ABSTRACT
Building on the analysis presented in the previous three chapters, which demonstrated the extent to which the regulatory process exhibits many of the characteristics central to the environmental philosophy of ‘weak’ ecological modernisation, this chapter examines these eco-modernist characteristics in more detail. In doing so, it provides an explanation for why the regulatory process operates according to these philosophical principles despite an increasing awareness that their application has facilitated environmentally harmful expansion for almost two decades. With every stage exhibiting a belief that expansive resource extraction is in the ‘public interest’, or a ‘social good’, the origins of this claim are subject to examination. The first section of this chapter brings into focus the particular strain of ‘modernisation’ being ‘greened’ by the regulatory process, taking into account contextual political-economic pressures. The second section examines the way in which this overarching narrow and economistic form of ‘modernisation’, given form by the policy and strategy objectives, is idealised and prioritised by those within the more operational, ‘approval’ stage of the process. The third and final section evaluates a mainstay of eco-modernist philosophy: the extent to which the faith placed by both policy and regulatory Panels in techno-scientific methods of risk mitigation is vindicated.
