ABSTRACT
We live in a time when environmental issues are constantly emerging as deeply contentious political issues. From oil spills on busy ocean waterways, slash and burn timber clearance in the remaining forested areas of the world and the disposal of toxic chemical and radioactive waste, to the maintenance of water quality, the control of ecologically disruptive gas emissions and the unknown consequences of human intervention in the gene pool, all of these activities and events now appear very close to our concerns and provide a constant diet for news programmes. The way we respond to these issues embodies our hopes and fears about the future. Our responses have not been confined to intergovernmental summits and the regulatory regimes devised by state authorities. We can see the results of emerging ecological awareness in all kinds of little ways, when we walk through supermarkets or when we deposit cans and bottles at recycling banks, or when we interpret the content of children’s television. In children’s cartoons, for instance, the leading heroic characters no longer save the world or civilization from some cunning and duplicitous villain, they ‘save the planet’ from some human-made ecological disaster.
