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MAIN CURRENTS in WESTERN ENVIRONMENTAL THOUGHT This Page Intentionally Left Blank MAIN CURRENTS in WESTERN ENVIRONMENTAL THOUGHT MAIN CURRENTS IN WESTERN ENVIRONMENTAL THOUGHT This page intentionally left blank MAIN CURRENTS IN WESTERN ENVIRONMENTAL THOUGHT Peter Hay UNSW PRESS This book is dedicated to past and present students of KGE515/KGE815 Environmental Values. They have been my best teachers. A UNSW Press book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales UNSW Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © Peter Hay 2002 First published 2002 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Hay, PR (Peter Robert), 1947– . Main currents in western environmental thought. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 0 86840 683 X. 1. Green movement. 2. Environmental sciences — Philosophy. 3. Environmentalism — Philosophy. I. Title. 322.44 Printer Griffin Press CONTENTS PREFACE viii 1 THE ECOLOGICAL IMPULSE 1 What inspires a ‘green’ sympathy? 1 Romanticism: the first broadcast expression of an 4 ‘ecological impulse’ Maintaining space for other life: ‘wilderness’ preservation 11 ‘Wilderness’ and the present-day environment movement 16 Some problems, including the question of the ‘construction’ 18 of nature 2 ECOPHILOSOPHY 26 Taking shape in the 1970s 26 Taxonomies of environmental thought 31 Animal liberation/animal rights 36 Deep ecology 41 Some environmental axiologies 48 Anthropocentrism makes a comeback 57 Some problems: meanwhile, in the real world ... 61 3 ECOFEMINISM 72 Patriarchal dualisms 72 Nature and gender 75 Feminism and ecofeminism 81 An ethic of care 84 Some problems, including the tenacity of essentialism 87 VI • CONTENTS 4 RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY AND THE GREEN 94 MOVEMENT Religion, spirituality, green ambiguity 94 Buddhism, Taoism, and neo-paganism 94 Christianity and ecological values: Lynn White and his critics 100 Christian stewardship 106 Panentheism and the reinterpretation of ‘creation’ 108 Some problems: ‘flaky spirituality’ in a materialist age 112 5 GREEN CRITIQUES OF SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE 120 The green critique of mechanistic science 120 The ‘new physics’ in environmental thought 129 Ecology: the ‘subversive science’? 131 Gaia 136 Alternative ‘ways of knowing’: the ecofeminist critique 139 of science Alternative ‘ways of knowing’: green phenomenology 142 Some problems: old or new science? 145 6 RECLAIMING PLACE: SEEKING AN AUTHENTIC 153 GROUND FOR BEING A literature of place 153 The commodification of space 155 Phenomenology and the search for authentic place 156 Place and ‘authentic being’: the Heideggerian legacy 159 Non-phenomenological theories of place in environmental 161 thought Authentic place and communal vitality: an essential link? 164 Some problems: Heidegger and the Nazi taint; the claim 166 for the essentiality of ‘nature’ 7 GREEN POLITICAL THOUGHT: THE 173 AUTHORITARIAN AND CONSERVATIVE TRADITIONS The authoritarian tradition in environmental thought: 173 the ‘tragedy of the commons’ Environmentalism and the conservative political tradition 179 Nature and fascism 182 Some problems: constructing cases from green ephemera 185 CONTENTS • VII 8 ENVIRONMENTAL LIBERALISMS: GREEN 194 THOUGHT MEETS THE DISMAL SCIENCE Environmentalism and the liberal rights tradition 194 Environment, economy: first principles in conflict? 201 ‘Classical’ environmentalist responses: the critique of 204 economic growth Measures of human wellbeing: beyond GNP 210 All hail ‘sustainable development’ 212 Protecting environmental amenity through market-based mechanisms 219 Ecological modernisation 228 Precaution 230 Ecological economics/alternative economics 233 Some problems: the tenacity of private desires 242 9 GREEN POLITICAL THOUGHT: THE SOCIALIST 255 TRADITIONS Democratic socialism and the environmentalist critique 255 Marxist hostility to environmentalism 259 Marxist co-option of environmentalism 261 Marxist–green syntheses 272 Classical anarchism and the environmentalist critique 277 The ‘scale’ variable: ‘small is beautiful’ and the critique 282 of urbanism Bioregionalism 285 Murray Bookchin and ‘social ecology’ 288 Some problems: hitching a ride on a falling star? 292 10 SEEKING HOMO ECOLOGICUS: ECOLOGY, 302 DEMOCRACY, POSTMODERNISM Critiquing ‘actually existing democracy’ 303 Toward an ecologically informed democracy 310 Environmentalism meets postmodernism: a difficult synergy? 