ABSTRACT
Caring about pollution in relation to the environment is a relatively modern phenomenon. In the twentieth century, pollution is seen as an embodiment of humankind’s struggle against nature. The ‘polluter pays’ often means that the consumer pays and people tend to care more about their expenditure budget than they do about pollution. The debate about pollution revolves around definitions, ethics and attitudes towards nature. Sociologist Colin Campbell believes Romanticism can be seen partly as a development from, and reaction against, the Enlightenment and what John Stuart Mill described as ‘the narrowness of the eighteenth century’. In reality, that anti-science movement had begun with the Romantics, grew through all the scientific and engineering glory of the industrial revolution, and has its current home in the strand of the environmental movement that is represented by the ‘deep ecology’ made popular by writers such as Arne Naess and Edward Abbey.
