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“Environmental standards” are regulations, by which judicial concepts relating to the environment are transformed into concrete norms based on operationalizing and standardizing measurable quantities. The development of environmental standards is a complex process in which the scientific insights of various disciplines, normative convictions and social frameworks all participate, each in its own specific fashion. (1) This contribution argues against a “naturalistic” and for a “culturalistic” understanding of the environment and environmental standards: Environmental standards are obligations which humans impose on their actions, when and insofar as they want to live together in a certain way. The fact that humans mandate environmental standards does not hand over their construction to arbitrary political maneuvering. It is constrained – besides by general standards of rationality – by scientifically discovered facts (for example, relations between dosage and effect), by the goals set by the social evaluation processes, and by the rules of a rational risk-opportunity evaluation. (2) Environmental standards have the general function of specifying, in particular cases of action under risks, the boundaries in such a way that the question, where does the threshold lie? always prompts the counter-question, what are we prepared to invest? Thus, a closer analysis of the problem of environmental standards shows it to be an instance of the broader problem of specifying the criteria of rationality of actions under risks. (3) Especially in the area of environmental standards, (normative) acceptability displays a significant discrepancy to (factual) acceptance of imposed risks. Only if we distinguish between acceptance and acceptability can we concede the state the right to impose risks on its citizens by law and also to punish infractions of environmental standards by sanctions. Citizens are assumed, thereby, to be able to act in a pragmatically consistent manner, id est, the citizen must also be prepared to have imposed on him those risks he imposes on others (and himself). This principle of pragmatic consistency is the higher norm legitimating the acceptability of risks. (4) The decisive point is thus that society must so organize its decision processes that their rationality can be perceived by the citizens affected. This would best be served by an environmental council in which the system of science (in the form of an expert committee) and the political system (in the form of an administrative committee) cooperate. This cooperation should be ruled by the primacy of substantive competence; this means, especially, that the testimony of the system of science must be given full consequence.
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