How Does American Government Deal with the Environment?
 

5. Interest Groups

    How groups influence politics and policy

    Groups that advocate environmental protection often depend on purposive or solidaristic incentives, so they have strong incentives to hold out 
      for the purest version of their agenda

    Many groups that are financially harmed by environmental protection depend on material incentives, and so they have strong incentives
          to be very focused and practical

    Purity v. Pragmatism

6. Public Opinion

    Support for the Environment is a mile wide and an inch deep

    The climate change example

How Does the United States Govern Its Land?

1. How Americans altered their landscape

    Land and economic growth

    How the U.S. government took control of most of the nation's land

    The Homestead Act

    The Pacific Railroad Act

2. How Chicago altered the landscape of the American Midwest

    Location, Location, Location

    Grain Production and the Transformation of the Prairie

    Timber Production and the Transformation of the Forests

    Cattle, Hogs, and Mass Production

    The Transformation of Rural Life

3. The Public Lands Today

    The Battle over Public Lands since the 1970s

    Forests & Fire

4. Land in Urban areas.