“The ‘development’ ideologues do not hear the screaming of the buttressed trees or the wailing of the rivers or the weeping of the soils. They do not hear the sentiment agony and the anguish of the non-human multitudes — torn, shredded, crushed, incinerated, choked, dispossessed.”
( John Livingston, Rogue Primate, p. 60)

“The overwhelming thrust of the ‘environmental’ movement is dedicated not to the interest of Nature, but to the security and sustainability of the advancement of the human enterprise.” (Rogue Primate, p. 214)

(Note: This is an edited version of a Green Web discussion paper. The full version is available online as Green Web Bulletin #79)

Introduction

John Livingston (1923-2006) should be better known in the deep green activist ecological community. What he taught is extremely important for today’s rapidly disintegrating ecological and social world, and his work deserves to be more widely read. Many deep ecologists have been influenced by the writings of this important Canadian thinker, whose books include The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation and Rogue Primate. Others were taught by him, or encountered radio and other media on which he left his imprint. Livingston was an eloquent writer whose work still has the power to force us to face up to what is required for the survival of life on Earth. As early as 1981, Livingston exposed the empty ritualism of the Canadian government’s environmental assessment panels and their destructive legacy for wildlife and the Earth:

“Environmental Impact Assessment is a grandiloquent fraud, a hoax, and a con.” (The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, p. 33)

Livingston can be considered to be of the stature of the late Arne Naess (1912-2009), who first developed the philosophy of deep ecology. We examine here the relationship between their respective ideas, our aim being to see whether Livingston was influenced by Naess, and explore any disagreements that may have existed between them. From a Canadian perspective, Livingston is of a comparable stature to Stan Rowe (1918-2004), also a naturalist and co-author of the 2004 A Manifesto for Earth, for which Livingston wrote a comment. Both their writings have influenced many of those on the path of deep ecology. However, while we are clearly admirers of the ideas of John Livingston, this is not a eulogy. Where appropriate, we offer some critical commentary. For your convenience, the books and major articles by John Livingston are listed by date of publication at the end of this article, along with other related books and articles.

Livingston’s background

Livingston was an active naturalist and his depth of knowledge about the natural world inspires awe. He wrote that there were two Canadas, one of wild creatures and one of the people. He believed that inter-species relationships were special. This is how he expressed it in a 1990 interview conducted by Farley Mowat:

“I am absolutely convinced that inter-species relationships are the ultimate relationships. We start with individual selfishness, then our relationship sphere begins to expand. There’s mother; there’s family; there’s the tribal self, and that eventually transcends to an inter-species self. At that stage, the essence of the feeling one has for nature is selflessness. The individual self dissolves in the overall relationship. A participatory relationship with nature.” (Rescue The Earth, p. 273)

Livingston expressed his views on natural history throughout all his books and essays. In the Author’s Foreword of One Cosmic Instant, he described his writings as “a reasonably civilized form of sabotage.” He was very active in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with nature radio programs like Audubon Outdoors and on television with Explorations and The Nature of Things. He led a CBC expedition to the Galapagos. He gave public lectures and taught for many years in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. He was president of the Audubon Society of Canada and edited that Society’s magazine. He was also president of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists.

Dominant Themes

Reading Livingston’s nature writings one is struck by several dominant impressions. The dominant themes of his writing and teaching we discuss include the following:

• Deep knowledge of natural history
• Non-human-centric view
• Defence of wildlife habitat
• Active, eco-political stance
• Conservative political approach
• Support of hunting and hunters
• Opposition to industrial logging
• Supporter of indigenous animism
• Opposition to resourcism
• Elevation of the naturalist
• Opposition to industrialism
• Ecological naturalism

Natural History Knowledge: Livingston had an enormous and detailed practical knowledge about the flora and fauna of Canada and about the land and marine geography. He had a talent in conveying this to others which combined his “hands on” knowledge of the natural world with a riveting writing style, free of platitudes. This natural history awareness gives the depth to Livingston’s wisdom.

