ABSTRACT
Twenty years ago, environmentalists were portrayed as Jeremiahs, purveyors of doom always ready to spoil the occasion. Talk of famine and global destruction backed by unproveable computer predictions poured forth. As the world economy apparently survived the OPEC oil price squeeze and the subsequent anxieties about commodity scarcity, so the worst fears of the anxious were alleviated. The world entered the 1980s in a new mood of optimism and marketorientated politics where squeezing the world’s poor became part of the process of continued wealth creation. It was also assumed that the impoverished would somehow remain manageable in terms of civil order and public health, and that business could become even better than usual.
