ABSTRACT
In the German social market economy, the government assures the solidarity of the social contract through class-mitigating welfare measures, while leaving the private sector free to operate in the economic market. The German public is more interested in environmental regulations than is the American public. The deep ecology movement is in deep trouble in an era of globalization dominated by the spread of North American and British ‘interest’ ideology worldwide. The German regulations attempt to integrate the concepts of economic growth and environmental protection in cost-effective ways. Animal liberation emerged as a reaction against the praise of the doubting human mind of Descartes, which rendered all other animal species to the status of mere machines. Ferry argues that both deep ecology and animal liberation involve anti-humanism: they do not mention ‘culture’, which is an outgrowth of freedom and involves a separation from nature.
