70 How Much Should a Person Consume? New Delhi blame it on Medha Parkar: indeed the precise timing of priced artacks on this most famous of Indian environmentalists can almost be predicted from the weather reports. The attacks come typi- cally in summer, when the airconditioners break down, or in the depths of winter, when the heaters do not get the required voltage. Holding Patkar responsible for the electricity crisis is to wish away the problems of theft, mismanagement, poor maintenance, and anti- quated technology that lie behind the power shortages in Indi. Ic is, also ignore the face chat environmental campaigns have, for che frst time, brought to centerstage the “victims of development,” the poor peasants and tribals who have thus far had to unwillingly make way for the dams, steel mills, and highways that dispossess them while bene- fiting others, Indeed, old-style public-sector socialism and new-style marcet liberalization are akin in some crucial respects. Both have incensified social inequalities as well as devastated the natural environ- ment. So its ironic that, today, the environmental movement isso much oon the defensive, Whereas in the 1980s iclooked as if their ideas might even translate into effective state policy, environmentaliss are now the favorite scapegoats of politicians and industrialists as well as of a con- sumer-driven media. In its countrywide implications the “environmental problem” is every bit as serious as the “Kashmir dispute” or the “fiscal crisis of the state.” Yer it has been poorly recognized by the intelligentsia and in- sufficiently acted upon by the political class. However, as we move further into the twenty-first century, the future of India asa sovereign nation might come to centrally depend on how its people manage their natural bounty, on their success in distributing its fruits equitably, on the prompmness with which they can take pre-emptive action against— of ameliorative action after—environmental degradation, A prominent columnist who often targets environmentalist in general is Swaminathan S. Aiyar of The Times of India, one who likes to target Medha Packat in particular is Tavleen Singh, formerly of India Taday and now of The Indien Expres. See Tasleen Singh, "Luddite Sisters,” “Beware the Eco and “The Light has Gone Out,” in India Today, issues of November 17, June 22, 1998, and December 27, 1999, respectively. CHAPTER 3 Three Environmental Utopias ‘The human world interests me more than the world of natu; may- be it isa heresy o say such a thing in America —Czeslaw Milosz ussions on environmental ethics have reached their high- ‘water mark in the United States, whether measured in terms of column inches of print space, enrolments in college courses, ‘or—the surest indicaror—the intensity of che debate. With the setting aside of wild areas being regarded as the best gauge of an ecological conscience, the development of environmental ethics has been closely linked to the growth of the American wilderness movement. Battles over the creation, preservation, and extension of the national park system form the backdrop against which the environmental commu- nity has examined and re-examined its ethical responsibilities toward nature. Three factors seem to have given a major impetus to modern de- bates on environmental ethics. The first, deale with in Chapter Onc, is the self-scrutiny of Christians following the indictment of thei faith byLynn White Jr. Ever since White, theologians and laymen alike have looked anxiously for signs of environmental responsibiliry within their own «radition, Sccond, there is a guilt complex more specific to the United Seates. In cesisting the equation of a dollar sign with theie cul- ture, Americans have pointed increasingly to their remarkable system of national parks. John Muir’ life-work, wrote one of his carly followers, was to help Americans shake off the twin shackles of “phi- listinism and commercialism.” thereby advancing “with freedom2 How Much Should a Person Consume? cowards the love of beauty as a principle."' Some seventy years later 2 ‘modern biographer of Muie argued thatthe wilderness movement was derived from a “deep stratum of the national experience which was surely as American as those of Joseph Coors and Union Carbide.”* ‘The thitd crucial influence on the development of environmental ethics is rooted in nature rather than euleare. As compared to topical ecologies, eemperate ecosystems are benign and hence more amenable to scientific exploitation for uiltarian ends, At the same time, for the ordinary city dveller the temperate forest isa good deal more welcom- ing than the tropical forest. The species diversity is far less—which ‘means, among other things, that there are fat fewer troublesome cre- atures such as leeches and cobras which, however attractive to the biologist, do nor encourage a quiet walk in the woods. As Aldous Hux- ley poinced out long ago, the worship of nature came easily to those who lived “beneath a temperate sky and in the age of Henry Ford.” In the tropics nature was fearsome, manifesting itself as “vast masses of swarming vegetation alien to the human spirit and hostile to it;” not, asin the North Atlantic world, a “chaste, mild deity” that could so easi- ly be “enslaved to man.” ‘The relative simplicity of temperate ecosystems is complemented by