Deep Ecology: An Ecocentric Worldview

Revised December 20, 2008

"Perhaps the most widespread evil is the Western view of man and nature. Among us, it is widely believed that man is apart from nature, superior to it; indeed, evolution is a process to create man and seat him on the apex of the cosmic pinnacle. He views the earth as a treasury that he can plunder at will. And, indeed, the behavior of Western people, notably since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, gives incontrovertible evidence to support this assertion." - Ian McHarg

"There is no word for 'nature' in my language. Nature, in English, seems to refer to that which is separate from human beings. It is a distinction we don't recognize." - Audrey Shenandoah, Clan Mother of the Onandaga Nation.

"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals.... They are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other nations." - Henry Beston ["The Outermost House"]

Respect for Animals

Both ancient and modern hunter-gatherer cultures demonstrate great respect for non-human beings. When animals are killed for food, various rituals express thanks to the animal and its spirit. Such cultures recognize the limits of their environment to provide such food and do not overhunt or overfish and do not leave any part of a killed animal unutilized. Other environmental components involving food and raw materials are also respected. Worship of soil, rain, and sun recognizes their great importance to tribal life. Many books have explored these intimate relations between human groups and nature , including Gerry Mander's "In the Absence of the Sacred" and Thomas Berry's "The Dream of the Earth".

The thread of human concern for nature runs throughout history. For millennia Jains in India have placed animals, and indeed plants and inanimate objects, on the same level as humans (see the Ecospirituality chapter). Early Christianity had its St. Francis of Assisi, who preached the equality of all creatures. "Charismatic megafauna" (see the Conservation Biology chapter) attract humanity to create masks and rituals, to mount stuffed heads on walls and skins on floors, and to swim along with marine mammals. The poets of the romantic period early in the 19th Century praised nature and landscapes, initiating the genre of "nature writing", and leading to many well-known books such as Edwin Way Teale's series "The American Seasons" and Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek". But over the past several decades nature writing has moved beyond descriptions of the wonders of nature to concern for the protection of nature.

At the beginning of "Hayduke Lives", Edward Abbey describes the death and burial of a desert tortoise by a yellow monster bulldozing a road to a huge new open pit mine. The sympathy of the writer greatly favors the tortoise over the bulldozer and the people behind it (both literally and figuratively), and over the usefulness of the mine's production to yet more people. In "Sand County Almanac" Aldo Leopold questioned human dominance over, and yet ignorance about, natural systems and the beings that make them work. His famous statement -- "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." -- provided an early rallying cry for the ecocentric movement. Other writers, like Barry Lopez in "Arctic Dreams", and Terry Tempest Williams, have fostered increased respect for wild animals and the ecosystems in which they exist.

Most animal rights activists wish that humans would never kill animals and never treat them with disrespect. The well-known organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals asserts that

"Animals Are Not Ours to Eat
Animals Are Not Ours to Wear
Animals Are Not Ours to Experiment On
Animals Are Not Ours to Use for Entertainment
Animals Are Not Ours to Abuse in Any Way."

While these goals are admirable, they raise some ecocentric questions. As we will see below, deep ecologists, who form a core group of Ecoshift, extend inherent value and rights to plants and inanimate objects as well as to animals. The Universe Story does not ascribe a higher level of being to animals than to plants or microbes. As a plant-lover, I don't recognize a distinction between animals and plants with respect to inherent rights. If we accept an argument that animals are a "higher" life form than plants, then it becomes easy to argue that humans are "higher" than both. My late co-worker Alex Shigo became well-known for his publication "A Tree Hurts Too" about wound responses in plants.

Theodore Roszak articulates another point-of-view in "Voice of the Earth" [p. 250] saying that "there are environmental militants (like some in the animal rights movement) who assert the equal right of every species to life, a position not apt to find widespread endorsement among the hungry many where their interests clash with bird or beast." Heifer International insists that meat is necessary to prevent starvation for millions (or even billions) in the poverty-stricken third world. The Food chapter of this book does not argue that everyone should be completely vegetarian, but does encourage much less meat for the affluent. With respect to clothing also, we can argue whether an animal skin on a native of the jungle or the tundra is a greater crime against Creation than the harvest of vast acreages of cotton to provide closets full of clothes for the affluent billion.

