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The authors explore the possibility of an essentialist link between environmental problems and state socialism, and the extent to which either an environmentalist movement or civil action can achieve a perceptible improvement in environmental quality. The authors frame their discussion from the discourse developed after the collapse of European socialism during 1989 and 1991.

The author examines how internal, nation-specific variations in the development of post-socialist economies influence the level of importance assigned to environmental issues. Acknowledgement of these variations help theorists avoid a dichotomy that artificially divides environmental policy-making into two groups, that of all post-socialist nations and that of all Western nations.

Variability is one of the most salient features of the earth's climate, yet quantitative policy studies have generally ignored the impact of variability on society's best choice of climate-change policy. This omission is troubling because an adaptive emissions-reduction strategy, one that adjusts abatement rates over time based on observations of damages and abatement costs, should perform much better against extreme uncertainty than static, best-estimate policies. However, climate variability can strongly affect the success of adaptive-abatement strategies by masking adverse trends or fooling society into taking too strong an action. This study compares the performance of a wide variety of adaptive greenhouse-gas-abatement strategies against a broad range of plausible future climate-change scenarios. We find that: i) adaptive strategies remain preferable to static, best-estimate policies even with very large levels of climate variability; ii) the most robust strategies are innovation sensitive, that is, adjust future emissions reduction rates on the basis of small changes in observed abatement costs but only for large changes in observed damages; and iii) information about the size of the variability is about a third to an eighth as valuable as information determining the value of the key parameters that represent the long-term, future climate-change state-of-the-world.

The relationship between scientific research and the democratic process is examined, focusing on the right of the people to be informed about environmental research and the need to protect intellectual property and maintain high standards of information. Topics include freedom of information regulations under the 1999 Omnibus Spending Bill, the tension between demand for environmental policy and incomplete scientific studies, and professional and political biases in the scientific process.

To be effective, the ecosystem approach must involve a practical point of view and scientists must become involved with wildlife managers and with policymakers in government. The scientific community for a long time has bemoaned failure on the part of policymakers to accept an ecosystem approach to land management. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is listening and has been told to pioneer the practical implementation of an ecosystem approach. Watersheds will be the natural systems on which ecosystems approaches will be based. Real-world constraints exist, that is, minimal knowledge of ecosystem functions and immediate human demands on land. Collaboration of those representing many interests will be required. Wildlife managers are being asked to give up the single-species approach, a move that will feel risky and inspire wariness. They will need help from scientists.

The article examines the appeal of environmental skeptics such as Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who question conventional ecological theory and viewpoints. The author concludes that the appeal of these nay-sayers is that the public would like to believe the state of the environment is not as dire as scientific evidence suggests.