The Symbolic Earth: Discourse and Our Creation of the Environment

The core dilemma in environmental advocacy may be illustrated by the question, "When we communicate about the world, should we stress what we know or what we feel?" The contributors to The Symbolic Earth argue that it is more important to decide how we should talk about what we know and feel. In their view, the environment is larely a product of how we talk about the world.

Because the environment is a social construction, the only hope we have of preserving it is to understand and alter the...