The Arrogance of Humanism

The thread of respect for nature is only one small thread in the whole cloth of history. Somewhere along the way the vast majority of humanity lost this respect for non-human beings and the natural systems in which they thrive. Arguments abound about whether agriculture, urbanization, religion, industrialization, science, or whatever, began and fostered the process. But from the 17th century through the 20th century, so-called "Western" thinking, whether "Christian" or "humanist", spiritual or secular, dominated world cultures, world economics, and world politics. This thinking is clearly anthropocentric, and believes that Earth and everything on it belongs to those humans who can do whatever creates the most power and money.

In 1967, at the beginning of the environmentalist surge of the 1970s, Lynn White wrote his famous and controversial essay "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" [Science 155: 1203-1207], which can be summed up in one quote:

"In Antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit.... Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects."

By the latter half of the past millennium, Christianity and its relatives Judaism and Islam, placed humans just below God and well above animals and all other organic and inorganic objects, which were here only to serve humanity and thus God.

In the late 1970's, David Ehrenfeld furthered the controversy by describing "The Arrogance of Humanism". He defined humanism as a fundamental belief that humanity is capable of solving all its problems, and stated that, whether recognized or not, humanism is the dominant "religion" of humanity. Ehrenfeld added [p.17] to this basic belief with:

"Many problems are soluble by technology.
Those problems that are not soluble by technology, or by technology alone, have solutions in the social world (of politics, economics, etc.).
When the chips are down, we will apply ourselves and work together for a solution before it is too late.
Some resources are infinite; all finite or limited resources have substitutes.
Human civilization will survive."

Humanism adds to anthropocentrism an overweening optimism about the abilities and future of humankind. It includes faith in human reason, faith in human perfectibility, faith in human science and technology, faith in human ability to dominate and control our environment, and faith in human power. This optimism now drives global culture regardless of whether humans are believed to be at the top of the Universe's power pyramid, or are just one step "under God". Humanism refuses to recognize that there are, and may always be, limits to our control and to our knowledge. The arrogance of humanism has led to the immense problems of globalization, social Darwinism, and the consumer culture documented throughout ECOSHIFT.

Hubris in 1961

Just as I began to write this chapter and to reread Ehrenfeld, I received a "scrapbook" packet from an old friend of my parents. In it was a copy of the commencement address delivered by Dr. Fred L. Whipple to Northeastern University in 1961. Fred was a good friend of my family and a well-known astronomer famous for his "dirty snowball" description of comets. His speech was a reflection of the times. He said: "New energy sources for human use will make fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, seem like match sticks in a forest. By hydrogen fusion our oceans will eventually become power sources wherein pounds, or even ounces of water, more than equal a ton of coal. Medical progress will conquer essentially all diseases except one that is universally fatal, old age.... I believe we can, if we choose, make this planet support 100 to 1000 times as many people as now live on it and this in comfort and security, if not in larger living areas."

Just 17 years later, Ehrenfeld wrote "The popular idea of 'clean fusion power' is a myth that encompasses every environmental delusion and folly of which this humanistic attitude is capable" ["The Arrogance of Humanism" p. 116]. Now, almost 50 years later, fusion power is as distant as ever, we fear that disease-causing microorganisms are mutating faster than our ability to defend against them, and more people are starving than ever before.

Ehrenfeld, as many others before and after, urges that "reason" must be tempered by human emotion or feeling. Reason, and consequently "science" and "technology", became the favored mode of human decision-making about 400 years ago. But use of reason usually depends on various unstated assumptions. Thus Ehrenfeld argues that "a clever person can use reason to support any course of action that he or she fancies - it takes decent feelings to pick the right one (ital. au.)" [p. 146]. An alternative statement was once made by my friend Louise Tritton - "Science can not make political decisions." Knowledge, elucidated by reason and science, may be necessary, but is insufficient to support or justify ethics, cultural, or social choices. Reason cannot differentiate right from wrong. Ehrenfeld continues [p. 163]: "emotion is an integration and summarization phenomenon." This leaves us with a need to develop emotions, feelings, and faith to blend with the scientific reason of the Universe Story.

