Lost legacy: How 1989 marked the rise of environmental politics

Olaf Corry argues that Eastern European revolutions of 1989 did not just mark the defeat of the socialist utopian ideal but also the rise of new political ideas associated with political ecology: the physical and human limits to the modern expansionary project, people-powered politics and a growing global awareness. 1989 was a staging post in the relaunch of older concerns about resources and planetary limits, bringing a substantive critique of modernist ideas of untrammelled material expansion and state power into the history of European revolutions.