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Ideas

Earth Mindless

As noted frequently throughout this website, the ecological crisis reflects a deep crisis in human culture. There is seldom an overriding and compelling pressure for many people to do anything about all problems noted elsewhere since, often, there is no immediate threat to themselves or their loved ones. Though regulations imposed from outside might stop some of the destruction for a time, it is only when individuals begin to respect and care for others-other members of the community, other generations to come and, of course, other species, that deeper and more lasting changes will come about. Otherwise, steps to sustainability will be as lasting and as successful as Prohibition was against alcohol consumption in America.

There is nothing new about values and beliefs that, to put it mildly, sit uncomfortably with ecological sustainability. Some, most notably the historian Lynn White, blame the tradition inherited by Judeo-Christian thinking. They attack it for treating humans as above and apart from the rest of nature, which was created simply to serve human purposes. Critics of this thesis have argued that there are minority traditions within that framework, e.g. St. Francis of Assisi, which point in a different direction. Furthermore, other religions and indeed non-religious materialism are scarcely free from blemish. Many religions and cults, for example, have opposed family planning as well as sanctioned environmental despoliation.

This alienation from the rest of the living world runs deep. David Orr argues that there is now a distinct and strong strain of what he calls 'biophobia'. He argues that it is 'increasingly common among people raised with television, Walkman radios attached to their heads, video games, living amidst shopping malls, freeways, and dense urban or suburban settingsSerious and well-funded people talk about reweaving the fabric of life on earth through genetic engineering and nanotechnologiesstill others talk of reshaping human consciousness to fit "virtual reality"...Biophobia is not OK for the same reason that misanthropy or sociopathy are not OK...[Now we have) whole societies that distance themselves from animals, trees, landscapes, mountains, and rivers. Is mass biophobia a kind of collective madness?The drift of the biophobic society, as George Orwell foresawis toward the replacement of nature and human nature by technology and the replacement of real democracy by a technological tyranny now looming on the horizon'.

The Ideology of Despoliation

The 'world view' described above has had particularly harmful consequences in terms of human attitudes towards the environment as a whole. Over the last few centuries, Nature increasingly has been perceived as something 'out there', from which humans are separate and above. No longer Mother Earth, Nature was increasingly viewed a disorderly and treacherous bitch, to be tamed and manipulated for the satisfaction of open-ended and indiscriminate human wants. As nature becomes progressively 'disenchanted' and inhibitions are further removed, the door to open-ended exploitation and destruction widens.

The very word 'environment' is part of the problem. Derived from the French 'virer' to turn, whence in/virer to encircle, it implies something that is peripheral to other things of greater importance. The term is its own put-down, meaning everything or next to nothing depending on personal preference. Family circumstances or educational opportunities, for example, can become 'environmental' issues. In such usage's, sight is lost of the fundamental issue: the Earth's life-support systems, their capacities, their rhythms, their tolerances-and their current degradation.

The dominant world view treats 'non-human nature' as devoid of intrinsic value; it is but a commodity to be manipulated, dominated, managed and controlled for the satisfaction of open-ended and indiscriminate human wants. Wild rivers, for example, are waiting to be 'harnessed' and virgin forests 'harvested' or otherwise 'put to work'. The value of and beauty in nature too are treated as purely in the eyes of the individual human beholder. Not surprisingly, landscape quality is subjected to quantification and valuation in ways little different to television programme ratings.

Resourcism

Apart from the setting aside of a few reserves, almost as freak shows, the health of the environment tends to receive serious attention only when the damage being done interferes with human goals, especially that of economic expansion. The Canadian writer Neil Evernden has defined the form of environmental management, so characteristic of Industrial Growth Society, as 'resourcism', a kind of modern religion which divides all of creation into categories of utility. Species and landforms which do not serve the goal of production are reduced correspondingly in significance or value.

Even environmental conservation can degenerate into a way of allocating natural resources more efficiently through scientific management and manipulation of natural systems on an ever large scale. In the more sophisticated forms of resource conservation, nature was still little more than a storehouse whose shelves, the less short-sighted managers recognise, are getting rather bare and dirty.

Environmental concerns are indeed recognised today, more than, say, a hundred years ago. Yet it tends to take the form of but one special interest amongst many, to be traded if the sum total of individualistic wants and desires is shown to indicate other priorities. Ecological science becomes a tool to make possible the maximum utilisation of the environment as raw material in support of but one species.

Environmental monitoring, auditing or impact assessments may do little more than describe a bit more accurately the effects of a particular activity. But the evaluation of this information depends upon various assumption about the environment, not least the 'rights' that may be ascribed to its diversity of life and land forms. There is also a tendency to define environmental problems narrowly in terms of specific pollutants, despite the fact that many environmentally destructive activities are quite 'clean'. Even the very concept of environmental management-of predicting and controlling infinitely complex systems-may contain within it that very hubris which has done so much to create a planetary crisis in the first place.

The catalytic converter perhaps epitomises the problems. For most people, such technological developments are seen as the solution to the environmental problems such as those created by the motor car. However, such 'fixes' either fail to solve the original problem, create new problems of their own or provide only a temporary respite before on-going growth in human numbers and artefacts swallows up any savings in resource consumption and pollution levels.

'Resourcism' can be seen in specific land uses. The noted American farmer and writer Wendell Berry, for example, relates the crisis in agriculture to a fundamentally exploitative attitude towards the land, in particular in how much and how quickly it can be made to produce. Berry argues that this is the driving force towards farm amalgamation, more powerful machinery and the greatly increased use of agrochemicals.

Many supporters of sustainable development support further environmental manipulation, often under the guise of 'stewardship'. It is still common to find people talking about 'spaceship earth' as if it were a giant machine, in need of better engineers. Particularly amongst 'new age' devotees, there is great enthusiasm for technologies like genetic engineering which, some even claim, can replace extinct species. The more extreme proponents of this view seize upon the writings of people like Ilya Prigonine, Buckminster Fuller and Teilhard de Chardin, proponents of a vision of humanity at the tiller of creation. Nature, wasteful and undependable, will be transformed by the guiding hand of science and technology into - well, whatever people want it to be.

The American writer Peter Vajk, for example, argues that people are 'the legitimate children of Gaia: we need not be ashamed that we are altering the landscapes and ecosystems of earth.' Such opinions only take to their logical conclusion the anthropocentric and utilitarian values that pervade most decision-making and theorising about sustainability.

Among the less exuberant sections of sustainable development thinking, it is quite common to find the argument that people are part of nature so that everything people do is, by definition, natural. But, if everything is 'natural', nothing is 'unnatural' and the words lose any real meaning. Presumably, readers would not be happy for the Earth to revert to the swirling mass of gases from which it was born. Assuming that we want life-including its human component-to continue, we need to look deeply at how life evolved and, as far as we can see, has maintained the conditions for future life. The attempt to increase greater harmony with these processes is what 'working with nature' is all about. Across society, however, there is still no deep appreciation of Nature's underlying order and the need to live within it.

Abbs, P. The Black Rainbow: Essays on the Present Breakdown of Culture. Heinemann, 1974. How the 'arts' reflect a disintegrating and destructive world view.

Callicott, J. Baird. Traditional Indian and West European Attitudes Towards Nature. Environmental Ethics, 4, 1982, 293-318. A discussion of the comparative environment-friendliness of different world views.

Clarke, J., ed. Nature in Question. Earthscan, 1993. For studies of attitudes towards the environment down the ages.

Devall, B. & G. Sessions. The Development of Natural Resources and the Conservation of Nature, Environmental Ethics, 6, 1984: 293-322. The environment as a resource, devoid of intrinsic value, a disorderly and wasteful, in need of taming and being put to work.

Dodson Gray, Elizabeth. Green Paradise Lost. Roundtable Pr., 1982. Particular emphasis on the role of 'macho' values in environmental destruction and social oppression.

Ehrenfeld, D. The Arrogance of Humanism. OUP, 1981. A classic analysis of anti-environmental thinking, including faith in the power of technology to solve every problem. Highly recommended.

Everndon, N. The Natural Alien: Humankind and the Environment. Toronto Univ. Pr., 1985. Contains valuable critique of Everndon christens 'resourcism'.

Hays, S. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency. Harvard UP, 1959. How the environment has been treated as warehouse and toy in need of better management.

Jones, T. Today's Obsolescent Aspirations. World Futures Society Bulletin, Nov-Dec., 1979: 19-26

Leiss, W. The Domination of Nature. Beacon, 1972.

Livingston, J. One Cosmic Instant: Man's Fleeting Supremacy. Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Study of human arrogance and its consequence for all species, people included.

Livingston, J. The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation. McClelland & Stewart, 1981. The contradictions of and limits to utilitarian environmentalism.

Livingston, J. Rogue Primate: An Exploration of Human Domestication. Key Porter, 1994. Deep ecological critique of the path of human 'development'.

Manes, Christopher. Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilisation. Little, Brown & Co, 1990. Polemical in style, it contains thorough critique of 'shallow environmentalism' plus a cogent outline of deep ecology perspectives.

McDermott, J. Opiate of the Intellectuals. New York Review of Books, 31st July, 1969, pp missing.

Naess, A. The Shallow and Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement. Inquiry 16, 1973: 95-100. The article that really registered the distinction between a shallow, human-centred environmentalism and one which sees people as but part of the ecological community.

Nasr, S. Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man. Allen & Unwin, 1968.

Rodman, J. Four Forms of Ecological Consciousness Reconsidered. In D. Scherer & T. Attig, eds., Ethics & the Environment. Prentice-Hall, 1983. Contrasts different perspectives on the environment.

Rodman, J. The Liberation of Nature? Inquiry 20, 1977: 83-131.

Soulé, M. & G. Lease. Reinventing Nature: Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction. Island Pr., 1994.

Suzuki, D. Can Science 'Manage' Nature. The Ecologist, 28(1), 1998: 7.

Vickers, G. The Weaknesses of Western Culture, Futures, Dec., 1977: 457-473

White, Lynn. The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis. In Shepard P. & D. McKinley, eds. The Subversive Science. Houghton-Mifflin, 1969. A famous essay which put the blame for environmental destruction on the Judeo-Christian value system.

A microcosm of anti-ecological thinking

This Guide is intended to serve an introduction to ecological thought. However, progress towards ecological sustainability will depend in part upon the identification and defeat of the Earth's many enemies. They come in many shapes and sizes but all are opposed, one way or another, to the values, analyses and policies found in these pages. Perhaps the most loathsome variety takes the form of the born-again believer in growth-is-good and technology-will-solve-all-problems. Having served their time in the environmental movement, they can cash in their credentials and find rewarding careers as new apologists for the status quo or worse. Usually they claim that things aren't as bad as they once thought, that society has got matters in hand anyway and that their erstwhile allies are just a bunch of extremists who enjoy doom-mongering. Examples include Gus Speth (USA) and Richard North (UK). Individual examples of anti-ecology include:

Joseph Bast et al, eg Eco-Sanity: A Common Sense Guide to Environmentalism

Wilfred Beckermann, eg his In Defence of Economic Growth and Small is Stupid

Anna Bramwell, eg her Waning of the Greens

Martin Lewis, eg his Green Delusions (Duke Univ. Pr., 1992)

Dixie Lee Ray, eg Environmental Overkill: Whatever Happened to Common Sense?

Matt Ridley, eg his Down to Earth

various contributors to John Baden, ed. Environmental Gore-A Constructive Response to Earth in Balance.

and, of course, Julian Simons, eg his The Ultimate Resource

A seductive but dangerous 'genre' is that 'some-things-might seem-bad-but-really-they are getting better' school of thinking. See, for example:

Easterbrook, G. A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism. Viking, 1995.

North, R. Life on a Modern Planet. Manchester UP, 1995.

The Cult of Progress

Anti-ecological ways of valuing, thinking about and doing things often unite around the idea of 'progress'. Particularly since the period known as the Enlightenment in the 18th century in Europe, the notion of constant improvement on all fronts has taken hold. At the core of the culture of what might best be called Industrial Growth Society is the belief in the possibility and desirability of open-ended material progress conceived in terms of the further development and expansion of the human-made world. According to the biologist Garret Hardin, 'growth, change, "development", spending, rapid turnover (are) viewed as goods without limits'.

The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins once noted that there were two possible courses to affluence: 'producing much or desiring little' . Contemporary society is firmly rooted in the former option. Anything else is backward, undeveloped, to be developed or 'take off' in the direction of those societies blessed with the widest array of consumer goods and technological devices

The Norwegian writer Johann Galtung has defined the predominant idea of progress as 'if X is good, 2X must be twice as good'. He argues that there is 'no sense of the optimum point'. The belief that humans could progress unfettered by ecological or any other constraints was reflected the pioneer sociologist George Simmel's description that the 'characteristic of man is to make limits, later on to cross them'. A secondary assumption that this progress will eventually overcome all the chronic social evils such as ignorance, crime, poverty and, for that matter, environmental problems like pollution.

Most educational institutions, for example, measure their success partly in terms of more students, more buildings, bigger and better facilities. More generally, pre- and semi-industrial societies have been viewed as backward, undeveloped, waiting to be developed or about to 'take off' in the direction of those societies blessed with the widest array of consumer goods and technological devices.

Such notions of progress set as the overriding goal the relentless accumulation of material goods and services, as an end in itself. The main preoccupation is material gain and practical improvements in the immediate future. It is accompanied by a competitive ethos, not just in the economic sphere but in all areas of life, including a 'defensive competition' to ensure that an individual or institution is on the 'winning' rather than the losing side. Comparatively little responsibility is felt or exercised for the effect of actions upon remote individuals or groups, future generations or other species.

Techno-fixations

One consequence is an unprecedented development of and dependence upon applied science and technology. There is a further assumption that technological and social progress can continue since humans are not only exceptional but also exempt from the influences and constraints to which other species are subject. All problems are soluble, most by technology; the future is what humans choose to make it An example is Sir Peter Medawar's claim that 'the deterioration of the environment produced by technology is a technological problem for which technology has found, is finding and will continue to find solutions'.

One consequence of such technological optimism is the hostility towards those who challenge it. This might explain the unusually bitter attacks launched upon the 'Limits To Growth' in books with revealing titles such as 'The Doomsday Syndrome', 'The Disaster Lobby' and 'Models of Doom'. The speech by Medawar ended thus: 'To deride the hope of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind'.

Under the umbrella of the dominant model of progress, life has become more centralised, standardised and subject to 'asystemic controls'-when individuals and groups are governed from outside and above as opposed to internal, organic, systemic means of self-regulation). Each area of living has its own specialist, professional institutions trying to solve 'scientifically' its problems.

Progress as Development: Development as Progress

The dominant concept of progress has shaped development programmes. Development is defined in terms of things, more production and consumption, with people and their communities treated as objects to be shifted around on the drawing boards of progress. At a national level, it becomes a race to catch up with and surpass that achieved by the most 'developed' nations and regions.

Wolfgang Sachs has identified President Trueman's speech to Congress (20/1/49) as the genesis of modern development strategies. Trueman defined development in terms of 'greater produc-tion..the key to prosperity and peace'. Sachs notes the ideological function of the concept. 'It allows any intervention to be sanctified in the name of a higher, evolutionary goal..(evoking) notions of universality, progress and feasibility'. Any alternative is equated with stagnation.