Non Human-Centred: This is the major theme running through all of Livingston’s writings, as it is for fellow Canadian eco-philosopher and naturalist Stan Rowe, cited approvingly in Rogue Primate. This ancient yet contemporary theme, of humans seeing themselves as separate from the natural world — what Peter Singer called speciesism — is seen as the dominant ‘received truth’ of contemporary culture. Livingston made a conscious effort to write from a non human- centred perspective and continually tried to explain historically how the human-centred attitude (anthropocentrism), came into being:

“Ours is the species that treats the land as though it owned it.” (Canada: A Natural History, p. 193)

“A man should no more be allowed to own the living soil than he now owns the air he breathes.”
(One Cosmic Instant, p. 223)

Such statements are similar in sentiment to views held by Arne Naess: “The earth does not belong to humans.” (Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, p. 74) One overall theme of Livingston’s writings about the natural world was to explore when the sense of dominance of humans over nature historically came about and to try to comprehend why this happened. (He uses “man” in his writings to refer to both genders.) Separation from nature leads to a doctrine of thinking that the non human is subject to absolute human domination and power. The ecocentric ethic advocated by Livingston goes against existing cultural traditions and assumptions. He thus opposed that marketplace concepts like competition, dominance, aggression, proprietorship, etc. be applied to nature and stressed “interspecies compliance” as sustaining the natural world. For Livingston, supposed cultural objectivity was actually riddled with cultural subjectivity.

Wildlife cannot be defended or preserved within industrial culture: As Livingston stated in The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, “There can be no ‘rational’ argument for wildlife preservation…” (p. 116) He believed that the defence of wildlife arises from an individual’s emotional attachment and experience with wild nature and saw this as a personal feeling — a “selfish individual experience” (Ibid, p. 98) — which could not be communicated in a rational sense to others. This experience appears to be a kind of “Self-Realization,” as expressed by Arne Naess, where the individual connects in consciousness to the natural world, becomes part of this world, and acts from this perspective. Livingston conveyed it as:

“Nature as one’s ‘extended self’ might serve to bridge the gap between the self-and-other, between the human-and-non-human. If, for example, I am able to see and identify the coyote or the red-tailed hawk as an extension of myself, perhaps I will act somewhat differently in view of that perception.” (Endangered Spaces, pp. 244-245)

Livingston argued that “human management” would not save wildlife, what was required was a fundamental shift in the way humans perceive and receive the natural world that surrounds them:

“All that is in my universe is not merely mine, it is me.” (The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, p. 113)

The thinking in this wildlife paragraph has been embodied in the Nature-bonding work carried out by Billy MacDonald at Red Tail Nature Awareness in Scotsburn, Nova Scotia.

Eco-political: Livingston’s natural history was also eco-political because many of the ideas which were more fully present in his later theoretical or philosophical books first appeared or were suggested in his nature writings. Livingston not only uniquely conceptualized and described natural history but, most importantly, agitated through his readers to bring about intellectual and social change, to rectify ecological injustice and abuse. Like Stan Rowe, Livingston’s eco-politics was grounded in biological knowledge. Both were scientists in the best sense of the term. (Livingston’s only earned academic degree was a B.A. in English.) Both can be described in Rowe’s characterization as “Earthlings first, humans second.” (Earth Alive, p. 21)

No alternative political model: Livingston had a revolutionary attitude towards Nature, in the sense of the changes he wanted to happen within industrial culture, but he seemed to oppose political radicalism within this society. In The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation he wrote against forming a new political party dedicated to environmental awareness, i.e., a green party as, “this, however, would only serve to alienate the rank and file of other political parties, and would be self-defeating.” (p. 55) Yet in his last major theoretical work, the 1994 Rogue Primate, Livingston was more positive towards the Greens, exempting them from the pursuit of resourcism and industrialization associated with other political parties. (pp. 186-187) I think he was quite mistaken in this, if we look at some of the practices of the federal and provincial Green parties in Canada.

In The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, Livingston bemoaned the negative image, in his eyes, of environmentalism:

“To this day in the seats of power, which means in the corporate boardrooms and the highest echelons of government, ‘conservation’ has too often meant ‘environmentalism’ which has too often been interpreted as hippies and radicals intent on the indiscriminate overthrow of all things.” (pp. 59-60)

Livingston made it very clear throughout his writings that he opposed the industrial growth and consumer society and human-centredness. Yet he seemed to be appealing here to this very society for the survival of plants, animals and their habitats. This seems a puzzling contradiction for someone so radical in his thinking, of seeking conservation within the system, when his writings show this system is otherwise hostile to wildlife. In a telling observation, Graeme Gibson, a friend for many years, says in his Appreciation in The John A. Livingston Reader, published in 2007, that Livingston as a thinker was “closest to George Grant” the Conservative philosopher. (p. xii)

