Ecologism

11 Key excerpts on "Ecologism"

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  eBook - ePub

  Green Political Thought

  • Andrew Dobson(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Conclusion

  We have established the differences between Ecologism and other major political ideologies, and the incompatibility between what I have called environmentalism and Ecologism is now clear. Ecologism seeks radically to call into question a whole series of political, economic and social practices in a way that environmentalism does not. Ecologism envisages a post-industrial future quite distinct from that with which we are most generally acquainted. While most post-industrial futures revolve around high-growth, high-technology, expanding services, greater leisure, and satisfaction conceived in material terms, Ecologism’s post-industrial society questions growth and technology, and suggests that the Good Life will involve more work and fewer material objects. Fundamentally, Ecologism takes seriously the universal condition of the finitude of the planet and asks what kinds of political, economic and social practices are (1) possible and (2) desirable within that framework. Environmentalism, typically, does no such thing.

  In terms of human relationships with the non-human natural world, Ecologism asks that the onus of justification be shifted from those who argue that the non-human natural world should be given political voice to those who think it should not. Environmentalists will usually be concerned about ‘nature’ only so far as it might affect human beings; ecologists will argue that the strong anthropocentrism this betrays is more a part of our current problems than a solution to them.

  Practical considerations of limits to growth and ethical concerns about the non-human natural world combine to produce, in Ecologism, a political ideology in its own right. We can call it an ideology (in the functional sense) because it has, first, a description of the political and social world – a pair of green spectacles – which helps us to find our way around it. It also has a programme for political change and, crucially, it has a picture of the kind of society that ecologists think we ought to inhabit – loosely described as the ‘sustainable society’. Because the descriptive and prescriptive elements in the political-ecological programme cannot be accommodated within other political ideologies (such as socialism) without substantially changing them, we are surely entitled to set Ecologism alongside such ideologies, competing with them in the late twentieth-century political marketplace. In contrast, I maintain that the various sorts of environmentalism (conservation, pollution control, waste recycling) can be slotted with relative ease into more well-known ideological paradigms, and that the way these issues have been readily taken up right across the political spectrum shows this co-option at work.

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  Green Political Thought

  • Andrew Dobson(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Conclusion

  We have established the differences between Ecologism and other major political ideologies, and the incompatibility between what I have called environmentalism and Ecologism is now clear. Ecologism seeks radically to call into question a whole series of political, economic and social practices in a way that environmentalism does not. Ecologism envisages a post-industrial future that is quite distinct from that with which we are most generally acquainted. While most post-industrial futures revolve around high-growth, high-technology, expanding services, greater leisure, and satisfaction conceived in material terms, Ecologism’s post-industrial society questions growth and technology, and suggests that the Good Life will involve more work and fewer material objects. Fundamentally, Ecologism takes seriously the universal condition of the finitude of the planet and asks what kinds of political, economic and social practices are (a) possible and (b) desirable within that framework. Environmentalism, typically, does no such thing.

  In terms of human relationships with the non-human natural world, Ecologism asks that the onus of justification be shifted from those who counsel as little inference as possible with the non-human natural world to those who believe that interference is essentially non-problematic. Environmentalists will usually be concerned about intervention only as far as it might affect human beings; ecologists will argue that the strong anthropocentrism that this betrays is far more a part of our current problems than a solution to them.

  Practical considerations of limits to growth and ethical concerns about the non-human natural world combine to produce, in Ecologism, a political ideology in its own right. We can call it an ideology (in the functional sense) because it has, first, a description of the political and social world – a pair of green spectacles – which helps us to find our way around it. It also has a programme for political change and, crucially, it has a picture of the kind of society that ecologists think we ought to inhabit – loosely described as the ‘sustainable society’. Because the descriptive and prescriptive elements in the political-ecological programme cannot be accommodated within other political ideologies (such as socialism) without substantially changing them, we are surely entitled to set Ecologism alongside such ideologies, competing with them in the late twentieth-century political market-place. In contrast, I maintain that the various sorts of environmentalism (conservation, pollution control, waste recycling, etc.) can be slotted with relative ease into more well-known ideological paradigms, and that the way these issues have been readily taken up right across the political spectrum shows this co-option at work.

