The State and the Global Ecological Crisis

Review: The State and the Global Ecological Crisis By John Barry and Robyn Eckersley Reviewed by Victoria Carchidi Washington, DC, USA Barry, John and Robyn Eckersley. The State and the Global Ecological Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 307 pp. ISBN: 0-262-52435-X. US27. 00 (softbound). If someone were to conduct an “impact assessment of international environmental diplomacy, ” John Vogler miserably acknowledges, the results would be “shameful” for such supposedly environmentally motivated interactions’ “contribution to global warming” through excessive air travel and “the mountains of paper consumed” (p. 237). This collection of essays does not shy away from unpalatable facts about the way states acting alone and in concert cause ecological damage. Yet these twelve thought provoking essays move beyond the misery of documenting environmental failures. The collection explicitly looks “to discover to what extent it might be possible to “ ‘reinstate the state’ as a facilitator of progressive environmental change rather than environmental destruction” (p. x). Part I, “The State and Domestic Environmental Governance, ” succeeds in this goal. It includes Peter Christoff’s article documenting Australia’s history—and pointing out that not only environmental degradation, but efforts at conservation, began almost immediately upon European settlement of that continent. James Meadowcraft, and Christian Hunold with John Dryzek, set out frameworks for looking at the ecological range of state policies. Hunold and Dryzek summarize their 2003 book (John S. Dryzek, David Downes, Christian Hunold, and David Schlosberg, with Hans-Kristian Hernes. Green States and Social Movements, Oxford, OUP, 2003) and present unexpected conclusions to the effects of governments’ passive or active inclusion or exclusion of green activism. Norway’s active inclusion of civic concerns has led to a green economy that silences radical options; the US’s passive inclusion effectively ignores the environmental movement; the UK’s active exclusion leads to easily placated greens; and, oddly, the passively exclusive government of Germany has led to an empowered, oppositional environmental movement that influences state policy and presses for radical change.