Natural history and general comments

“Anyone who has spent the greater part of a lifetime enjoying and attempting to understand and preserve wild nature will have had the experience of witnessing his own species drift lower and lower on his personal scale of perfection.” (One Cosmic Instant, p. 188)

“The entire career of homo sapiens has taken place in a period so brief as to be invisible on the geological time scale. Long before our ancestors emerged, today’s land forms were well in place. Even though as a species, we have experienced only a fleeting moment of the planet’s history, we tend to see today’s world as complete – as though the ages of mountain-building and flooding and up heaving were now concluded. We also tend to believe that geological phenomena occurred for the purpose of producing the landscape we see today. We often hear of the final retreat of the ice, or the ultimate form of the Rocky Mountains, or the eventual shape of the continents. This is a human conceit only. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, contemporary blips on the geological record, remind us that all is not over, and that earth processes continue.” (Canada: A Natural History, p. 17)

Hunting: Livingston was not anti-hunting. He mentioned in the Acknowledgments to One Cosmic Instant that he received a “special grant” from the Canadian National Sportsmen’s Show. In the same book he made the comment:

“Hunters are the first naturalists and ecologists. Their lives depend on their knowing and anticipating the cycles of the seasons and the corresponding requirements of the animals they themselves depend upon.” (p. 139)

In a 1990 interview with Farley Mowat, Livingston made it clear that he was against sport hunting and fashion fur. A strange observation in the 1966 Birds of the Northern Forest, referring to the killing of prairie waterfowl, was the comment about hunters only taking a portion of the annual natural “surplus”. (Plate 17) Perhaps this explains why he could receive funding from hunter organizations. In 1981, Livingston repudiated this surplus position in The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation and put forward a view more in keeping with his overall eco-philosophy:

“In the biosphere there is no harvestable surplus of anything.” (The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, p. 30)

Forestry is not farming: Livingston wrote against forest spraying and clear cutting. He warned about climate change, the doctrine of sustainable development, and against the idea that Canada had “surplus” water. He strongly argued in his writings that excess human population was a key problem. Livingston spoke out against comparing nature to farming and hence the misleading use of the term “harvest” by exploiters as in industrial forestry. The following quotation very movingly makes this point:

“How can you harvest a stand of trees you did not plant, or a shoal of fish you did not propagate, or a trophy moose you did not raise?…The unfortunate legacy of the harvest idea is that it perpetuates and reinforces the perceived status of nature as a resource, a commodity in the human service.” (Canada: A Natural History, p. 182)

Aboriginals, the arctic, social justice, and fur trapping: In his nature writings Livingston wrote about the aboriginal kill-off of wildlife, as aboriginals entered new lands. Indigenous people in various countries, which became New Zealand, Australia, and the Americas, did wipe out wildlife. He wrote that, about 12,000 or so years ago:

“A long list of the very largest mammals became extinct, according to the evidence, at about the same time as man was establishing himself in the ‘New World.’”
(One Cosmic Instant, p. 122)

Livingston was a supporter of indigenous animism and understood its role in spiritually enveloping humans in the natural world and thus restraining their exploitation of this world. This seems to have occurred after the initial kill-off by aboriginals. He noted that:

“The loss of animism and the substitution of theism was one of the most critical turning points in history”
(One Cosmic Instant, p. 142),

resulting in a further alienation from Nature. Livingston was not unconcerned about social injustice towards aboriginals:

“We could not have had Renaissance cathedrals without the slaughter of Aztec and Inca innocents; both were in celebration of the European church.” (Ibid, p. 182)

He was very positive about indigenous cultures, for example the Inuit, as shown in Arctic Oil, in which he also pointed to the extreme precariousness of the Arctic ecosystem and its birds, mammals and plants. By showing this in concrete terms, Livingston tried to outline how an oil spill could have disastrous consequences, revealing also a detailed knowledge of the practicalities of Arctic oil and gas politics. As he noted:

“No major conservation group or organization has yet identified itself as being flatly opposed to any and all industrial penetration of the far north.”
(Arctic Oil, p. 101)

“Peak oil” although not used as a term in this 1981 book, was close to this author’s consciousness:

“Today, the slowly but inexorably diminishing, finite world supply of oil is a threat that is closing in on the industrial monoculture.” (Ibid, p. 112)

For John Livingston, Inuit culture was environmentally appropriate, and not, as in industrial cultures, based on production and consumption. His general position towards aboriginals, in Canada and elsewhere, reflects that adopted by Left Biocentrism. Thus he showed both support for traditional aboriginal cultures in opposition to industrial monoculture, but also a willingness to point out historically the negative role of such traditional cultures, as they entered virgin wildlife habitats for the first time. In Arctic Oil he pointed out that indigenous groups, in opposing industrial culture, are forced to adopt European notions of “property rights.” This has nothing in common with Inuit traditions. This point was also made in his essay The Dilemma of the Deep Ecologist.

