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Etienne Benson's book Surroundings (2020) details the emergence and history of the now ubiquitous signifier 'the environment'. Today, the environment performs all manner of work cognitively and normatively, as Benson shows. His book ends with a plea that diversity be fostered in the immediate environments people inhabit. However, this unremarkable aspiration is foiled by two absences in his otherwise fine book. One is a proper treatment of social power and how, discursively and materially, powerful people and organisations routinely diminish existing environmental variety. The other is the 'gigantism' associated with twenty-first century capitalism and technoscience. Benson's analysis, in the end, misses key drivers affecting the content and affects of the environment as a signifier.

The environmental humanities are suffused with a sense of urgency. As geoscientists sound the alarm about human treatment of the Earth, likewise environmental humanists seek to trigger the "conversation of humankind" that seems scarcely to be happening outside universities. This essay ponders the future of the environmental humanities, and specifically their relationship to the geosciences whose messages animate much current humanistic inquiry. It cautions against a too-hasty acceptance of the notion of a "global environmental crisis." It argues for forms of interdisciplinary work that give humanists parity-of-esteem with geoscientists. And it suggests that a modified paradigm of global environmental assessment might be a viable vehicle for greater humanistic influence in the global public sphere. Throughout, humanists must somehow balance trust in geoscience with a critical stance towards its core messages about a changing Earth system. This stance is anchored on the ground of democracy, the necessary political basis for any legitimate decisions about humanity's future on Earth. Steering the environmental humanities will be a major challenge given the need for humanists to retain academic freedom yet cooperate in order to exert influence outside the academic domain.

The environmental humanities are suffused with a sense of urgency. As geoscientists sound the alarm about human treatment of the Earth, likewise environmental humanists seek to trigger the "conversation of humankind" that seems scarcely to be happening outside universities. This essay ponders the future of the environmental humanities, and specifically their relationship to the geosciences whose messages animate much current humanistic inquiry. It cautions against a too-hasty acceptance of the notion of a "global environmental crisis." It argues for forms of interdisciplinary work that give humanists parity-of-esteem with geoscientists. And it suggests that a modified paradigm of global environmental assessment might be a viable vehicle for greater humanistic influence in the global public sphere. Throughout, humanists must somehow balance trust in geoscience with a critical stance towards its core messages about a changing Earth system. This stance is anchored on the ground of democracy, the necessary political basis for any legitimate decisions about humanity's future on Earth. Steering the environmental humanities will be a major challenge given the need for humanists to retain academic freedom yet cooperate in order to exert influence outside the academic domain

This essay's point of departure is the coincident economic and environmental "crises� of our time. I locate both in the dynamics of capital accumulation on a world-scale, drawing on the ideas of Marx, Karl Polanyi and James O'Connor. I ask whether the recent profusion of "crisis talk� in the public domain presents an opportunity for progressive new ideas to take hold now that "neoliberalism� has seemingly been de-legitimated. My answer is that a "post-neoliberal� future is probably a long way off. I make my case in two stages and at two geographical scales. First, I examine the British social formation as currently constituted and explain why even a leading neoliberal state is failing to reform its ways. Second, I then scale-up from the domestic level to international affairs. I examine cross-border emissions trading—arguably the policy tool for mitigating the very real prospects of significant climate change this century. The overall conclusion is this: even though the "first� and "second� contradictions of capital have manifested themselves together and at a global level, there are currently few prospects for systemic reform (never mind revolution) led by a new, twenty-first century "red-green� Left.

There now exists a significant body of theoretically informed empirical research into 'neoliberal environments'. It comprises numerous studies which together explore the connections between neoliberal principles and policies, on the one side, and the biophysical world on the other. However, making sense of them is by no means straightforward, despite their common focus on neoliberal environments. It is currently left to readers of these studies to synthesise them into a wider, joined-up account of neoliberal environments. This and two companion articles aim for precisely this sort of broad and coherent understanding. The contribution of this second instalment is to present an overarching political economic theory of 'neoliberal environments'. By synthesising concepts from the work of Karl Marx, Karl Polanyi and James O'Connor, this article presents a framework for thinking about how neoliberal policies relate to the biophysical world. © 2010 The Author. Geography Compass © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.