their greater ability to recover from disturbance. ‘There is no tor- rential monsoon beating down on land freshly cleared of forest and making it difficult for new growth to clothe it. In this respect the term temperate is wholly apt. Here, the even-tempered climate has allowed for and inspired radical programs of environmental modification. ‘Thus, while some in the West have adored nature, othets have just as easly controlled and dominated it. The ecology of the temperate zone has facilitated both the conquest and the worship of nacure. “This triple heritage of Christianity, anti-philistinism, and benign cology has given the debate on environmental ethics a distinctively * Robert Underwood Johnson, “John Mais,” eribute dated January 6, 1916, in Academy Notes and Monographs (New York: The American Academy of Arts and Leteers, 1922), pp. 21-2. 2 Frederick Turnct, “So Necessarily Elite,” in Park in the West and American Cateure (Sun Valley, 1D: Insite of the American West, 1984). 3 Wordsworth inthe Tropics,” in Aldous Husky, Do What you Will(19295 pnt London: Chatto and Windus, 1956) Three Environmental Utopias 3 American stamp. Strongly rooted in US history, the debate asi seands is largely incomprehensible co environmentalists from other cul- Aparticular weakness of this debate has been its rather narrow focus oon individual attitudes toward nature. There is little attempt to locate these attitudes in their cultural context, or indeed to examine their social, as distinct from ecological, consequences. This juxtaposition of singular man to singular nature gives rise to a series of binary opposi- tions, around which the history of environmental ideas is then written. ‘Thus, Donald Worster’s magisterial history of ecological ideas in the ‘West is woven around the polar opposites of arcadian and imperial attitudes toward nature, Likewise, both Roderick Nash and Stephen Fox have tried to rewrite the history of American cavionmentalism. as a struggle berween “preservationists” who wish to preserve nature and wild species for their own sake, and “utilitarians” who, with the help of science and rational management, transform nature into useful commodities, working toward “the greatest good of the greatest num- ber for the longest time.” And for today's deep ecologists the only ewo admissible attitudes are “anthropocentric” (human centered) and “biocentric” (nature centered), The story of environmental ethics is thereby reduced 10 a Manichaean struggle between one set of good ideas (arcadian, preservationist, biocentric) and an opposing set of evil ‘ones (imperial, utilitarian, anthropocentric).4 “This chapter tries to see the American debate on environmental ethics from broader perspectives chat may enrich it. To circurnvent its idealise and individualist tenor I intend to recast the debate as one aboutsocial utopias. For, every theory of nature is embedded in a larger theory of society. As Raymond Williams warned us, “if we talk only of singular Man and singular Nature, we can compose a general history, but at the cost of excluding the real and altering social relations.” Indeed, “the idea of nature contains an extraordinary amount of hu- man history.” and “what is often being argued. .. in the idea of nature * Donald Worster, Natures Economy, Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind; Suephen Fox, The American Conservasion Movement: john Muir and his Legacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 985); Devall and Ses- sions, Deep Ecology.74 How Much Should a Person Consume? is the idea of man; the idea of man in society, indeed the ideas of kinds of societies."* 1 In the modern marketplace of ideas, environmentalism occupies the broad space between «wo sharply opposed views of the human pre- dicament: the bueyantly optimistic vision of the economist and the profoundly pessimistic vision of the biologist. The neoclassical eco- ‘nomist’s mystical belief in the magic of the market as an instrument of human welfare contrasts with the population biologist’s equally mys- tical belief in the human propensity for collective suicide through overbreeding. If the economist acknowledges no natural limits to growth, the biologist is obsessed only with such limits. Whar the ewo have in common is their skepticism of purposive action for the com- ‘mon good: in the one case it is not needed because of the mantra that the marker takes care ofall our problems; in the other case itis probably 00 late, ‘As compared to the dominant schools in economics and biology. environmentalist take a subtle view of the human prospect. They ad nnowledge that Spaceship Earth does set certain limits to economic ‘expansion butargue that itis only at certain times and in certain places that environmental degradation is of sufficient magnitude to threaten the future of specific societies, However, like neoclassical economics and Malehusian biology, ecological consciousness must aso be viewed asa distinctive response to the growth of industrial society. Here, I be- lieve chat, within the environmental movement, thereare three generic responses to industrialization: the three environmental philosophies of our time are agrarianisns, wilderness thinking, and. scientific indus- srialiom. ‘At one level, of course, these are simply three perspectives on the human-nature relationship. Scientific