Environmentalism - towards a wholistic political philosophy

- Concern for the environment is not new, but goes back several centuries: in the 19^th century sewage was a problem – one that was not dealt with until the smell in London became intolerable. The discovery that illness was caused by raw sewage was also a breakthrough.

- Crucial more recently was air pollution especially after the ‘smogs’ of the 1950s. The word ‘smog’ was coined to describe what seemed like a combination of fog and smoke – thick, choking fog that caused respiratory illnesses and many deaths. The phenomenon of ‘smog’ shows the importance of interaction in a system: in this case, chemicals and gases in the atmosphere (often harmless on their own) were acted on by sunlight, producing harmful by-products. These smogs led to legislation, in the form of the Clean Air Act of 1956.

- Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ (1962) was also very influential – warning of the damage to wildlife of blanket use of agricultural pesticides. In 1963 a US Presidential Science Advisory Committee warned against ‘indiscriminate use’ of pesticides. (Rachel Carson died in 1964 age 56)

- Another key development occurred with the report: “Limits to Growth”, published by the “Club of Rome” (a group of industrialists, scientists and computer experts) in 1972. The study was based on a ‘world model’ – a computer model – showing how five or six apparently separate components: population, resource depletion, production of food and goods, land, and pollution are all connected in a ‘system.’ The model allowed the scientists to input different scenarios (population growth, technology breakthroughs, more pollution etc) and to assess the results of each scenario. The dramatic conclusion arrived at was that whatever was done, a ‘crash’ of some kind (for example, excess population, or life-threatening pollution, or total lack of land for food) would occur at some time in the future, because there are limits to all natural resources. Some critics felt the results were unduly pessimistic, but there were powerful arguments put forward: for example, if you cut down population growth (by birth control etc) then a smaller population naturally expects a higher standard of living – so resources will still be used up, pollution will increase, etc, and all that has happened is that the crisis has been postponed. If you cut down pollution, the population will grow (because less people die from diseases caused by pollution!) – with similar consequences in the long term. Others argued that it showed that we must take a multi-track approach that reflects the way the elements of the system are interconnected.

The real significance of this report, then, is that it argues that the problem of damage to the environment is not one of single separate aspects, but that all are interconnected. To understand this, we have to get to grips with some technical ideas, such as the phenomenon of exponential growth (like compound interest in a bank account): many natural phenomena, especially population growth, occur exponentially, and such growth can get out of control very quickly. For example, unless two parents have only one child, their family numbers will grow with the generations, but we may not realise there is an over-population problem until it is too late…. Another example which I found compelling was to imagine a pond with water-lilies growing on it; if they grow exponentially, doubling the area they cover in a given time period, then the danger point is when they cover half the pond – and this doesn’t look like a problem situation. Feedback loops are also crucial, such as in the example given where less population may mean increased pollution.

There are several instances of positive feedback in relation to global warming:

- oceans, soil and trees absorb half the CO2 that humans produce. As the climate warms (due to more CO2), the sea and the soil may produce more CO2, also tropical forests may die - and there will be less absorption of CO2, à more CO2 and more heat

- the polar ice-sheets reflect nearly 80% of sunlight - if they melt the water reflects less heat à increasing temperature

- Siberia is thawing, and releasing methane, a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 also à increased temperature.

Soon after the Club of Rome report, people began to talk of ‘spaceship earth.’ This idea - that we are floating in space like a spaceship and have only limited food and air on board - was reinforced when we saw the first pictures of earth from space). Although we tend to think of nature as providing us with plenty, in fact the earth is a closed system (apart from sunlight, nothing new comes into it) and the resources (air, water, land, oil) are limited.

