First published in The Great Outdoors Magazine.
One of the first things I do when I run an eco-education course is introduce the “Environmental Spectrum”. One end of the spectrum is ‘grey’, the other ‘deep green’. Points in between get progressively less grey, and increasingly greener. The object of the spectrum is to help people understand differing perspectives and viewpoints that exist towards environmental matters – even within the ‘environmental’ movement.
At the grey end we have the ‘Cornucopians’. The Cornucopia was the mythical ‘Horn of Plenty’ – an animal horn used as a wine cup that, regardless of how much was drunk from it, never emptied. George W. Bush is a Cornucopian, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were Cornucopians and the majority of the world’s financial institutions and economists use a model that assumes infinite and endless economic growth. To this group, the environment is limitless “resource” pure and simple.
Next to the Cornucopians are the ‘Accommodators’. This group acknowledge that there are serious environmental issues but believe that adjustments of existing market and political mechanisms will be sufficient to solve any problems. They believe that economic growth is necessary to alleviate poverty and that poverty is the primary cause of environmental degradation and pollution. Tony Blair, Charles Kennedy and Ian Duncan Smith are all Accommodators, in fact, this perspective is the one most commonly held in contemporary Britain – by individuals, businesses, and both non-governmental and government institutions. Even most of the “environmental” charities are Accommodators.
The Communalists come next along the line. Communalism has nothing to do with Communism, which is based on a centrally controlled state economy (as opposed to a centrally controlled corporate economy, which we have today and somehow find acceptable, despite it having all the corruption and inefficiency of the old communist system). Communalists advocate ‘appropriate’ technology, self-reliance, local control of local economies, ‘bottom up’ development and growth that is measured in the quality of people’s lives rather than in the quantity of money they earn. Communalists believe that there is a serious and significant environmental problem that must take primacy in human affairs and they offer intelligent and very viable, practical ways of living sustainably. You’ll find a whole mish-mash of backgrounds and belief systems amongst the Communalists, they agree more essentially on actions than on ideals.
At the deepest green end is ‘Gaianism’. This group sees the Earth as a whole total living system and the context in which humans must live. They believe that all things have an intrinsic right to reach their full potential; that richness and diversity are critical to life; that humans have no right to reduce richness or diversity except to satisfy vital needs; that human interference with other parts of the Natural world is excessive; that basic structures of political, social, cultural and economic life must radically change, and that we all have a responsibility to act by living lifestyles that support the previous points.
I grew up in 1980’s Britain and I saw the Cornucopianism of the Thatcher/Reagan years dissolve slowly into a realisation that we, as a species, were seriously damaging our own habitat. Rachel Carson’s famous book ‘Silent Spring’, about the devastating pollution caused by industrial agricultural practices in America, opened the debate in 1964 but it took until the early 1990’s before the wave really broke into our everyday awareness with the Rio Earth Summit. Governments and individuals, organisations and groups, all rushed to their chosen points along the environmental spectrum, and to this day there they all jostle, taunting each other and debating, each trying to move the other into their own zone of thought.
As the environmental situation has got demonstrably worse you might expect a general shift along the spectrum with fewer Cornucopians and more Gaianists. It seems though, that the trend has been less obvious. A massive increase in the profile of environmental issues and an ‘official’ acknowledgement that things are getting exponentially more serious has resulted in a rallying of the Accommodators.
What this means is that many institutions have clad themselves in the regalia of the ‘environmentalist’ while actually not doing a great deal to help meet the challenge of sustainable living. But why is this the case?
The four points along the spectrum can actually be grouped together into two categories by identifying the patterns of thinking that they each embrace. The Cornucopians and Accommmodators have different opinions but they both use the same ways of thinking to put their beliefs into action. They both subscribe to the same pattern of thinking that created the current environmental crisis. In this respect, their approach is ‘shallow’ in that it leaves in tact many of the structural foundations of current problems.
The Communalists and Gaianists on the other hand are advocating new ways of thinking altogether, pointing out, like Einstein, that the patterns of thinking that got us into a mess in the first place are hardly likely to lead us out of it. These deep green approaches are referred to as ‘deep’ ecology, because they challenge the fundamental and deeply held assumptions of our industrial culture – like the supremacy of humans over other species, the economic growth imperative and the belief that high-technology will deliver us from evil.
Because the Accommodators sell us the palatable idea that we can sort the environmental crisis out without changing our lifestyles much, without pain, they have won the balance of power and influence. They offer a sugar-coated pill, but once the sugar has dissolved, the bitter core is left, and we will come to realise that we have been conned by our own optimism, having wasted years of precious time.
Beware these pseudo-environmentalists! They are the modern ecocrats of everything environmentally shallow. They wear suits and ties, neatly ironed blouses and shiny shoes. They have well paid jobs in respectable institutions, they are educated, lucid and intelligent, they will always listen to you, always reply politely to your correspondence, they are blinkered by their own righteousness and the ignorance they offer is bliss – to all except the Earth and those that love her deeply.