industrialism and wilderness are the «wo old antagonists parading under new names: one advacating the conquest of nature, the other pleading for human sul mission to natural processes. And agrarianism is nothing but the 5 "Ideas of Nature” (1972), in Raymond Wiliams, Problems in Materialism and Culture (London: Verso, 1984), pp. 70, 84 Three Environmental Utopias 75 search for a golden mean of stewardship and sustainable use. How- ‘ever, each of these perspectives on nature also forms part of a larger philosophy of social reconstruction. They each rest ona distinct theory of hiscory which outlines where society is coming from, where it seems to be heading, and in what direction it should go. I term these philo- sophies “utopian” for in each case their critique of the existing social order has as its point of reference an ideal sociery free of the blemishes of the one being attacked, For agrarianism, the apogee of human history is represented by the sgrain-based civilizations of Europe and Asia. The agrarian views with disfavor both tribal sociery—where life was believed to be nasty, brutish, and short—and industrial society, where humans have suc- cumbed to the pursuit of wealth. The ecological and social ideal here is peasant society, where technology is on the human scale and the bonds of community strong, The political program of aggarianism is therefore to resist the onslaught of commercialism and industrialism where they have nor yet made inroads; and where they have, to re- solutely euin one’s back on modern society and go “back to the land.” As a social response to industralization, agrarianism has usually invoked the traditions of a culture staring defeat in the face. In Social Origine of Dictatorship and Democracy, bis great work on the making. ‘of the modern world, Barringcon Moore Jr eather cynically rematked thar the peasant rebellions of early modern Europe represented the “dying wail ofa class over whom the wave of progress is about to roll.” Memories of these peasant movements were, however, kept alive by «a galaxy of pocts and writers whose moral, and indeed ecological, in- dictment of industrial capitalism has been brilliant!y analyzed in the English case by Raymond Williams.® But even as the industrial eco- nomy of the North has transformed itself inco a post-industrial one, “CE Leo Marx, “American Literary Culture and the Fatalstic View of “Technology” in idem, The Pilocand te Pasenger: Esays on Literarure,Tehnalogy ‘and Culture inthe Unized States (New York: Oxford University Prest, 1988). " Barrington Moore, Ju. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord sand Peatant in she Making of the Modern World (Harmondsworth; Penguin, 1966), p. 505. Raymond Willams, Ue Country and the City (New York: Onford Unives- sity Press, 1973). CF. also Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology: Worduworth and the Environmental Trdition (London: Routledge, 1991),76 How Much Should a Person Consume? in other parts of the world agrarianism continues to exercise a compel- ling appeal. ; Later [shall have more to say about the heritage of the best-known ‘American agrarian, Thomas Jefferson, and that of the best known Ind- jan agrarian, Mahatma Gandhi. For a succinct statement of the agrat- ian ideal, however, we need to turn to Gandhi's close contemporary, the poet and novelist Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for liverature. In an arresting analogy—albeit one wh modern ferninists may find patriarchally irksome—Tagore observes thar Villages are like women. In their keeping is he cradle of the race. They are nearer to nazure than towns, and in closer touch with the fountain of life. They possess a narural power of healing. tis the function of the village, lke that of women, to provide people with theirclementary needs, with food and joy, with the simple poetry oflifeand with those ceremonies ‘ofbeauty which the village spontaneously produces and in which she finds delight. Bue when constant strain i put upom her, when her resources ate ‘excessively exploited, she becomes dull and uncreative. From her tims- honoured postion ofthe wedkled wife, she chen descends to that ofamakd- servant. The city in its incense egorism and pride, remains unconscious ‘of the hurt ie inflicts on the very source of its life, health and joy. In medieval civlization—or what Tagore calls the “natural state"— the ‘village and the town have harmonious interactions. From theone, flow food and health and fellow being. From the other, return gifts of ‘wealth, knowledge and energy.” This balance is rudely shattered by the growth of industrialization. Now, “greed has struck at the relationship ‘of mutuality between town and village.” For, “modern cities feed upon the social organism that runs through the village. They appropriate the life stuff of the community and slough off a huge amount of dead mat- ter, while making 2 lurid counterfeit of prosperiy.” Indeed, today “represent energy and materials concentrated for the satisfaction ‘of chat bloated appetite which isthe characteristic symptom of modern civilization.” “City and Village” (1928), in Rabindranath Tagore on Rural Reconstruction (New Delis Ministry of Community Development and Co-operation, 1962). Three Environmencal Uropias 7 ‘We come next ro wilderness thinking, che environmental philoso- phy so