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Ecology Politics and Liberal Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Volkmar Lauber
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OVER THE LAST TEN YEARS, ECOLOGY HAS MADE ITS ENTRANCE INTO politics. At first the main concern was with pollution; but soon it broadened, and today the watchword is energy. In both cases the underlying phenomenon is that of economic growth. Not that all growth is incompatible with ecological balance; but over the last few decades normally there was a conflict, and industrial and urban growth in particular have led to a significant deterioration of the environment. Hence the importance of the controversy surrounding industrialization and economic growth, which has taken on an increasing importance in the politics of several Western European countries.

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Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1978 , pp. 199 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1978

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References

1 Gross Domestic Product… appears to provide the most convenient measure of ecological demand’ (Blueprint for Survival, special issue of the Ecologist, 1972, p. 3). But it has to be kept in mind that the GDP above all reflects an increase in value, and its content is subject to change. Some technologically very advanced products (such as computers) have a minimal environmental impact.

2 Beckerman, Wilfred, Two Cheers for the Affluent Society , St Martin’s Press, New York, 1974, pp. 36 and 203–204.Google Scholar Pavitt, Keith, ‘A European View of the “Environmental Crisis”’, in Axtmann, Robert C., ed., Rescuing Man’s Environment , Princeton University Council on Environmental Studies, Princeton, N. J., 1972, p. 129. 129.Google Scholar

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21 Shonfield writes: ‘I remember the undisguised glee of a member of the staff of the Commissariat du Plan in Paris who was describing the success of a plan to change the structure of an industry in which there was a proliferation of small, backward firms: they were being killed off ‐“un vrai holocauste!” he said.’

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37 Ibid., pp. 119–20.

38 Ibid., p. 112.

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42 Thus, General Hugh Johnson of the NRA (National Recovery Administration). Quoted by Shonfield, op. cit., p. 310.

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49 In Marckolsheim (on the French side of the Rhine), a chemical plant (with danger of lead pollution) was at stake; after very strong and well‐organized local protest, the government revoked the permit for the installation. In Wyhl (on the German side of the Rhine), the permit for a nuclear power plant was finally suspended in court, but only after a history of local protests and administrative and judicial proceedings.

50 Thoreau, Essay on Civil Disobedience.

51 The Economist, 19 March 1977, p. 12.

52 Ibid., 13 November 1976, p. 63.

53 In France, the Electricité de France and the Atomic Energy Commission are not only conducting a publicity campaign for nuclear energy but the latter has also forbidden all its employees and all personnel under contract to publish anything about nuclear energy without its previous clearance. See Samuel, Pierre, Le nucléaire en question , Entente, Paris, 1975, p. 95.Google Scholar

54 See Heilbroner, op. cit., p. 89; and also his review of Fred Hirsch’s Social Limits to Growth, where he writes: ‘The necessary remedy may be beyond our grasp, for it requires nothing less than an abandonment of the primary behavioral premise of capitalism ‐that is, the replacement of the individualistic acquisitive ethos by a social, communally oriented perspective. Can this be achieved without falling into Chinese thought control?’ Heilbroner, Robert L., ‘The False Promise of Growth’, The New York Review of Books, 3 03 1977, p. 10. Konrad Lorenz has similarly argued for a ‘dictatorship of the good’ to save the world from ecological disaster. And many have wondered about the political nature of the Club of Rome’s proposals; there is a strong suspicion of authoritarian politics. See Dahrendorf, op. cit., pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

55 Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation , Beacon Press, Boston, 1957.Google Scholar