The doctrine of modernisation also leads to a sense of fatality and helplessness in the face of change, good or bad, summed up in the often expressed phrase 'you can't stop progress'. It is also finds expression in attacks on opponents of particular projects as 'luddites'. Perhaps its ultimate form is the dream of conquering outer space and settling new worlds, free from what President Reagan once called the 'surly bonds of Earth'.

Given its ideological provenance, it is not surprising that development usually has meant a focus upon more 'infrastructure', for example, more capital intensive farming and forestry, large-scale water and mineral excavation schemes, big power, chemical and metallurgical plant, the creation of scenic parks and tourist complexes. Sometimes, development takes the form of a 'package deal' aimed at all sectors, not just one. A pioneer models of such development was the Tennessee Valley Authority in the USA

However, its most dramatic embodiment is found in the 17 western states of the USA. A blend of private interest and state power under what might be called a 'hydraulic state capitalism' has transformed the arid regions. The main catalyst has been the Bureau of Reclamation. More than 45 million acres of reclaimed desert have been put under irrigation. No river is undammed: all have been 'put to work'. The Bureau alone has built 322 storage reservoirs, 345 diversion dams, 14,490 miles of canals, 930 miles of pipelines, 216 miles of tunnels, 15,530 miles of drains, 174 pumping plants, 49 power stations and over 16,000 miles of transmission lines in its history.

In Britain the biggest and most powerful agent of such perspectives in the field of rural de-velopment has been the Highlands and Islands Development Board. The means to overcome rural 'backwardness' has been the transplantation of 'seeds' of industrialisation into the region. The HIDB, for example, has attempted to create 'growth centres' around large-scale industrial development such as aluminium smelting and pulp mills. Initiatives such as the establishment of Craftpoint aimed at stimulating more commercial development in the field of craft production. The HIDB has been a staunch supporter of the Cairngorm Chairlift Company's plan to extend the present ski area and it opposed the designation of the Northern Corries SSSI in the area.

The same production-oriented priorities seem to guide the Integrated Development Programme in the Western Isles where fears have been expressed about the incentives to improve and reseed the machair, thereby reducing its biological value. The HIDB is also highly critical of conservationists who get in its way, describing them as a 'lunatic fringe' (HIDB chairperson, quoted by Robertson, 1985)

Progress, then, consists of transforming nature into forms that are imposed by human beings which in practice means industrialised farms, factories and cities. Some environmentalists see the electricity pylon as symbol of this model of development, though Rodman's description of the modern dam might equally suffice. He calls them 'massive monuments to man's technological ability to tame the wild flow of ("waste") natural energy and to substitute it into socially useful functions (irrigation, hydropower, flood control, and tamer forms of recreation).

The dominant model of development is based upon an interrelated web of domination and exploitation. The victims of the system face are variously excluded, disempowered, degraded, debilitated or simply destroyed. These 'losers' range from individuals (of all sentient species, not just humans) to whole environments.

The Lakota Sioux author Vine Deloria sums up what the concepts of 'progress' discussed above mean in practice: 'it is the total replacement of nature by an artificial technology..the absolute destruction of the real world in favour of a technology that creates a comfortable way of life for a few fortunately situated people'. Kvaloy writes in terms of a 'power pyramid' at the bottom of which are the most obvious losers and victims but whose progressive instability threatens security and well-being at all levels.

Despite its seeming strength, industrial growth society actually is extremely brittle and lacking in resilience. Just as more traditional forms of colonialism created a series of tensions and backlashes within both colonial powers and their colonies, so too contemporary living patterns and power structures have created a series of imbalances -ecologically, economically, socially, and psychologically.

Bury, J. B. The Idea of Progress. Macmillan, 1932.

Coombs, H. The Return of Scarcity. CUP., 1990. and the shock it gives to those who thought there was a never-ending and abundant free lunch.

Deloria, V. The Metaphysics of Modern Existence. Harper & Row, 1979.

Diamond, S. Civilisation and Progress. In his In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilisation. Transaction Books, 1974. In this critique of mainstream anthropology, Diamond attacks the underlying assumptions made about progress.

Dubos, R. The Dreams of Reason. Columbia UP, 1961. Well reasoned attack on exaggerated expectations of human rationality and intellectual prowess.

Galtung, J. Two Ways of Life. Resurgence, 111, 1985: 5-7. Critique of dominant way of living and the values it reflects.

Goldsmith, E., et al. The Future of Progress: Reflections on Environment and Development. Green Books, 1995. A deep critique of what it calls the 'industrial monoculture' model of progress.

Gomer, R. The Tyranny of Progress in B. Rothblatt, ed., Changing Perspectives on Man, Univ. Chicago Pr., 1968.

Gowdy, J. Progress and Environmental Sustainability. Environmental Ethics, 16, Spring, 1994: 41-47.

Hardin, G. Naked Emperors: Essays of a Taboo Stalker. Kaufmann, 1982. See especially the chapters Ecology and the Death of Providence, Ending the Squanderarchy and Limited World, Limited Rights.

Irvine, S. You Can't Stop Progress. Real World, 13, Autumn, 1995: 14-15.

Jones, T. Today's Obsolescent Aspirations. World Future Soc. Bulletin, Nov-Dec., 1979: 19-26.

Kothari, R. Environment and Alternative Development. Alternatives, V, 1979-80: 427-475.

Lasch, C. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics. Norton, 1991. A dense work but well worth the effort, particularly for its critique of laissez-faire liberalism and self-aggrandisement as well as left-wing cornucopianism and welfarism, one informed by a strong awareness of ecological and social limits and the responsibilities they bring.

Lyons, D. Are Luddites Confused? Inquiry, 22, 1979: 381-403. Why 'luddites' may be right and why more know-how often does not mean a better society.

Mishan, E. Whatever Happened to Progress? Jnl Econ. Issues, X112, 1978: 405-425

Noble, D. The Religion of Technology. Knopf, 1998.

Orr, D. Modernisation and the Ecological Perspective. In Orr. D. & M. Soroos, eds., The Global Predicament Univ. N. Carolina Pr., 1979. Critique of one of the most powerful modern ideas which has shaped many a disastrous 'development' project.

Polanyi, K. The Great Transformation. Beacon Pr., 1975. The great study of how values and lifestyles were transformed by industrialism.

Sahlins, M. Stone-Age Economics. Chicago Univ. Pr., 1972. A radical reinterpretation of what is usually dismissed as the brutish and nasty past from which agricultural and then industrial progress liberated us.

Skolimowski, H. The Myth of Progress. The Ecologist, 47, 1974: 248-258.

Stent, G. The Paradoxes of Progress Freeman, 1978. The self-limiting nature of progress, particularly intellectual advance

The EcoCritique of Reductionist and Mechanistic Science

Particularly problematic in the dominant mindset is the tradition emanating from the intellectual revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, associated with thinkers such as Newton and Descartes. It laid much of the ideological foundations for modern industrialism. The argument is not that it represents a totally distorted perception of reality. Rather it is only one of many roads to the truth and one with built-in flaws and limitations.

These weaknesses are to be found in the tendency towards separation and dissociation in the way of perceiving, thinking about and valuing things characteristic of modern society. Only a very partial picture of reality could be created on this basis. Its most extreme expression was logical empiricism and the accompanying effort to force all forms of knowledge into the mould of physics in particular. Observation and measurement drove out other approaches: that which cannot be measured either tended to be simply ignored, or grossly simplified to make measurable, or aggregated into a macro statistic. Reality is treated as if it were no different to a machine, comprehensible on the basis of mechanical laws about the arrangement and movement of the parts. Moreover, the focus became these fragments, which, according to this world view, could be comprehended in isolation from each other.

The approach also emphasised a very linear and sequential understanding of reality. In particular, it favoured a logic in which a specific cause is deemed to lead to a specific effect. Such approaches are particularly inappropriate when it comes to complex entities such as human society and ecosystems. In such systems, the 'whole' is more than merely the sum of the parts and, within it, causes and effects interact in ways that are often unpredictable and behave counter to expectations.

At the most general level, the significance of different conceptualisations of social and environmental problems can be seen in the way that the dominance of the growth model leads to the definition of problems of supply and demand. The modern world view discourages any sense of balance, stabilisation and sufficiency. Instead it encourages notions of limitless maximisation and therefore increases the risks of 'overshoot'. Thus problems are perceived primarily in terms of shortages of supply rather than longages of demand. Accordingly, the solution is seen in terms of more power plants to meet actual and projected rises in energy demand, more reservoirs to supply water, more timber plantations to furnish wood products, more facilities for more recreation and so forth. This predisposes thinking in terms of increased supply, unlike a conceptualisation based upon 'longage', which puts the focus upon decreasing demand (the term is Hardin's).

For example, the British government White paper 'Roads To Prosperity' (May, 1989) took past traffic increases and projected further growth by some 140% by the year 2025. It thereby concluded that it was necessary to increase public spending to the order of £12 billion over 10 years for widening, strengthening and adding to the existing road network to cope with future demand. Yet, as a very wide variety of critics noted, this projection ignored other factors that might prevent the high traffic scenario from ever materialising (e.g. greenhouse gas generation and climatic change, future oil supply shortages, increased competition from other land uses).

Furthermore, the very act of providing more 'supply' only acts as positive feedback creating yet more demand, thus cancelling out the 'gains' from more road space. The example is all the more interesting since more holistic approaches have been put forward for example by Lewis Mumford back in the mid-1960s; this alternative not only threatened entrenched economic interests but also did not 'make sense' from the point of view of the dominant paradigm.

The importance of problem definition can be seen in more specific areas. For example, there is the problem of pest infestation of crops. It is discussed by Lutzenberger (1984) who argues that mainstream traditional agricultural science compartmentalises factors such as soil, fertilisers, pests, pesticides, weeds, herbicides and plant breeding into separate 'drawers' where they are put under the microscope of 'linear reasoning'.

Lutzenberger further argues that this approach is self-fulfilling since 'when we pursue the kind of agricultural practices it advocates, we transform farms in such a way as to make the paradigm come true. On many modern farms, soils have become dead mechanical substrates and pests do act as if they were arbitrary enemies'. The problem is the widely recognised fact that the problem of pest infestation, soil depletion and other agricultural problems have not disappeared and Lutzenberger concludes that more holistic approaches are needed.

A second example comes from the 'tree deaths' that have devastated in recent decades species as varied as plane trees in southern France, cypresses in central Italy, pines in Japan, oaks across America, maples in Nova Scotia, hemlock and beech in New England, fruit trees in Florida, palm trees in the West Indies and of course conifers in many part of the world, all seemingly succumbing to the fate of the American chestnut in the earlier part of this century and elms more recently.

In a more holistic and ecological perspective, however, the key issue is not the particular fungus, beetle infestation or some other specific and immediate cause. Rather it is a general state of stress and the loss of resistance by the trees that rendered them vulnerable to devastating attack. The answer is found in the synergistic impact of human activities upon environmental systems, particularly air pollution, soil demineralisation, the cultivation of trees in conditions to which they are not adapted and the trade in timber.

Arnold, A. The Corrupted Sciences: Challenging the Myths of Modern Science. Paladin, 1993

Capra, F. The Turning Point. Flamingo, 1983. Accessible explanation of the harm done by mechanistic, reductionist and supposedly value-free ways of thinking about people and planet.

Ferkiss, V. Nature, Technology and Society Adamantine Pr., 1993.

Jones, A. From Fragmentation to Wholeness. Part 1. The Ecologist, 17(6), 1987:236-240. A critique of reductionism in science. Part 2 was published in The Ecologist, 18(1):30-34

Lutzenberger, J. How Agrochemicals Feed the Pests that Destroy the Crops. The Ecologist, 14, 1984: 77-81. An excellent study of how paradigms of thinking shape the questions asked and therefore the answers given, using the problems of agriculture as a telling case study.

Mansfield, P. From Reductionism to Holism in Our Understanding and Treatment of Cancer. The Ecologist, 28(2), 1998: 113-116. Another case study of the dangers of tunnel vision.

Merchant, C. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. Harper & Row, 1980. Important historical analysis.

Midgeley, M. Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and its Meaning. Routledge, 1992.

Ravetz, J. R. Scientific Knowledge & Its Social Problems. Clarendon, 1971.

Ravetz, J. The Merger of Knowledge with Power. Mansell, 1989.

Roszak, T. Where the Wasteland Ends. Doubleday, 1973. Possibly the most effective polemic against the modern tendency to disembody the living world and attempts to understand life by chopping it up into ever smaller pieces.

Schiebinger, L. Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. Beacon Pr., 1993.

Siebker, M. Industrial and Post-Industrial Images of Man. The Ecologist, 74, 1977: 120-126

Worster, D. Nature's Economy. Sierra, 1977. An excellent history of ecological science which shows that it too can suffer from reductionist and mechanistic thinking.

EcoCritiques of the Cult of Expertise, Specialisation and 'Neutrality'.

Another aspect of the dominant mindset is a tendency to cultivate a dispassionate objectivity, often linked to a cult of expertise and ever narrowing areas of specialisation. It has been harmful in many cases, especially when it is used to relieve people of responsibility for their beliefs and actions. Once subjective judgements and values are eliminated, the way is cleared for one-sided emphasis on planning and efficient performance. The worst instance of this probably was the Holocaust, when individuals like Eichmann abandoned any notion of morality in pursuit of the most proficient means of mass murder.

There are also problems with the way in which the scientific and academic working environment encourages a very reserved and cautious style, perhaps as a result of a desire to be perceived as reasonable and impartial by colleagues. The biologist George Woodwell has called this tendency 'hyperobjectivity', which, he claims, 'is the epitome of unreasonableness and its practice not only lends support to avarice and pollution, but destroys the credibility of science and scientists as a source of simple common sense'. Perhaps it is a bit like an engineer on board the Titanic concentrating upon measurements of stress in the bulkheads and not shouting out that the ship was sinking.

Part of this process is the treatment of individuals and groups as mere objects, rather than thinking or feeling entities. This, in turn, makes their exploitation or mistreatment more likely. At best, they have value because of utilitarian purposes they might be made to serve. Examples of this effect at work range from relationship between the 'factory' farmer and the farm animal to that of the experimenter and the laboratory animal. Critics of town planning similarly develop the case that members of local communities are treated as abstract units to be moved around on drawing boards, regardless of the real harm to their well-being.

Epstein, S. Corporate Crime: Can We Trust Industry-Derived Safety Studies? The Ecologist, 19 (1), 1989: 23-30.

Goldsmith, E. Are the Experts Lying? The Ecologist, 28(2), 1998: 51-53.

Maxwell, N. Science, Reason, Knowledge and Wisdom: A Critique of Specialism. Inquiry, 23, 1980: 19-81. Exhaustive but rewarding study of the dangers of thinking that answers can be found by simply accumulating more and more bits of information

Mokhiber, R. 'Objective' Science at Auction. The Ecologist, 23(5), 1993: 57-58.

Nandy, Ashis. The Pathology of Objectivity. The Ecologist, X111(6), 1981: 202-207. The cult of dispassion portrayed as a kind of illness-perhaps concentration camp boss Adolf Eichmann most embodied the dangers of rationality separated from values.

Taylor, V. Subjectivity and Science. The Ecologist, 106(7), 1980:230-234. An interesting personal reflection on the issue of scientific and academic 'neutrality'.

Walker, M. Sir Richard doll: A Questionable Pillar of the Cancer Establishment The Ecologist, 28(2), 1998: 82-92. Critique of the objectivity of celebrated British scientist.