firmly planed in American soil. There is widespread agree ment within the wilderness movement on the need t fully protect and if possible expand the system of national parks; there is, however, no such consensus on a philosophy of social reconstruction based on the wildecness ethic. One school, among whose influential spokesmen is Roderick Nash, views nature appreciation as an indication of a cule ture’ maturity. Here, wilderness is not counterposed to civilization but isin face the surese indicator of the flowering of civilization. In this perspective automobiles and national parks, free-flowing rivers and powcr plants, universities and trails, can and must coexist." Of more interest to us isthe radical strand in wilderness thinking, which we may call pre-agrarianism or, perhaps more accurately, prim svism. This believes that an original sate of harmony with nature was rudely shattered by the white man. Here, 6 may as well stand for “Be- fore Columbus.” The founder of the Wilderness Socicry, Robert Mar- shall, claimed that before Columbus the whole of North America was a wilderness where “over billions of acres the aboriginal wanderers still spun out their peripatetic careers, the wild animals still browsed in unmolested meadows and the forests still grew and moldered and grew again precisely as they had done for interminable centuties.""! For the primitivist the victory of agriculture signals a precipitous fll in eco- logical wisdom. And, as the iron plough lacerates mother earth, hu- ‘man history spirals downward. Industrialism only further accentuates the separation of humans from nature, a partial brake on its excesses being provided, belatedly and ineffectively, by the movement ro set aside areas of forest and wilderness as national parks, The primitivist theory of history has inspired truly radical propo- saly—for example, the reduction of human population by 90 percent to allow the recovery of wilderness areas and species threatened with '® Cl. Roderick Nash, “The Exporting and Importing of Nature: Nature- Appreciation asa Commodity, 1850-1950,” in Penpecties in American History Volume XIT (Cambridge, Mass: Charles Waeren Center for Studies in American History, 1979). 1 Robere Marshall, “The Problem ofthe Wilderness” (1930), in erst Club Ballet vol. 32, no. 5, 1947, p4478 How Much Should a Person Consume? extinction." Pursuing che principle of *biocentric equality” which they hold dear, deep ecologiscs—pethaps constituting the leading edge of primixivism—turn their back on both agricultural and industrial society. Only hunting and gathering, they believe, can satisfy essential human needs without sacrificing the rights of non-human species. A return to pagan, pre-Christian origins is therefore a precondition for restoring harmony in nature. This return ro origins would allow even ‘white society to recover its humanity. To quote the Native American thinker Vine Deloria, Jr “the whice man must drop his dollar-chasing, vilization and return to a simple, tribal, game-hunting, berry-hunt- ing life ifh is to survive, Fe must quickly adopt notonly the contemp- corary [American] Indian worldview but the ancient Indian worldview to survive.” The idea that huncer-gatherers were the fitst, and perhaps still che ‘only rea, environmentaliss is pervasive among radical edges of the wilderness movement. It is upheld by many activists and implicidly present in the work of some scientstsas well. Reviewing the biologist Jared Diamond's book Collapse, the Cambridge economist Partha Dasgupta sarcastically says: “reading Diamond you would think that four ancestors should all have remained hunter-gatherers in Africa, co evolving with the native flora and fauna, and roaming the wilds in search of wild berries and the occasional piece of meat.” The disdain is unmistakable, and redolent of the Oxbridge high table. But the fact is that even if Diamond does not quite think that way, many of his fellow greens in California do believe that not just our ancestors but cour descendants should live in this fashion." ‘The primicivist theory of history is in essence a theory of de- development ox un-development,a steay fall from the natural high of hunter-gatherer society. For, the frst humans were literally reared in the womb of nature. Exposed from birth to the sights, smells, and sounds of the natural world, hunter gatherers were at one with their surroundings, feeling themselves to be the “guests rather than masters 8 Of Dave Forman, “A Modest Proposal for a Wiklerness System,” Whole Earth Review, 90.53, Winter 1986-7. . °S Quoted in George Feaver, “Vine Deora,” Encounter, April 1975, p39 14 Dasgupta’ review, published in che Loudon Review of Books availble at swwwleb.co.uk/v27/n10/print/dasgO hem! Three Environmental Utopias 79 of nature. This unity was disrupted by civilization which, in the words of the California ecologist Paul Shepard, “increased the separation bberween the individual and the natural world as it did the child from the mother. . .” Significantly, agriculture rather than industry is held to be the original culprie for fostering the dualism of humans and rnacure in which “wild ching aze enemies of the tame; the wild other is not the context but the opponent of ‘my’ domain.” ‘What distinguishes scientific industrialiom is chat, among the three «environmental philosophies of