What's Political about the Environment? Some Implications for Democratic Theory.

Political theory addressing environmental problems typically takes a single type of issue, such as climate change, as exemplary and relies upon this type as the basis for theorizing. This paper begins with a simple but often neglected question: What makes an environmental problem a political problem? I begin with a set of temporal and spatial distinctions in order to illuminate the variety of environmental problems before turning to the role of complexity and uncertainty in understanding environmental problems. The purpose is to determine whether there is a unifying idea behind this variety of problems that is amenable to deliberative or participatory democracy and whether an attachment to a participatory idea of democracy is sustainable in light of these problems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]