Livingston was very much against the fur trade and any attempts to link this to aboriginal culture. His ideas were brought out in the interview conducted by Farley Mowat:

“There’s no ecological, anthropological or economic basis for saying that the fur trade is part of the traditional aboriginal culture. None. It was the fur trade and the trade in animals of all kinds that destroyed the aboriginal cultures of North America. And to hear people today, including natives, claim the anti-trappers are going to bring down the native culture is bizarre.

“I think the great change to the aboriginal cultures came when the native no longer saw the animal as part of himself, part of his environment, but as a source of cash. The animal was transformed into a cash symbol. The moment that happened, the aboriginal culture was gone.” (Rescue The Earth, p. 272)

Livingston opposed multiculturalism, which he termed “international industrial monoculturalism,” as not being able to accommodate indigenous cultures which are outside of industrial society. (Arctic Oil, pp. 93-94) This is an interesting position and a direct challenge to the official view in Canada, that it is and should strive to be a multicultural society.

Resourcism: Livingston introduced the striking concept of “resource” in Arctic Oil. This term (and its corollary “resourcism”) is forever associated in my mind with his thinking. It was further discussed in The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation and Rogue Primate:

“A ‘resource’ is anything that can be put to human use …It is the concept of ‘resource’ that allows us to perceive nature as our subsidiary.” (Arctic Oil, p. 119)

“Once a thing is perceived as having some utility — any utility — and is thus perceived as a ‘resource,’ its depletion is only a matter of time.” (The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, p. 43)

So “resource” becomes associated with human-centredness. After reading Livingston, I could never consciously use this term in my own writing to refer to trees, fish or other animals. I came to see that the language we use, embodies a taken-for-granted world view of human dominance.

Elevation of the naturalist: Livingston privileged the naturalist as the person who best makes the case for the defence of the natural world, based on individual experience, where “nature is not an object, but a subject.” (Endangered Spaces, p. 247) His assumption, that those who defend wildlife are basically naturalists, was a position also expressed by York University colleague Neil Evernden in a companion essay in The Paradox of Environmentalism. However, this defence of wildlife cannot be conducted within the rules governing accepted human-dominated debates.

Livingston’s ecological activism as a life-long naturalist can be contrasted with the general attitude towards active environmentalism among naturalist club members. Too often they seem to remain content with merely observing and recording wildlife and plant life, but don’t oppose environmental destruction. For many, naturalizing does not seem to change human consciousness away from anthropocentrism and towards ecocentrism but is a vehicle for “getting away” from society. The general hesitancy among naturalists about speaking out on environmental issues (which is not Livingston’s position) seems at odds with a basic premise of deep ecology, that embracing and involvement in understanding the natural world through naturalizing work — Nature bonding — is a necessary path to a deeper ecological consciousness for Earth defenders, which can overcome human-centredness.

Industrialization, not capitalism, is the problem

“Both ‘right’ and ‘left’ subscribe to and are subsumed by the greater ideology of the industrial-growth ethos.” (Rogue Primate, p. 59)

This was a theme introduced in the 1973 book One Cosmic Instant and pursued in Livingston’s later books. For many years, and prior to studying the material for this paper, I had written in various articles about the origins of the left biocentric tendency, how Andrew McLaughlin’s 1993 book Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology, had shown industrialism to be the main problem in destroying nature. (ibid. p. 172) McLaughlin argued that capitalism and socialism were both variants of such industrial social practices. This position was basically incorporated into the left biocentric theoretical tendency, with attribution to McLaughlin. Clearly Livingston was advocating such a position some 20 years earlier:

