This essay investigates the environmental conflicts, particularly the new political subjects involved and their collective visions: the latter seems to concentrate in an unusual way on the mismanagement of local resources and the consequent risks to public health. The new political subjects (committees, associations, movements) manage to create well-structured links between scientific discourses (pollution data, foresights etc.) and political discourses (value orientations and debates on resolutions about future). On the basis of some Italian case studies (the waste issue in Campania and the incinerator issue in Emilia-Romagna) this paper offers a brief analysis of the argument forms adopted by these groups, of their relations with democratic institutions and science (administrators and/or experts), of their leadership internal processes and of the idea of ‘riot’ pursued.