history being considered here, i alone looks ahead. Here, human salvation lies in the future, not in return to an agrarian or pre-agrarian past. The task is to tame industrialism and temper its excesses, nat urn our back on it. Asa philosophy of resource swe (a term abhorrent to agrarian and primitivist alike), scientific in- dustralism seeks to replace the anarchy of the market with a rational rogram of state control, Industrial capitalism may be ecologically wasteful but scientific expertise, when backed by legislation and an activist state, can assure the sustained yield of natural resources so cru- cial co human welfare. Like agrarianism and wilderness thinking, scientific industrialism has a distinctive three-stage interpretation of human history. A fine statement comes from the pen of that pioneering American forester of the nineteenth century Bernhard Fernow, In an essay titled “Battle of the Forest” Fernow, giving an interesting twist to primitivist nar- ratives, starts with the process of ecological succession. Thus, the process of glaciation is followed by the formation of the soil, the gra- dual emergence of plants and then trees, culminating at last in what we know as virgin forest. This painfully slow and by no means unidirec- tional process is the “unwritten history of the battle of the forest,” a “product of long struggles extending over centuries, nay thousands of years.” Buc the hurdles of nature are nothing compared to the threats posed by humans, For, pre-industrial society in gencral, and most especially farmers and shepherd, rake “sides against the forest.” Through “will ful or careless destruction” they have “wasted the work of nature through thousands of ‘years by the foolish destruction of the forest 2 Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1982), pp. 3-7, 28-39,80 How Much Should a Person Consume? cover.” They have “accomplished in many localities uter euin .. . and turned them backinto inhospitable deserts as they first were before the struggle of the forest had made them inhabitable.” Scientific forestry, next, inaugurates a more hopeful stage, but the habits of many lifetimes dic hard. Fernow leaves us with a picture of the forester heroically battling the uneducated citizen, with the result very much in the balance: “I'he battle of the forest in this country is how being fought by man, the unintelligent and greedy carrying on a war of extermination, the intelligent and provident trying to defend the forest cover."!6 (Our three philosophies of environmental history do not usually speak dirculy ww questions of gender. Still, one can berween the lines distinguish three different kinds of emphases, The ideal role of women in agrarian society is vividly illustrated in the extract from Tagore. In her “time-honoured position of the wedded wife” she keeps the family and household going, while in the community at large women are the symbol of continuity, the vehicle by which traditions are passed on from onc generation to another. From one point of view the role of wo- men is here stable and well defineds from another itis severely circum- scribed, Primitivists tend to believe the latter, holding that icis only in hunter-gatherer societies that we find a relative equality of the scxes. ‘This is ascribed to the absence of private property in land, and to the fact that women, as the primary gatherers of food, play a far more important role in economic life. Respect for women in primitive so- ciety, it is further argued, goes hand in hand with the “feminine prin- ciple” in nature, Finally, scientific industrialists claim thar modern science enormously expands opportunities for both men and women. Only in modern society are women not barred from professional careers, only in the cities aze they free ofthe petty tyrants and super- stitions of the village ‘Over a century and more the principles of these utopias have been articulated in print and, less often, action. Words and sometimes deeds are the forms in which they typically manifest chemselves, words and deeds quoted and analyzed at different points through this book. [also offer below three visual representations that capture the core belie, 16 Bemard Fernow, “The Battle of the Forest.” The National Geographic Magazine, June 1894. Three Environmental Uropias 81 ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHIES? A GRAPLIC SUMMARY AGRARIANISM Enteral ac focal poorest Agents of Ev! The Machine, materialistic philosophy Key phrases Technology ‘om the ham scale’. hack to the td Policy Go back Stage It PRIMITIVISM. vironmental and So good a : supe Stage Tine ents of Evil The plow that lcertes Mother Fath the white man Key phrases Prine / pomeedial virgin / unypoit mature, ‘he equally of sexes and of ll species Go back t9 Stage | (caninate 90% ofthe human Popeltion if necessary?) Policy82 How Much Should a Person Consume? SCIENTIFIC INDUSTRIALISM. ingen and ‘cal gocdmes ‘Agent of Bil tern nara opel pstts) PRLS Besnard pace oer Petey eevee ope suppositions, prejudices, and prescriptions of the great environmental philosophies of our time. ave skegched the broad ou ie Feanenin her arieaation in wo deren content nia ‘and the United States. One is the most powerful country in the in- dustrial world, now moving toward a post-industrial economy and post-marerial societys the other is a populous