Environmental politics designate both the politics about the environment[1] and an academic field of study focused on three core components:[2] Neil Carter, in his foundational text Politics of the Environment (2009), suggests that environmental politics is distinct in at least two ways: first, "it has a primary concern with the relationship between human society and the natural world" (page 3); and second, "unlike most other single issues, it comes replete with its own ideology and political movement" (page 5, drawing on Michael Jacobs, ed., Greening the Millenium?, 1997).
[2] Further, he distinguishes between modern and earlier forms of environmental politics, in particular conservationism and preservationism.
Contemporary environmental politics "was driven by the idea of a global ecological crisis that threatened the very existence of humanity."
And "modern environmentalism was a political and activist mass movement which demanded a radical transformation in the values and structures of society.
"[2] Scholarly journals representing this field of study include: