ABSTRACT
When in 1989 Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, Liberal Democracy became the dominant political persuasion of industrial societies. It is therefore the politics and policies of Liberal Democracy that are seen as ensuring the well-being and rights of citizens while safeguarding the environment against the excesses of technoiogical development and the overzealous economic pursuit of profit. Through their environmental policies Liberal Democracies are claimed to be able to regulate pollution emissions, set ‘safe levels’ for poisons and contamination, secure the sustainability of the bases of existence-air, water, soil, plants, biodiversity, climate-and to see to it that costs are not externalised, that is, that the true costs to the environment are reflected in the price of goods and services. Liberal Democracy, so it is argued, is the best if not the only system adequate to that task. From a temporal perspective, however, this assumption emerges as naive. The picture gets more complex. Paradoxes replace simplistic certainties: anomalies, gaps, contradictions and incompatibilities abound.
