I. Mainstream Environmentalism

A. Characterized by: managerial ecology, maintenance of ecosystems through scientific study, large-scale mathematical modeling, and government institutions.

B. Ecosystem: Consists of interrelated biological and physical aspects of environment as a single system linked by energy exchanges based on laws of thermodynamics and cycling of nutrients. Subsystems such as forest, soil, prairie, marsh, farm, and city exist within larger world system.

C. Factors related to mainstream environmentalism

1. Population: World population is doubling every 35 years. "Population bomb" must be defused through controls and limits on number of births. Recommendations and decisions on population control to be made by demographers, judges, doctors, scientists, and other trained experts.

2. Market: Bio-economic approach to resource use is based on ecology. Whole systems are managed in terms of efficiency of energy production and exchanges for optimization of yields.

3. Technology: Includes computer modeling of whole ecosystems through quantification, measurement of energy flows, abstraction of information bits from environmental context, and manipulation by differential equations, prediction of system behavior.

4. Social Relations: Scientifically trained decision-makers and advisors are employed in government, bureaucracies, industries, universities. Government regulation of resources and environment is strengthened in 1970s; erodes in 1980s.

5. Attitudes: Entire human-nature ecosytem is criterion for sustained human well-being and for policies. Environmental quality is maximized through rational management. Examples: Club of Rome (Limits to Growth, 1972); Garrett Hardin; Paul Ehrlich; Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ); United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP).

II. Environmental Movement: Ecosystems restored and maintained through community control and social movements. Small-scale, group decision-making, public demonstration, citizens' action approaches emerge, constituting opposite end of spectrum from conservation as mainstream environmentalism.

A. Factors related to environmental movement

1. Population: Present world population growth will be slowed by demographic transition to lower death and birth rates through ecologically sustainable development. Americans will see increased availability of birth control methods for women and men, legalization of abortions, communal sharing of child-rearing. Education is especially important for women. Abortion and pro-choice movement, and reaction by antiabortion, prolife movement, are intensifying.

2. Market: To minimize human impact on resources and ecosystems, community- or worker-owned and controlled industries, based on group subsistence and well-being rather than on affluence and profit-making, are proposed.

3. Technology: Appropriate (or intermediate) technologies based on recycling of resources and wastes, renewable energy sources (wind, sun), and urban gardens are developed.

4. Social Relations: Will include an increase in community action, such as women's movements, bioregional farm-worker movements, minority activists, sustainability movement, appropriate technology groups; antitoxics campaigns. Urban minority movements focus on clean air and water in inner cities.

5. Attitudes: Ecological ethic is based on natural ecosystems as model for human decisions and ways life. Entire environment has a right to healthy existence. Humans are part of ecosystem, not superior to it. Human impact on land and resources should be minimized and scaled-down. Examples: Gary Snyder, E.F. Schumacher, Susan Griffin, Carl Anthony, minority environmentalists, deep ecologists, ecofeminists, social ecologists, greens, and Earth First!.

1. Are present bureaucratic responses to resource allocation and "management" (Forest Service, Environmental Impact Reports, and so on) and to pollution (Environmental Protection Agency, Superfund) sufficient for dealing with conservation issues? Why or why not?

2. Discuss the underlying assumptions about nature and the appropriate human relationship to nature in the following contemporary environmental movements: Deep Ecology, Greens Party, Bioregionalism, Social Ecology, Ecofeminism, Earth First!

3. How would you characterize current disagreements about goals and strategies among various American environmental organizations? Are such divisions useful? Is direct action justified? Is ecotage?

4. Is the contemporary environmental movement dominated by middle class concerns and male leadership? Justify your answer.

5. What is ecofeminism? What are some ecofeminist critiques of Western attitudes toward nature? In your opinion, is this line of argumentation a meaningful one?

6. Why should African Americans, Native Americans, and members of other minority groups become environmentalists?

7. What global environmental problems exist in the late twentieth century? Assess the analysis and proposed responses to the global crisis discussed in the documents.

8. How, in the opinion of Faber and O'Connor, have "the environmental movement's legislative victories of the 1960s and 1970s become one source of its failures in the 1980s?" (p. 557) Do you agree or disagree with this analysis? Support your argument.

9. Is the ecology movement today a force for social change or a safety-valve for the established order? Justify your answer.