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  The Politics of the Environment

  Ideas, Activism, Policy

  • Neil Carter(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  To cohere as an ideology, Ecologism must have three basic features: (1) a common set of concepts and values providing a critique of the existing social and political systems; (2) a political prescription based on an alternative outline of how a society ought to look; (3) a programme for political action with strategies for getting from the 11 existing society to the alternative outline. Ecologism passes the test on all three counts (Dobson 2007). First, it is characterised by two core ideas: a rethinking of the ethical relationship between humans and the natural world, and the belief that there are natural limits to growth. Secondly, it offers an alternative political prescription for a sustainable society. Thirdly, it identifies various strategies for reaching the sustainable society. By contrast, reformist approaches do not add up to an ideology. They offer no distinctive view of the human condition or the structure of society. They are embedded in and embraced by other ideologies such as conservatism, liberalism or socialism. It is because Ecologism encapsulates the most interesting, challenging and distinctive contributions made by environmental political theorists that Part I focuses on its arguments and examines the veracity of the claim that it represents a distinct ideology. Chapter 2 identifies some of the key issues in environmental philosophy by exploring ethical questions about the relationship between humans and the natural world. Chapter 3 outlines the core features of green political thought and examines the relationship between green ideas and traditional political ideologies. There is often a close, and sometimes confusing, relationship between theory and practice in any discussion of political ideology.

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  Political Ecology

  System Change Not Climate Change

  • Dimitri Roussopoulos(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Black Rose Books

    (Publisher)

  As Jonathan Porritt, Director of Friends of the Earth and a leading speaker for the Green movement in Britain has written: It seems quite clear that whereas a concern for the environment (a fundamental characteristic of the ideology in its own right) is an essential part of ‘being green,’ it is by no means the same thing as being green. The principal difference is that Ecologism argues that care for the environment presupposes radical changes in our relationship with the natural world and in our mode of social and political life. Environmentalism, on the SECTION THREE Political Ecology and Social Ecology Political Ecology 98 other hand, takes a managerial approach to environmental problems, secure in the belief that these can be solved without fundamental changes in present values or patterns of production and consumption. 28 Origins In the 1960s, a new Left emerged which drew inspiration from a new mix of philosophical perspectives. This movement, composed primarily of young people and active on diverse political fronts, gave rise to a number of new social movements by the beginning of the 1970s. As noted earlier, these movements included the anti-war, feminist, communitarian, and ecology movements. The basic tenets of belief and methods of action that have characterised these movements up to our own day developed in a fruitful process of cross-fertilisation which transcended national boundaries. Space limitations do not permit discussion of the numerous theories and analyses of the crisis of our society or the proposed alternatives put forward by these movements. (There is already a considerable descriptive and analytical literature on the origins and nature of the new social movements.) Here, we will simply enumerate some of the principal contributions of political ecology. Although it is critical of science as traditionally understood, political ecology does affirm that the ecological crisis can be scientifically verified.

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  Environmental Politics

  The Age of Climate Change

  • Robert Garner, Lyn Jaggard(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Radical social and political change necessary: either authoritarian (for ‘survivalists’) or decentralized and democratic political organization 4. Anthropocentrism and a commitment to intra- and inter-generational equity 4. Intrinsic value of nature or, at least, a weaker version of anthropocentrism; a commitment to social justice within human society and between humans and non-human nature Introduction: The Political Dimension of Environmentalism 9 ‘deep ecology’ and ‘shallow ecology’; Eckersley (1992) distinguishes between ecocentric and anthropocentric approaches, while to add to the confusion, both O’Riordan (1976) and Pearce et al. (1993) distinguish between ecocentric and technocentric approaches. The term ‘Ecologism’ is preferred by some radicals because it signifies the interrelationship between the human species and nature, and implies a non-hierarchical order of things displacing man from his dominant posi-tion, both key characteristics of the radical approach. The use of the label ‘Ecologism’, however, can lead to confusion since the term ‘ecology’ – first used by the scientist Ernst Haeckel in the 1850s – also describes a branch of biology which studies, in a neutral fashion, the relationship between living organisms and their environment (Heywood, 1992: 247). The differences between the radical and reformist positions are more easily definable than the terminology would suggest. Each approach contains an economic, political and philosophical perspective. Put simply, the reform-ist position is human-centred, holding that protecting the environment is primarily for the benefit of humans. In addition, it suggests that environ-mental protection can be effectively incorporated within the political and economic structures of modern industrial society, without fundamentally threatening economic growth, material prosperity or liberal democracy. For the reformists, then, economic growth and environmental protec-tion are not necessarily incompatible objectives.