“From the conservationist’s point of view, there is no shred of difference between capitalist and socialist societies so long as both stand for inordinate industrial growth and productivity. Industrialization at an increasing rate is the goal of all the super-powers and their satellites today, and industrialization (including growth in both production and consumption) is the grail of all forms of government in the ‘developed’ world.”
(One Cosmic Instant, p. 206)

I agree with his position, made in several of his writings. Yet the appropriate social arrangements for the future ecocentric society, where humans are no longer lords and masters over the natural world, will, I believe, draw more from a socialist, collectivist, cooperative base rooted in social justice for humankind, rather than from capitalism. Stan Rowe, who shared Livingston’s views of our relationship to the Earth, but perhaps unlike Livingston considered himself a person of the Left, put it this way:

“Socialism has the virtue of extending the circle of care beyond the selfish individual, at least turning our vision outward in the right direction.” (Home Place, p.193)

Future ecological social formations we can organize for, could be diversely unique, and not built on the human arrogance towards nature common to both existing capitalist and, unfortunately, past socialist/communist societies.

From Livingston’s perspective then, environmental carnage today is seated in the Western industrial person shaped by this very social formation. This carnage can only be overcome if basic cultural beliefs of dominance over nature are changed. Most cultural systems make distinctions between humans and other animals as absolute as possible. We have to cease from interpreting nature only through ourselves, and thereby restricting ‘meaning’ to humans.

Ecological nationalization: A very interesting comment by Livingston, which deeper environmentalists in Canada need to consider, was made about the necessity to differentiate between ideological and environmental approaches to nationalization. One thinks here of the enormously polluting Alberta tar sands, and the appropriate strategy for ending their ‘development.’ Livingston wrote:

“When nationalization of primary resources comes, as it inevitably must, it will be on grounds which are ecologically oriented. The grounds will not be ideological.” (One Cosmic Instant, p. 207)

Environmentalists, he argued, need to understand that environmental forces are eating away at what can be considered “traditional rights,” like the right to reproduce. The end of human dominance over nature requires a major value shift, a change in the dominant culture. If people come to believe that change is necessary, then value shifts could occur quite rapidly. This is why theoretical work, that is, changing cultural mind sets, is necessary and vitally important.

Some dissenting considerations

“The establishment of a green society presupposes the implementation of the necessary changes suggested in the deep ecology formulation.” (The Selected Works of Arne Naess, Volume Ten, p. 574)

John Livingston was far less political than Arne Naess. I found out through an obituary when Naess died in January of 2009, that he had been a candidate on the Norwegian Green Party’s lists. Although Green parties worldwide fall in the shallow eco-capitalist ecology camp, as noted early on by Rudolf Bahro when he exited the German Green party in 1985 — and as we see today in the Canadian federal Green Party — the concern for a political vehicle to express Earth-centred ideas and the various problems which this entails, does not seem to have been a priority of Livingston’s thinking.

Clearly Naess differed from Livingston on this. Naess argued for ecological justice plus social justice; also that the green movement must be involved in peace problems and must combine reformist and revolutionary work. Green politics, said Naess, meant the elimination of class politics globally, nationally, and locally. However it must present itself so that it cannot be placed on the red/blue or left/right continuum, and make this clear in its public face. Naess had a movement built around his ideas. This was not the situation for Livingston’s work. As mentioned earlier, Livingston seemed to have moved from outright rejection of the idea of an independent green political formation in 1981, to a tepid approval of the Greens in his last major work, the 1994 Rogue Primate.

The writings of Livingston show that for him culture was key in trying to understand the relationship between man and nature, not industry or government. He was not engaged or interested in Green politics. He seems to have missed out on the educational or propaganda function of Green politics, if conducted from a principled, non-shallow position. In his 1973 book One Cosmic Instant, Livingston made a defining statement about his politics, and a recurrent theme in his writings:

“Inordinate productivity is what present environmental issues are concerned with — not capitalism or socialism. Environmental issues must not be confused with ideological issues.” (One Cosmic Instant, p. 206)

Thus ecological politics must focus on how humankind will relate to the natural world and not whether an economy and society is capitalist or socialist. Livingston saw the industrial social formation with its perpetual growth economy as the enemy of life on Earth. Both capitalism and socialism/communism have historically been faces of this formation. But Livingston did not articulate that, while a permanent growth economy and expanding consumerism are intrinsic to capitalism, it does not follow that this is how a socialist or communist economy has to define itself, notwithstanding what has occurred in the past. Rudolf Bahro, an ecocentric Left Green thinker in Germany, advanced the view in the 1980s that:

