Markets, Deliberation and Environment

'The expansion of the market has been a worry to many. But while some are concerned about the expansion of the market in geographical terms (meaning, in fact, globalization), most social democrats have discussed it in terms of the goods which are now subject to the market. Perhaps the two most mentioned goods are education and health the claim is that they should not be distributed, supplied and priced according to "the market", or supply and demand. However, another important good which many believe should not be subject to the caprice of the market is the 'environment'. This, actually, is a vague concept, and therefore John O'Neill holds that we should discuss a variety of 'environmental goods'. In this thought provoking and profound book, he raises the question whether environmental goods and the market go hand in hand. O'Neill's claim is that they do not; nor should we reason about the environment using market norms and/or theory. If it is not the market, then what is the right framework for thinking about the environment? O'Neill believes it is deliberative politics, or 'deliberation', as he calls it. Step by step and in a very careful analysis, O'Neill examines, and offers a critique of dozens of arguments in support of the market discourse in the context of the environment. For example, standard economic theory holds that the reason we have so many environmental problems is that we have failed to apply market reasoning to the environment. O'Neill not only rejects this, but also shows how this could be vice versa: that the reason why we have these problems is precisely the expansion of market norms and reasoning to the environment. If mainstream economic theory claims that we should apply mechanisms of 'willingness to pay' and 'cost benefit analysis' to environmental questions, O'Neill puts forward the argument that such theories fail to grasp not preferences but the reasons people hold preferences. At this point he first hints to the solution, which he offers in more details later in the book: politics is the sphere and deliberation is the mechanism through which we can find out these reasons, which are not less important than the preferences themselves, in the context of environmental policies. O'Neill discusses both utilitarian claims against the expansion of the market to environmental goods (e.g. Chapter 2) and other, political and communitarian arguments. One of these claims he has been putting forward for many years and in many of his books and papers, namely, that we should not be so concerned with whether indeed the market can or cannot do this or that to protect the environment, because there are non-market values and norms which many of us regard as constitutive to our identities, and which might override market considerations, regardless of whether the market does or does not protect the environment. Such norms could be justice, equality, community, or indeed values that have to do with our relationships with the not yet born (chapter 3), or with the past (chapter 5), relationships that constitute the way we think about our identity. Whether obligations to the past should guide our policies today might be a controversial claim. In times of financial and economic crisis it might prima facie seem a luxury to commit ourselves to the past instead of caring for the well being of those living now. However, O'Neill discusses this using a rather broad notion of well being, one that is not only materialistic, but includes answers to questions such as how we live, how we respect other people, and so on (Chapters 5 and 6). O'Neill draws our attention to several environmental goods. In fact, one of the most surprising chapter is the one that deals with the idea of 'wilderness'. Those familiar with 19th and early 20th American literature and use of the term, know that it serves to dismis

Lancaster University, UK

Introduction: Globalization and the Environment Part 1: Environmental Goods and the Limits of the Market 1: Markets and the Environment: The Solution is the Problem 2. Managing Without Prices: On the Monetary Valuation of Biodiversity 3. Property, Care and Environment 4: Public Choice, Institutional Economics, Environmental Goods Part 2: Time, Community, Equality 5. Time, Narrative and Environmental Politics 6. Sustainability: Ethics, Politics and the Environment Part 3: Bringing Environmentalism in from the Wilderness 7. Wilderness, Cultivation and Appropriation 8. The Good Life Below the Snowline Part 4: Deliberation and its Discontents 9: Deliberation, Power and Voice 10: The Rhetoric of Deliberation 11: Representing People, Representing Nature, Representing the World 12: The Political Economy of Deliberation