ABSTRACT
From a focus on localised problems such as pollution of air or water, the scope of environmentalism has steadily expanded to take on the globe. Following the identification of ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect, the relevance of specifically global environmental change has come to be implanted in the public consciousness in the 1990s. An explosion of international environmental agreements such as the 1987 Montreal Protocol (which set targets for phasing out chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, held responsible for depletion of the ozone layer) and the 1992 Climate Change Convention in Rio (which set national targets for reducing emissions of CO2, the main contributor to global warming) is one illustration of this phenomenon. The flurry of activity at all levels on the environmental front has, in turn, generated a growing academic interest, testified to by this book, in business responses to the environment. However, much of this literature pays little attention to systematic variations within the categories ‘business’ and ‘environment’. Further, the role of government in this context appears to be either that of the policeman with the proverbial stick, or, lately, a mere provider of environmental information that is supposed to promote voluntary action.
