The Role of Self-interest in International Environmental Law

Abstract

World public order of the environment: Towards an international ecological law and organization. By Jan Schneider. Toronto, London, and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1979. Pp, vii, 319. $20.00 Environmentalism ultimately demands a global perspective. The concepts of finitude and interdependence, absolutely fundamental to environmental analysis, are confirmed in the recognition of the global environment as an essentially closed system. Any less encompassing analytic framework undermines, to some extent, the central proposition that all levels of the natural system are fundamentally intertwined. Admittedly overused, the image of "Spaceship Earth" nonetheless powerfully illustrates both that the planet is a discrete, and hence finite, entity and that its occupants cannot escape the consequences of their activity.