Abstract

Two models of environmentalism are considered. One — hard line environmentalism — is a theory which unites environmental ethics and political theory; the other — soft environmentalism — is a package of the two as two distinctive levels of moral reasoning. It is argued that hard‐line environmentalism is a‐democratic, rests on wrong methodological assumptions, and is friendly to the environment just so long as being so serves a sought‐after ‘psychological revolution’. Soft environmentalism is to be preferred also because its idea of democracy must be national and international rather than local. Since in the ‘new’ Europe people will move very often and will therefore fail to develop a sense of ‘place’ which is local, it may be a waste of time to emphasise ‘localism’ as part of environmentalism.