All this goes to demonstrate that we are faced with a group of inter-related problems, and here are a few more examples:

- air pollution in London (Nitrous oxides, sulphur dioxide etc) may have contributed to 3,000 deaths (asthma, lung disease, heart disease) in 2005

- acid rain is now known to affect the oceans:

- the pH of the ocean’s open water has been 8.2 for millions of years, now (since burning fossil fuel for couple of centuries) it is down to 8.05 (i.e. more acidic), and this damages coral reefs, & microscopic life that are at the base of the food chain; also plankton makes less calcium in more acidic water – we don’t know what effect this will have, though coral reefs (home to rich diversity of life) are dying

- acidification could lead to mass extinction: the previous 5 such events were all accompanied by acidification (last time 65 m yrs ago, the dinosaurs died out – probably the gases came from a meteor strike). [Alanna Mitchell, author: The Hidden Ecological Crisis of the Global Ocean, pub: Oneworld.]

- waste:

- in the UK we send 10 m tonnes of waste a year to landfill sites. Of this, 60% is food (6m tonnes!). 70% of produce is dumped by producers and retailers before it even gets to the stores. Each adult throws away £420 of food a year (plus a further £470 in packaging). A quarter of the food waste that goes into British landfill is reckoned to be edible.

1.2 All this led to new ways of thinking about the environment and the impact of human activity, and to some new and very important concepts. This, to me, is why environmentalism should be dealt with under the heading of ‘philosophy’ – and of course since we are dealing with the way we organise our lives and distribute resources, environmentalism is essentially a political philosophy: (see also below, on values)

- Growth at present is not ‘sustainable’ – sustainability is essential to our long-term survival. Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb 1968) wrote about what he called the "Doomsday" scenario. He saw the central problem as one of population growth, and predicted millions would die. Although his predictions have proved alarmist, nevertheless improved birth control and decline in the birth rate in countries such as India have contributed to staving off the crisis. Barry Commoner, in The Closing Circle, 1971, argued that capitalist technologies were to blame, and attacked the middle classes and developed societies - since consumption by these groups is higher than for the poor and the ‘third world’, and the amount of pollution they cause is also much more significant than that caused by those in poor countries. This is a debate that continues to this day [2010] with China objecting to developed countries demanding they cut back on CO2 when they produce so little, and when they want to industrialise… The argument for sustainability has met with some support – at least in theory – since there is more acceptance now (early 21^st century) of the need for energy conservation, ‘reduction, recycling, re-use’ etc.

- The view that the problem is not simply with "single issues" but with the whole "system" has led to interest in the concept of ‘ecology.’ The word was invented by the biologist Haeckel in 1870. It is derived from the Greek word ‘oikos' meaning ‘home’. Note that the same word is the root of both ecology and economics (the latter meaning, roughly, household management). See 3 below. The Club of Rome report drew attention to the interconnections between resources, pollution, population, food, and land; it showed that all are part of a system, and that use of, or waste from, any one of these, and growth or decline in any part affects every other part.

- ‘Quality of Life.’ Economists and politicians are very keen on measures of ‘Standard of Living.’ But the problem with measurements such as this, especially if they are based on income or wealth, is that they do not measure people’s happiness – or even their health. There have been many voices calling for new measures – ways of including perhaps happiness (though this may be un-measurable…) or aesthetic and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives.

- ‘Zero growth’. A related point is that the constant drive for ‘growth’ should be questioned: after all, as many have pointed out, if a country has more sick people being treated in hospital, then the increased expenditure, on buildings, equipment and staff will go into an increase in the GDP! As Keynes pointed out, government expenditure could be increase, and used to build the economy, simply by having one group of workers make holes in the roads, and another fill them in.

Writing up these notes now (2010), what strikes me most forcefully is that all these ideas were being discussed nearly 40 years ago, in the 1970s, and it is only now, in the first decade of the 21^st century, that there is widespread awareness of the issues. I just hope we are not too late.

1.3 More on ecology:

- As mentioned above, the concept of ecology came originally from biology, and it has been used in physiology and mathematics, before being used to understand the natural environment. It came about as a result of searching for order in the apparent chaos of life forms and their relationships to each other and their environments.