EcoCritiques of Cybernetics and 'Superscience'

Sadly, some aspects of the 'new physics' and similar developments are not necessarily more sensitive to people or planet than past intellectual currents. They might amount merely to a shift in the 'goal posts', reproducing the older mechanical approach at the level of the whole, instead of the fragment. Certainly, the writings of Ilya Prigogine on dissipative structures and self-organisation, which have achieved almost a cult status of late, could be taken as nothing more than a rationalisation for genetic engineering and intensified manipulation of environmental systems and living creatures. Old 'animist' beliefs of the past may still have much to teach us.

Berman, M. The Cybernetic Dream of the 21st Century. Jnl Humanistic Psychology, 26(2), 1986: 24-51.

Goldsmith, E. High Technology Euphoria. The Ecologist, 13(5), 1983: 190-192. Critque of Peter Russell's The Awakening Earth.

Goldsmith, E. Superscience-Its Mythology & Legitimisation. The Ecologist, details missing. Critique of Prigogine, Jantsch et al.

Goldsmith, E. The Super-Informed Society. The Ecologist, 123, 1982: 107-116. Questions the relevance of 'information' theory to an understanding of the living world.

Rowe, J. S. & B. V. Barnes. Geo-Ecosystems & Bio-Ecosystems. Bull. Ecol. Soc. Amer., 75(1), 1994: 40-41. Call for a truly holistic approach against reductionist tendencies in current theoretical ecology.

Worster, D. The Ecology of Order & Chaos. Environmental History Review, 14, 1990Hughes, C. Gaia: A Natural Scientist's Ethic for the Future. The Ecologist, 15(3), 1985: 92-95. explores some of the limitations and danges with the popular Gaia hypothesis.

EcoCritiques of Political Correctness, Postmodernism and the 'New Age'

McCormick, B. Identity Crisis. Real World, 9, Autumn, 1994: 6-7. Critique of the identity politics of 'relativism'in which there is always someone else to blame.

Sessions G. Hip, Hip, Awry! Real World, 5, Autumn, 1993: 8-9. Critique of the New Age movement.

Sessions, G. Postmodernism, Environmental Justice & the Demise of the Ecology Movement? Wild Duck Review, June/July, 1995: 14-16. Argues that postmodernism fails to deconstruct its own brand of humanistic arrogance.

Soule M. & G. Lease, eds. Reinventing Nature?: Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction. Island Pr., 1995.

Snyder,G. Nature is No 'Social Construction'. Wild Earth, Winter, 1996/97: 8-9.

Teffort, J. Mind Your Language. Real World, 3, Spring, 199314-15. Critique of 'political correctness'.

Willers, B. The Trouble either Cronon. Wild Earth, Winter, 1996/97: 59-61. Critique of postmodern historian William Cronon who, like so many others, treats nature merely as another human construct.

The Nature of Scientific Ecology

The science of ecology itself has reflected, to some extent, the kind of society in which it developed, just as Darwin's theories should be related to the Victorian society in he lived. The historian Donald Worster notes how Tansley's approach to ecology dovetailed nicely with the agronomic and industrial view of nature as a storehouse of exploitable material resources. Similarly, Worster argues, the language of industrialism-production, consumption, manufacture, exchange, efficiency, productivity, competition, individual maximisation-became the language of scientific ecology.

A example which Worster does not use but which might illustrate his general point is the tendency in most ecological texts to describe photosynthesis as 'inefficient'. The ecological approach is quite different. Instead of trying to improve upon photosynthesis (an idea popular in the literature of sustainable growth, for example, with respect to super-productive biomass farms), another view might see that primary production is actually very efficient. Technological intervention is likely to create decreased order (i.e. reduced self-maintenance and self-perpetuation in a given biological system).

Ecological efficiency is radically different to technological efficiency. Plants, for example, extract, via photosynthesis, that amount of energy they need and no more, that which is required for the purposes of maintaining their structure and reproducing themselves. Were they to fix more energy they would use up, more nutrients they would use up more nutrients in the soil than could be made available on a permanent basis which would inevitably cause disequilibrium, leading to reduced stability.

The overall effect of this way of thinking is to reduce nature to a 'quantitative, mechanistic "mass of miscellaneous stuff" facilitating the commodification and industrialisation of the living world' (Worster). Nature becomes objectified into the kind of mathematical formulae. The focus seems to have become material and observable entities. These fragments are analysed in isolation, since anything else is viewed as unreal and unwarranted abstractions or idealised schema. Mainstream scientific ecology is thereby found guilty, critics argue, of the 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness', abstracting parts and ascribing to them features that only belong to the whole.

Mainstream scientific ecology has tended to abandon key tenets of holistic thinking such as balance, organisation, succession, complexity and the notion that the whole, for example a forest, is more than the sum of its parts, the trees and other components. As a trained ecologist, the American conservationist Aldo Leopold provides a particularly interesting example of disenchantment with his profession. He became very critical of specialised forestry and, more generally, of reductionist approaches. He criticised academic scientists for 'dismembering' nature, 'examining the construction of the plants, animals, and soils which are the instruments of the great orchestra' without comprehending the overall 'harmony'.

Goldsmith, E. Evolution, Neo-Darwinism and the Paradigm of Science. The Ecologist, 15, 1985: 104-112. Critique of individualistic and competition-based theories

Goldsmith, E. Ecological Succession Rehabilitated. The Ecologist, 15(3), 1985: 104-112.

Odum, E. Great Ideas in Ecology for the 1990s. Bioscience, 42, 1992: 542-545.

Rowe, S. The Integration of Ecolgical Studies. Functional Ecology, 27(4), 1992: 115-119.

Rowe, S. & B. Barnes. Geo-Ecosystems & Bio-Ecosystems. Bull. Ecol. Soc. America, 75(1), 1994: 40-41.

Rowe, S. Managing Profligacy Efficiently. Real World, 12, Summer, 1995:7-9. Critique of the 'New ecology' put forward by Daniel Botkin & others.

Rowe, S. From Reductionism to Holism in Ecology and Deep Ecology. The Ecologist, 27(4), 1997: 147-151.

Worster, D. Nature's Economy. CUP, 1991. How the science of ecology has reflected the reductionist and mechanistic worldview of industrial society.

Ecology and the Social Sciences

Society's attempts to understand its own problem are cleearly influenced by the paradigms shaping the social sciences. The dominant perspectives, from Marx & Mannheim to Parosns & Weber, have largely been devoid of any ecological grounding. Fortunately, there have been attempts to remedy this blinkered view.

Catton, W. and R. Dunlap. A New Ecological Paradigm for Post-Exuberant Sociology. American Behavioural Scientist, 24(1), 1980: 15-47. Argues that human beings may be exceptional in some ways but they are no more exempt from ecological constraints than any other species, contrary to the thinking that has dominated most sociology. The ecosystem-dependence model overrides other ones, e.g. the rival 'conflict' and 'functionalist' schools of thinking which both rest on the same unrecognised ecological assumptions

Catton, W., et al. To What Degree is a Social System Dependent on its Resource Base? In J.F. Short, ed., The Social Fabric. Sage, 1986. How future societies will be destabilised by attempts to maintain the stability of society in its present form.

Colwell, T., 1971. The Ecological Basis of Human Community, Education Theory, 214: 418-433

Dunlap, R.E. Ecology and the Social Sciences. American Behavioural Scientist, Sept-Oct., 1980: 3-151

Dunlap, R.E. & Liere, K.D. van. The New Environmental Paradigm. Jnl. Environmental Education, 9, 1978: 10-19.

Ehrlich, P., 1981. 'An Ecologist Standing Up Amongst Seated Social Scientists', Co-Evolution Quarterly, 31: 24-35. A critique of the conventional; social sciences and their failure to address the real issues.

Ehrlich, P. Environmental Disruption and the Implications for The Social Sciences. Soc. Sci. Quarterly, 62, 1981: 7-22. Another critique of the ecological ignorance found across the social sciences

Fraser Darling, F., 1951. The Ecological Approach to the Social Sciences. American Scientist, 39 2, 1951: 244-256

Fraser Darling, F. and R. Dasmann. The Ecosystem View of Human Society. Impact of Science on Society, XIX (2), 1969: 109-121.

Hardin, G. Cultural Carrying Capacity: A Biological Approach to Human Problems,' Bioscience, 36, 1986: 599-606

Odum, E. Ecology: The Link between the Natural and Social Sciences. HRW, 1975. Odum is a veteran ecological scientist who has long argued the need to ground our thinking in biophysical realities.

EcoCritiques Of Conventional Economic Theory & Policy

No other discipline has clashed perhaps so extensively and deeply with the perspectives of sustainability than economics. Most economics schools as varied as those of Marxist and Monetarism have failed to ground their subject in either social or biophysical realities, dwelling instead inside abstract models of open-ended human demands, limitless factors of production and, in neo-classical market economics, perfect competition.

Though the structures of a 'command' economy clearly differ from those of mixed and 'laissez-faire' variants, the basic goals and assumptions on which they operate have remained the same. Whether linked by a Five Year Plan or the market place, demand calls forth supply in a virtuous, expanding and self-perpetuating circle. Ecological systems, energy and matter behave somewhat differently.

All 'grey' economists failed to understand that the human economy does not 'produce' anything per se. Rather human economic activity transforms what is made available by ecological system, inevitably creating waste by-products in the process. Not only do ecological systems provide the means of production, they also furnish the conditions for production - all those 'life-support' services which make the Earth habitable. They are not endlessly malleable nor are they replaceable.

The American economist Kenneth Boulding once attacked his profession for propagating 'cowboy economics' (i.e. grab what you can on an open frontier), instead of an economics of 'spaceship earth' (i.e. living within limits). The 'signals' sent by conventional economics models have been signposts on the road to disaster. Far from being an 'invisible hand' guiding producers and consumers to general and lasting prosperity, economies managed under conventional guidelines have become, in the words of Herman Daly, 'highly visible boots', kicking human communities and environments alike.

The classic instance of the failure of conventional economic theory is the measurement of gross national product, particularly the way harmful or unsustainable activities are counted alongside ones which provide real and sustainable well-being. Similarly, the concept of 'externalities;' suggests a failure to take into account phenomena which are in reality intrinsic to economic activity.

Such criticisms apply both to the main body of economic thought per se as well as to the way it has been applied by decision-makers. Conventional economics can supply neither the models nor the specific policy tools to solve the sustainability crisis-it is too deeply flawed and limited. Indeed, the whole project of trying to put an economic value on things like human health or biodiversity is neither an intellectually viable or morally permissible strategy. This is not to say that market-based mechanisms will have no role in the construction of a sustainable society. Rather it is a matter of recognising the limits of tools like taxation and accepting, in many instances, the need for direct public regulation.

There are inherent incompatibles between the 'growth paradigm' at heart of most economic thinking and a more ecologically grounded approach (sometimes called 'ecological economics', 'bioeconomics' or 'steady-state economics'). Instead of the traditional divide of economic policy into a choice between 'private' and 'public' strategies, the fundamental question would become one of optimum scale, the proportionality between, on the one hand, man numbers and their artefacts and, on the other, ecological capacities, rhythms and tolerances.

The language of conventional economics can provide some of the language to describe these alternative approaches. The life-support functions provided by ecosystems could be perceived as 'capital stocks' upon whose conservation any sustainable economic activity depends. Instead of focusing upon, for example, the fish processing factories, their productivity and profitability, or consumer preferences for fish fingers, the essential issues would become the state of fisheries, impacts upon other consumers of target fish species (e.g. predator populations), pollution of the oceans, and the availability of resource inputs to the fishing industry (e.g. fishing boat fuel). An ecologically guided economy would try to live off surplus flows, not eat into its capital. At the very least, it would not describe the liquidation of its assets 'as income' nor assume an existing resource input can be simply substituted by a replacement.

Bello, W. & S. Rosenfield. Dragons in Distress. 1992. Critical look at the so-called tiger economies of the Far East, countries whom, as the UK Conservative and Labour Party leaders both were urging, should be copied to build 'Enterprise Britain'.

Boulding, K. The Economics of the Coming Spaceship. In Jarret, H., ed. Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy. John Hopkins UP, 1966. Pioneering critique of smash & grab 'cowboy economics'.

Christenson, P. Historical Roots for Ecological Economics: Biophysical Versus Allocative Approaches. Ecological Economics, 11:, 1989 17-36

Cleveland, C., et al. Energy & the US Economy: A Biophysical Perspective. Science, 225, 1984: 890-897

Constanza, R., ed. Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability. Columbia UP, 1991. A broad-ranging collection, uniting many of the big name writers and researchers in the field.

Daly, H. Growth Economics and the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. American Behav. Scientist, 24/1, 1980: 79-105

Daly, H. The Economic Growth Debate: What Some Economists Have Learned But Many Have Not. Jnl. Environ, Econs and Management, 14, 1985: 323-336

Daly, H. & J. Cobb For the Common Good. Green Print, 1990. More a collection of essays and sometimes a bit obtuse in style but nevertheless a key book.

Daly, H. & K. Townsend. Economics, Ecology, Ethics. MIT Pr., 1993. Excellent collection, with some older but far from dated articles, attacking economic growthmania and putting the steady-state alternative.

Daly, H. & A. Umana, eds. Energy, Economics & Environment. Westview, 1980.

Dieren, W. van & Hummelinck. Natures Price: The Economics of Mother Earth. Marion Boyars, 1979. A useful Dutch study, the final chapter of which paints an interesting picture of a sustainable society.

Ekins, P. The Environmental Sustainability of Economic Processes: A Framework for Analysis. Department of Applied Economics, University of Cambridge, Discussion Paper 1, 1992.

Engler, A. Apostles of Greed: Capitalism & the Myth of the Individual in the Market. 1995.

Georgescu-Roegen, N., 1979. Methods in Economic Science. Jnl of Economic Issues, XIII 2, 1979: 317-328. His other writings are listed in the general section of the guide under Limits To Growth

Goodland, R. & C. Ledec. Neoclassical Economics & Sustainable Development. Ecological Modelling, 28, 1987: 19-46.

Gorz, A. Critique of Economic Reason. Verso, 1989. A broadside from one of the few neo-Marxists who seems to have taken on board many ecological perspectives.

Hall, C.A.S. et al. Energy & Resource Quality: The Ecology of the Economic Process. Wiley, 1986.

Hall, C.A.S. Sanctioning Resource Depletion: Economic Development and Neo-Classical Economics. The Ecologist, 20/3, 1990: 99-104

Hamilton, C. The Mystic Economist. 1994. Critique of the failure of conventional economics to integrate ethical concerns.

Henderson, H. Paradigms in Progress: Life Beyond Economics. Knowledge Systems, 1991.

Lux, K. Adam Smith's Mistake. Shambhala, 1990.

Manser, R. Going West: Market Reform and Environment in Eastern Europe. The Ecologist, 24(1), 1994: 27-32.

Meadows, D. Equity, The Free Market and the Sustainable State. In D. Meadows, ed., Alternatives to Growth 1, Ballinger, 1976.

Mishan, E.J. Economic Myths and the Mythology of Economics Wheatsheaf, 1986.

Mishan E.J. Economic and Political Obstacles to Sanity. Nat. West Bank Quarterly Rev., May, 1990: 25-42

Mishan, E.J. The Costs of Economic Growth. OUP, 1993. A new edition of a classic which combined an environmental and social critique of pro-growth economic policy.

