Anastasia Telesetsky | September 10, 2026
Teaching Environmental Law in Perilous Times: Learning Common Ground for Ecological Solidarity
These are challenging times for environmental management because we are losing our social cohesion and are increasingly detached from the lives, both human and more than human, around us. Political scientist and sociologist Robert Putnam has been diagnosing and re-diagnosing this problem in his books like Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. We no longer have common purpose with repeated interactions either with each other or with our environment. We have what former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy referred to as “our epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” as well as what journalist Richard Louv labeled the “nature deficit.” It is in this time where we need to be reconnecting with our neighbors and learning from nature at large that the engaged teaching materials in Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen Gonzalez’s Teaching Environmental Law in Context offer a real opportunity for environmental studies students, law students, and lawyers to reflect on how we can grow in solidarity through shared knowledge.