Arne Naess and Thomas Berry

While many environmentalists were making great headway through the 1970s and 1980s cleaning up pollution and protecting endangered species, a few visionaries saw that these efforts insufficiently addressed the basic problems and thus could not change fundamental human behavior. Fritjof Capra, in "The Turning Point", criticized the paradigm of rational, linear, reductionist science and technology, blaming it for many of the ills of society, and argued the need to bring emotion, intuition, and holism back into the worldview of humanity. This is the argument that we had moved too far to the left side of the table in the Great Turning chapter, and needed to swing more to the right side. On p. 16 Capra says: "what we need, then, is a new 'paradigm' -- a new vision of reality, a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions, and values". He was one of the first to describe the "paradigm shift" that was already beginning by 1980, but had not yet been recognized.

At the same time, Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess originated a philosophy that he called "deep ecology". This name highlights its difference from "shallow" environmentalism based on anthropocentric values, and brings in the holism that underlies ecological science. Naess carried the concept of respect among humans through respect for other living beings to respect for Earth's life support systems. Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, helped to popularize deep ecology concepts in his various books, including "A Dream of the Earth" and "The Great Work". George Sessions, Bill Devall, John Seed, Joanna Macy, Alan Drengson and others have further developed the concepts of deep ecology and its near synonym, ecocentrism.

"Deep ecology encourages a fundamental shift in the way we experience nature and how we respond to the environmental crisis. Deep ecology rises from a belief in the essential value and interdependence of all forms of being. Supporters of deep ecology are committed to minimizing humanity's destructive interference with the rest of the natural world and to restoring the diversity and complexities of ecosystems and human communities. The deep ecology vision promotes practices to help change old patterns of thinking and acting. It reconciles us with the larger natural world that is our home.
This philosophy has risen in popularity in part because it questions the aims of many environmental movements that are popular now. Basically most environmental movements have taken as their base the value of nature to humans. Deep Ecology rejects this and asserts that rather than seeing nature as valuable to humans we should see nature as valuable in and of itself. This, many deep ecologists believe, means that as a world society we must alter our idea of our relationship to nature as well as our relationships with each other." - Attributed to a "Center for Deep Ecology" on a dead web page

My own one sentence definition of deep ecology reads: All species of living beings and all kinds of non-living beings have equal inherent rights to participate in Continuing Creation on Earth. This statement derives from a growing recognition that Earth may be more unique in the Universe than we thought decades ago. As far as we know AND MAY EVER KNOW, life on Earth is a unique manifestation of the creative power of the Universe. This scientific fact remarkably does not disagree with the teachings of many religions through the ages. Deep ecology recognizes that any SPECIES of plant or animal only survives about 2 million years before it evolves into something else, and that this is a very short time relative to Earth's age. Deep ecologists also recognize that non-living beings evolve too: mountains, rivers, soils, deserts, glaciers, oceans, and continents. Recognition that evolutionary creation continues, albeit very slowly from our short-term viewpoint, leads to understanding that humans are currently having far too much impact on Earth's creative processes. Thomas Berry writes:

"The true, fundamental relationship between humans and the natural world is one of wonder, beauty, and intimacy.... We need to assert that there is a single community of life on Earth, and that community lives or dies together. Every being has three rights: the right to be, the right to habitat, and the right to fulfill its role in the ever-renewing process of Nature" [Wild Earth, Summer 2000, p 93].

The Eight Points of Deep Ecology

In 1984 Arne Naess and George Sessions, "during a camping trip in Death Valley", summarized or codified deep ecology thinking into Eight Points. Naess later called these "a set of fairly general and abstract statements that seem to be accepted by nearly all supporters of the Deep Ecology movement." In "Deep Ecology for the 21st Century" [p. 68], edited by Sessions, Naess lists the Points as follows:

"The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent worth). These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.
Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantially smaller human population. The flourishing of non-human life requires a smaller human population (ital. au.).
Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between bigness and greatness.
Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes."