Norgaard, R.B. Economic Indicators of Resource Scarcity: A Critical Scarcity. Jnl Environmental Economics & Management, 19, 1990: 19-25

Paepke, O. The Evolution of Progress: The End of Economic Growth and the Beginning of Human Transformation. Random House, 1993.

Plant, C., and Plant, J., eds. Green Business: Hope or Hoax. New Society Publishers, 1990.

Ravaioli. C. Economists and the Environment: What the Top Economists Say about the Environment. Zed Books, 1995. Oscar Wilde is proved right- these people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Robertson, J. Future Wealth: New Economics for the Twenty First Century. Cassell, 1990.

Sagoff, M. The Economy of the Earth. CUP, 1988. A wide-ranging critique of economic thinking, especially of the dangers of using 'economic efficiency' as some sort of objective benchmark of goodness.

Schumacher, F. Small is Beautiful .Abacus, 1973.

Singh, N. Economics and the Crisis of Ecology. OUP, 1978.

The Arts

The artistic life of human societies interacts with the broader ecological community in many ways. The shallowness, aimlessness and frequent nihilism of much modern art, for example, might be linked to the kind of society in which we live, one dangerously adrift from its ecological roots. Mental illness, addictions and assorted other social disorders, alongside disordering of environmental systems, might be seen therefore as products of a 'worship' of wrong things, an idolatry which the arts can both reflect and encourage.

On the other hand, writers, painters, photographers, and other artists often have been stimulated by nature-and its violation. Poetry & prose, for example, have been major vehicles for the expression of fears about environmental destruction and associated changes in human values and social structures. The photographs of Ansell Adams magnificently pay homage to the wonders of Nature. Sometimes whole movements, notably Romanticism, emerged as a response to the dramatic changes in the physical and social landscape. This was particularly the case with the advent of Industrialisation but many other examples can be found, often with a fin de siècle feel about them.

Equally, literature has been the vehicle for visions of a rapprochement and greater harmony between people and planet. Green Utopias match Grey Dystopias. A leading examples of the former is Callenbach's Ecotopia (see below). At present, a lot of creative work is being done on ways to capture and inspire a greater reverence for the environment.

Drama too can play a similar role. The Humane Society of the United States, for example, has a subdivision, the Centre for Respect of Life and Environment, which in turn is sponsoring a play A Sense of Wonder, based on the life on Rachel Carson, the famous author of Silent Spring. Another project, In Harmony with Nature, is bringing together classical musicians to speak and perform on behalf of the Earth. More generally, many artists, from cartoonists to theatre performers, have donated their skills to organisations campaigning against environmental degradation and pollution.

The arts also interact with the environment in a very direct sense. In many cases, such as fine art, the very act of producing paintings and other artistic works has its own environmental impacts. These include the manufacture and disposal of paper, paints and inks. The biggest single source of toxic waste around the world is the photography and film processing industry. The art of calligraphy in ancient China actually caused much environmental degradation (tree-felling to produce charcoal). The production of some musical instruments in Western Africa is causing significant damage to some local forests today. Perhaps the most direct instance is that of so-called 'earthworks', assaults on environments presumably in the name of sculpture such as Chriso's 24 miles long, eighteen feet high nylon fence in Northern California, mercifully a temporary work of 'art', or Heizer's sadly permanent Double Cut, an enormous gash in the Virgin River Mesa, Nevada.

Obviously, there is a danger that assessment of the ecological dimension of art forms might repeat the error in some schools of thought (e.g. the writings of Edward Said) of judging the literary value of, say, Victorian novels by their stance on imperialism. Nor do we need another version of socialist realism and the rule of a new Zhadanov, the tsar of culture under Stalin. But many artistic endeavours are likely to both reflect and encourage certain values bad behaviours regarding the environment and other species. Correspondingly, artists must bear some responsibility for their work and its role in society; equally no government supporting the arts can ignore such issues.

Abbs, P., ed. The Black Rainbow: Essays on the Present Breakdown of Culture. Heinemann, 1974.

Gablik, S. The Reenchantment of Art. Thames & Hudson, 1991. Poses alternative to contemporary materialism and moral emptiness.

Gimpel, J. The Cathedral Builders. Grove Pr., 1961. Important study of how 'art' and labour could be combined in the Middle Ages, unlike more contemporary distinctions between high art and everyday activity.

Griffin, D., ed. Sacred Interconnections: Postmodern Spirituality, Political Economy & Art. SUNY Pr., 1990. Postmodernism is being used in the sense of a greener alternative to modernism, not the more common, politically correct but bankrupt 'everything-is-relative-and-as-good-as-anything-else' school of thought.

Gryse, J. de & A. Sant, eds. Our Common Ground: A Celebration of Art, Place & Environment. Univ. of Tasmania, 1994.

Gussow, A. A Sense of Place: Artists & the American Land. FoE (USA), 1972.

Humphrey, P. The Ethics of Earthworks. Environmental Ethics, 7, 1985: 11-18.

Keeble, B. When Art and Work Were One. The Ecologist, 15(4), 1985: 165-176. Study of the work of Eric Gill, amongst other things a leading typeface designer.

Lane, J. The Death and Resurrection of the Arts. Green Alliance, 1982. An essay which roots the failings of the contemporary arts in the post-Renaissance and post-Enlightenment world view.

Lasch, C. The Culture of Narcissism. Abacus, 1980. The chapter on Schooling and the New Illiteracy, especially the short section on Cultural 'Elitism' & Its Critics', contains many insights.

Porteous, J. D. Environmental Aesthetics. Routledge, 1996.

Trussell, D. The Arts & Planetary Survival. The Ecologist, 19(5), 1989: 170-176. Part Two was published in the next issue 20(1), 1990: 4-8.

The writings of William Morris make many connections with an ecological sensibility. Unfortunately few in the socialist movement to which he belonged followed his lead.

General Literary and Language Studies

Bennett, J. & W. Caloupka, eds. In the Nature of Things: Language, Politics and the Environment. Univ. Minnesota Pr., 1993.

Berry, W. In Defence of Literacy. In his A Continuous Harmony. Harvest/HBJ, 1975. Short essay which defends language skills and knowledge of books, contrary to many 'progressive' educationalists and literati.

Brandon, W. The Magic World: American Indian Songs and Poems. 1971

Campbell, J. The Mythic Image. 1974. An exploration of traditional myths, which had firm ecological roots, and the way they were replaced by ideas about sky gods in whose service people could set about changing the biological and physical world.

Glotfelty, C. & H. Fromm, eds. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Univ. Georgia Pr., 1996.

Hilgartner, S., et al. Nukespeak: The Selling of Nuclear Technology in America. Penguin, 1982. An example of how language is used and abused.

Meeker, J. The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology. Scribner, 1974.

Resta, A. The Mirror of Tolkien: The Natural World & Community in Lord of the Rings. The Trumpeter, 7(1), 1990: 30-33. Example of an ecologically informed study of this well known saga.

Roszak, T. Where the Wasteland Ends. Doubleday, 1973. Part Three contains a good discussion of the Romantic movement.

Shepard, P and B. Sanders. The Sacred Paw; The Bear in Nature, Myth and Literature. 1985. The bear shares with the wolf a critical place in human thoughts about the environment and wild creatures. Shepard and Sanders explores the meanings that the bear has come to embody.

'Nature Writing'

Abbey, E. Desert Solitarire: A Season in the Wildnerness. McGraw-Hill, 1968.

Allen, J., ed.. Anthology for the Earth. Walker Books, 1997. A delightful, inspiring collection, admirably illustrated.

Busch, R. Wolf Songs: The Classic Collection of Writing About Wolves. Sierra Books, n.d.

McNamee, G., ed. The Sierra Club Desert Reader: A Literary Companion. Sierra Books, n.d.

Murray, J., ed. American Nature Writing 1998. Sierra Books, 1998. Part of an annual series.

Murray, J. The Sierra Club Nature Writing Handbook: A Creative Guide. Sierra Books, n.d.

Tedlock, D. Finding the Centre: Narrative Poetry of the Zuni Indians. 1972.

Wilson S. & T. Moritz, ed. The Sierra Club Wetlands Reader: A Literary Companion. Sierra Books, n.d.

The works of and John Muir (e.g. his Wilderness Essays) and Henry Thoreau are wonderful examples of nature writing as well as perceptive critiques of industrialism.

'Econovels'

Some readers may find that an easier route into the issued raised on this Website may not be via heavyweight, fact-ridden tomes but through a dip into the thriving world of 'eco-literature'. The environment as a whole and non-human life in particular feature in many novels, plays and poems. Perhaps the most common theme has been that of technology-out-of-control, destroying the environment whilst enslaving people. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the best example. Not surprisingly, the genre of science fiction has been a major vehicle for environmental concerns, perhaps the greatest work this century being Pohl and Kornbluth's The Space Merchants. However, there are many rivals to that claim, not least the works by Marge Piercy (especially Body of Glass).

Since ecological destruction is often perpetrated by specific groups for selfish gain, often outside the law, it is not surprising that another genre also delves into environmental issues-crime and detection. Interestingly, this is most evident in the more recent 'feminist' school of crime writing, notably Sara Paretsky's work (e.g. her Toxic Shock). Sometimes crime and science fiction can blend with political satire to produce the kind of knock-about comedy found in books like those by the stand-up comedian and gag writer Ben Elton (which draws upon an older tradition, notably Robert Tressell's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, part of whose lineage in turn flows from Charles Dickens)

Children's literature is another medium for environmental concerns: Ted Hughes' Iron Man, and Ursula le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy, for example. Perhaps the most common form is the animal story e.g. Colin Dann's Farthing Wood series, Kenneth Graham's Wind in the Willows and Richard Adams' Watership Down.

A powerful school of writing can be found in the literature from and about those communities that found themselves on the receiving end of 'development', not least 'first people' groups. Such communities had often produced a rich oral literature, in which stories of creation and other explorations of life have strong ecological elements.

It is also important to note those individuals in the 'invading cultures' who nevertheless were sympathetic to the traditional ways of life that were being ground under by the new settlers and traders. They stand in marked contrast to those who took a more hostile view (e.g. 'the only good Indian is a dead Indian' school of writing in dime novels and later in the cinema).

Econovels constitute a distinct genre which, at its best, can blend comedy (usually of a blacker variety), detection, thrills and spills with some hard ecology. Some of the best examples come from the pen of the American author Carl Hiaasen, a journalist on the Miami Herald in Florida and obviously one of the harder-boiled variety. He brings to his stories the cutting edge of someone who seen some scams and low life in his time. He also has little time for mass 'culture'. His novels to date are invariably are racy, witty, fast moving and packed with plenty of political punches. The plots are quite good too.

Various targets cross Hiaasen's sights, though it is the process of 'development' which provides the continuous thread from one story to the next. A number of characters also reappear, most notably Skink, ex-governor of Florida. He was driven out of office because he was honest and tried to protect Florida from further exploitation and destruction. Now he's living as a recluse but he's not given up on the good fight and now is prepared to wage it no holds barred.

Double Whammy draws a bead on the sports industry (bass fishing in particular) and TV evangelists while Skin Tight, which assaults the American obsession with 'good' looks and desperation for success. Native Tongue takes apart theme parks and the real estate racket. But as good a place as any to introduce yourself to Hiaasen is back at the beginning, his first thriller Tourist Season, which is aboutertourism and the way the blight it is spreading. Perhaps shooting tourists is taking non-violent direct action a bit too far but it makes gloriously politically incorrect reading.

Abbey, E. The Monkey Wrench Gang. Avon, 1976. A good instance of life subsequently imitating art when American activists began to put real spanners in the works of timber companies and the like. Its sequel is Hayduke Lives! (Little Brown & Co., 1990).

Callenbach, E.. Ecotopia. Bantam, 1977. Through the eyes of a visiting journalist, we see how a future secessionist region of NW USA is rebuilding itself along ecological lines.

Callenbach, E. Ecotopia Emerging. Bantam, 1977. The prequel to the above, describing how the split came about and why it took a green road..

Coetzee, J.M. The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee. In his Dusklands (Penguin, 1974), a satire on colonial arrogance and brutality set against traditional Hottentot society.

Fischer, D. Anthropolis: A Tale of Two Cities. Mercer Univ.Pr., 1992. The story of a professor and his family visiting a new town in the Rockies of the future which is creating an ecological community in the aftermath of another oil crisis.

Gieson, Judith van. The Wolf Path. Harper Collins, 1992. Murder and biodiversity combined.

Guthrie, A.B. The Big Sky. Bantam, 1972. Tale of the frontier and the mountain men, first published in 1952.

Hailey, A. Overload. Pan, 1980. Even authors of best selling pot-boilers can use environmental themes, in this case the aftermath of a catastrophic failure in our centralised power supply systems.

Kingsolver, B. Animal Dreams. Harper, 1991. Locals versus mining corporation and the pollution it causes, set in Arizona.

LeGuin, U. Always Coming Home. Gollancz, 1986. Another vision of a future ecological society post-crash.

Matthiessen, P. At Play in the Fields of the Lord. Vintage, 1992. Battle over the future of the rainforest and its native inhabitants, with the menace embodied in an American missionary.

McDonald, J. A Flash of Green. Ballantine, 1962.

McDonald, J.. Barrier Island. Ballantine, 1986. Skulduggery over the future of seashore scheduled for protection.

Momaday, N. Scott. Way to Rainy Mountain. Ballantine Books, 1969. A Kiowa novelist.

Russell, A. The Forest Prime Evil. Walker & Co., 1992. More skulduggery in an eco detective thriller set amongst the threatened redwoods of California.

Shaine, Benjamin. Alaska Dragon. Fireweed Pr. n.d.

Stephenson, N. Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller. Bloomsbury, 1988. Thriller about pollution in Boston harbour and the fight against by local ecofreaks.

Strieber W. & J. Kunetka. Nature's End. Grafton, 1986. Struggle over what to do in the aftermath of climatic change and other ecodisasters.

Turner, G. The Sea and Summer. Faber, 1987. Bad times after global warming takes hold.

'EcoPoetry'

Aisenberg, N., ed. We Animals: Poems of Our World. Sierra Books, n.d.

Bly, R. News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness. Sierra Books, 1980.

Diamond, S. Totems. Station Hill Pr., 1982. Poems from a great ecological anthropologist

Dunn, S & A. Scholefield. Beneath the Wide, Wide Heaven: Poetry of the Environment. Virago, 1991.

Snyder, Gary. Turtle Island. 1969. Some might select this Pulitzer prize winner as the greatest 'Earth' poet. His prose is brilliant too.

Limits to Growth theory

At an 'operational' level, in terms of both problem diagnosis and policy development, it is the concept of the limits to growth which is at the heart of the debate about the environment, society, and the human prospect. The idea cuts across the grain of contemporary society where expansion is still widely equated with progress, stability with stagnation. Perhaps this explains the fierce hostility which greeted back in the early 1970s the two seminal documents of the Limits thesis-the Limits to Growth Report to the Club of Rome and the Blueprint for Survival from the Ecologist magazine. They were roundly denounced for, amongst other things, a loss of faith in human ingenuity and technological prowess.

