Framing the Environment: The Cornwall Alliance, Laissez-faire Environmentalism, and the Green Dragon

Abstract

Religious discourse plays an important role in U.S. public debates on environmental policy. In this paper, we examine an aspect of this discourse, focusing on the discursive frame adopted by conservative evangelical elites as they promote religious interpretations of the environment distinct from more proenvironmental factions. Using qualitative document analysis of the Resisting the Green Dragon lectura series, sponsored by the Cornwall Alliance, we identify four key themes to this frame: (1) environmentalism is not science, (2) but a religion, (3) which threatens Christianity, and (4) personal and political freedom. These interrelated themes focus on denying or neutralizing scientific claims of environmental degradation, but also, and perhaps more importantly, counter moral claims advanced by more pro-environmental factions by linking a religious form of laissez-faire environmentalism to ethical considerations salient among evangelicals.