- Ecosystems: when we study the inter-relationship of components in a given environment, that environment when seen as a whole is an ecosystem. These may be large or small, simple or complex. My favourite examples are: a pond – where water, oxygen, CO2, mud or soil, plants, bacteria, micro-organisms, insects, fish, etc may all live in the same environment; they interact in many ways (dead fish feed bacteria; plants provide oxygen; etc). The health of the whole pond (as anyone who has had one knows!) depends on the right balance of the different elements. Too many plants and the pond is smothered; too many fish and some will die, not enough microscopic life and small insects and the fish will starve, and so on.

- The first lesson we should learn from ecology concerns the interconnectedness of all nature (Commoner).

- A further very important point is that complexity and variety are essential for balance and stability: and conversely, a simple ecosystem with a small number of components is vulnerable to changes which could destroy the whole system. A stable ecosystem has:

feedback mechanisms - which are essential for stability, although they can also affect the system in unexpected ways, so we need to understand them

food chains/webs - and provided these are rich and complex they will remain stable: if one part of the chain dies off, the organism higher up the chain can find something else to feed on,

biodiversity: the point just made shows one of the reasons why biodiversity is important – it also provides a rich gene pool so that life can evolve in the most efficient and successful way,

redundancy: this is another way of describing the feature of a stable system – if one part breaks down, another can replace it to perform the same function, a feature of complex electronic devices, and the human brain!

lack of hierarchy: it seems to those who have studied ecology that natural systems differ from the way that humans organise much of their social life, for in an ecosystem even the ‘humblest’ creature or organism may play an essential role; or, conversely, the creature we humans regard as somehow the ‘highest’ form of life is not necessarily essential to the survival of others or of the system. The fish in your pond may die, but the pond will continue to provide a living space for all the other organisms. This point can be linked to the (controversial!) idea of ‘Gaia’ (see below) – the planet as a self-regulating ecosystem; for if humans die off, that may not affect the rest of life on earth in any negative way – it might even allow other life-forms to flourish, since we won’t be killing them off!!

- finally, ecology seems to me to teach us that we should have respect for all the components of our ecosystem, and we should be questioning the role of human activity (economics, industry, science etc) in terms of its ecological effects.

1.4 This leads to new values:

In political philosophy, it seems to me, we often have to choose between alternative values (freedom or equality, individualism or collectivism, the traditional or the new etc).

Environmentalists have pinpointed a number of ‘old’ values, which have at least contributed to our tendency regard the environment as not having much importance, or being there simply for us to exploit:

- the view of man as a superior life-form: for many, this view is Biblical in origin (Adam was formed in the likeness of God) – though some would argue that Adam was given ‘stewardship’ (see next point also) over living things, and this implies caring for them. On the other hand, it seems hard to avoid the implication that living things are designed for us to benefit from. This is ‘anthropocentrism’ – putting humans at the centre. Nowadays Darwinists may be more inclined to argue that we have simply ‘evolved’ as have other living things – but Darwin himself was not innocent of regarding humans as superior (and whites as at the peak, compared to non-whites, and men as compared to women…). It is not easy, in all honesty, to completely avoid being anthropocentric – after all, we have to look at the environment from a human point of view, and we cannot know what other living things feel (see however When Elephants Weep by Jeffrey Masson and Susan McCarthy, Vintage 1996). Nevertheless some environmentalists have explored how we might move in this direction (see below).

- interesting to read that in Islam there is a concept of tayyab – roughly: ‘ethical and wholesome’ (linked to, but going beyond halal). As Shelina Janmohamed says in Generation M: ‘Resources must be properly respected, workers in primary industries must not be exploited. Sustainability and renewability are part of the Islamic idea of ‘stewardship of the Earth’ which generation M eco-Muslims are championing.’