and largely agricultural Country secking desperately wo industrialize as rapidly as possible. ‘What stands out in this comparison is that while che dominane environmental philosophy in India is agrarianism, in the United States ic is wilderness thinking, The Indian movement bases ineon whe tions of an agrarian culture while invoking a more recent his ¢ eee movements agsins British colonialism led by Mahatma Gandhi. The rhetoric of this environmental movernent is greatly in- fluenced by Gandhi’s anti-industrial philosophy, and its more vocal sections call for a return to the Mahatma’s vision of a village-centered nomic order.” Or ‘course, agratianism is also a powerful current in American cul- tural history. Its most famous statement, Jefferson's Notes on Virginia ines of three environmental uto- 17 -These themes are explored ie greater dealin chapters 2 and 9, Three Environmental Usopias 83 is, ike Gandhi’ pamphlet Hind Swaraj (Indian home rule), in the main a manifesto of social reconstruction based on the susbsistence farm, There are, however, two important ways in which American ag- rarianism differs from its Indian counterpart. While Gandhi invokes the spirit of community which he believes to be intrinsic o traditional peasant cultures, the yeoman farmer of Jefferson’ imagination is a figure of sturdy independence. Private proprietorship of land is, in the Jeffersonian vision, a sine qua non of the individualist spirit, which is in turn the bedrock of democracy. And while Gandhian agrarianism is acutely aware of ecological limits, the American version is in fact premised on the ecological abundance of a sparsely settled continent. ‘Their occupation of a scemingly endless continent was, indeed, a source of great comfort to carly American agrarians like Jefferson and Crevecoetr, In Europe limitations ofspace may have forced the work- ing poor to accept the miseries of city life, but in the new continent “virgin land,” the precondition fora society of yeoman farmers, “had been given co Americans in extreme, almost unbelievable abun- dance.”!® This optimism was shared by the writers and scholars who, following in Jefferson's footsteps, authored the inter-war manifesto called 1 Take My Stand, The most eloquent of these “Southern Agrat= ians,” the poet John Crowe Ransom, claimed that the unemployment problem of the 1930s was a direct consequence of industrialization and the shift of population from country to city. Advocating the return of the unemployed co the land, Ransom observed: "So far as America is concerned, there always was land enough for [the farmer] to till: there was no such problem as overpopulation ... the land is sill with Us, as patient and nearly as capable as ever.”!? nour own time, there have been some interesting attempts to recast the Jeffersonian ideal along ecological lines, for example by Wendell Berry This is, however, a marginal strand in the American enviton- mental movement, whose core is undoubtedly the wilderness ethic. In CE William Adams, “Natural Vitue: Symbol and Imagination inthe Farm Css,” Georgia Review, vol. 39, no. 4, 1985. J.C. Ransom, “Land! An Answer to the Unemployment Problem,” Harper Magazine, july 1932, p. 218. ® Among the many books by Wendell Berry defending the agrarian way of life, the most eloquent pethaps remains his carly polemic, The Unseiling of America (San Francisco: Siera Chub Books, 1977).84 How Mich Should a Person Consume? fa culture. Evi- fact wilderness lovers ate in the main quite hostile to agricul dently, going back ro nature does not imply going back to the land. ‘Thus, che ecologist Ray Dasmann once confessed that he had for most of his career been interested only in “the extremes of land usc, the city and the wildemess.” The country in between—composed of farm, rangeland, pasture, and shrub jungle—had been to hinn “just space to be passed through as quickly as possible.”2* ; What Dasmann ignored his compatriots have actively deplored: recall John Muir's charactetization of sheep as “hoofed locusts,” but in fact the prejudice against farming and farm animals is very wide- spread.22 Coming from the cities, lovers of the wilderness condescend to the farmer and “take for granted the dependence of both city and country on the agricultural base.” Wilderness lovers, themselves ur- bane and cosmopolitan, look down on the farmer as uncouth, An editor of Harpers Magazine once rematked that “if a man perspires Iangely in cornfield onadusty day, and washes hastily in ahorsetrough, and cats in shirt-sleeves that date their deanliness three days back, and loves fat pork and cabbage neas, he will not prove the Arcadian com- anion at dinner." ; Pes for Mui he saw the agrcultrist not merely 25.2 clturalphlis- tine but as an ecological villain. He wrote once, ofa farmer he knew, thar the man had allo plow, and woe tthe diy odor orale sick th fil under the savage redemption of his keen steel shares. Not content withthe s0- called subjugation of every tetestial bog, cock, and moorland, he would fin dsaver sme method of ecamadon appli the oxans and sky, that in due calendar time they might be brought o bud and blossom as the rose... Wildness charms noc my ftiend ... and whatsocvet may Ray Dasmann, “The Country In Berwcen,” Sierra Club Wildernes Cal. dar, 1982. [am grateful co my student Joel Seton for this reference. 