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1962), then, can only inform ecologism rather than be it due to the
absence of an overriding political strategy for dealing with the problems
it identifies. My suggestion is that, in 1962, ecologism (and therefore
the possibility of being radically green) did not exist, and that Rachel
Carson s book and the period in which it was written are best viewed as
part of the preconditions for ecologism. Looking at it in this way we
shall avoid the mistake made in many commentaries on and anthologies
of socialism, say, which talk of the cleric John Ball (who spoke on
behalf of English peasants during the rebellion of 1381) as if he were a
socialist. The most that can be said of him, living as he did well before
the French and Industrial Revolutions that gave birth to socialism
proper, was that his sentiments were socialistic. Similarly, the pre-1970
26 Green Political Thought
ideas and movements that have an affinity with ecologism are green
rather than green.
The final important consequence of historicizing the ideology is that
it enables us to emphasize the novelty of its analysis. It has been
remarked that, despite its claims to the contrary, the green movement s
perspective is merely a reworking of old themes. Thus, for example, its
warnings about population growth are substantially contained in the
work of Thomas Malthus; its reluctance fully to embrace the mech-
anistic reason characteristic of the Enlightenment was a recurrent theme
in the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century; and even its
apocalyptic tone has been prefigured on countless occasions in count-
less Messianic movements. Such critics generally take these observa-
tions to indicate that, as has happened before, the subordinate themes
associated with the green movement will eventually be submerged by
their dominant and opposed counterparts. This interpretation fails to
take full account of the historically specific nature of ecologism. For it
is precisely the ideology s point that, while the terms of its analysis are
not new in themselves, the fact of their being posited here and now gives
those terms a novel resonance. So the critique of mechanistic forms of
reason, for instance, cannot be directly mapped back on to similar cri-
tiques made in the nineteenth century. The additional factor to be taken
into account, argues the green movement, is the potentially terminal
state to which slavish usage of this reason has led us. In this way history
defines the context within which ecologism operates (and therefore
helps define ecologism itself), and provides the ground on which old
themes acquire new resonances, coalescing to form a full-blown modern
political ideology.
Conclusion
It needs to be stressed time and again that this is a book about ecolo-
gism and not about environmentalism. Most people will understand
environmentalism a managerial approach to the environment within
the context of present political and economic practices to be what
green politics is about. I hope I have begun to establish that there is
more to it than this. . Ecologists and environmentalists are inspired to
act by the environmental degradation they observe, but their strategies
for remedying it differ wildly. Environmentalists do not necessarily
subscribe to the limits to growth thesis, nor do they typically seek to
dismantle industrialism . They are unlikely to argue for the intrinsic
value of the non-human environment and would balk at any suggestion
that we (as a species) nurture our spiritual capacity (Porritt, 2005,
Thinking about ecologism 27
p. 145). Environmentalists will typically believe that technology can
solve the problems it creates, and will probably regard any suggestions
that only a reduction in material throughput in the production process
will provide for sustainability as wilful nonsense. In short, what passes
for green politics in the pages of today s newspapers is not the ideology
of political ecology, properly understood. This is why the student of
green politics needs to do more than scratch the surface of its public
image in order to appreciate the full range of the debate that it has
opened up.
2 Philosophical foundations
In 1855, Chief Seattle is supposed to have said:
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