- the problem(s) with economics – (i) if we measure the value of things using only monetary values we are faced with difficult questions such as how to put a price not only on life (which insurers try to do!) but on the quality of life? This is to say nothing of trying to put a value on compassion, love, health, beauty, dignity, freedom, grace, delight… On a more basic level, we have for too long treated the air, the sea, land and rivers, as if they were ‘free’, and any damage done to them has not been counted in our tables of economic costs. In fact economists regard such ‘costs’ as ‘externalities’ or ‘residuals’. (See Part 1). (ii) it seems to many critics, especially after the 2008 ‘credit crunch’ (assuming it’s over!) that the market has serious limitations: the value we put on money has led to speculation (against currencies, nations, as well as companies), risk-taking and short-termism. These are not the values we need if we are to protect our environment. Ecology surely teaches us that it is co-operation and respect for even the weakest life-forms that is needed, not the ‘winner takes all’ outlook of market competition.

- some would say there is a problem with science itself, or with ‘modernity’. After all, many of our problems arose when we industrialised – and some recent technologies (nuclear power, genetic engineering perhaps) appear to bring with them enormous risks. The critique of science and technology can of course lead to accusations of ‘Luddism’ – or impractical romanticism. On the other hand, there is – I believe – a lot to be said for ‘alternative technology’ or ‘appropriate technology’. Perhaps postmodernism could help here – if it is understood to mean a rejection of the ‘grand narratives’ that grew out of the developed west’s colonial and imperial ambitions? (See: Postmodernism). On the other hand, there is an important part of the environmental movement that uses science to criticise an excessive reliance on science: (see Social Movements: the environment). See also the notion of “reflexive modernity” (U. Beck 1992).

Environmentalism suggests, then, that we should base our attitude to the environment on such new values as:

- equality, diversity, interdependence, nurturing (a feminine value?), holism.

The ‘new thinking’ outlined next attempts to incorporate these new values.

2. Some examples of new thinking:

2.1 The ‘Gaia hypothesis’…

James Lovelock (a scientist who worked for NASA on the question of how to identify life on other planets) came up with the radical observation that the earth is a self-regulating system (see Lovelock 1979, etc). It is amazing that life exists at all, given the very special conditions that it needs; moreover, the earth seems to maintain itself in balance – plants, microbes, water and air all interacting and re-adjusting themselves to keep a steady set of environmental conditions.

Lovelock was not suggesting that there is anything like a god maintaining the earth (even though Gaia was the name of the Greek earth goddess), but some have rejected his theory because it seems metaphysical (see below). Lovelock always maintains that he is giving a scientific description of how the earth system works.

It was also not Lovelock’s intention to suggest that we need not do anything to protect the environment: if we humans do enough damage we could upset the whole system, whereas other living things always seem to keep the balance. The human race, then, surely has a special responsibility to take care!

It is not clear what policies follow from the Gaia idea, and recently Lovelock has combined a sort of pessimism (it is not a problem if human kind is wiped out, so long as nature survives) with controversial views such as support for nuclear power and opposition to wind-farms.

In The Vanishing Face of Gaia: a final warning (Allen Lane £20), Lovelock, now (2009) age 90, believes that we have not much time, and the world may be destroyed (or large parts of it). Quoting from a review by Euan Ferguson in The Observer 9^th Sep 2009, Lovelock seems a strange mixture: as a scientist of course he believes in observation and analysis, but also that the planet “[now] knows us. We are not too far perhaps from becoming a proto-intelligent planet, a planet taking early steps in thinking for itself.” However, he also believes that air travel is not a serious contributor to CO2, “flying’s only got this reputation because often greening mixes with the bad side of the left, which is to do with envy.” And that wind farms are not always environmentally friendly (the CO2 generated in their construction), nor helpful because you need 4,000 to replace one coal-fired power station. He argues that Germany has 17,500 but still produces more CO2 than before; and that nuclear power is needed, and it is “far, far less dangerous than any propagandist has ever pretended.”

