Environmentalist thinking and/in geography

In recent years, a new type of determinist environmental thinking has emerged. It can be understood to be one strand in a much broader realm of 'environment talk'. Many human geographers have expressed a combination of scepticism and surprise at the apparently inexorable rise of the neo-environmentalist arguments which differ from early twentieth-century environmental determinism yet continue to draw upon biologistic accounts of human culture. Although geography has in recent years been at the forefront of the academic discussions of environmental change in relation to science, institutional context, political costs and human impacts, the discipline nevertheless has to contend with a widespread misperception of the place of environment in human affairs and the world's future. This Forum discusses the context for the rise of, and consequences of, determinist accounts.