Stan Rowe, quoted on the Ecospheric Ethics web site, has proposed altering the first four Points from a biocentric to an ecocentric perspective:

"The well-being and flourishing of the living Earth and its many organic/inorganic parts have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
Richness and diversity of Earth's ecosystems, as well as the organic forms that they nurture and support, contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
Humans have no right to reduce the diversity of Earth's ecosystems and their vital constituents, organic and inorganic.
The flourishing of human life and culture is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The creative flourishing of Earth and its multitudinous nonhuman parts, organic and inorganic, requires such a decrease."

Rowe argues that the phrase "except to satisfy vital human needs" in the original third Point allows continued reduction of diversity as long as human population continues to grow. Rowe prefers to state maintenance of diversity as an absolute and asserts that it can only be satisfied with a human population of less than one billion (see the Population chapter).

Rights, Worth, and Hubris

Reading the Eight Points without lots of introductory and background material can produce a strong negative reaction. The Points seem anti-human. How can non-human life be as important as human life? Satish Kumar, long-time editor of the wonderful magazine Resurgence, prefers the term "reverential ecology" to deep ecology. He says that deep doesn't necessarily mean good, and that some deep ecologists put other-than-human life too much ahead of human life. Additional controversy surrounds the issue of giving "rights" to the other-than-human. Peter Seidel in "Invisible Walls says that "rights" are a human invention anyway and do not exist in nature. He goes on to say that the concept of rights is based on selfishness. And Baird Caldecott says "To extend rights to wild animals would be in effect to domesticate them."

Yet legal questions must be answered, such as the right of marine mammals to remain free from adverse effects of active sonar testing (creation of sonar waves to detect submarines). In January 15, 2008 President Bush exempted the U.S. Navy from meeting provisions of the Coastal Zone Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Though many unanswered scientific questions remain, some courts have supported the rights of mammals to be free from such damaging sound waves. But in November 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (7-2) that national "defense" supercedes the rights of whales and dolphins to a life free of endangering noise.

At the height of the 1970's when clearcutting was a major environmental issue, Christopher Stone wrote a seminal book titled "Should Trees Have Standing?", which was reissued in 1996. The question involved whether trees should have legal rights. One principle of the Forest Guild, an alternative association of professional foresters, is "The forest has value in its own right, independent of human intentions and needs." Recently, a group of Midwestern loggers sued the U.S. Forest Service for violating the First Amendment by ruling in favor of environmentalists about timber sales. The loggers claimed that environmentalists are deep ecologists, and deep ecology is a religion, so ruling in their favor is favoring one religion over another. Maybe they are partly right.

In Green Space, Green Time [p. 244 ff.] Connie Barlow engages herself with an anthropocentric devil's advocate over the question of whether the Mexican gray wolf should be reintroduced into the wild. She begins by stating "these four credos mean that, for me, the pageant is sacred, the diversity of life is sacred, bioregions are sacred, Gaia is sacred." When asked why biodiversity is sacred, she replies "Biodiversity is sacred because it is my religion to believe so." Deep ecology is a spiritual issue, not a scientific one.

The Eight Points in fact eschew the word "rights" in favor of "intrinsic value" or worth that does not arise from any relationship to humanity. The term "rights" is reserved for "human rights", which appear to be self-ordained. Inherent worth differs from usefulness. Species NEED NOT play a large role in an ecosystem in order to have value, and certainly do not need to have any benefit to humanity. Many deep ecologists extend the concept of inherent worth beyond other living species to all "entities", such as rocks, landscapes, rivers, mountains, and the ocean. Such entities, too, deserve to develop in their own ways, free from human interference. Jeffrey A. Lockwood ["Good for Nothing" UUWorld May/June 2001, p. 31] provides my favorite quote: "The problem is that nature doesn't exist for us, ecosystems don't care about us, animals don't generally love us, and the universe doesn't really need us." What humanity needs is a good dose of humility rather than our current overdose of hubris.

