A conference on the theme “Ecology and politics” took place at the end of November of this year in the Institute named after N.Vavilov in Mosco. There weren’t many speakers: chairman of the committee for ecology of the Public Chamber V.Zakharov, former minister of ecology of Russia V.Danilov-Danilyan, correspondent-member of the academy of sciences of the RF A.Yablokov and politician G.Yavlinsky. We offer our readers a part of the latter’s speech.

From a speech by Grigory Yavlinsky at the “Ecology and politics” conference:

“…An authoritarian state… is not very interested in the opinion of citizens. When it was interested, then in every pre-election program there was [something] about ecology…Now about the crisis. From the middle of the 90s our state – this is a state of businessmen. The state machine represents the interests of clearly defined business- groups. These interests are perpendicular to the interests to the interests of the people. The task of business – to consume nature. That’s how business works. While society’s interest – is to protect nature. In this compromise – the guarantee of forward movement… We do not have a state that represents the interests of citizens.