2 Muir used the term oftca in is writings and speeches, asin his “Address on the Sierra Forest Reservation,” Sierra Club Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 7, 1896, 8 Linda Graber, Wilderness Sacred Space (Washington DC: Association of rican ss, 1976), pp. 21-2. ; Ea Michel quote it es) Schmit, ac Na The Andee Myth in Urban America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 6-7. Three Environmental Utapias 85 bbe the character of his heaven, his earth seems only a chaos of agricultucal possibilities calling for grubbing-hoes and mannes."* Here again India provides an illuminating contrast. While it has an even greater diversity of ecological regimes than the United States, the movement for the protection of wild areas has not enjoyed much popular sanction, Support for the national park movement in India hhas come chiefly from international conservation otganizations and from a class of big-game hunters turned preservationists—these in- clude many former maharajas. Furthermore, the designation of parks and sanctuaties has been heavily biased toward the preservation of large mammals such as the tiger, the thinoceros, and the elephant. The establishment of sanctuaries for their protection has led to the uproot- ing of villages sicuated within their boundaries, while the protected species themselves are often a serious threat to the lives and livelihood of human communities living adjacent to wilderness areas. The man- agement of national parks is therefore a subject of quite some contro- versy, though itis fair to say that within the environmental movement the burden of opi ranged against wildlife management (as pre- sently practiced) for its neglect of the interests of peasants and tri- bals.26 ‘We have, therefore, a curious symmetry: the dominant environ- ‘mental tradition in the United States, wilderness thinking, is hostile to agriculture, whereas the dominant tradition in India, agrarianism, is not favorably disposed to lovers of the wi ‘What, chen, of the thitd of our philosophies, scientific industrial- ism? This is an environmental tradition that is, in a sense, truly uni- versal, transporting itself wich ease across the world. In India and the United States as indeed in China and Brazil, Germany and Indonesia, forestry experts and irrigation engineers uphold an identical vision of large-scale, centralized, and expert-controlled resource management, Associated with the state and with state power, scientific industri- «lism has in fact come to be the common enemy of the environmental ® Quoced in Daniel B, Weber, “John Muir: The Function of Wilderness in 9 Industrial Sociey,” unpublished PRD thesis, University of Minnesota (copy in Seeing Memorial Library, Yale University), pp. 159-60. 2 This theme i picked up for more detailed treatment in chapter 5, below.86 How Much Should a Person Consume? movement in India and the United States. In the latter, free-flowing rivers and nacueal forests are cherished by environmentaliss for theie beauty and ecological value but coveted by resource managers for the millions of board feet or kilowate hours they may yield. This is che dlassic dilemma, preservationism versus utilitarianism, chat has un derwritten a good part of American environmental history and envi- ronmental conflict. In India, however, conflicts over water and forests ‘more sharply foreground the question of alternative uses-~subsistence persus commerce, local versus national, peasants versus industry. Thus, large dams and eucalyptus plantations, to cite just cwo examples of scientific conservation at work, are criticized both for their diversion ‘of resources from the countryside to the city, and for che trail of en- vironmental destruction they leave in their wake. These conflicts are vividly represented in the symbols and slogans of the environmental movements in both counties. A focal point of the American movement has been the struggle berween scientific industrialism and wilderness thinking, while in India scientific indus- rialism squares off against agrarianism, Not surprisingly, scientific conservationists loom large in the demonology of environmentalists ‘everywhere. Ifthe great icon of American environmentalism is Muir— a product ofthe “university of the wilderness’ —its demon is indisput- ably Gifford Pinchot, founder of the United States Forest Service, Likewise, Indian environmentalists like to oppose Mahatma Gandhi, the prophet ofa village-centered economic order, to Jawaharlal Nehru, the long-serving prime minister who initiated and guided programs of industrial development that have led both to environmental destruc tion and the impoverishment of many peasant snd uibal commu ties. ‘All social movements need their symbols of good and evil, their jconsand demons. These eepresentations of Muir and Pinchot, Gandhi and Nehru, only indicate the ferocity of the debate between the three major environmental philosophies of our time. It is ironic that scar- tered through Muir's writings are warm references to Pinchor’s pro- sgyams for the takeover and rational management of American forests. ‘Aicr having read and heard a great deal about the Muis-Pinchot divide, I visited the Muir woods outside San Francisco, only to Find a splendid redwood named the Gifford Pinchot Tree. And Nehru was all Three Environmental Utopias 87 said and done, the