"The EC and the Global Environment: Dimensions, Trends, and Prospects"

Lankowski, Carl. (1993) "The EC and the Global Environment: Dimensions, Trends, and Prospects". In: UNSPECIFIED, Washington, DC. (Unpublished)

Preview

PDF Download (1357Kb) | Preview

Abstract

[From the Introduction]. This may initially strike one as a strange question. After all, the environment has become a virtually universal concern of politics and policy-making. Nevertheless, the question deserves to be posed because what is and is not included in the term, environment, cannot be taken for granted. For the sake of simplicity, one can imagine two ways of considering "the environmental." One way draws lines around anthropogenically traceable degradations of the biosphere, taking as the baseline extant social institutions and cultural orientations. This approach is, broadly speaking, not only anthropocentric, but in a way, ethnocentric as well. Interest in the environment comes from and is pretty much limited by "fixing" (as in abating) undesirable transformations of our natural surroundings. Methodologically, this approach is Cartesian, in the sense that it instinctively proceeds by isolating effects prior to engineering responses to them. Such an approach does not question the parameters of human action. A more holistic approach can be defined in contrast which dares to judge our productive and consumptive practices by the character of our relationship to our "natural" surroundings itself.

Actions (login required)