2.2 James Elkington Greening Business through Sustainability Revolutions and the Triple Bottom Line – a ‘light green’ approach…

Elkington (1997) writes of (seven?) “sustainability revolutions” that he believes must take place to reach sustainable business. These include changes in the approach to markets, values, transparency, life-cycle technology, and governance. He describes the series of events that have changes our awareness of the environment, identifying (three?) “waves” of sustainability, with peaks and troughs for each:

- the formation of Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace (1970s),

- the disasters at Bhopal and Chernobyl (1980s),

- public battles over environmental issues such as Brent Spar and Shell in Nigeria (1990s),

- the BSE “mad cow” disease etc, and the current phenomenon of globalisation, have all helped us move towards sustainability by convincing business that it must do something.

Now, he says, business must be aware of the “triple bottom line” – economic, environmental and social, but this will not be really effective until it is “built into” corporate agendas from the moment a new business is set up. (See also CSR 6).

Socialist critics will of course say that this is not enough: the fundamental nature of capitalism (getting things done cheaply, and producing more ‘things’ because of the growth imperative) makes it simply not compatible with environmental protection. (See the notes above on the problem with economics…)

3. Others have connected ecology with existing ‘alternative’ ways of thinking:

3.1 eco-socialism

Eco-socialism blames the capitalist form of industrial and economic growth – and not industrialism as such – for environmental damage. See the reference to Barry Commoner, above. There is a danger that eco-socialists would be less critical of environmental damage caused by the state presumably? Eco-socialists also argue that poverty is the root cause of environmental destruction (for example the burning of dung as fuel for cooking in poor countries...), and if wealth were better distributed there would be less damage... However, a counter-argument is that the old Soviet Union and its East European partners did more damage to the environment than many capitalist countries. (To which the counter argument might be that these countries were not socialist (see my notes on Castoriadis). See: Pepper, D. 1984, 1986. In the latter work, Pepper argues that the centre of green philosophy is socialism. See also the writing of Andre Gorz.

NB: The Soviet Union and the environment: Steven Rose (G 21.08.10) reviewing Red Plenty by Francis Spufford:
Points out how the ‘science’ of Marxism (esp. from Engels’s The Dialectics of nature, 1883, rediscovered in 1930s) was combined with ‘cybernetics’ (Norbert Wiener, 1948) – the ‘fourth law of dialectics’. Cybernetics – ‘circular causation’ – showed how systems could exhibit apparently goal-directed behaviour without consciousness. Soviet Union kept trying to use this scientific knowledge, plus computers, but didn’t realise that ‘systems work best when self-organised from below, not centrally planned from above in a command economy.’

Key figures in soviet system: Abel Aganbegyan (economist), Raissa Berg (molecular geneticist), Leonid Kantorovich (Nobel winner, mathematician – calculated how to improve plywood production and then this method spread), Sergei Lebedev (designer of first generation of soviet computers). Example of problem: a machine breaks down at a viscose plant and it needs to be replaced, but that means the target for the factory that produces the machine has to be changed, and that requires re-planning the inputs into the machine tool factory… and so on, as everything is inter-connected. Only the semi-criminal ‘fixer’ can sort it out…

3.2 eco-feminism

Feminists, both radical and socialist, look at the possible links between the domination of women and of the environment: is nature feminised, and are women “naturalised”? Or is there any truth in the traditional (male dominated) view that women are closer to nature - either biologically, or socially through their roles...? See notes on The Enlightenment (enl9raceslaverywomen.htm) and on Feminism (pp21feminism.htm).

Val Plumwood from Australia (who died in 2008) is an example, see: Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1992). See her story of how she survived being attacked by a crocodile – an experience that changed her view of our place in nature: val plumwood crocodile attack.htm. A Wikipedia article on her says her position is neither ‘postmodern’ (i.e. respecting absolute differences) nor ‘deep ecological’ (i.e. merging self and the world) – rather she grounds ethical responsibilities in the continuities and discontinuities between subject and object, and people and nature. (Does this link up with Brian Easlea?) She also refers to ‘shadow places’ (source?).