closest associate and political colleague of Gandhi ‘over many decades—indeed, his chosen political heir, the man with ‘whom the Mahatma left India “in safe hands.” Vv have called these three environmental visions utopias, which they are inboth senses of the word, in thar they seek to fundamentally alter and reshape the world, and in thar none can be realized in full. The claims of scientific industialism notwithstanding, chere are ecological limits tothe global spread of the consumer society it creates; despite the deep ecologists deepest yearnings, a return to our hunter-gatherer origins is auite out of the question; and over much of Asia and Africa the world of stable subsistence farming so beloved of the agrarians is rapidly giv- ing way to a more thrusting, individualistic, and market-oriented way of life. Perhaps the debate berween these three visions has in fact run ies course. [ike to believe that we are on the threshold of a new phase in the development of environmental ethics, with a new synthesis com- ing to take the place of the three contending philosophies. This syn- thesis would take from primitivism the idea of diversi, from peasant cultures the ideal of sustainability, and from modern society in gene- ral, rather than scientificconservation in particular, che value of equity Anthropologists and ecologists, working sometimes separately and at other times in tandem, have forced a retreat from the monocultural view of sociery and nacuce so typical of high modernism,” that which wished and indeed urged the remaking of the whole world in the image of Western Europe and North America. For this new appreciation of diversity, biological as well as cultural, we have also to thank wilderness thinking and activists working on behalf of indigenous people. Like- wise, the ideal of sustainability has provided a powerful antidote to another core ideal of industrial society: that of economic growth with- ‘out limits. This ideal has its roots in peasant cultures, which often used land and nature wisely, well, and with a view to the long term. Finally, while scientific industeialism may have ended up as a movement of experts, it was fired in the first instance by a passion for equality and democracy, the urge to bend science and nacure so as to make the fruits88 How Much Should a Person Consume? of economic growth accessible to all” In the modern world and no. where ese challenges to principles of hierarchy have gained moral cur- reney: In pre-modern times uprisings of slaves, peasants, women, and workers had always to contend with a dominant ideology—wherher monarchism, absolutism, theocracy, or patriarchy—that legitinnaved, justified, and enforced inequalities of race, sex, caste, class, and rcli- gion. Only from the French Revolution have social movements been able to draw sustenance from the wide acceptance of equity as a value. Diversity, sustainability, and equity: these are the building blocks of an environmental ethic in the making. What might this philosophy be called? 1 like the sound of “social ecology,” the term used both by the Lucknow sociologist Radhakamal Mukerjec and the veteran Ver- ‘mont radical Murray Bookchin, For the scholar, cis term allows a coming together of the natural and social sciences, a union 30 crucial for understanding the complexities of ecological processes and their impact on human life. For the citizen it joins rather than separates the ‘most dominane species on earth with the other species and habitats thiat we have to share the world with. Social ecology, then, can serve both as an intellectual paradigm and. as a guide to civic or stare action. And the term is inclusive in a way in which its rivals are perhaps not. Thus, deep ecology not only privileges wilderness protection over other forms of environmental work, i also disparages these as shallow. In contrast the label “social” is capacious enough to allow for multiple varieties of environmental thought and action. Thar, at any ate, is what the rest of this book attempts 10 de- monstrate. Chapters Four and Five examine, within the domains of the forest and the wild, the claims of competing environmental phi- losophies and suggest ways in which these claims can be harmonized ® As). Leonand Bates once said, “in spite of its complexity, in spite ofits ambiguity the [scienitic]_ conservationist policy contained an inner vitalcy that could not be obscured and destroyed. Here was an effort :o implement democracy for twentieth-century America to stop the stealing and exploitation, ‘oinspire high standards of governmene, to preserve the beauty of mountain and surcam, to distribute equally the profits ofthe economy." J. Leonard Bates, *Ful- filling American Democracy: The Conservation Movennent, 1907 «0 1921," ‘The Misisippi Valley Misorical Review, vol. 44, no. 1, 1957, pp. 36-7. Three Environmental Utopias 89 or resolved. Chapters Six through Eight profile three pioneering social coologists—onc American and two Indians ~ rose work and exam- is, I argue, of compelling importance and relevance. me final chapter poses what is perhaps the most fundamental environmental question, the one contained in te vtle uf this book, ‘to answer which we shall have to summon the resources, traditions, insights, and moral force of all che ucopias analyzed in the present chapter—and much else besides.