A Different Look at Deep Ecology

[Rachel Barge]

I thought folks might be interested in this blog post written by my co-worker at Breakthrough Institute. I don't have much experience with Deep Ecology but I know we'll be discussing it in depth on our trip, so that's why her post stuck out to me. Feel free to leave comments! Here's the article her post was referencing too.

http://breakthroughgen.org/2008/07/15/the-nihilism-of-deep-ecology/
http://spot.colorado.edu/~mcclelr/NondualEcologyLight.htm


The Nihilism of Deep Ecology

Written by Lindsay Meisel, Breakthrough Generation Fellow
Cross-posted from the Breakthrough Generation Blog (www.breakthroughgen.org)

Carbon-sucking trees. Mirrors in space. Oceans fertilized with urea. Some of these ideas seem better suited to the annals of science fiction than to modern-day solutions to climate change. Geo-engineering — along with nanotechnology and bioengineering — belongs to a class of scientific innovation that many fear will threaten the integrity of life as we know it. Environmentalists of the “deep ecology” school fear that an overly technical approach to climate change glosses over the real issues (human greed and overconsumption), and could drive us toward a future more Blade Runner than ecotopia.

From a deep ecology perspective, the environment is governed by a complex natural order that is superior to any human artifice. When faced with the challenge of climate change, deep ecologists believe that we must restore the world’s “natural” balance, and that overly technical solutions are an arrogant attempt to improve upon nature. Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, and others have pointed out that many technological “solutions” address problems that were themselves created by technology, and that we’re ignoring the simple solutions that nature has already provided.

But what about all the problems that nature creates? Why don’t deep ecologists criticize the earth for smiting us with floods, fires, and diseases? That would be silly, of course, but it’s just as silly to criticize technology simply for being technology. As the Buddhist philosopher John McClellan writes,

Deep ecologists seem to have the same fear and loathing toward today’s out of control technology as humans have had until just recently toward Uncontrolled Nature, with her savage, untamed wastelands. They call technology inhuman, cruel, and heartless, using the same words we once used to describe cruel wilderness – and like humans of the 19th century waging war on wild nature, environmentalists today long only to conquer technology, to subdue and control it, as we have nature herself.

Nature is no wiser than technology, and claiming adherence to nature’s laws is an attempt to bypass the messy business of ethics and values.

So what do deep ecologists value? On the surface, they seem to value life, in all its varied forms. Their mission is to protect earth’s diverse biology from the destructive forces of humanity and technology. But there’s something nihilistic about preserving ecosystems as they are – life is constantly evolving, and deep ecologists’ attachment to one idea of nature denies whole worlds of future possibilities. Nietzsche argued that emulating nature means living a life of indifference:

“According to nature” you want to live? O you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain all at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power–how could you live according to this indifference? Living—is not that precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is not living–estimating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? And supposing your imperative “live according to nature” meant at bottom as much as “live according to life”–how can you not do that? Why make a principle out of what you yourselves are and must be?"

[Iain Duncan]

Human activity has the capacity to accelerate the change within an ecosystem at a rate much faster and with greater intensity than any other species. This capacity is not born of the functioning of our bodies, or the resources needed to sustain ourselves. With an average of 1 hectare of land per peson in the world the planet likely still has the capacity to manage these most basic impacts of human activity. The great potential for humans to heal or to harm comes from our creativity and innovation, of which techonolgy is one expression.

The history of technological advancement starts off as a rather benign influence - the creation of the wheel and the ability to harness fire, though both things that impact an ecosystem, are in general very manageable influences for most ecosystems. I don't think that many deep ecologists sit fearful of the influence of the hammer. More recently however, we have born witness to an increasing ability of humans to effect the functioning of the planet through our technological innovations. Our influence on the planet is increasing exponentially and most people will find it difficult to argue that this influence is having a positive effect for any form of life other than human, and that even the long-term human benefits are often debatable.

Though I cannot claim to speak for a whole movement, my understanding of deep ecology is that the movement seeks not to avoid ethics or values, but instead tries to confer equal rights to the non-human parts of the natural world in order that we can include the rest of life in our values and ethics. Central to the movement is the idea that all life, including the planet as a whole, has an inherent value beyond what is deemed useful for human activity. If one humbly affords equal rights not only to humans, but to the rest of nature as well, and if one agrees that our recent influence on the planet through technology has had a net negative effect on these species, then one might begin to empahtize with the view point that we must approach our technological experimentation with a deep respect for its power to negatively effect the myriad lives on this planet.

There can be no doubt that in the most extreme viewpoints a fear of technology is expressed, coupled with a desire to eliminate human influence on the planet - just look at organizations like "The Voluntary Human Excticntion Movement". We can't allow these extremes to become the demonstrative illustrations of the deep ecology movement primarily because they are just that - extremes. Their ideas and actions have a place in our dialogues about environmental change, but we must be careful about the power we give them to influence constructive debate and to paint a whole movement. To think that the most techno-phobic and fearful extremes have managed to get the whole deep ecology movement labeled as nihilistic is frightful (just kidding).

Deep ecology is not synonomous with indifference, rather, it promotes the opposite - a sincere consideration and respect of all life on this planet. Human creativity and innovation as expressed through technology has demonstrated an increasing ability to negatively effect all life on the planet. I believe that one part of deep ecology is a call to raise our awareness about the negative effects techonolgy has caused and to explore new ways of using human creativity and innovation to begin healing some of the damage that has been done. The goal is to find ways to harness the positive potential of our human role in nature for the benefit of all life.

"We cannot solve problems with the same ways of thinking that we used when we created them" - Albert Einstein