4. The main schools of ‘deep green’ thought, (i.e. building on ecology), are:

4.1 Social ecology – e.g. Murray Bookchin, M, 1990

“The very concept of dominating nature stems from the domination of human by human, indeed of women by men, of the young by their elders, of one ethnic group by another, of society by the state, of the individual by bureaucracy, as well as of one economic class by another or a colonised people by a colonising power”

i.e. the source of problem is intra-human domination – an anarchist approach?

Hence social ecology is not criticising science as such, but may in fact use scientific/rational arguments…

Nor does it put the blame on anthropocentrism (see below), nor argue that the environment has an intrinsic value – rather, humans create value, and the issue is why some things and some people are under-valued… as well as raising crucial question about ‘domination’: how widespread is it? Why do some need to dominate others? Etc

Update:

How intriguing to find (Weds 11 March 2015) a reference to the Kurds of the PKK following a political system similar to that recommended by Murray Bookchin:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/10/revolutionary-kurdish-isis-ivana-hoffman This is very much a women’s revolution as well: Mehmet Aksoy says: ‘the first revolution, the agricultural revolution, was instituted by women, and the first counter-revolution and the first negative hierarchies were created by men.’

4.2 Deep ecology – e.g. Capra, F. 1982, 1984, Arne Naess.

Environmental damage results from the human relationship with the environment, (not intra-human issues) – i.e. from anthropocentrism. If we see ourselves as the centre of the universe, or as the most important part of, then we de-value everything else, and then animals, plants, and the environment, only exist for us, and we only care about destruction because (and when) it affects us.

Here, nature is ‘intrinsically’ valuable – i.e. not for what it gives us.

Update: Recently Bolivia, influenced by indigenous peoples, has legislated to give rights to the natural environment. Mother Earth: 11^th April from the Guardian – by John Vidal:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/10/bolivia-enshrines-natural-worlds-rights?INTCMP=SRCH

A wonderful development, I think – using native beliefs, and building a law which gives rights to the natural environment…

“She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organisation.”

The 3.5 million-strong CSUTC de Bolivia (Confederacion Sindical Unica de Trabajadores) helped to draft the law – the biggest social movement in the country.

The indigenous Andean spiritual view is that Pachamama (Earth Mother) is at the centre of all life.

Ecuador has also given rights to nature, giving it “the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure and functions and its processes in evolution.”

However, Vidal comments that the Amazon is still being destroyed by oil companies and others.

Fritjof Capra tries to find links between the very latest scientific theories (20^th century particle physics, complexity theory in maths) and mysticism, Taoism etc – see:

http://www.fritjofcapra.net/bibliography.html. (See also: Pepper 1986, and Dobson 1990).

Capra is also involved in the Shumacher Centre, which promotes ‘alternative [or ‘soft’] technology’ etc. Fritz Schumacher advocated ‘Buddhist economics’: suffering in the world is caused by ‘attachment’ (primarily but not only to things...) and as all humans find it difficult to be non-attached, so all suffer, and all deserve compassion. See also Resurgence magazine, edited by Satish Kumar, of the British Wheel of Yoga.

See also Resurgence Magazine, edited by Satish Kumar.

For an obituary and further information on Naess see:

Arne Naess: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/15/obituary-arne-naess and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_N%C3%A6ss

Naess was criticised by Bookchin for his ideas which seemed too “new age.” The proposals here are perhaps the most radical: limits to economic growth, i.e. cuts in consumption, a reassessment of the concept of human need, communal growth, and even restricting population growth...

Note that some ‘deep ecologists’ (e.g. ‘Earth First’) have allegedly put nature before humans – willing to inflict injury on humans to save animals or trees etc. Naess rejected such an idea.

