What level of government for ecologists?
by Jean Mercier First and foremost, environmentalists have focused their attention on the physical environment, on questions regarding the quality of the air, the water, and the soil. As radical as they may appear to be, most environmentalist groups focus on the concrete solutions to solve our environmental problems. Greens and ecologists, on the other hand, in addition to the physical state of the planet, are interested in larger, more institutional questions. Better known in Europe and particularly in Germany (Hulsberg, 1988), the Greens constitute a political force that has made its political thought (Dobson, 1990)(1) and its parliamentary action felt in several countries. There are also ecologists who are less easily identifiable in terms of traditional public policy positions. “Ecology” was a term first reserved for the study of natural settings and the interactions found among its components. With time, ecology came to include the study of interactions at the human and institutio
