British Politics and the Environment

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Britain has an immense range of environmental law and the reputation for largely ignoring it. John McCormick describes the fascinating story of the political growth of that law, and the pressures, the compromises, the parliamentary and civil service opportunism that allowed the edifice to grow over the greaterpart of a century. He tells the story of the absolute change in political climate over the last ten years and deciphers the nature of Thatcher's "conversion" to greenery. He explains why everyone who cared about the environment became embattled and, above all, how the old methods of sensible political compromise were banished, probably for ever, not the least because of the government's obsession with secrecy. What, then, are the new political means of compelling change on a reluctant parliament? Everything is at stake from welfare to water, from forests to fishing. Where are we now? what are the likely pressures, both internal and from Europe and the rest of the world to make Britain pass more environmentally sound laws and, perhaps more importantly, to observe them? McCormick provides a gripping picture of the central issues, of the system and of the battleground. The author also wrote "Acid Earth: the Global Threat of Acid Pollution".