Two differing perspectives to that of limits to growth are noteworthy. One might be called 'hyper-expansionism'. Readers interested in the notion of a limitless world capable of endless manipulation are directed in particular to the writings of Herman Kahn and Julian Simon. It might be noted as well that what is sometimes called 'New Age' writing often contains a very technologically oriented and expansionist view of human destiny, advocating extensive use of genetic engineering and even the 'humanisation' of other planets. See, for example, works by the theologian Teilhard de Chardin and Peter Russell's The Awakening Earth.

However, such rabid cornucopianism has come under challenge from many sources, including the 'reform' wing of business and élites. The latter rallied to the battle cry of Sustainable Growth. Given the general faith in open-ended human potential that underlies contemporary culture, it is perhaps not surprising that there was still a great aversion to ideas about insuperable constraints. This 'new' approach did not attack growth per se but growth which is unbalanced, undifferentiated, quantitative, uncontrolled or unsustainable.

The concept was popularised by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). The focus was the 'fine-tuning' of production systems to mitigate some of its more undesirable side-effects, particularly those that are interfering with the goal of greater consumption. The economic 'engine' was perceived to be basically a sound one: all that was wrong was some dirt clogging the carburettors and inadequate driving skills.

More recently, another notion, that of 'sustainable development', has come to the fore. Yet it conjures up two distinct and, beyond a certain point, incompatible meanings. One word, Sustainable, suggests durability and stability but the other, Development, is used most often to denote changes in land use, especially the construction of new buildings and other infrastructure. It is also used in some circles to suggest less tangible things, particularly relating to quality of life and 'inner' growth. Perhaps the popularity of the phrase lies in its capacity to mean all things to all people. However, closer examination suggests that most of the values and policies found under the umbrella of sustainable development will not reverse the present slide to ecological meltdown.

Whatever their advantages over the 'smash and grab' school of environmental mismanagement, the goals of sustainable growth or sustainable development would still be unsustainable in the long-run, destroying many species and local human communities who get in the way of 'progress' in the meantime. Both are contradiction in terms, akin to a belief in the possibility in having one's cake and eating it.

The key challenge for human society therefore is to learn to think in terms of sufficiency rather than 'moreness'. For many people, 'limits' are synonymous with oppressive restraints. Many critiques of the Blueprint for Survival, for example, claimed that it was prescriptive, if not downright authoritarian. Actually, the concept of limits provides a positive framework for decision-making. It suggests guidelines for long-lasting satisfaction and fulfilment. The various limits to growth should be seen as brakes and safety barriers. Operational and behavioural limits are central to the processes of self-regulation that prevent excess and failure. Any system - plant, animal, community, institution, machine or ecosystem - must have limits to its functioning. Otherwise it would cease to be an ordered entity and fail. As the veteran ecologist, Eugene Odum, puts it, growth beyond the optimum is cancer'.

Bender, T. Why We Need To Get Poor Quick. The Futurist, 11, 1977: 210-215

Bormann, F. An Inseparable Linkage: Conservation of Natural Ecosystem and the Conservation of Fossil Fuel Energy. Bioscience, 26(12), 1976: 754-760

Boyden S., et al. Our Biosphere Under Threat. OUP, 1990. Study of limits to growth, with particular reference to one country, Australia, often viewed as new cornucopia.

Burch, W. R. & F. Bormann. Beyond Growth. Yale UP, 1975.

Cook, E. The Consumer as Creator: A Criticism of Faith in Limitless Ingenuity. Energy Explor. & Exploit., 1(3), 1982: 189-201.

Culbertson, J. 'Economic Growth', Population & Environment. Population & Environment, 11(2), 1989: 83-99.

Davis, W. Jackson. The Seventh Year: Industrial Society in Transition. Norton, 1979.

Diamond, J. Playing Dice with Megadeath. Discover, April, 1990: 55-59. A short and well explained study of the conflict between human demands and biodiversity.

Douthwaite, R. The Growth Illusion. Green Books, 1992. A full-scale attack on growth-oriented economics, linking its environmental costs to its failure to deliver the promised social goods in a fair, satisfying or sustainable manner.

Ehrlich, P. & A.Ehrlich Extinction. Gollancz, 1981. Perhaps the definitive study of how we depend upon the diversity of lifeforms for a variety of services that make the Earth habitable-and how human expansion must be at their expense.

Ehrlich, P. & J. Holdren, eds. The Cassandra Conference: Resources and the Human Predicament. Texas A&M Univ. Pr., 1987. Some of the key advocates of the Limits perspective are united in this volume.

Garbarino, J. The Future As If It Really Mattered. Bookmakers Guild, 1988.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Harvard UP, 1971. A truly profound and ground-breaking study of biophysical constraints with species attention paid to way the laws of thermodynamics limit energy and material conversions. Jeremy Rifkin's Entropy (see below) is a popularisation of this fundamental work. See also:

Georgescu-Roegen, N. Energy and Economic Myths. Pergamon, 1977.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. Matter Matters Too. In K. D. Wilson ed. Prospects for Growth, Praegar, 1977.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. Matter: A Resource Ignored By Thermodynamics. In Proceedings of the World Conference on Future Sources of Organic Raw Materials. Pergamon, 1979.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. Energetic Dogma, Energetic Economics, and Viable Technologies. Advances in Economics of Energy and Resources, 4, 1982: 1-39.

Giarini, O., and H. Louberge. The Diminishing Returns To Technology Pergamon. 1979.

Glasby, G. Entropy, Pollution and Environmental Degradation. Ambio, 17(5), 1988: 330-335. Why physical expansion, no matter how well managed, must come against a brick wall, doing increasing damage en route.

Goldsmith, E. Is Development the Solution or the Problem? The Ecologist 15, 1985: 210-219

Goodland, R. The Case that the World Has Reached Limits: More Precisely that Current Throughput Growth in the Global Economy Cannot Be Sustained. Population & Environment, 13(3), 1992: 167-182.

Hall, C. A. S. The Biosphere, The Industriosphere, and their Interactions. Bull. Atom. Scientist, 31, 1975: 11-21.

Hardin, G. Limited World, Limited Rights. Society, 17(4), 1980: 5-8.

Hardin, G. Living Within Limits:Ecology, Economy & Population Taboos. OUP, 1993.

Holdren, J. Technology, Environment and Well-Being. In C. Cooper, ed., Growth in America, Westview, 1976.

Hodson H. V. The Diseconomies of Growth. Earth Island, 1977.

Hueting, R. The New Scarcity and Economic Growth. North-Holland, 1980.

Kassiola, J. The Death of Industrial Civilisation. SUNY Press, 1990. A very useful overview of the 'limits' literature from an American professor of Political Science.

Lambert, T.A. Energy & Entropy in American Agriculture & Rural A New Paradigm for Public Policy Analysis. Cornell Jnl Soc. Rels., 15(1), 1980: 84-97. Example of the 'Limits' perspective used to illuminate the problems of a particular sector.

Livingston, D. Global Equilibrium. Ekistics 42, 1976: 173-176.

Livingston, J. One Cosmic Instant: Man's Fleeting Supremacy. Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

Lovins, A. Long-term Constraints on Human Activity. Environmental Conservation 3(1), 1976: 3-14.

Mathews, W. H., ed. Outer Limits and Human Needs. Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, 1976.

Meadows, D., et al. Beyond the Limits. Earthscan, 1992. An up-date of the original Limits to Growth study.

Miles, R. Awakening from the America Dream: The Social and Political Limit to Growth. Marion Boyars, 1977.

Mishan, E. The Cost of Economic Growth. Penguin, 1969.

Mishan, E. The Economic Growth Debate. Allen and Unwin, 1977.

Mueller, R. Thermodynamics of Environmental Degradation. NASA TM X-65492, Goddard Space Flight Center, 1971.

Mueller, R. Energy in the Environment & the Second Law of Thermodynamics. NASA TM X-644-72-130, Goddard Space Flight Center, 1972.

Odum, E. The Strategy of Ecosystem Development. Science 164, 1969: 262-270. A classic study of the changes in ecosystems from immature growth to a mature and comparatively stable equilibrium, a process with which human land uses clash. Though conservationists are frequently attacked for wanting to freeze 'change' and artificially preserve nature in mothballs, Odum shows that it is activities like mining, agriculture and manufacturing that keep environmental systems at a simplified and unstable state. The argument is further developed in:

Odum, E. Ecology and Our Endangered Life-Support Systems. Sinauer, 1989.

Odum, E. & H. Odum. Natural Areas as Necessary Components of Man's Total Environment. Trans. North American Wildlife Conf., 1972: 178-189.

Ophuls, W. Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity. Freeman, 1993. Part One of this book is perhaps the most comprehensive and effective statement of the whole limits thesis. Part Two, which explores its political implications, contains an equally good exposition of the Tragedy of the Commons argument, though other sections have been criticised for their authoritarian overtone.

Rifkin, J. Entropy: Into the Greenhouse World. Bantam, 1990.

Rifkin, J. Time Wars. Simon and Schuster, 1989. Study of how we have found ourselves increasingly short of time and out of rhythm with the rest of Nature.

Sale, K. Human Scale. Secker & Warburg. 1980. An encyclopaedic study, replete with examples across many areas of life, that big is often far from better.

Sears, P. The Inexorable Problem of Space. Science, 127, 1958: 9-16.

Skolimowski, H. The Myth of Progress. The Ecologist, 4(7), 1974: 248-258.

Trainer, F. Abandon Affluence. Zed, 1985. A study that paid particular attention to the unsustainable levels of resource depletion and environmental pollution and degradation that would accompany any attempt to generalise across the globe western levels of consumption. It locates environmental problems firmly in the economy's need, as currently structured, to seek further expansion. A forthcoming book from Trainer will explore the structures and lifestyles appropriate to a 'conserver' society.

Valaskakis, K. et al.. The Conserver Society. Harper & Row, 1979.

Vale, T., ed. Progress Against Growth. Guildford Pr., 1986. American collection on the costs of growthism and alternatives to it.

Vitousek, P. et al. Human Appropriation of the Products of Photosynthesis. Bioscience, 34(6), 1986: 388-373. How humans are not only eating bigger and bigger slices of the Earth 'cake' but are also threatening, thereby, to destroy the 'bakery' itself.

Watt, K., et al. The Unsteady State. Univ. Pr. Hawaii, 1977.

Woodwell, G. Success, Succession, and Adam Smith. Bioscience, Feb., 1974: 81-87.

Limits To Growth Theory Defended

Bunyard, P. Global 2000-Revisited. The Ecologist, 13(4), 1983: 110-113.

Daly, H. Ultimate Confusion: The Economics of Julian Simon. Futures, October, 1985: 446-450.

Daly, H. Boundless Bull. Cannett Centre Jnl, 4(3), 1990: 113-118.

Ehrlich, P. An Econmist in Wonderland. Soc. Sci. Qrtly, 62(1), 1981: 44-49. Critique of a latter day Dr Pangloss, Julian Simon.

Ehrlich, P. The Limits to Substitution. Ecological Economics, 1(1), 1989: 9-16.

Ehrlich P. & A. Ehrlich. Review of "Resourceful Earth"(Simon & Kahn, eds.). Bull. Atom. Sci., Feb., 1985: 44-47.

Ehrlich, P., & H. Mooney. Extinction, Substitutions and Ecosystem Service. Bioscience, 33/4, 1983: 248-254.

Holdren, J. et al. Bad News: Is It True? Science, 210, 1980: 1296-1301.

Trainer, F. Affluence for All? A Reply to Goeller & Weinberg. Science and Public Policy, 11(1), 1984: 54-56.

Trainer, F.E. The Limitations of Alternative Energy Sources. Conservation & Recycling, 7(1), 1984: 27-42.

Trainer, F. E. A Critical Examination of "The Ultimate Resource" & "The Resourceful Earth". Technol. Forecasting & Social Change, 30, 1986: 19-37.

Woodwell, G. Short-Circuiting the Cheap Power Fantasy. In R. L. Smith, ed., The Ecology of Man, Harper and Row, 1976

The Contradictions of Sustainable Development

In the last few years, debate about the interlocking environmental, economic and social problems facing humanity increasingly has been shaped by two words-'sustainable' and 'development'. At first sight, they seem a strange combination One word, 'sustainable', suggests durability and stability, but the other, development, is used most often to denote changes in land use, especially the construction of new buildings and other infrastructure. Yet use of the term 'sustainable development' is now so common that it must be concluded that most decision-makers, policy analysts and commentators can see no contradiction in the combination of these two words. Certainly, the term seems to have supplanted previous terminology such as 'sustained yield' and its younger cousin 'sustainable growth'.

The promise is held out by the proponents of Sustainable Development that we can have "development without destruction", to quote the title of a book by M.K. Tolba. The right mix of 'green' lifestyle change, 'appropriate' technological innovation, and enhanced managerial expertise, will facilitate, it is claimed, further growth in the good things in life, whilst, at the same time, reducing the evils that now plague the planet. Society, it seems, can have the best of both worlds.

If there is an icon of sustainable development, it surely must be the 'green' car. Apparently, it will offer the means of mass mobility, privacy and convenience for each and every citizen. Yet, thanks to lightweight materials and super-efficient engines, it will slash fuel consumption, thereby making fuel resources last much longer, as well as cut air pollution. In its more radical forms, this new generation of vehicles will be powered by batteries charged up courtesy of the sun.

Arrogant notions of 'planet management' abound. Environmental systems in general and other species in particular are in general still treated as but 'resources', there to be manipulated for open-ended human entitlements. Today's problems are treated as matters of inadequate management, insufficient information and faulty techique, all of which can be cured by greater expertise, intensified research and, of course, technological development, especially by increased efficiency in resource use and deployment of pollution control gadgetry.

The paradigm of Sustainable Development is one of reform, not revolution. The idea that there might be boundaries beyond which it is foolish to transgress is largely ignored in terms of the here and now. The wise words of veteran ecologist Eugene Odum, that "growth beyond the optimum is cancer", find few listeners amongst the proponents of Sustainable Development. Concepts like "limits", "carrying capacity" and "stability" are treated with disdain: they regarded as, at best, hypothetical speculations, if not meaningless abstractions. Most critically, the notion that human society taken as a whole may already be in a state of 'overshoot' is simply dismissed. Such views are viewed as simplistic and vulgar, unduly negative thoughts that surfaced in the early 1970s but which sank from sight, once more sophisticated thinking rightfully took their place.

However, far from there being "world enough and time", room for manoeuvre is rapidly being lost. Refusal to bite on the bullet of radical change now can only make subsequent surgery more painful but also less likely to succeed. The paper further argues that talk of 'sustainable development' is, at best, so much hot air, and, often, a deliberate deception, designed to veil what, in essence, is business-as-usual. This dissembling serves a simple purpose: it gives the illusion of change when, in reality, little has altered. Society as a whole continues to pursue those very policies and goals which, if unchanged, will make the present slide to ecological ruin irreversible.

Such verbal trickery is only part of the problem with the concept. The very phrase, the paper will argue, is a contradiction in terms. 'Sustainable' and 'Development' are like chalk and cheese: they simply cannot be combined without violating everyday language. Their union is tantamount to believing that it is possible to have one's cake and eat it.

Court, T. de la. Beyond Brundtland: Green Development in the 1990s. Zed, 1990.

Devall, B. Reformist Environmentalism. Humboldt Jnl. Social. Relations, 6(2), 1979: 129-158.

