Michael Maniates
Professor of Political Science
  and Environmental Science
Allegheny College
814-332-2786

michael.maniates@allegheny.edu

Fall 2009 office hours:
MFW 10:15 - noon, Tu 11 - noon,
and by appointment

Michael Maniates (curriculum vitæ) is a Full Professor of Political Science and Environmental Science at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. His is the only active joint appointment at Allegheny that bridges the natural- and social-sciences. He sometimes wonders (with trepidation) where he fits in Matt Groening's typology of college teachers*(!)

Over the past year or so, Michael has been working on a simple but troubling contradiction. We know intuitively that the most important things in life take hard work, struggle, and sacrifice. We celebrate this fact as Americans. Yet we've somehow fallen into the comfortable assumption that "saving the environment" -- surely one of the most important challenges of our time -- can and should be individually easy, simple, and convenient.

Titles of best-selling environmental books say it all -- It's Easy Being Green, for example, or The Lazy Environmentalist -- as do the "ten simple ways to make a difference" lists that populate the Web sites of major environmental groups and the Environmental Protection Agency. We're told that saving the planet is possible without breaking much of a sweat. Really? Can working effectively for goals like climate stability, a socially-just policy on exposure to toxics, or renewable energy really be that easy? Or by trying to make it attractive to do good in this world, are purveyors of "easy" inadvertently promoting a system that fails to engage our creativity and nurture our ability to make lasting change? Are we, in other words, being sold short?

Michael's been writing about this issue (here's one example featured in Thomas Friedman's new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded and the Aspen Ideas Festival 2008). His work has been profiled by other writers (special thanks to David Villano of Miller-McCune Magazine). And he's been a frequent guest of colleges, universities, and environmental gatherings around the country (e.g. Washington D.C., Allegheny, Westminster, University of Florida, DePauw, Sonoma State (YouTube), St. Bonaventure University, the University of Redlands, and Vanderbilt University (YouTube)).

Those bags under Mike's eyes are probably from the two projects he's finishing on what he calls "the environmental politics of sacrifice." One is an edited volume (with John Meyer of Humboldt University) titled The Environmental Politics of Sacrifice, to be published by MIT Press in 2009. The other is a lively book aimed at a popular audience with the working title of Selling Us Short: Grown Up Ways of Saving the Planet.

When he's not on research leave (as he was in 2007-2008), Maniates teaches classes on the politics of Third World "development," the domestic and international politics of environmental governance, sustainable energy futures, and the dynamics of social change. He works with first-year students in his seminar "College is the Answer...But What was the Question?" And he does his level best to draw his upper-level students into collaborative research and writing around global patterns of consumption, overconsumption, and consumerism; low consumption/high prosperity paths to development; underexplored routes of citizen involvement in contemporary environmental struggles; and joyful learning and teaching in the liberal arts. With his students he founded, in 1996, the Meadville Community Energy Project, and served as a research affiliate with its successor, the Commonwealth Community Energy Project.

Mike also founded and coordinates the Project on Teaching Global Environmental Politics, an electronic network of 300+ scholars, educators, and activists focused on global environmental affairs (see the project archive for a look at what we talk about). He is the co-founder and member of the Advisory Board of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, now celebrating its 20th year of interdisciplinary policy analysis and advocacy.

It's no surprise, then, that Mike is especially fond of Tom Tomorrow (this link takes you to an entry page for Salon.com -- look for the red "Enter Salon" link in the upper corner of the page to get to Tom Tomorrow comics...well worth it!) He also likes the writings of the good folk at The Onion (their work on Earth Day and consumerism is especially thought-provoking).

Prof. Maniates holds a B.S. (Phi Beta Kappa) in Conservation and Resource Studies, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Energy and Resources, all from the University of California at Berkeley. He was a Fulbright scholar to India, a recipient of the Sprout Award for the best book in International Environmental Politics (with Tom Princen and Ken Conca) for Confronting Consumption (MIT Press 2002), and Academic Dean of the Spring 2007 'round-the-world sailing of Semester at Sea. In 2000, Allegheny College surprised him with the Thoburn Teaching Award for Innovation and Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Mike's best known publications include "Environmental Studies: The Sky is Not Falling," published in BioScience; "Individualization: Plant a Tree, Ride A Bike, Save the World" (abridged version here) and "In Search of Consumptive Resistance: The Voluntary Simplicity Movement" in Confronting Consumption; and "Of Knowledge and Power" in his edited volume Encountering Global Environmental Politics (Rowman & Littlefield 2003). He's made his home in Meadville, Pennsylvania since 1993, with his two daughters Sarah (18) and Hannah (15).

*In a bout of great kindness, Professor Sascha von Meier offers her own hand-drawn answer to that question.