Green Talk in the White House: The Rhetorical Presidency Encounters Ecology

Issues of wilderness and wetlands preservation, clean air and clean water, and the sustainable use of natural resources have figured prominently in American political debate of the twentieth century. Presidents since Theodore Roosevelt have addressed these issues, rhetorically in their public addresses and pragmatically in their policies and appointments to pertinent positions. Green Talk in the White House gathers an array of approaches to studying environmental rhetoric and the presidency, covering a range of administrations and a diversity of viewpoints on how the concept of the
rhetorical presidency
may be modified in this policy area. Tarla Rai Peterson’s introduction to the book discusses both methodological and substantive issues in studying presidential rhetoric on the environment. In subsequent chapters, noted scholars examine various aspects of half a dozen modern presidencies to shed light not only on those administrations but also on the study of environmental rhetoric itself. The final section of the book then directs attention to the future of presidential rhetoric and environmental governance, with looks
in
at state-level environmental issues and looks
out
at the international context of environmentalism.