Devall, B. & G. Sessions. The Development of Natural Resources and the Conservation of Nature. Environmental Ethics, 6, 1984: 293-322. A major article spotlighting the approaches that seeks to conserve resources-so that they can be available for exploitation at a later date. In passing, it cites examples of programmes from 'sustained yield' forestry to eliminate wildlife that got in the way of such goals.

Doyle, J. Hold The Applause, A Case Study of Corporate Environmentalism. The Ecologist, 22(3), 1992: 84-90. A critique of the record of Du Pont in particular, but shows that most corporate 'greening' is a very superficial preening with unchanging goals of more expansion and power.

Ehrlich, A. The Dangers of Uninformed Optimism. Environmental Conservation, Autumn, 8(3), 1981: 173-175.

Ehrlich, P. & A. Ehrlich. Review of 'The Resourceful Earth'. Bull. Atomic Scientists, Feb., 1985: 44-47

Ehrlich P. & A. Ehrlich. Betrayal of Science and Reason. Island Pr., 1996

Fairlie, S. Long Distance, Short Life: Why Big Business Favours Recycling. The Ecologist, 22(6), 1992: 276-283

Goldsmith, E. Is Development the Solution or the Problem? The Ecologist, 15, 1985: 210-219.

Hardin, G. Ecology and the Death of Providence. Zygon, 15, 1980: 57-6.

Hardin, G. An Ecolate View of the Human Predicament. Alternatives, VII(2), 1981: 242-262.

Hays, S. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency. Harvard UP, 1959. Historical survey of that kind of environmentalism which is really about a super-efficient exploitation of the environment, in which people are still perceived to be above and apart from the rest of nature.

Hueting, R. The Brundtland Report; a Matter of Conflicting Goals. Ecological Economics, 2, 1990: 109-117.

Livingston, J. Moral Concerns and the Biosphere. Alternatives, 12, 1985: 3-9.

Lohmann, L. Whose Common Future. The Ecologist, 20(3), 1990: 82-84. Critique of the Brundtland report and subsequent initiatives, arguing that they represent the reformist wing of the global élite, trying to sustain business-as-usual by modifying its worst features.

Manes, C. Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilisation. Little, Brown & Co, 1990. Apart from being a very readable introduction to deeper ecological perspectives, this is also an excellent critique of the failure of 'reformist' environmentalism of official and semi-official conservation bodies.

Naess, A. Sustainable Development and the Deep Ecology Movement. The Trumpeter 4, 1988: 138-142

Rees, W. Sustainable Development: Economic Myths & Ecological Realities. The Trumpeter, 5(4), 1988: 133138

Sachs, W. Environment & Development: The Story of a Dangerous Liaison. The Ecologist, 21(6), 1991: 252-257

Sachs, W., ed. Global Ecology: Conflicts & Contradictions. Zed, 1993. A guide to the would-be planet 'managers'.

Sachs, W. The Blue Planet: An Ambiguous Modern Icon. The Ecologist, 24(5), 1994: 170-175. Viewed from outer space, the blue ball that is planet Earth might encourage awareness of the finitude of the only home we'll ever have and inspire some much needed modesty. But it can also feed fantasies of global control.

Sarkar, S. Accommodating Industrialism. The Ecologist, 20(4), 1990: 147-152

Sessions, G. Anthropocentrism and the Environmental Crisis. Humboldt J. Soc. Relations, 2, 1974: 71-81

Trainer, F. Critical Examination of 'The Ultimate Resource' and The Resourceful Earth'. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 30, 1986: 19-37.

Trainer, T. A Rejection of The Brundtland Report. IFDA Dossier, May-June, 1990: 71-85.

See also:

Bowers, J. Economics of the Environment. British Association Nature Conservationists, n.d.

A report by an environmental economist criticising some aspects of the Pearce Report on Sustainable Development (UK Dept. of Environment, 1989)).

Buckner, D., et al. The Price of Life. Green Party (London), n.d. Another response to the Pearce Report, this time from the Green Party of England and Wales-and a bit more radical than the one above.

The 'PAT' formula:

There are two levels of understanding why environmental systems are under unsustainable pressures-the pressures themselves and the forces behind them, which might be best described as 'root causes'. Human impacts derive from three distinct pressures: population growth, growth in per capita consumption and growth in the impact of technologies used.

· Population size. (P)

the more people, the greater the impact.

· Per capita consumption (or 'affluence'). (A)

the more resources each person consumes, the greater the impact

· Unit of technology used to produce goods and services consumed. (T)

every form of technology has an impact but some have greater ones than other ones that could be used to deliver the same level of per capita consumption to the same level of population.

Hence the formula:

population size x per capita consumption x impact per unit of technology

= pressure on environmental and social systems

Ehrlich, P. & J. Holdren. One-Dimensional Ecology. The Ecologist, 2 (2), 1972: 11-21. A crucial article which argues that all three factor count together, each magnifying the effects of the other two. The article was written with specific reference to the thesis advanced by the American biologist and socialist Barry Commoner that the problem is 'flawed technology'. See, in particular., his famous work, The Closing Circle. His subsequent books specifically deny any population dimension to the environmental crisis.

Holdren, J. Population and the Energy Problem. Population and Environment, 12(3), 1991: 231-255. An important essay which looks at the USA's profligate levels of energy consumption, showing that the decisive factor in the country's globally unfair and ecologically unsustainable demand for energy was not increased per capita consumption nor, surprisingly, the switch to energy-wasteful technologies like the private motor car, but simply that there are more Americans. In other words, population growth has been a potent force in itself and in its capacity as a multiplier of other factors at work.

Samaras, T. Bigger People: A Growing Problem. Earth Island, Spring, 1998: 22. An interesting little case study of an increasing menace: not only are there more and more people but they are getting bigger, causing themselves more health problems and demanding more physical space and more resources.

Specieism and Animal Rights

In these politically corrected times, we are become awash with new terms designed to spotlighted specific forms of exploitation, oppression & discrimination. Some of the more extreme examples such as 'stoutism' (regarding fat individuals) have become mere raw material for comedians. Whatever their validity, all deal with the maltreatment of people by people. Fortunately, the rise of the so-called animal rights movement has spotlighted how people in general have been responsible for the systematic infliction of pain and other suffering upon non-human creatures. Speciesism is as good a shorthand as any to describe this wilful disregard for the needs of all those other members of the ecological community.

Of course, all individual creatures depend upon the use, if not suppression, of their fellows as well as the physical resources of the environmental system. Yet the scale of such exploitation can be kept to the minimum necessary and practised in ways that are reduce as far as possible suffering and other harm.

Unfortunately, human society has a long history of abusing other creatures. It has taken many, many forms. The oldest is killing of wild animals for food, furs, and, hides. Then came the domestication of farm animals. An an early stage some animals became household pets. Others were tormented in fairground and arena spectacles, being baited, raced, made to perform pointless tricks or simply forced to fight each other. Hunting not for food but for pleasure is another long-standing tradition. Often such activities have been conducted in needlessly cruel and wasteful ways.

The advent of industrialism made matters worse in many ways. This is most obviously the case in farming, with the spread of intensive livestock units, especially since 1945. The transport of live animals has also increased in volume and distance. Though 'old-fashioned' trapping continues, most fur production now takes place on 'factory farms'.

Humans still massacre other wild creatures simply to remove their horns or other parts of their anatomy to gratify a weird variety of whims and fetishes. Even the keeping of pets has been revolutionised, with huge breeding programmes set up to gratify human whims. Ancient societies had nothing to rival the sacrific of thousands of animals upon the vivisection altars of industrialised science. And, now, the transplant industry scours the bodies of other creatures looking for spare parts for humans.

There are complicated arguments about the validity of ascribing 'rights' to individual animals who, it seems, are neither aware of such abstract concepts nor capable of enforcing them. It might even be argued that it is anthropocentric to make other creatures 'honorary humans.' There are other problems about where to draw the line, especially with regards to sentience and non-sentience, as well as to measure animal welfare. The fact remains, however, that humans as a whole are responsible for wholesale carnage as well as demonstrable cruelty. It would be the worst sophistry to indulge in formalistic philosophical wrangling and not focus on the practical consequences of our attitudes to other animals.

The term 'rights' remains a convenient label to describe values and policies that lead us to lifestyles that tread more lightly on all our fellow creatures. Many Red Indian groups in the 'wild west' learned to take little from the huge herds of buffalo with which they co-existed. They made maximum use of they took-and were grateful for the bounty they received. Modern humankind could learn from their ways.

Clark, S. The Nature of the Beast: Are Animals Moral? OUP, 1983.

Fox, M. Returning to Eden: Animal Rights & Human Responsibility. Viking, 1980.

Hargrove, E., ed. The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate. SUNY Pr., 1992.

Collection of key articles on the problem of reconciling individualist rights thinking with more holistic approaches plus other philosophical issues.

Midley, M. Animals & Why They Matter: a Journey Around the Species Barrier. Pelican, 1983.

Regan, T. The Case for Animal Rights. Univ. California Pr., 1983.

Regan, T. & P. Singer, eds. Animal Rights & Human Obligations. Prentice-Hall, 1976.

Rodman, J. The Liberation of Nature? Inquiry, 20, 1977: 83-131.

Ryder, R. Animal Revolution. Blackwell, 1989. Historical overview of changing attitudes.

Singer, P. Animal Liberation. Paladin, 1977.

Singer, P. In Defence of Animals. Blackwell, 1985. This work and the one above are key books in this field.

Wynne-Jones, J., ed. The Expanding Circle. Centaur, 1985. A compendium of 'humane throught'.

See also:

Magel, C. A Bibliography of Animal Rights & Related Matters. UP America, 1981.

Earth Mindful

In the light of the scale of exploitation and destruction today, it is not surprising that it has long been argued that humankind needs a new ethic to guide us towards that sense of one-ness with the rest of nature, which some tribal societies may have possessed but which no longer shapes perceptions, particularly those in industrial societies.

The lineage of what might be called ecocentrism and others have labelled deep ecology can be traced back through the centuries, with perhaps the Taoists of ancient China being its first coherent expression. Some feminist writers have claimed that there was a widespread 'gynocentric culture', often based around the veneration of Earth goddesses before the rise of more patriarchal values and power structures.

In more modern times, Thomas Malthus can be singled out as the first to stress how much humans share with other species a complete dependence on their environment for their well-being and livelihoods. The Romantic movement also pre-echoed many ecological concerns. The dramatic impact of Europeans on the comparatively virgin continent of North America produced a whole string of commentators ringing alarm bells about the direction society was travelling. Amongst the most noteworthy were George Catlin, Henry Thoreau, George Marsh and John Muir. Between the wars, America also produced important contributions to environmentalist literature from forester Aldo Leopold, ecologist Paul Sears, and the planner Lewis Mumford. In 1973, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess felt able to distinguish 'shallow ecology' and its concern with pollution, resource depletion and other environmental sources of harm to humans from what he called the 'deep ecology movement'.

It is the population/carrying capacity question is the one that sets apart 'purer' strains of ecocentrism from those which draw upon the more familiar radical traditions from Europe, especially socialist thought. Dave Foreman, for example, a founder of the militant American group 'Earth First', wisely declared the population issue the 'absolute litmus test' ('Earth First!' journal, Nov. 1987 issue). Quite clearly, on a finite planet, an unwillingness to accept limits on what is available for humans must curtail what rights are to be recognised for non-human species since those rights have no meaning without the physical space and resources to underwrite them.

Within the framework of ecocentrism, 'right' relationships involve three distinct though closely interacting sets of equity-place (i.e. between all those people alive today), time (between those alive today and those yet to be born, i.e.. Intergenerational equity) and species (between human and non-human life forms). Equity is used in the sense of an equal opportunity to realise potential in ways that achieve the maximum possible mutual satisfaction of affected parties. The relationship between the three is perhaps most closely seen in the way poverty in many 'Third World 'countries drives many of its victims to overgraze, deforest and otherwise damage their environment, thus compromising the rights of future generations and other species.

Ecocentrism starts from a sense of the implicate unity of life whose diversity must be defended for its own sake. It stresses the common membership shared by humans and other lifeforms in one community. Perhaps the most succinct summary of ecocentrism was by Aldo Leopold: 'A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community and the community includes the soil, waters, fauna, and flora as well as people'. As Aitken notes with respect to agriculture, the permissibility of many modern agricultural practices becomes much more curtailed once we include non-human interests as well as more traditional concerns such as human health effects amongst the criteria for judgements.

Ecocentrism stresses interrelatedness and reciprocity, reversing the central premises of what has been called 'resourcism'. Human interests become only one of a number of contending considerations. The human community must be integrated into the wider biotic community so that the former is sustained by the latter and the latter by the former. This perception changes, in Leopold's words, 'the role of Homo Sapiens from conqueror of the land community to plain member and citizen'. It requires that 'all human activities must be appraised and managed in the light of their effects on all other components of the ecosystem' (Darling and Dasmann). Snyder sums up the spiritual core as follows: ' I am a child of all life and all living beings are my brothers and sisters'. From this flows the injunction to 'tread lightly' in all relationships.

In terms of its implications for land use, the most important criterion from an ecocentric perspective is biodiversity. More than anything else this distinguishes it from other forms of resource management. As Noss puts it, the 'maintenance of biodiversity must become our primary mission, the principle that guides all resource use'. Paul Shepard further argues that species extinction is the greatest crime since it is irreversible. No plan or activity is acceptable if it endangers the existence of a species. Further, 'the measures to avoid it are the same that preserve the biosphere as a whole'.

It is sometimes suggested that the planet might be better off without we humans and certainly the Gaia hypothesis implies that the biosphere can take human-caused pollution in its stride even if it poisons people. Yet human self-destruction is likely to take with it a great many non-human life-forms so it seems reasonable to conclude that there exists a common bond, a shared interest in survival.

It will be noted that ecocentrism multiplies the number of entitlement holders, thus creating the problem of how to reconcile conflicts between their claims on finite resources. The best policy is that which minimises harm i.e. treads most lightly on the maximum number of interested parties. Birch and Cobb (1974) for example, suggest that an appropriate balance would be that in which it is possible 'to maximise the quality of human life with minimum impact on non-human life' (p173). They reject absolutist arguments for human rights, recognising that, at times, this means 'a compromise of human interests for the sake of other species'. Some writers, notably Stone, 1974 and 1987, have suggested that this will mean giving non-human life forms a legal standing. In most cases, policies that are sensitive to the rights of other species to flourish in their native habitats are also policies which promise the bst chances of long-term sustainability for humans too.

Some Theoretical Issues

To be fair, there are some serious conceptual, let alone practical problems, inherent in such approaches. There is, for example, the question of what needs (and what rights) has something (e.g. a species or a landform) that is not self-conscious nor capable of communication as well as not a responsible moral agent, at least not in ways we humans associate with ourselves. Is it possible, for example, to commit an 'injustice' against the rest of the biotic community which it has no sense of justice? How do we know what is 'the integrity, stability, and beauty of the land' (i.e. Aldo Leopold's criteria for an appropriate land use ethic). For example, Jackson et al (1984) call for an agriculture that, in the title of the book, meets 'the expectations of the land'-how does the land know about and communicate such expectations?

David Ehrenfeld tackles the frequently posed question of why we should care about other species, many of whom could threaten human well-being and all of whom-as far as we know-don't seem to care about us. The question of 'what good' is served by saving a habitat or species, he argues, should be answered by asking the same of the questioner.

