ABSTRACT
The environmental crisis expresses the relation between science and society in
a special way: it illustrates the overriding importance of action. Action-oriented
decisions-for example, whether to stop global warming for the sake of people
or in order to conserve the natural world-profoundly affect the relationship.
Both the post-World War II changes in production technology, which gave rise
to the environmental crisis, and the failed effort to resolve it by the strategy of
control, lead to a common conclusion: Environmental pollution is an incurable
disease: it can only be prevented. By design, production technologies must be
compatible with environmental quality. This introduces a social interest in what
is widely regarded as a private prerogative: the decisions that determine what is
produced and by what means. Environmental quality is then an aspect of political
economy, requiring, for example, national, democratically determined, industrial
and agricultural policies. Such a sweeping transformation of production can
be powerfully inspired by a vision of the economic renaissance that would be
generated by the new, more productive, technologies. The most meaningful
engine of change may be not so much environmental quality as the economic
development and growth generated by the effort to improve it.
