This chapter discusses some cornerstones of the current United States debate on climate change and the environment, its socio-cultural and historical backgrounds, and some potential perspectives. It provides a macro-typological—and thus necessarily in many ways reductive and incomplete—introduction into a complex and controversial topic currently in the midst of rapid development. This chapter does not claim to represent ‘the’ American mindset towards nature or ‘the’ US view on the question of whether man-made activities are the cause of global warming or not, but aims at providing a primary and generalistic framework for analysing cultural aspects of views on climate change and the environment in the US. It thereby touches on more specific issues and trajectories found in the following chapters of this book.