“We must lower the basic load which our civilisation is imposing on the earth, by a factor of ten to one.” (Avoiding Social & Ecological Disaster, p. 324)

“…communitarian societies, planning their everyday working and living around an undogmatic spiritual vision and practice…and allow room for animals, plants, earth, water, air and fire to resume once more their own evolutionary direction.” (ibid. p. 269)

The socialist/communist promise of social justice through economic redistribution remains valid and necessary for true social justice. One could envision an ecologically-oriented socialist or communist economy that respects ecological limits and frugal lifestyles; respects other life forms, which would include human population reductions; is not based on permanent economic growth and consumerism; is decentralized or small scale; upholds democracy and individual human rights — providing such rights are not Earth-unfriendly.

A second related point would be that in order to mobilize humans to conceive of themselves culturally as Earthlings, respecting and upholding the intrinsic interests of non-human life forms and the Earth itself, and to succeed politically, social justice for humankind must be part of this mobilization. The socialist or communist political side has more to contribute on this than the capitalist side. Livingston seems to have had capitalism and socialism equally in his ecological gun sights and offered no path forward out of the capitalist economy. It is necessary to say that the Left has generally been in opposition to the kind of Earth-centred politics for which John Livingston and others so resolutely stood. The Left has opposed calls for human population reductions and making human politics subordinate to preserving the health of the Earth. Livingston pointed out that supporters of social ecology accuse those who defend Nature and raise population issues of being ecofascists. (Rogue Primate, pp. 189-190). The political task for environmental and Green activists is to combine biocentrism/ecocentrism with the social justice tradition of the Left, which is what left biocentrism is trying to do.

Livingston’s view of the vanguard role of the naturalist in Nature preservation and wildlife defence is a puzzle. While it applied to his own situation as a naturalist and perhaps to a few of his friends, generally naturalists are not prominent in the environmental and Green movements. Those of us who consider ourselves biocentric or ecocentric and supporters of deep ecology do place Nature preservation and wildlife concerns at the center of our political work. But “naturalists” who are members of natural history clubs are not normally the Earth-warriors Livingston’s writings imply.

Livingston did not adequately conceptualize for others the bonding to the natural world and the defence of wildlife so central to his ecological world view. In contrast, Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic has been an important movement-rallying slogan:

“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land” (A Sand County Almanac, p. 239)

There is no such equivalent in Livingston’s work. Instead there is almost a glorification of the individual “mystery” in relating to wild nature, which is not capable of explication. Graeme Gibson seems to support this position in his posthumous Appreciation of Livingston’s work, when he writes:

“That some form of mysticism, or intuitive experience — call it what you will — is close to the centre of the ethos Livingston shares with most naturalists and preservationists is indisputable.” (The John A. Livingston Reader, p. xix)

Livingston showed very successfully that the human-centred Western industrial cosmology has no place for other species. For him, the fundamental problem was ontological — that is, the nature of existence, the need for a different ground-of-being to industrial society. Yet we do need a shared language and common slogans to mobilize the forces of opposition to industrial capitalism — this was not, unfortunately, provided by Livingston. Like Livingston, Arne Naess also believed that the main problem was ontological. But he, with George Sessions, did develop the eight-point Deep Ecology Platform to rally the ecocentric troops and provide them a capsule of this world view. Ecological thinkers can also be organizers. As Ed Abbey so famously said, “Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.”

Livingston and Deep Ecology

“Clearly the deep ecologist who does not ‘go public’ is irrelevant. I say this because the destruction of nature is not going to ‘go on hold’ while the body of deep ecological insight permeates the public consciousness and the public conscience. Something has to be done now. If the paradigm is the problem, and most of us believe it to be, then we might as well have at it.” (The Paradox of Environmentalism, p. 71)

“The philosophic basis for environmental management and control is the same basis as that for environmental destruction.” (ibid. p. 71)

“We believe that the preservation of birds — all birds — is a legitimate aim that does not need justification on economic or any other grounds. Birds should be preserved because they are there — because they happened. That, to us, is reason enough.” (Birds of the Northern Forest, p. 11)

“The utter objectivity of nature, which is to say that no organism is ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ but merely is…” (Canada: The Wonders of Nature, p. 137)

