1002

The New Environmentalism

The environmentalism of the late 1960s and 1970s readily drew on earlier nineteenth-century concerns with the effects of an emerging industrial-urban society on human health and the natural landscape. Yet as the negative impact of industrial development became ever more apparent, arguments that stewardship of the environment should be a fundamental concern of humankind grew increasingly angry — and more widespread. How did a new generation of activists respond to the environmental degradation of the late twentieth century?

For each of us, as for the robin in Michigan or the salmon in the Miramichi, this is a problem of ecology, of interrelationships, of interdependence. We poison the caddis flies in a stream and the salmon runs dwindle and die. We poison the gnats in a lake and the poison travels from link to link of the food chain and soon the birds of the lake margins become its victims. We spray our elms and the following springs are silent of robin song, not because we sprayed the robins directly but because the poison traveled, step by step, through the now familiar elm leaf–earthworm–robin cycle. These are matters of record, observable, part of the visible world around us. They reflect the web of life — or death — that scientists know as ecology. . . .

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.

The choice is, after all, ours to make.

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: inherent worth, intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.

2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.

3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.

4. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.

5. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.

6. Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.

7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.

8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.

1003

The ecology crisis is insoluble unless we work at the same time at overcoming the confrontation of military blocs. It is insoluble without a resolute policy of détente and disarmament, one that renounces all demands for subverting other countries. . . .

The ecology crisis is insoluble without a world order on the North-South axis. And we must realize that our entire standard of living [in the North] is largely based on the exploitation and suppression of the rest of humanity. . . .

The ecology crisis is insoluble without a decisive breakthrough towards social justice in our own country and without a swift equalization of social differences throughout Western Europe. . . . The ecology crisis is insoluble without progress in human emancipation here and now, even while capitalism still exists. It is insoluble without countless individuals managing to rise above their immediate and compensatory interests. . . .

If all this is brought to a common denominator, the conclusion is as follows: The ecology crisis is insoluble under capitalism. We have to get rid of the capitalist manner of regulating the economy and above all of the capitalist driving mechanism, for a start at least bringing it under control. In other words, there is no solution to the ecol-ogy crisis without the combination of all anti-capitalist and socialist tendencies for a peaceful democratic revolution against the dominant economic structure.

ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

The environmental activists of the 1970s and 1980s were a diverse group with diverse opinions about the ways to address environmental issues. Using the sources above, along with what you have learned in class and in Chapters 28 and 29, write a short essay that explores the impact of environmentalism on political debate in the late twentieth century. How did environmental activists combine ethical, economic, and scientific critiques?

Sources: (1) Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), pp. 189, 277; (2) Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Salt Lake City: G. M. Smith, 1985), p. 70; (4) Rudolf Bahro, Socialism and Survival (London: Merlin Books, 1982), pp. 41–43.