The processes that we now think of as “globalization” were central
to the environmental cause well before the term “globalization”
came into its current usage. Global environmental concerns were
born out of the recognition that ecological processes do not always
respect national boundaries and that environmental problems often
have impacts beyond borders; sometimes globally. Connected to
this was the notion that the ability of humans to act and think at a
global scale also brings with it a new dimension of global responsibility—
not only to planetary resources but also to planetary fairness.
These ideas were central to the defining discourse of contemporary
environmentalism in the 1960s and 1970s1 and to the
concept of sustainable development that took root in the 1980s and
1990s.2