the word ecology comes from the Greek root oikos , meaning home. The underlying idea is that the earth is a place of close relationships -- that plants, animals, minerals and humans are important to each other and together constitute an integrated whole. Ecology, as a scientific discipline, studies the interconnections between species and habitat. Contemporary environmentalists, however, often forget that the earth is home to all its component parts. To protect the earth, they only concentrate on preserving it as a physical object, not as a set of intricate relationships. The earth is seen as merely a house: a material structure, a shelter, an abode to support us and our things.
Even the greenest of liberals often sport this mind-set, seeing the earth as a storehouse of natural resources -- oil, timber, plants, animals and others that we use to fuel our cars, build our houses and feed ourselves -- and as an absorptive mechanism that we use to assimilate our wastes. Forests consume carbon dioxide, oceans dissipate toxic substances, and the earth's soil buries solid wastes. Liberal environmentalism is about using the earth's resources and its absorptive capacities in a sustainable manner. It entails figuring out how best to use more resources and emit wastes without overshooting the carrying capacity of the planet.
Liberal environmentalism has been important in identifying and containing many harmful activities: Clean Air Act, National Forest Management Act and Clean Water Act all represent liberal victories that go a long way in safeguarding the environment. Moreover, in the present political climate, where those so-called 'fiscally responsible' continue to push for the emasculation of environmental laws, liberal environmentalism perhaps stands as the most reasonable response, arguing that environmental protection is compatible with economic growth, corporate enterprise and technological prowess.
Yet, reasonableness and genuine environmental protection are two different things. Liberal environmentalism is so compatible with contemporary material and cultural currents that it implicitly supports the very things that it should be criticising. Its technocratic character gives credence to a society that measures the quality of life fundamentally in terms of economic growth, control over nature and the maximisation of sheer efficiency in everything. By working to show that environmental protection need not compromise these maxims, liberal environmentalism fails to raise deeper issues -- about who we are, our place in the global ecosystem and our relationship with the other species that also inhabit the earth, issues that strike at the core of a genuinely ecological politics -- that more fundamentally engage the dynamics of environmental degradation.
Often the greatest constraint on human autonomy is nature itself. The vicissitudes of nature -- wind, cold, rain, drought and so on -- restrict, rather than expand, human choices. To advance human freedom, we need to subdue nature, to discipline its vicissitudes or at least protect ourselves from them. Liberalism can assume this approach to nature because it refuses to grant animals, rocks, or plants any moral standing. Morality is fundamentally about how humans treat each other. It concerns itself with issues of duty, right conduct and virtuous action between free autonomous human beings. Plants, animals and rocks are not free; they are part of the realm of necessity. And insofar as there is no element of rational deliberation in their activities, they are undeserving of ethical treatment. Nature becomes a casualty of human freedom.
Yet, liberalism can still generate an environmental sensibility and has done so. Liberal environmentalism works to curb exploitation; the idea is to preserve the stock of natural resources and the absorptive capacity of earth so that human life can continue and even prosper. Liberal environmentalism, in other words, is still minding the house when a deeper, more promising approach entails nurturing a home. A politics of the home begins with connection. It has to do with how we think about our place in the universe and how we relate and connect with all around us.
Ecologically, connection involves seeing earth as an intricate weave of air, water, land and species, and appreciating how we are braided into its very fabric. It involves understanding that not only do we depend upon a well-functioning natural world to support us, but also that we are literally of the earth and intertwined with its life; it involves respect and the warmth and intimacy that develops as we no longer simply use the earth for our own gain. The history of environmental thought has danced around this orientation for decades but has yet to feel secure in expressing it clearly in its politics. The great debate has always been between anthropocentrists and biocentrists, with little middle ground. Anthropocentrists regard human beings as the central fact, or final aim, of the universe; nature is here for our benefit. This is essentially the principle underlying liberal environmentalism. Biocentrists, on the other hand, argue that life itself is the central principle and that humans are simply one among other species. Biocentrists claim that plants, animals and according to some, even inorganic matter (a position called 'ecocentric') have the right to exist simply because they are part of nature. They are not resources for human consumption nor waste baskets for pollution but simply other entities with whom humans share the planet. However, it is impossible to be purely biocentric. Such a view does not discriminate between different species and thus would have to privilege the Ebola virus as well as the humpback whale -- a view that few people can sincerely maintain. A more sensible approach is to infuse our anthropocentrism with a sense of respect for the natural world derived from the experience of being interconnected.
The conservationist Aldo Leopold, writing before anthropocentrism and biocentrism found themselves at intemperate odds, claimed that there have been two stages in the evolution of ethical concern and that the world was due for a third. The first focussed on the relations between individuals and aimed to establish principles for the way people should treat each other. Leopold used the Mosaic Decalogue -- the Ten Commandments -- as an example. The second stage concentrated on the relations between the individual and society; it addressed the way the individual is integrated into society and the rights and obligations that follow from such integration. The third stage which Leopold thought would come about as the natural extension of the other two, would focus on the way humans relate to nature. Leopold saw that there was no informing ethic (which, for him, entailed a limitation on freedom of action) to guide human orientation towards the natural world. Human use of nature was a function of economic motives alone based on no other consideration.
The ethic Leopold ultimately offered -- land ethic -- placed human beings in the centre of environmental dynamics, yet insisted that they see themselves not as conquerors of the earth but as citizens of a biotic community. Seeking to extend the sphere of ethical relevance, Leopold's intent was not to equalise humans, rocks, trees and animals, but to heighten human regard for non-human existence and emphasise how tightly human life is entwined with the natural world.
Adopting Leopold's land ethic can invigorate the contemporary environmental movement. Inviting humans to be part of a biotic community enlarges the meaning of environmental protection and this in itself can inspire greater political effort. While the liberal approach presents challenges, it displays a narrowness of vision that has little to attract most of us. Indeed, liberal environmental protection is probably best left to those who specialise in maximising efficiency or mastering technological innovation: the technocrats, bureaucrats and systems analysts of the world.
In contrast, Leopold's land ethic, and the orientation being articulated here, go much further. According to this view, environmental degradation is not simply inexpedient but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, ethically wrong. As Leopold put it: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
Liberal environmentalism derives its significance from being part of contemporary, industrial society. It makes sense because it is compatible with the broad principles that currently animate our lives -- principles such as economic growth, control over nature and maximisation of efficiency. Genuinely ecological politics does not refute the liberal aim so much as embed it within a larger context. Protecting the earth is not simply about sustaining the material mechanisms that ensure human life; it also entails honouring and working to preserve the integrity of nature's networks of support, of which we are a part. n
Paul Wapner is an assistant professor at the school of international services, American University, Washington DC