Many orthodox writers have challenged in particular the use of the prefix 'eco' to describe a philosophy or a mode of design and management. Their argument is that ecology is about relationships between organisms and their environment, no more than that. The knowledge it provides could be used to defoliate a forest in Vietnam as well as conserve a jungle.

At this level, the issue is indeed one of human choice. Georgescu-Roegen, for example, notes in his various writings that humans are free to choose to live a short, spectacular existence as a specie or live a less flamboyantly but somewhat longer one. It is also a question of moral choice whether to live in ways that exterminate other life forms or live and let live, accepting the right of other species to pursue their own evolutionary destiny.

If the choice is the second one in both cases, it is reasonable to start seeking the appropriate means by looking at how ecological systems, prior to intensive human usage, have survived so long. If it is accepted that human society is dependent upon the environment, then the rhythms, capacities and tolerances of environmental systems become the guidelines that a society aspiring to be sustainable must respect. Our living necessarily involves some use of land and of other lifeforms. Nevertheless such realities should encourage, not discourage, examination and repeated re-examination of how humanity can lessen adverse impacts upon the environmental systems, including specific maltreatment of other forms of life.

Bergeson, A. Deep Ecology & Moral Community. In R. Wuthnow, ed. Rethinking Materialism. Erdmans, 1995.

Berman, M. The Reenchantment of the World. Cornell UP, 1981.

Birch, C. and J. Cobb. The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community. CUP, 1981. Amongst other things, an attack on mechanistic biology and a call for a more ecological and organic model of life processes.

Bohm, D. Wholeness and Implicate Order. RKP, 1980. Seminal work from a leading exponent of a 'new physics'.

Callicott, J. Baird. Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair. Environmental Ethics, 2, 1980: 311-338.

Chiras, D., ed. Voices for the Earth: Vital Ideas from America's Best Environmental Writers. Johnson Books, 1995.

Davis, D. E. Ecophilosophy R&E Miles, 1989. An extremely valuable bibliographical survey of the ecophilosophical literature.

Devall, B. & G. Sessions. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered Gibbs M. Smith, 1985. A somewhat disjointed but very important collection of essays presenting values that can bring people and planet into closer harmony.

Devall, B. Simple in Means, Rich in Ends. Green Print, 1990.

Drengson, A. Developing Concepts of Environmental Relationships. Phil. Inquiry, 8, 1986: 50-65

Drengson, A. A Critique of Deep Ecology? Jnl. Applied Phil., 4 (2), 1987: 223-227

Drengson, A. Beyond the Environmental Crisis. Peter Lang, 1989. Detailed Canadian comparison of world views that flow against and with ecological sustainability.

Drengson, A. The Practice of Exploring Technology, Ecophilosophy & Spiritual Disciplines for Vital Links. SUNY Pr., 1995.

Drengson, A. & Y. Inoue, eds. The Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology. North Atlantic Books, 1995.

Eckersley, R. Environmentalism and Political Theory UCL Pr., 1992. Rather abstract, lacking clear guidelines for political activity yet it goes a long way to get clear the philosophical foundations of green politics and policy.

Ehrenfeld, D. Beginning Again: People & Nature in the New Millennium. OUP, 1993. New essays from this first-rate thinker.

Fraser Darling, F. and Dasmann, R. The Ecosystem View of Human Society. Impact of Science on Society, XIX (2), 1969: 109-121.

Goldsmith, E. The Way Rider, 1992. Detailed and significant review of the world view needed for ecological sustainability.

Griffin, D, ed. The Reenchantment of Science. SUNY Pr., 1988. A collection of essays both on science in general and on specific disciplines, with a particularly useful introduction.

Hardin, G. Filters against Folly Viking, 1985. The controversial American biologist Garrett Hardin cuts through a lot of the sentiment and piety about relationships between people and between people and planet. He has been criticised for his concept of 'lifeboat ethics' in relation to the problems of countries suffering from poverty and environmental decline i.e. we are not obliged to save those who won't take actions to save themselves or whose rescue would put ourselves in peril. Nevertheless, he is a crucial thinker on environmental problems. See also:

Hardin, G. Naked Emperors Kaufmann, 1982.

Hardin, G. Human Ecology: The Subversive, Conservative Science. American Zoologist, 25, 1985: 469-476

Hargrove, E. Foundations of Environmental Ethics. Prentice-Hall, 1989. An overview from an American professor under whose editorship the magazine Environmental Ethics became perhaps the leading forum for thought on ecophilosophy.

Hay, P. & R. Eckersley. Ecopolitical Theory. Univ. of Tasmania, 1992. More philosophical than political but still an excellent collection of essays from Australia, a source of much good thinking.

Hughes, J. Donald & Schultz, R., eds. Ecological Consciousness. Univ. Pr. of America, 1981. A first-rate collection.

Johns, D. The Practical Relevance of Deep Ecology. Wild Earth, Summer, 1992: 62-68.

Leopold, A. A Sand County Almanac. OUP, 1949. An all-time classic from American forester and conservationist. See also:

Leopold, A. The Conservation Ethic. Jnl. of Forestry, 32, 1933: 634-635, 640.

Leopold, A. A Biotic View of the Land. Jnl. of Forestry, 37, 1939: 727-730.

Leopold, A. The Ecological Conscience. Bull. Garden Club of America, Sept., 1947: 45-53.

Leopold, A. Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest. Environmental Ethics 1, 1979: 131-141.

Leopold, L., ed. Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold. OUP, 1953.

McLaughlin, A. Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology SUNY Pr., 1993. An interesting Marshall, P. Nature's Web: An Exploration of Ecological Thinking. Simon & Schuster, 1992. Good overview and history.

Metzner, R. The Emerging Ecological World View. In Tucker, M & J. Grin, eds. World views and Ecology. Bucknell UP, 1993.

Milbrath, L. A Proposed Value Structure for a Sustainable Society. The Environmentalist 4, 1984: 113-124

Milbrath, L. Putting things To Rights. Real World, 13, Autumn, 1995: 8-9. Call to put ecosystem protection first in our value system.

Mills, S., ed. In Praise of Nature Island Pr., 1990. Another treasure trove of ecological thinking.

Naess, A. Self-Realisation in Mixed Communities of Humans, Bears, Sheep and Wolves. Inquiry, 22, 1979: 231-241

Naess, A. A Defence of the Deep Ecology Movement. Environmental Ethics, 6, 1984: 265-270.

Naess, A. Deep Ecology in Good Conceptual Health. The Trumpeter, 3, 1986: 18-22

Naess, A. Intrinsic Value: Will the Defenders of Nature Please Rise. In Soule, M., ed., Conservation Biology. Sinauer, 1986.

Naess, A. & I. Mysterud. Philosophy of Wolf Policies. Conservation Biology 1(1), 1987: 21-34.

Naess, A. Ecology, Community and Life Style. CUP, 1988. The most accessible source of this Norwegian philosopher who developed the notion of 'deep ecology'.

Nash, R. The Rights of Nature. Univ. Wisconsin Pr, 1989.

Norton, B., 1991. Towards Unity Amongst Environmentalists. OUP, 1991. A recognition that people have different reasons for fighting for environmental protection and call for greater theoretical and practical unity.

Oelschlaeger, M., ed. The Wilderness Condition. Island Pr., 1992. A collection of essays including many of America's leading ecophilosophers

Ornstein, R. & P. Ehrlich. New World/New Mind: Moving Toward Conscious Evolution. Doubleday, 1989.

Rolston, H. Philosophy Gone Wild. Prometheus Pr., 1986.

Rolston, H. Environmental Ethics. Temple Univ. Pr., 1988.

Roszak, T. Person/Planet. Doubleday, 1978.

Rothenberg D., ed. Wisdom in the Open Air. Univ. of Minnesota Pr., 1992. A collection of writings from a small country which has supplied a disproportionate number of key ecological thinkers-Norway.

Rotherberg, D., ed.. Wild Ideas. Univ. Minnesota Pr., 1995.

Rowe, S. From Reductionism to Holism in Ecology and Deep Ecology. The Ecologist, 27(4), 1997: 147-151. Apart from a critique of scientific ecology, Rowe makes pertinent comments on th platform of deep ecology produced by Naess and Sessions.

Scherer, D. & T. Attig, eds., 1983. Ethics and Environment Prentice-Hall

Schultz, R. & Hughes, J. Donald, eds. Ecological Consciousness. Univ. Pr of America, 1981.

Sessions, G. The Deep Ecology Movement: A Review. Environ. Rev., 11, 1987: 105-126

Sessions, G. Ecological Consciousness and Paradigm Change, in Tobias, M., ed. Deep Ecology. Avant Books, 1985

Sessions, G., ed. Deep Ecology for the 21st Century. Shambhala Pr., 1995. Perhaps now the premier collection of deep ecology writings, valuable also for the overview and insight of the editorial introduction provided by Sessions for each section.

Shepard, P. Man in the Landscape. Texas A&M Pr., 1991. Brilliant survey of human attitudes towards their environment, including analysis of the Earth's enemies, though sometimes a bit arcane.

Shepard, P. The Others: How Animals Made Us Human. Island Pr., 1995.

Snyder, G. The Practice of the Wild. North Point Pr., 1991. More essays from this penetrating thinker about humans and nature.

Snyder, G. Turtle Island. New Directions, 1974. Snyder, G. The Real Work. New Directions, 1980. (plus Halper, J., ed. Gary Snyder: Dimensions of a Life. Sierra, 1991).

Snyder, G. A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics and Watersheds. Counterpoint, 1995. Another round-up of essays from one of the most insightful and eloqunet writers of our times.

Suzuki, D. Inventing The Future: Reflections On Science, Technology & Nature. Stoddart, 1989. Thoughts of a noted Canadian geneticist and environmental campaigner

Sylvan, R. Deep Pluralism. University of Edinburgh Pr., 1994. Sylvan formerly known as Routley and his colleague Val Routley (now Plumwood) have produced considerable work on ecophilosophy. An Australian, Sylvan is critical of deep ecology writings emanating from the USA. His own work has a very dense style, with an accent on philosophical 'form', logical proof, etc., whereas the original deep ecology writers at least lay out a bit more clearly the content of an ethic of Earth care.

Sylvan, R. and D. Bennett. The Greening of Ethics. White Horse Press, 1994.

Taylor, P. In Defence of Biocentrism. Environmental Ethics, 5, 1983: 237-243

Taylor, P. Respect for Nature. Princeton Univ. Pr., 1986. A difficult but rewarding exploration of ways in which the rival claims of individuals and groups as well as those of the whole system, community or environment might be reconciled.

Whitehead, A. N. Science and the Modern World. CUP, 1933. An earlier argument for thinking in terms of processes and organic relationships, including mind-body interactions.

Willers, B., ed. Learning to Listen to the Land. Island Pr., 1991. A collection of writings mainly from more recent thinkers and activists on behalf of the Earth.

Zimmermann, M., et al, eds. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. Prentice-Hall, 1993.

Lessons from EcoScience

Bolin, B. & R. B.. Cook. The Major Biogeochemical Cycles & Their Interaction. Wiley, 1983.

Daly, H. On Thinking About Energy. Natural Resource Forum, 3, 1978: 19-26.

Daly, H. The Circular Flow of Exchange Value and the Linear Throughput of Matter-Energy. Rev. Soc. Econ., 43(3), 1985:279-297.

Ehrlich, P. The Machinery of Nature. Paladin, 1988. A short, very readable guide to the 'rules of the game': how life on Earth is maintained.

Ehrlich, P, A. Ehrlich, & J. Holdren. Ecoscience: Population, Resources & Environment. Freeman, 1977. Older than the Miller book below but still excellent overview.

Golley, F. A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology: More Than the Sum of the Parts. Yale UP, 1994.

Hall, C. A. S. et al. Energy and Resource Quality. Wiley, 1986.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. Myths about Energy and Matter. Growth and Change, (10), 1979: 16-23

Glasby, G. P. Entropy, Pollution and Environmental Degradation. Ambio, 17(5), 1988: 330-335

Goldsmith, E. Gaia: Some Implications for Theoretical Ecology. The Ecologist, 18(2), 1988: 64-74. Argues the importance of 'holism'.

Hall, C.A.S. The Biosphere, The Industriosphere, and their Interactions. Bull. Atom. Scientist, 31, 1975: 11-21

Hall, C.A.S. et al. Energy and Resource Quality. Wiley, 1986.

Harte, J. Consider a Spherical Cow: A Course in Environmental Problem Solving. Kaufman, 1985.

Lovelock, J. Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth. OUP, 1979. New light on the life sciences, arguing the Earth can best be understood as a self-regulating whole.

Miller, G. Tyler. Living in the Environment. Wadsworth, 1990. Easily the best primer on the scientific background with plenty of topical illustrations and suggestions for policy.

Odum, E. The Strategy of Ecosystem Development. Science, 164, 1969: 262-270.

Odum, E. The Emergence of Ecology as a New Integrative Discipline. Science, 195, 1977: 1289-1293

Odum, E. Ecology & Our Endangered Life-Support Systems. Sinauer, 1989.

Odum, H. & E. Odum. Energy Basis for Man and Nature. McGraw-Hill. 1980.

The Politics of Ecology

Ecopolitics presents the real alternative to the bankruptcy of mainstream politics, one uniquely relevant to our times. As the Earth's life-support systems begin to collapse, there is a desperate need for a distinctly ecological framework of values, analysis and policy development. On issues as varied as genetic engineering and taxation, most discussion is still trapped, however, within a framework that has no deep awareness of environmental or social constraints. Ecopolitics seeks to blend the wisdom of ecology to long-standing traditions in society of personal responsibility and moderation.

A North American phrase, the 'conserver society', suggests the alternative we need to build, in opposition to today's destructive demand culture. This means that the number one priority today must be the maintenance and rehabilitation of the conditions for the survival of our species - and that of other species - on Earth. Survival does not mean just the barest minimum necessary for existence, though, globally, millions are deprived of even that prospect due to the greed of the richer sections of the world). The goal must be a fair opportunity for everyone to enjoy, in a sustainable manner, a fulfilling life without robbing other cultures, future generations and other species of their chance to thrive. Concepts like carrying capacity, limits to growth and biodiversity are the touchstones of this politics.

Social reforms must be conceived with the framework of this goal. At present, the green movement has been almost as guilty as more mainstream organisations in adopting causes without giving due thought to their ecological sustainability. Frequently, for example, they advocate greatly increased infrastructure and welfare investments without recognising that they too have environmental impacts just as much as things they denounce like military spending. Similarly, they talk of 'social development' and 'environmental conservation' as if they were equals or twin tracks. It is time to talk the language of ecological priority.

The Conserver Ideal does not equate change with progress (which usually means economic growth). It does not idealise the past in the manner of the Nostalgia Industry and Merrie Olde England. It does demand, however, respect for the achievements of older generations and cultures, whilst advocating humility about the capacity of humans to manage the future. It acknowledges the intrinsic values of the Earth's diversity of life and landscapes as well as our dependence upon them.

It is fair in ways that traditional egalitarianism never has been. The cornucopian policies of left-wing politics can only diminish the prospects of future human generations and those of non-human species. It is also thoroughly democratic: totalitarian solutions are non-solutions since they are deeply unstable. Stalinism and Nazism, for example, destroyed human communities and environment with neither restraint nor remorse. Interestingly, many of those who talk about the threat from 'eco-fascism' belong to political traditions which, unlike ecopolitics, denied or acted as apologists for the monstrosities committed in countries like Maoist China. The building of a sustainable society without popular consent and participation will be as successful as Prohibition was against alcohol consumption. If ethnic and social groups in general cannot find common ways to survive, it seems all too likely that none will.