For those who still want to put humanity first, I ask: is there any difference between a self-proclaimed "superior" species destroying other species as it chooses and a self-proclaimed "superior" race destroying other races, or a self-proclaimed "superior" religion destroying other religions?

We can contrast humanism with deep ecology regarding respect and responsibility. The hubris of humanism allows us "ordinary" humans to avoid thinking about problems. We can go on enjoying ourselves because our share of the problems is unimportant or negligible; others will solve them somehow. Deep ecology, on the other hand, insists that we ARE the problems and that each of us needs to take responsibility for solutions if possible, or change if not, including changing our own basic attitudes and actions. Deep ecology works to attack the causes of problems in order to prevent them, not to find short-term cures within the current organization of world society. Deep ecologists also try to move beyond the negativity of shallow environmentalism to the positive, to stop berating on humanity for being irresponsible and start talking about what we ought to do and are doing to create real change.

Delving Deeper

John Seed and Joanna Macy developed the "Council of All Beings" (see the Ecopsychology chapter) as a deep ecology ritual to reconnect us with the living Earth and its sources of joy, commitment, and inspiration. Participation in a Council has been an important rite of passage for people coming into the ecocentric movement. Macy and Brown's "Coming Back to Life" provides a variety of other deep ecology exercises for individuals or workshop leaders.

Other deep ecology rituals or workshop activities have developed around the Universe Story (see the Universe Story chapter). Sister Miriam MacGillis of Genesis Farm invented The Cosmic Walk, a walk along a timeline of the universe. Genesis Farm offers multi-day workshops on the "New Cosmology". Connie Barlow's "Gift of Tiamat" on The Great Story web site involves masked acting out of chemical elements, planets, animals, and mental elements, along with narrative poetry.

For more deep ecology on the web, see Margaret RainbowWeb's brief description and visit her deep ecology page and the rest of her web site. The Deep Ecology page of the Rainforest Information Centerhas an extensive reading list (but without notes).

"Deep Ecology for the 21st Century" is a series of 13 one-hour radio programs that you can suggest to your local public radio station or listen to yourself. They can found at New Dimensions by searching for the title. The Northwest Earth Institute disseminates a group study curriculum on "Exploring Deep Ecology".

The Foundation for Deep Ecology supports education, advocacy, and legal action on behalf of wild Nature through projects, publications, public programs, and grants to non-profit groups. Efforts include protecting and restoring big wilderness, making farming more compatible with biological diversity, and stopping the homogenization of the world by the global industrial economy.

For further reading in deep ecology, I recommend Thomas Berry's "The Dream of the Earth" and "The Great Work", and two collections of readings, George Sessions' "Deep Ecology for the Twenty-first Century" and Drengson and Inoue's "The Deep Ecology Movement", though some of the latter is pretty heavy going. All these authors have also written more recent books on the subject. Since deep ecology has been developed by philosophers, reading about can be slow going. It is important to focus on the basics rather than to get bogged down in the verbose details.

On the other hand, many people have been introduced to ecocentric, deep ecological thinking by reading "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn. This easy read consists largely of a dialog between a human and a gorilla in which the human learns about the difference between human cultures of "Takers" and "Leavers". "Taker" cultures started with the onset of agriculture and are supported by many religious creation stories. "Leaver" cultures, in contrast, live sustainably within natural systems. The gorilla says: "The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man.... This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world."

"Ishmael" and most (all?) other books on these issues avoid discussing the very important problem of whether a single human life is worth more than the lives of any or all other organisms or species. We came close to destroying the Pacific yew to produce the anti-cancer drug taxol. The question must be addressed directly. How many species am I willing to wipe out so my family can live? If human population continues to grow we will see more and more demands placed on Earth systems and species to give up their normal functioning and even existence so that ALL humans can survive and live long lives.

To the next chapter - Ecofeminism: Nurturing Mother Earth

To Table of Contents

ECOSHIFT: Deep Ecology - by Tony Federer