Finally it is worth noting that native/indigenous peoples in Australia and America have a very different relationship to the environment: for Australian aborigines the relationship is with mother/father/grandmother etc... In ‘My People’s Dreaming’ (Finch Publishing, Sydney, Max Dulumunmun Harrison says:

‘Begin with Mother Earth:

Mother Earth births everything for us. Father Sky carries the water and oxygen for us to breathe. Grandfather Sun warms the planet, warms our body, gives us light so we can see, raises the food that the Mother births and raises most of our relations, all our plants and trees. Grandmother Moon moves the water and gives us the woman-time and our birthing.’

5. Conclusion/overview:

All ‘deep green’ perspectives share the view that we need new values, and that existing institutions need to be radically altered. The theories also go beyond national boundaries, and beyond political parties - is environmentalism neither right nor left? They all say we need a new philosophy, and/or set of new values, and to save the environment requires new forms of action. Some explicitly say we will need a lower Standard of Living (though a higher Quality of Life). In the UK the Green Party (see Social Movements 8 the green movement) is now highly oriented to getting into parliament… (Originally it was more like a protest group).

6. Questions/problems:

What is the correct way to understand nature – using the precepts of ecology? Or is a Darwinian view (struggle for survival) more accurate? How can we apply the kind of philosophy that Aborigines practice in our modern world?

If it is argued that exploitation of planet and people are linked - how can this be demonstrated?

Is it possible to avoid anthropocentrism? In the end, isn’t our concern to save ourselves (self-interest)? Or is it true that ‘saving ourselves’ is at the root of the problem!

What is an ‘environmental ethic’? We could say there is an ‘intrinsic’ value in nature – but does that mean anything, since we are still the ones deciding on the value of nature? (Hence perhaps the mystical side to much green thinking…?) (*) [Footnote 1]

Similarly, we could say that to preserve the interdependence of nature requires diversity, altruism and tolerance - or is this simply reading on to nature our own preferred values...?

How do we go about changing our involvement with the environment? Will people change their values when they understand the position? (Why should they?)

Alternatively, as for Madeleine Bunting (Guardian 7^th Sep 2009), is it not a question of new values (*) but of taking what practical steps we can?

Does this mean there is no need to bother over these philosophical questions?

Footnotes:

1. This can become very complex: e.g. McHarg in Disch starts with non-anthropocentric view ... - should see creation as:

negentropy (use of energy to create, vs. entropy: decay of energy),

symbiosis (earth is home to everything, from hydrogen to man),

apperception or consciousness - that which gives higher form to order, with which man is especially endowed (but: evolution of which means man is

prospective steward of the biosphere i.e. man as steward or manager is different to man as dominator..??? i.e. leads back to anthropocentrism...???]

(*) a ‘megalogue’ as Amitai Etzioni puts it…

*********

7. A FEW REFERENCES:

Bahro, R. 1984: From Red to Green, Blackwell

1986: Building the Green Movement, New Society

Beck, U. 1992: Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Sage

Bookchin, M. (e.g.) 1997: The Politics of Social Ecology, Black Rose Books

Capra, F. 1982: The Turning Point, Simon & Schuster.

Capra, F. and Spretnak, C. 1984: Green Politics, Hutchinson

Chase, S. (ed) 1991: Defending the Earth: a dialogue between Dave Foreman and Murray Bookchin, South End Press

Davis, J. and Foreman, D. 1991: The Earth First! Reader, Peregrine Smith

Dobson, A. 1991: The Green Reader, Andre Deutsch

1995: Green Political Thought, Routledge

Goodin, D. 1990: Green Political Theory, Polity

Gorz, A. (e.g.) 1979: Ecology as Politics, South End Press

Merchant, C. 1992: Radical Ecology, Routledge

Naess, A. 1989: Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, ed. Rothenberg, Cambridge Univ. Press.

Pepper, D. 1984: The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, Croom Helm

1993: Eco-socialism: Routledge

Porritt, J. 1984: Seeing Green, Blackwell.