ABSTRACT
In this contribution I shall explore some of the tensions between liberal democracy and the requirements of thoroughgoing ecological reform, where by this I mean a degree of reform commensurate with the current worldwide ecological crisis. I propose to adopt an ecocentric rather than an anthropocentric yardstick of reform since, as is explained in the introduction to this collection, ecocentrism affords an exacting standard for ascertaining the true environmental potential of political systems. I shall argue that liberal democracy fails to provide the kind of social conditions conducive to the large-scale emergence of an ecocentric consciousness, and hence that ecocentric environmentalism is bound to remain a minority concern in liberal regimes. I shall then outline the kind of social conditions which I consider generally to be a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for the emergence of an ecocentric outlook.1 Up to this point my paper recapitulates, though in an ecological vein, some of the lines of argument developed by communitarian, socialist and feminist critics of liberalism. Thereafter, however, I subject the notion of eco-communitarian selfhood, developed in the first half of the study, to closer scrutiny, distinguishing it from abstract forms of collectivism or globalism, yet also expanding it into a transnational frame. It is also worth noting that the overall argument is largely programmatic, as space does not allow the full development and defence of all the claims and inferences involved along the way.
