In this essay I examine the dispute between the German Green
Party and some of the country’s environmental nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) over the March 2001 renewal of rail shipments
of highly radioactive wastes to Gorleben. My purpose in
doing so is to test John Dryzek’s 1996 claim that environmentalists
ought to beware of what they wish for concerning inclusion in the
liberal democratic state. Inclusion on the wrong terms, argues
Dryzek, may prove detrimental to the goals of greening and democratizing
public policy because such inclusion may compromise the
survival of a green public sphere that is vital to both. Prospects for
ecological democracy, understood in terms of strong ecological
modernization here, depend on historically conditioned relationships
between the state and the environmental movement that foster
the emergence and persistence over time of such a public sphere.