Deutsche Bank AG - Historische Gesellschaft der Deutschen Bank e.V.

a new generation of teachers and government
employees and becoming organized in ecological
fringe parties, the approaching crisis was for a long
time not perceived, in a period of regained pros-
perity and material saturation, by the broad centre
of the social spectrum or the big political parties
represen ting it
As Koselleck already noted in connection with
the first modern crisis, i e. the developments leading
up to the French revolution, the heralds o f progress,
could "notget a clear view of thephenomenon
o f crisis as such. No crisis is accessible to planning,
to rational steering rooted in blind faith in progress,
"With that, howevel; given growi~g s ymptoms
of crisis, the emergence of the ecological
movement at the fringes was inevitable, and
hardly a decade a fter their appearance the 'Green
Party" had become a polit~cal factor firmly established
in parliament (1980).
Environmental catastrophes such as Chernob yl
and Bhopal, the chemicals accident in Basle, oll
spills like the Valdez disaster in Alaska, the plague
ofalgae in the Mediterranean, and media dissemi-
nation of ecological issues such as acid rain, the
IOSS of woods, destruction of tropical rain forests,
the hole in the ozone layerand the greenhouse ef-
fect have meanwhile resultedin society in its entire
breadth being en veloped b y a widespread though
largely unconsidered awareness, emanating from
the activist fringe groups, of an environment in
crkis.
Corresponding to this - as a result of a superficial
search for the causes - there emerged an abstract
hostility towards technolog~ aimed above
all at industrial processes and those who carry
them out, but not, on the other hand, at theirpro-
ducts. In the USA., 41 % of all Americans inter-
viewed in 1981 in a regular pol1 agreed with the
Statement that protecting the environment was so
important [hat requirements and standards could
not be too high and continuing environmental im-
provements must be made regardless of cost. In
June 1989, despite all e fforts made during the de-
cade in environmental protection, the proportion
o f interviewees agreeing with this radical state-
ment had increased to 79%.7
lt fits in with this that the protection of the envi-
ronment should have developed from a topic for
quickly expanding fringe groups into a centralpol-
itical issue for allparties. The question to be asked,
however; is what surveys like those quoted a bove
- polls in the Federal Republic show the same re-
sults - tell us about the achievements of the stead-
ily gro wing activities in en vironmental protection.
Rapidly expanding environmental departments
at central, regional andlocallevelanda rising flood
o f acts and statutory orders to regulate ecological
matters in alt areas of life are characteristic of the
development. But it harbours far-reaching dan-
gers: inadequate attention to long-term issues for
the sake of quick political success, mismanage-
ment o f economic processes, covert asph yxiation
of the market economy by a new and ever more
comprehensive burea ucratic administered econ -
omy: Attempts at steering by ad hoc regulations
necessarily involve economic risks. These become
even greater when - implicit in the democratic