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Introduction Does Eco-Politics Exist and Does it Have Need of a Philosophy? 1. Why do we fail to notice the great changes? I read somewhere that when Captain Cook’s ship first approached the shores of Australia in 1770, his passengers were wondering with great curiosity how the natives living in Stone Age conditions would react to their appearance. To their great surprise they did not react at all; they stared straight through the three-masted barque. It was too big to be real. They scattered in headlong flight only when the rowboats were lowered and armed sailors started to row ashore. Of this they could guess the meaning. We fail to notice the great changes, because they are too great to be comprehended. We experience them from within and change together with them. Thus, we do not perceive the rotation of the Earth. At the same time, they are too small and slow to be noticed. ‘The level of the warming of the Earth’s surface from year to year can barely be measured. The destruction or drying out of the topsoil and the pollution of the waters takes decades and by the time this process has been brought to completion, the generation into whose life it brought change has died out. Its descendants are already born into the changed circumstances and find those natural. The changes of planetary significance cannot be linked to notable dates or significant events. They lack immediate relevance and therefore cannot expect the attention of the public, especially in the age of sensation-driven mass media on the hunt for daily sensational stories. ‘The stir caused by the “accidents” of Chernobyl or Fukushima merely reminds us of the unmanageable and immeasurable risk represented by spent radioactive fuel, nuclear experiments and outmoded nuclear submarines peacefully rusting at the bottom of the ocean — not at some point in the distant future but already for quite a while now.