The Ecological Imperative and the Conserver Agenda.

Another Northern American phrase, 'treading lightly', spotlights the essence of an ecological way of thinking. It might be summed up under these headings:

· Equilibrium:

opposition to growth-oriented policies and actions which threaten ecological sustainability, in favour of a society in balance with the Earth's life-support systems.

· Diversity:

maintenance of the diversity of the Earth's landscapes and lifeforms, including human cultural variety consistent with overall ecological diversity and with respectful, caring relationships between people

· Stability:

minimum disruption and dislocation of the Earth's biophysical processes and of the social fabric of human communities.

The goal, then, is a society in harmony with ecological rhythms, capacities and tolerances, including those of our own human nature. This agenda emphasises, for example, sufficiency, rather than open-ended demands. It stresses personal and collective responsibility and duty, rather than the egotism and self-indulgence characteristic of consumerism and me-centred politics. It advocates common standards and values, rejecting the 'politically correct' tendency to treat everything as equally valid and purely a matter of personal preference. It prioritises regional self-reliance and community enterprise, instead of increasing dependence on the world market. It demands caution, leaving what works well alone, instead of dashing ahead with dangerous innovations like genetic engineering or clearing away functioning communities to make way for 'development'. It favours an ecologically appropriate use of technologies like solar energy and organic farming. It stands for real security from environmental and economic devastation, harnessing the resources now devoted to military aggrandisement. Around such assumptions, a new foundation for decision-making can be laid.

Sources of Support

Building a movement based on a global, ecological ethic of caring and sharing in today's materialistic culture is a hard task, though easier and less risky than trying to sustain the present industrial order. The prospect is not as bleak as, sometimes, it may seem, though, in a very real sense, it does requires a deeply spiritual and cultural awakening.

For a start, there are many signs of deep insecurity and dismay across society. This is most obvious in the newly 'liberated' states of the former Communist Bloc where the dreams promised by market 'reforms' have turned sour. There are also deep and increasing discontents within the heartlands of affluence. There are even more signs that increasing numbers of people are seeking greater security and stability in their lives. The conserver ideal can tap this mood, offering a politics of protection against the destructiveness of GATT-led trade 'liberalisation', giant construction projects, indiscriminate technological innovation, and other forces tearing apart local communities and environments.

Furthermore, once the assumption is dropped that green politics is automatically of the Left, the possibility of reaching out beyond the present confines of the radical ghetto will increase. Contrary to the view that the best terrain for green politics is amongst the marginalised and most oppressed sections of society, the largest part of the 15% vote for the Green party in the 1989 British Euroelection came from 'soft' Tories, rather than the 'hard' Left. The best prospect is in fact an appeal beyond conventional politics, an appeal to the many mature, responsible people who currently find no adequate expression for their views in the infantile, irresponsible politics of today.

In the short-term, the ecopolitical message will find most response amongst citizens already concerned about the state of the world, dissatisfied with conventional politics but who, as yet, are not thinking in ecological terms. To spread the word, a network of informed and articulate activists is needed. It will be composed of committed individuals, people of capable of responding to what seem likely to be increasingly turbulent times, fraught with dangers but also opportunities. Ecopolitics, then, is about a political regrouping around a new agenda and a new centre of gravity - addressing the fundamental issues of facing society now.

The building of a more sustainable society will depend, in part, upon the creation of an independent, ecologically based political party, contesting positions of power and influence in society. At present, however, the most urgent task is to rally together people who share the same perspectives and lay the foundations for that longer term goal. The need now is for a tight organisation with a really coherent and forceful message.

Ecopolitics is not about sectarianism. People committed to the ecological vision must be willing to work with individuals from other parties as well as other organisations. It is foolish to be dogmatically committed to any specific organisational strategy since there are so many uncertainties in the present political situation. The key consideration is to keep options open and build upon the latent support in many sections of society for a more conserving and caring way of life.

It is time to go back to basics, restating the fundamental value that the basic needs of all - human and non-human species - must come first. It is the task of ecopolitics to identify new yardsticks of value: the maintenance of planetary resources, pollution tolerance margins, the conservation and restoration of biodiversity, the importance of strong local communities etc. It will spotlight the critical factors of population growth and unrealistic and unrealisable expectations, leaving on one side marginal social issues. It will argue that we must work from a premise of mutual interdependence and the responsibilities that it entails.

Davis, J., ed. The Earth First! Reader. Gibbs M. Smith, 1991. A good collection of articles from what at its peak was the cutting edge of American environmentalism. More recently, Earth First! seems to have moved towards a more traditional social radicalism while many of the voices in this volume have regrouped around the Wild Earth journal..

Dobson, A., ed. The Green Reader. Andre Deutsch, 1991. A well-chosen collection by an academic who argues that there is a distinctive strain of ecological thought he calls it 'ecologism' that transcend conventional politics.

Eckersley, R. Environmentalism and Political Theory. UCL Press, 1992.

Foreman, D. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. Crown, 1991. Autobiography of Earth First! founder and leading American activist.

Foreman, D., and Haywood, D. Ecodefence: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching. Ned Ludd Books, 1987. The title says it all.

Irvine, S. Expectations & Realities. Conserver Publications, 1994.

Irvine, S., & A. Ponton. A Green Manifesto. Macdonald Optima, 1988.

Jones, B. Green Thinking. Talking Politics, 22, 1990: 50-54. A useful short summary.

Kvaloy, S. Ecophilosophy and Ecopolitics. North American Review, Summer, 260, 1974: 17-28.

List, P., ed. Radical Environmentalism: Philosophy & Tactics. Wadsworth, 1993. Useful anthology, the last sections of which feature rival perspectives on the value of and justification for violent actions against equipment and property in defence of the environment.

Merchant, C. Radical Ecology. Routledge, 1992.

Milbrath, L. Environmentalists: Vanguard for a New Society. SUNY Pr., 1984.

Norton, B. Unity Amongst Environmentalists. OUP, 1991.

Rothenberg, D., 1987. A Platform of Deep Ecology. The Environmentalist 7(3): 185-190.

Sale, K. Deep Ecology and its Critics. The Nation May 14, 1988: 670-675

Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Green Revolution; The American Environmental Movement, 1962-1992. Hill & Wang, 1993. Includes a deeper ecological critique of mainstream environmental organisations.

Scarce, R. Eco-Warriors : Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement. Noble Press, 1990. A journalistic but well informed account.

Spretnak, C. & Capra, F. Green Politics. Paladin, 1985.

Tokar, B. The Green Alternative. R&E. Miles, 1987.

Tokar, B., 1988. Social Ecology, Deep Ecology and the Future of Green Political Thought. The Ecologist 18 4/5: 133-141

Yearley, S. The Green Case-A Sociology of Environmental Issues, Arguments & Politics. Harper Collins, 1991.

Zakin, Susan. Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environment. Viking, 1993.

Studies Of Specific Green Organisations and Movements

Dowie, M. Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century. MIT Pr., 1995. Look at the failures and splits suffered by the American movement, though Dowie's advocacy of a kind of social environmentalism seems just another way of putting the Earth on the back burner again.

McCormick, J. Reclaiming Paradise: The Global Environmental Movement. Belhaven, 1989.

Parkin, S. Green Parties. Heretic Books, 1989. Factual survey of green political organisations around the world.

Pearce, F. Green Warriors: The People and Politics Behind the Environmental Revolution. Bodley Head, 1990. Accessible and general survey.

Richardson, D. & C. Rootes. The Green Challenge. Routledge, 1994. Various academic articles on the emergence of green parties in Europe.

Rüdig, W., ed. Green Politics One. Edinburgh UP, 1990.

Rüdig, W. & P. Lowe,. The Green Wave: a Comparative Analysis of Ecological Parties. Blackwell, 1992. Another academic study.

Shabecoff, Phillip. A Fierce Green Fire. publisher unknown, 1993. History of the movement from ex-New York Times environmental reporter.

Waller, M. & F. Millard. Environmental Politics in Eastern Europe. Environmental Politics, 1, 1992: 159-185.

Young, S.. The Different Dimensions of Green Politics. Environmental Politics, 1(1), 1992: 9-45.

Young, S. The Politics of the Environment. Baseline Books, 1993. Short and very convenient handbook.

Individual Environmental Thinkers and Campaigners

Bishop, J. Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist: The Life & Legacy of Edward Abbey. Atheneum, 1994.

Brower, D. The Life and Times of David Brower. and Work in Progress. Peregrine Smith, 1990 and 1991. 2 volume autobiography of person many regard as America's leading post-war conservationist, controversially sacked by the 'respectable' Sierra Club in 1969.

Brower, D. Let the Mountains Speak, Let the Rivers Run. Harper Collins, 1995.

Cohen, Michael. The Pathless Way. Univ. Wisconsin Pr., 1984. Study of life and work of John Muir.

Fox, S. John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement. Univ. Wisconsin Pr., 1981. Study of seminal figure in the history of environmentalism as well as the debates between conservationists and 'resource managers'.

Halper, Jon, ed. Gary Snyder: Dimensions of a Life. Sierra, 1991. Various articles celebrating one of America's greatest contemporary thinkers and poets.

Hepworth, James & McNamee, Gregory, ed. Resist Much, Obey Little: Some Notes on Edward Abbey. Dream Garden Pr, 1985. Essays on controversial writer and militant activist, perhaps most famous for his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang which in turn inspired groups like Earth First! See also Ann Ronald's The New West of Edward Abbey. Univ. Nevada Press, 1988.

McClintock, J. Nature's Kindred Spirits: Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward, Annie Dillard & Gary Snyder. Univ. Wisconsin Pr., 1994.

Meine, C. Aldo Leopold: His Life & Work. Univ. Wisconsin Pr., 1988.

Meine, C. Wallace Steigner and the Continental Vision. Island Pr., 1997.

Muir, C. Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work. Univ. Wisconsin Pr., 1988. Biography of American forester and thinker, father of the famous 'Land Ethic'.

Strong, D. Dreamers and Defenders: American Conservationists. Univ. Nebraska Pr., 1988. Study of twelve leading American conservationists such as Carson and Commoner.

Turner, F. Rediscovering America: John Muir in his Time and Ours. Sierra, 1985. Biography of one of the great conservationists.

Vickery, J. Wilderness Visionaries. ICS, 1992. Study of six leading American conservationists such as Thoreau and Muir.

Watson, P. Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas. Key Porter, 1994.

Wilson, E.O. Naturalist. Island Pr., 1994. Autobiography of the century's great scientist, one of the few not afraid to speak out against the destruction taking place.

The Summer 1998 issue of Wild Earth contains a number of articles on the theme of wildlands philanthropy. In passing, they spotlight many great individuals whose genorosity and vision meant that there is at least a bit more of the Earth has been conserved and this provides a foundation for ecological reconstruction.

Ecological Critiques of Conventional Politics

Today's interlocking social, economic and environmental crises in turn are reflected in the realm of politics. The political system is in a deepening state of crisis, unable to respond to the challenges of our times. None of the major political parties has really grasped what is at stake while the one force that seemed most promising, the green movement, is itself in a state of disarray and confusion.

Politics today reflects and feeds upon wider assumptions in society, where the dream of unlimited growth and affluence for all holds sway. None of the major parties is prepared to stand up and tell everyone that the game is up and that the consumer society as we know it is doomed. Even the various green parties often fail to talk of limits imposed by ecological reality. Instead, they increasingly take refuge in wishful talk about expanding personal entitlements.

Symptomatic of this tendency is the conspiracy of silence across the green movement about overpopulation: now the trendy talk is about 'reproductive rights' and similar slogans. Almost gone is the deep vision and incisive analysis that characterised publications like The Blueprint for Survival back in the early 70s. Instead, today, we are awash with empty rhetoric about sustainable development, beneath which often lurks an unwillingness to break with business-as-usual: more production, more trade, and more consumption. There are positive signs to the contrary - much good work is being done in fields like energy efficiency and local community initiatives. But it is being betrayed by the dead hand of today's political establishment.

The bankruptcy of mainstream politics is palpable, breeding contempt and cynicism. From the welfare state to the 'enterprise culture', there is a crisis of relevance and narrowness of vision. Most politicians desperately try to breathe new life into a dying order of industrial society. At best, they indulge in a few strokes of cosmetic green paint to otherwise unchanged values and priorities which will cancel out any good they do. The major political parties are also flawed in more specific ways.

First there is a conservatism which won't conserve. It has been dominated by the free-market Right which has liquidated the politics of traditional conservatism. In its place, we have a scorched earth policy of economic free-for-all in which the strong grab whatever they can at the expense of everyone else. They make a lot of noise about family values, stable communities, decency, law and order, and our cultural and environmental heritage. But their values and policies guarantee that both society and the environment will continue to deteriorate. In today's conservatism, a politics of selfish greed dominates everything else.

In the case of America's democrats and Britains' Labour party, there is a brand of Social Democracy which has abandoned all pretence at serious reform. Instead it indulges in empty rhetoric about 'modernisation'. In pursuing a 'better-managed' growth economy, they offer no fundamental alternative. Their hopes of delivering full employment and a fairer distribution of wealth through economic expansion will be dashed by ecological constraints.

Perhaps most bankrupt of all are the ideas of the traditional socialist Left. Here too, we find people who have fought honourably against exploitation and oppression. Yet, by and large, their thinking has been far removed from any ecological sensibility. The recently touted notion of 'ecosocialism' is simply a contradiction in terms, not least since most left-wing thinking is still aggressively human-centred and denies the basic concepts of limits-to-growth.

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Cliff, G. Red or Green. Real World, 2, Summer, 1994: 10-12.

Devall, B. Ground to a Halt: Critique of Earth First! Real World, 4, Summer, 1993: 16.

FoE. Reagan & the Environment. FoE (USA), 1982.

Eckersley, R. The Road to Ecotopia? Socialism Versus Environmentalism. The Ecologist, 18(4/5, 1988: 142-147. She particularly contrasts Marx and John Muir in respect to an all species sense of community.

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Irvine, S. Red Sails in the Sunset. ECO, 1995. Ecopolitical critique of the socialist inheritance.

Irvine, S. Just Junk Male. Real World, 5, Autumn, 1995:4-5. Critique of feminism.

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Rifkin, J., and C. Grunewald. Voting Green. Bantam, 1992. A critical report on the track record of members of the American congress on a variety of green legislative initiatives in the USA. It suggests the legislation a green congress might be passing.

Rifkin, J. The Clinton Dilemma. Tikkun, 8(3), 1993: 14-18, 75-79.

Routley, V. On Karl Marx as an Environmental Hero. Environmental Ethics, 3, Fall, 1981: 237-244. Routley sees no cause for hero worship.

Sale, K. Deep Ecology & Its Critics. The Nation, May 14, 1988: 670-675.

Sessions, G. Political Correctness, Ecological Realities & the Future of the Ecology Movement. Wild Duck Review, September, 1995:10-13.

Sills, D. The Environmental Movement and its Critics. Human Ecology, 3(1), 1975. A comprehensive overview of responses to the first wave of green concern from across the existing political spectrum and from orthodox science.

Teffort, J. Mind Your Language. Real World, 4, 1993: 14-15. The Limits of Political Correctness.

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