DEEP ECOLOGY IS THE BEST FORM OF ENVIRONMENTALISM

DEEP ECOLOGY IS THE BEST FORM OF ENVIRONMENTALISM

1. DEEP ECOLOGY IS THE ONLY WAY TO PREVENT ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION.

George Sessions, Chair, Philosophy Department, Sierra College, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY, p. xxi.

The major reform environmental organizations have in some cases performed brilliantly, and in other cases they have compromised miserably, in their piecemeal political/economic/legal/technologicaI approaches to protecting the environment. By failing to take an ecocentric integrated long‑range perspective, by failing to be guided by realistic visions of ecological sustainable societies, and by failing to adequately address the root causes of the ecocrisis, they have managed only to delay some of the worst of the environmental degradation. Overall their strategies and efforts are failing to stem the tide of global environmental destruction. The crucial paradigm shift the Deep Ecology movement envisions as necessary to protect the planet from ecological destruction involves the move from an anthropocentric to a spiritual/ecocentric value orientation. The wild ecosystems and species on the earth have intrinsic value and the right to exist and flourish, and are also necessary for the ecological health of the planet and the ultimate well‑being of humans. Humanity must drastically scale down its industrial activities on Earth, change its consumption lifestyles, stabilize and then reduce the size of the human population by humane means, and protect and restore wild ecosystems and the remaining wildlife on the planet. This is a program that will last far into the twenty‑first century. The crucial question is how much irreversible global ecological destruction humanity will continue to cause before existing trends can be significantly reversed.

Arne Naess, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Chair of Philosophy Department, University of Oslo, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY, p. 153

5. Fight against pollution and resource depletion. In this fight ecologists have found powerful supporters, but sometimes to the detriment of their total stand. This happens when attention is focused on pollution and resource depletion rather than on the other points, or when projects are implemented which reduce pollution but increase evils of other kinds. Thus, if prices of life necessities increase because of the installation of anti‑pollution devices, class differences increase too. An ethics of responsibility implies that ecologists do not serve the shallow, but the deep ecological movement. That is, not only point five, but all seven points must be considered together. Ecologists are irreplaceable informants in any society, whatever their political color. If well organized, they have the power to reject jobs in which they submit themselves to institutions or to planners with limited ecological objectives. As it is now, ecologists sometimes serve masters who deliberately ignore the wider perspectives.
3. THE ALTERNATIVE TO DEEP ECOLOGY IS INEVITABLE CHAOS AND DICTATORIAL RULE.

Arne Naess, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Chair of Philosophy Department, University of Oslo, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY, p. 464-465

So the big open question is: How far down are we going to sink before we start heading back up in the twenty‑second century? How far must we fall before there is a clear trend toward decreasing regional and global ecological unsustainability? It may be useful, in this connection, to consider some possible scenarios: 1. There is no major change in ecological policies and in the extent of worldwide poverty. Major ecological catastrophies occur as the result of the steadily accumulating effects of a century of ecological folly. This drastic situation forces new ecologically strict policies, perhaps through undemocratic and even brutal, dictatorial military means used by the rich countries. 2.. The same development continues except for a major change in the poor countries: there is considerable economic growth of the Western kind. Now there are five times as many people living unsustainably. A breakdown occurs very soon, and harsh measures are taken to fight chaos, and to begin a decrease in unsustainability. 3. and 4. Several similar developments ending in catastrophic and chaotic conditions, and subsequent harsh brutal policies implemented by the most powerful states. A turn towards sustainability, but only after enormous ecological devastation. 5. Ecological enlightenment, a realistic appreciation of the drastic reduction in the quality of life, increasing influence of the Deep Ecological attitude, and a slow decrease of the sum total of unsustainability. A trend toward decreasing unsustainability discernable by the year 2101. Our hope: the realization of the rational scenario: least strenuous path toward sustainability by the year 2101.

OBJECTIONS TO DEEP ECOLOGY ARE MISTAKEN

1. DEEP ECOLOGY IS CRITICAL OF HUMAN-CENTEREDNESS, NOT HUMANITY

Warwick Fox, National Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY, p. 280

The extent to which people in general are ready to equate opposition to human‑centeredness with opposition to humans per se can be viewed as a function of the dominance of the anthropocentric frame of reference in our society. Just as those who criticize capitalism, for example, are often labeled as "Communists" and, by implication, "the enemy," when, in reality, they may be concerned with such things as a more equitable distribution of wealth in society, so those who criticize anthropocentrism are liable to be labeled as misanthropists when, in reality, they may be (and, in the context of environmentalism, generally are) concerned with encouraging a more egalitarian attitude on the part of humans toward all entities in the ecosphere. In failing to notice the fact that being opposed to humans‑centeredness (deep ecology's critical task) is logically distinct from being opposed to humans per se (or, in other words, that being opposed to anthropocentrism is logically distinct from being misanthropic), and in equating the former with the latter, Bookchin and Skolimowski commit what I refer to as thefallacy of misplaced misanthropy." Committing this fallacy in the context of criticizing deep ecology involves not just a crucial misreading of deep ecology's critical task, but also the oversight of two other considerations that contradict such a misreading. The first is that deep ecology's constructive task is to encourage an egalitarian attitude on the part of humans toward all entities in the ecosphere‑including humans. The second is that deep ecologists are among the first to highlight and draw inspiration from the fact that not all humans have been human‑centered either within the Western tradition or outside it. Far from being misanthropic, deep ecologists celebrate the existence of these human beings.

Warwick Fox, National Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY, p. 271

Second, the term ecocentric seems closer to the spirit of deep ecology than the term biocentric, because, notwithstanding their broad usage of the term life, the motivation of deep ecologists depends more upon a profound sense that the Earth or ecosphere is home than it does upon a sense that the Earth or ecosphere is necessarily alive (you don't have to subscribe to some ecological form of hylozoism to be a supporter of deep ecology). In accordance with this extremely broad, ecocentric egalitarianism, supporters of deep ecology hold that their concerns well and truly subsume the concerns of those movements that have restricted their focus to the attainment of a more egalitarian human society. Deep ecologists, in other words, consider their concerns to subsume the egalitarian concerns associated, for example, with feminism (as distinct from ecofeminism), Marxism, antiracism, and anti-imperialism.' In the eyes of deep ecologists, the emergence of a distinct ecofeminism, a distinct "green" socialism, and so on, are‑at least in their best forms‑attempts by feminists, Marxists‑cum‑socialists, and so on, to redress the human‑centeredness of their respective perspectives .6 Needless to say, deep ecologists welcome these developments and they recognize that ecofeminism, green socialism, and so on have their own distinctive theoretical flavors and emphases because of the different theoretical histories that inform them. Nevertheless, they see no essential disagreement between deep ecology and these perspectives, providing that the latter are genuinely able to overcome their anthropocentric legacies.