The precautionary principle—which holds that action to address threats of serious or irreversible environmental harm should be taken even in the absence of scientific certainty—has been accepted as a key feature of environmental law throughout the European Union. In the United States, however, it is still widely unknown, and much of what has been written on the topic takes a negative view.
In this book Kerry Whiteside introduces the work of a range of French ecological theorists to an English-speaking audience. He shows how thinkers in France and in English-speaking countries have produced different strains of ecological thought and suggests that the work of French ecological theorists could lessen pervasive tensions in Anglophone ecology.