Public Citizens

Paul Sabin teaches United States environmental history, energy politics, and political, legal, and economic history.  He coordinates the Yale Environmental History working group and the Yale Environmental Humanities Program, and helps lead Yale’s undergraduate Environmental Studies major. 

He is the author of Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism (W.W. Norton, 2021), which examines the evolution and impact of the public interest and environmental movements in the United States since the 1960s. His previous book, The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble Over Earth’s Future (Yale University Press, 2013), explores the clash between environmentalists and their critics in contentious debates over population growth and resource scarcity.  His first book, Crude Politics: The California Oil Market, 1900-1940 (University of California Press, 2005), shows how politics and law shaped a growing dependence on petroleum in California and the nation. Sabin also has written on international resource frontiers, U.S. overseas expansion, and energy and legal history.