321 Some problems: ‘governmentality’ vs ecologically 329 constituted democracy THOUGHTS BY WAY OF CONCLUSION: THE 340 TENACITY OF ENVIRONMENTALISM REFERENCES 345 INDEX 389 PREFACE Introducing his book, Green Political Theory, Robert Goodin writes: my aim is not simply to set out, fully and faithfully, what self-styled greens happen for better or worse to believe. Considering the diversity of positions ... that project would quickly degenerate into taxonomic tedi- um even if it did not prove altogether impossible (1992: vii). It is just such a book — a book to ‘set out, fully and faithfully, what self-styled greens happen for better or worse to believe’ — that, some years ago, I determined to write. Whether I have merely demonstrated the validity of Goodin’s observation is not for me to say. But I hope not. I have tried to give a faithful account of the main feeder-streams that debouch into the swift-running river of ‘western’ environmental thought. I specify ‘western’ because I have no wish to be arrogantly ethnocentric. There are forms of environmentalism emerging within indigenous and other non-western contexts that draw little upon devel- opments in the industrial west (and as a citizen of an over-developed nation within the southern hemisphere I continue to prefer ‘west’ to ‘north’). I cannot write of these other environmentalisms; hence the hedge within the title. Given this acknowledged limitation, however, I hope to have provided an all but comprehensive overview of the com- plex, burgeoning, endlessly moving swirl that is western environmen- talism. I should also state that where strands of thought have frayed into a myriad sub-strands, as many have in recent years, I have adopted one of two strategies. I have either focused upon seminal contributions, or I have presented the thought of one or more contributors who can be PREFACE • IX held to be emblematic of recently occurring developments. Where it has seemed feasible, though, I have striven to be comprehensive. In seeking breadth I have also been mindful of that other axis, the temporal one. Since the 1970s environmental thought has evolved at an extraordinary pace, yesterday’s orthodoxy rapidly becoming today’s history. Many of the people contributing to this dynamism have evolved commensurately. Where an individual’s thought has shifted markedly I have endeavoured to acknowledge this. Where evolution has been more subtle, less readily apparent, I mostly have not. It will be the case, then, that some people will have ideas attributed to them from which they have since, at least in part, moved on. In trying to account for the rills and runnels of environmental thought, even those through which a lessened volume now flows, this has been unavoid- able. Nevertheless, to any parties aggrieved on this account I unre- servedly apologise. Each chapter concludes with a ‘problems of’ sub-section. The ideas and beliefs of the environment movement have been, and continue to be hotly contested. The terms in which outsider criticisms have been couched are beyond the scope of this book. But each strand of envi- ronmental thought is also contested, often as vigorously, from within the family of environmentalist positions. It is these, the terms in which insider critiques have been constructed, that are the focus of the con- cluding section of each chapter. I also pondered long over the vexed question of referencing. I have written with an intelligent, non-specialist reader in mind, and I am aware that for such people textual references are irksome. I have man- aged to dispense with notes, but not with quotes: on the contrary, I have felt it important to allow those who have contributed significant- ly to environmental thought to express directly their ideas as much as possible, and so I have had recourse to quotation beyond what may be considered usual. I have attempted to integrate quotes seamlessly, so that it should be possible to read straight into, and through them with- out a sense of dislocation. Such an approach to reading is, indeed, strongly advised. As for sources for citation, I have given prominence to all writings historically important to the development of environ- mental thought, but I have also made extensive use of less well-known writings when it has seemed to me that they suit a particular need. The book, thus, contains a very large undifferentiated bibliography. I con- sidered several possible schemes before deciding that the standard, sin- gle comprehensive list would probably still serve the reader’s needs best. The book’s text will make evident which bibliographic items con- stitute the environmentalist canon. I must acknowledge the unbegrudged assistance of the many peo- ple who have helped in the course of writing this book. Discussions at various times with Wolfgang Rudig, John Cameron, Vicki King, Warwick Fox, Robyn Eckersley, Peter Christoff, Michael Jacobs, Janis X • PREFACE Birkeland, Tim Doyle, Tim Bonyhady, Barry Lopez, Jim Russell, John Todd, Julie Davidson, Peter
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