Insuring the future

Environmental politics needs more than piecemeal institutional efforts and more than calls for a set of 'new' values. It needs a realistic, comprehens ive, and effective policy programme. Such a programme can be derived from a conjunction of Hardin's work on the 'tragedy of the commons' and Beck's an alysis of the 'risk society', and involves exploiting the possibilities for the internalisation of risk provided by the insurance and reinsurance indu stries. Such exploitation requires tailored changes to the politico-legal e nvironment, enforcing strict liability for the production of risk, permitti ng any and all agents adversely effected by such negative externalities to initiate action for damages. The aim is not to clog up social and economic life with endless legal disputation, but through such a threat to ensure th at environmentally significant investment and productive strategies are act ively constrained by actuarially calculated strategies for risk internalisa tion.