Introduction

Abstract

Today, the public increasingly perceives humanity as a part of the biosphere where continued rapid transformation and modification of the global environment could endanger the human race. A new type of threshold has been reached in many sectors of the economy: neither capital, market, nor labor, but the stress placed upon the environment has become the limiting factor (Thober et al. 1985). The current public debate focuses on the formulation and justification of a policy which is likely to be appropriate and sufficient for containing and avoiding this threat. How can a society be brought about to change its abuse of the environment? Do humans respond to rational arguments about environmental issues? How far can environmental education and appeals to common values modify human behaviour? To what extent do we need incentives and penalties? The answers which are given to those questions will draw from a variety of images of humankind and make implicit assumptions about the kind of interactions which have taken place between societies and their natural environment in the past.