Environmentalism Environmentalism as a Challenge to the Modern Secular Nation-State Environmentalism is the protection of the air, water, land, plants, animals, and other natural resources from pollution and its effects. Environmentalism is also known as conservationism, ecologism, and the Green Movement.
Environmentalism has many names because it is an emergent ideology.
It is composed of sets of attitudes towards the various institutions and processes of society. An ideology provides the believer with a picture of the world both as it is and as it should be, and in doing so, organizes the tremendous complexity of the world into something fairly simple and understandable. Environmentalism is emergent because it is a new system of beliefs and environmentalists would disagree strongly over its definition. It does not yet give those who believe in it a fully formed set of beliefs. There are still many debatable points as to what exactly it is and how it can be used to answer basic social, political, and cultural questions.