democracy and the environment -- Politics and Society in Russia and its Neighbors

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Date Posted: 17:05:05 02/28/02 Thu
Author: Kate Sacrison
Subject: democracy and the environment

It was a few classes ago that we talked about whether democracy can work in Russia, due to their past of czarist and Communist rule. I went to Robert Kennedy Jr's talk at the law school on environmental law today. Most of the talk related to the American environment, but he also touched on situations in the rest of the world. In his opinion, it is democracy that has initiated and preserved American environmental law. If Russia had been a democracy in the 1970s, he holds, their environment would be in much better shape - pollution would not be as much of a problem, for instance. Remnick refers to the Chernobyl disaster, and the ensuing poor decisions regarding the clean-up of it. I would like to think that if such a thing happened in a democratic government, there would be a large public outcry. Politicians would have to be honest with the public and use safe clean-up methods in order to remain in office. This was not a concern for the Communist Soviet Union - politicians had no one to answer to.

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