Bron Taylor is an Environmental Studies scholar at the University of Florida with whom I once worked to develop an Environmental Studies program when we were both at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. Among other things, his scholarly work has paid close attention to environmental movements around the world, from radical to mainstream manifestations, with special attention to their ethical, spiritual, and political dimensions.
After hearing about the incident in Maryland yesterday where a protester was shot and killed by police after threatening employees at the Discovery Channel's headquarters claiming the channel was not doing enough to save the planet, I thought of Taylor as someone who might help us make sense of the situation. My hunch was quickly confirmed when I learned that Lee had been influenced by the novels written by Daniel Quinn, for I knew Taylor had written about Quinn's influence on environmentalists in his new book,
Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future. (More about his book and writings can be found on his
website.)
