Publisher's Synopsis
The Dutch are known for taking the initiative in setting ambitious goals for environmental achievements and have drawn up domestic environmental plans which are exemplary in their willingness to take the issues seriously and to take action to address the matters in hand. Britain, on the other hand, is widely known as the dirty man of Europe and often its political and economic leaders seem to display a cynical disregard for the impassioned pleas of environmentalists. This collection of specially commissioned essays looks behind the rhetoric of reputation and public image and compares it with feasibility and reality. There is undeniably a great chasm between The Netherlands and Britain in terms of political imagery in environmental matters, but many of those differences are more to do with political culture than with environmental reality. It is this tension between image and reality which lies at the heart of this volume.
