Notes on imaginary and environmental risks: global warning between the apocalypse and marketing

Abstract

Already in 1986, the sociologist Nikolas Luhman had recognized the critical role of communication in the assertion process for environmental themes and values of reference inside the society and its systems of specialization. At that time the excess of communicative environmentalism was considered a danger for society. Nowadays this appears as the linchpin of a strategy meant to get out from a problem which the German scholar defined “of an unlikely growing complexity”.