To breathe free

Book · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1991

OSTI ID:7295692

DeBardeleben, J

This book was organized by the Center's East European program and supported primarily by a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers' Fund. This book reports on the new political forces that swept Communist regimes from power throughout the region in 1989 and are now struggling to set up post-Communist governments and institutions. Nor need they do so. This volume does not attempt to be a current account of the state of environmental policy and official institutions in Eastern Europe. New institutions are only slowly taking shape. In the meantime, much of the old apparatus remains in place. The new leaders and parties have found it difficult to cover the economic cost or accept the political risk of imposing expensive environmental controls on the large industrial enterprises that are the principal polluters. In Poland and Hungary we see the real threat of a political backlash from workers facing unemployment when such enterprises lose even part of their state budget subsidy, let alone face new charges for pollution control or penalties for its absence. The separate environmental movement that played a prominent part in the overthrow of Communist power has not, moreover, survived as a powerful separate political party anywhere in Eastern Europe. Its chances appeared greatest in East Germany and Czechoslovakia but in neither place has the Green political organization expanded or even maintained its pre-1989 leverage.

• OSTI ID: 7295692
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
010900 -- Coal
Lignite
& Peat-- Environmental Aspects
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290300* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Environment
Health
& Safety
290400 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Energy Resources
294001 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Coal
ABSTRACTS
BROWN COAL
CARBONACEOUS MATERIALS
COAL
COMBUSTION PRODUCTS
CONTROL
COOPERATION
DEFORESTATION
DOCUMENT TYPES
ECOLOGY
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
ECONOMICS
ENERGY SOURCES
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
EUROPE
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
LEADING ABSTRACT
LIGNITE
MATERIALS
PLANNING
POLITICAL ASPECTS
POLLUTION CONTROL
POLLUTION REGULATIONS
REGULATIONS
RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
SAFETY STANDARDS
STANDARDS