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  Theorising Welfare

  Enlightenment and Modern Society

  • Sue Penna, Martin O′Brien(Authors)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Second, although the quality of particular local environments differs markedly across the world's regions, none the less changes in those qualities are intimately connected to the 1 70 Post-Enlightenment problema tics health and welfare conditions and resources of the world as a whole. Third, people's relationships with their local (and translocal) environ-ments comprise political ecologies -that is, they embody rights and duties, rules of access, benefits, costs, opportunities and identities which provide frameworks for environmental exploitation and maintenance. Fourth, 'development ' is not something done by the 'Third World' in order to look more like the 'First World'. Capitalist industrial development represents a dynamic that directs and governs the relationships between people and between people and their environments. A political ecology perspective that acknowledges the development-environment connection focuses attention on the relationships between environment and welfare conceived in their broadest senses. Political ecologies of welfare There is a strand of the environmentalist critique that retains a degree of faith in the capacity of human rational and technological ingenuity to solve environmental problems. This faith has persisted for as long as the social and physical sciences have existed. It consists in the belief that through the combination of scientific know-how and rational planning, it is possible to control and regulate the sum total of socio-economic activity so that 'nature ' will not be destroyed and the earth will be able to sustain our own and future generations. The faith is visible in commitments to manipulating, managing and designing 'nature ' so that, over time, its resources will remain bountiful. Compare, below, the rhetoric of Moos and Brownstein (1977) with that of Maser (1991): We must merge our capacity to imagine and innovate with our ability to compre-hend and manipulate natural and social forces.

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  Rethinking Green Politics

  Nature, Virtue and Progress

  • John Barry(Author)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  120 RETHINKING GREEN POLITICS However, what both ecological modernization and collective ecological management share is a concern with the political regulation of human interaction with the environment. Collective ecological management widens out the ecological modernization approach by viewing the totality of social-environmental relations as the appropriate context within which problems in the material interaction between economy and environment, as manifested in the 'formal ' or money economy, can be placed. In a sense the collective ecological management strategy is on one level a democratic political procedure within which various ways of valuing the environment (and thus various relations and interests to and in the environment) can be raised, deliberated and incorporated into policy recommendations. The green political case is thus not for a pre-emptive 'hands-off ' approach. Rather, it recognizes that an adequate solution to environmental problems demands a wider context than that provided by economic or technical valuations of the non-human world. This can be taken to mean that in the case of social-environmental interaction, 'problem identification' is not to be left up to market pro-cesses alone. However, this is compatible with holding market processes as having a continuing role to play in the management or resolution of social-environmental problems. In other words, markets are often not the appropriate institutional setting for defining and thinking about social-environmental relations, though they are not ruled out as having some role to play. Whereas ecological modernization places the onus of justification on those objecting to development, and a deep ecology view of green politics demands that the onus of justification be shifted to those who wish to use the environment (Dobson, 1990: 61), collective ecological management requires that there be no presupposition in favour of either preservation or development.

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  Risk, Environment and Modernity

  Towards a New Ecology

  • Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Brian Wynne, Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Brian Wynne(Authors)
  • 1996(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  As Jahn and Wehling have shown for Germany, this new ecologisation of the social should not be seen as a clearly defined ideology that is confined to the new right. It is ECOLOGICAL MODERNISATION 265 much more an 'argumentative formula' that can be found much more widely (see also Eder, this volume). Indeed, it is a formula that can be found in mainstream politics in other countries too. The fourth line of development is the socialisation of ecology. Here the debate on the ecological crisis is simply recognised as being one of the few remaining places where modernity can still be reflected upon. It is in the context of environmental problems that we can discuss the new problems concerning social justice, democracy, responsibility, the preferred relation of man and nature, the role of technology in society, or indeed, what it means to be human. This gives ecological discourse a great political importance. In a way it is completely irrelevant whether emblematic problems like global warming constitute the dangers that some people argue they present. Global warming should simply be seen as one of the few possible issues in the context of which one can now legitimately raise the issue of a 'No' to further growth. Here the philosophical imperative of responsibility can be introduced in centre-stage political decision-making through a plea for a 'No regrets' scenario on global warming targets for low energy consumption. At the same time, the socialisation of ecology perspective would hold that the 'ecological crisis' is by no means unique. Here it elaborates on the cultural politics perspective. Indeed, there is much to be said for the integration of the debates on new technologies that are generally kept separate. If one would break with the conception that nature should be understood as something 'out there', and with the idea that nature stands for the 'authentic', the pure and the good, one might create the possibility of a more vibrant sort of debate.

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  Politics and the Life Sciences

  • Robert H. Blank, Samuel M. Hines Jr., Odelia Funke, Joseph Losco, Patrick Stewart, Robert H. Blank, Samuel M. Hines Jr., Odelia Funke, Joseph Losco, Patrick Stewart(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  INTRODUCTION Whether they prove to be timeless or not, most political theories originate as a response to a particular crisis or problem ( Wolin, 1960 ). Today those crises and problems relevant to any discussion of ecopolitics and environ-mental politics and policy include population growth; constraints on vital resources (e.g., water, fisheries, arable land); industrial pollution; the waste from weapons of mass destruction; the potential devastating effects of bio-chemical weapons; biotechnology and genetic manipulations; resistant strains of bacteria; and the most controversial of all today, climate change and global warming (see Lomborg, 2004 , for a more comprehensive list of global crises). E. O. Wilson, in lamenting the loss of our biodiversity, notes the rapid disappearance of tropical forests and grasslands and other habi-tats where most of the diversity of life exists ( 2012 ). He cites the changes caused by “HIPPO” (Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, Overpopulation, and Overharvesting, in that order of importance) and speculates that half of the species of plants and animals might become extinct by the turn of the next century ( Wilson, 2012 , p. 294). Likewise, Cairns (2001) reminds us that the pursuit of sustainable growth, even the so-called “smart growth,” absent consideration of and action to mitigate the negative long-term effects to the natural environment, could result in catastrophe, for example, overshooting carrying capacities of the planet. These crises call into question the capacity of humanity to address these problems in a timely and effective manner. Clearly, what is called for is a holistic approach, based on a full understanding of what light contempor-ary science can shed on these issues and on the ability of governments and nonstate actors to address them.

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  Common Futures

  Social Transformation and Political Ecology

  • Alexandros Schismenos, Yavor Tarinski(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Black Rose Books

    (Publisher)

  I. Political Ecology and Social Change Yavor Tarinski Introduction [I]t is one thing to establish international treatises, national laws, and environmental ministries and agencies; it is quite another to effect the concrete changes in attitudes, practices and institutions necessary to resolve the ecological crisis. Dimitrios Roussopoulos 1 NOWADAYS, the need to act against the ongoing environmental degrada-tion seems more than evident, as well as its relatedness to other social, polit-ical, and economic problems that we are facing today. From marginal activist groups to governments of the strongest countries on the planet, all appear to be concerned with how the future of our shared world will look like. However, what does not seem so obvious is how we are going to deal with the deepening ecological crisis. The mainstream environmentalist strategy, strongly propagated by governments and big business, strives at situating the current ecological challenges on the level of nation-states and global markets. According to it, it is the national governments and the multinational corporate players, the very ones responsible for the current mess in the first place, that should agree on how to protect nature. For many years, a significant part of the environ-mental movement had its imaginary entangled with the bureaucratic dynamics of political parties or green consumerism. But renowned author Dimitrios Roussopoulos masterfully points at the inability of nation-states and intergovernmental technocratic institutions to successfully tackle the crisis, despite thousands of international agreements and protocols: “In 1886, the first international environmental agreement was signed; today there are over 250 agreements, most of them concluded since the 1960s.

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  Environment

  An Interdisciplinary Anthology

  • Eugene Jolas, Andreas Kramer, Rainer Rumold(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  As we have seen in previous chapters, a non-anthropocentric green politics aims to alter the prevailing attitudes to nature. On this account, green politics is a moral crusade seeking to win “converts” away from anthropocentrism and its worldview. These approaches have much in common with what [A.] Dobson calls the “religious approach” to green change which holds that “the changes that need to take place are too profound to be dealt with in the political arena, and that the proper territory for action is the psyche rather than the parliamentary chamber.” 1 On the other hand, so-called “reformist environmentalism” focuses mainly on “greening” existing structures, rather than reflecting on the structures themselves in the light of ecological considerations, and the relationship between structures and the behavior and attitudes of agents. The conception of green political theory being developed here seeks to com-bine both agency and structural approaches . . . . The values, principles, and goals that are central to the green political project depend upon combining both 735 agent- and structural-level change. Collective ecological management therefore has to do with both preferences and policies, agents and structures. In this re-spect, unlike market approaches to ecological issues, collective ecological man-agement is a problem-solving rather than a preference-aggregating process. For green politics, understood as a form of collective ecological management, re-solving environmental problems requires cultural and not just institutional change. Because the roots of ecological problems do not lie exclusively in either cultural norms or institutional structures, neither do the solutions. From the point of view of green politics defended here, the long-run resolution of social-environmental problems requires a politics based on an immanent critique of the prevailing cultural as well as institutional order .

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