Most lists of deep ecology thinkers on the internet cite John Livingston. So it is not original for this essay to claim him as a member of this persuasion. My own claim for Livingston in this regard is based on the thrust of his Earth-centred thinking, as shown in his writings, and that Livingston explicitly claims sympathy with deep ecology. He said that as a result of his earlier book publishing, he came in contact with others thinking along similar lines and then realized he was not alone. The 1988 letter from Livingston to the environmental group North Shore Environmental Web in Nova Scotia (quoted below), is one example of him making his deep ecology interests apparent and reaching out to others:

“I have read your March 1988 paper with the greatest of interest and admiration. I read it also with gratitude for your clarity of expression and argument — qualities not always easy to come by in the “deep ecology” literature… It is my personal view that capitalist and socialist persuasions are equally unecological so long as they share the ethos of industrial growth. Human social organization is irrelevant to the destruction of Nature. The industrial growth society remains just that, its colour notwithstanding. Congratulations on your splendid document. Sincerely, John Livingston, Professor.” (Letter dated March 22, 1988, to the North Shore Environmental Web, New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, responding to a discussion paper The Green Movement And Our Place In It.)

Of course Livingston brought his own independent thinking and contribution to deep ecology. He investigated, with a natural-history overlay, why humans have become the “rogue” self-domesticated, placeless, primates; why wildlife conservation can only be a “fallacy” in our existing society; why humankind has come to view the natural world not as intrinsically worthy in its own terms, but merely as a collection of “resources” for exploitation; and why human-derived environmental impact assessments are basically fraudulent and provide a fig-leaf cover for continuing environmental destruction. These are all ideas which are associated in my own mind with John Livingston. There is a legacy of original ideas, which Greens and environmentalists who seek to go deeper in their thinking can draw upon.

I believe John Livingston’s ideas have contributed in a significant way to my personal theoretical evolution and viewpoint. They have also contributed to the theoretical foundations of the left-biocentric tendency within deep ecology. He most fully explored his relationship to deep ecology in the essay The Dilemma of the Deep Ecologist and in his final major work Rogue Primate. One comes to the conclusion, after going through the various texts, that Livingston saw his own thinking as aligned with the philosophy of deep ecology and the thinking of Arne Naess. This alliance is seen by him as cosmological in nature. Some features of this are:

• Livingston accepted the basic idea of all entities in nature as having equal intrinsic value, not dependent upon humans for legitimation.
• Like Naess, he repudiated the concept of private property in Nature by humans.
• He accepted the distinction Naess made between “shallow” and “deep” ecology, and that the environmental movement is overwhelmingly human-centred, dedicated to advancing the interests of industry-centred humans, not the interest of Nature and other species.
• He placed the environmental movement as basically in the shallow camp, while wildlife advocates or naturalists were seen as in the deep camp and as a leading voice.
• Finally, both Livingston and Naess, most importantly, saw the crucial importance of childhood Nature-bonding in the development of the “ecological self” so that it could be liberated from the cultural prison of human chauvinism and the taken-for-granted goal of the humanization of the planet. Naess has described how, as a small child, he spent hours studying small marine intertidal life forms, it seems, partly because his mother lacked empathy with him. Livingston expressed his views on childhood Nature-bonding thus:

  “For the child who has bonded with and thus become non-human Nature, and who retains the capacity to retrieve that self-identity through adulthood, the wilful, deliberate, and conscious
  wounding of Nature is impossible, because that would be self-mutilation.” (Rogue Primate, p. 134)

For Livingston, the wildlife naturalist activist acquires a “biospheric self,” which leads to “the dissolution of the ego-centred self,” (ibid, p. 196) whereas human chauvinism “requires ‘selfhood’ to be kept in the human family.” (Ibid, p. 98) The concept of Self-Realization from Naess, which for him is not philosophically or logically derived and which is key for transforming a person’s consciousness, is quite similar to Livingston’s view of how the wildlife activist relates to the natural world.

Conclusion

John Livingston was an original thinker who made a significant contribution to the theoretical growth of the environmental and green movements. He must be included in the deep ecology camp. I started the research for this paper with some predisposition that John Livingston could be regarded as Canada’s Arne Naess. However, as we saw in the section Some Dissenting Considerations, (above) this is no longer my position. Naess was very involved in Green eco-politics and in trying to outline a path forward for others out of the ecological and social morass of industrial capitalist society. Clearly this was not Livingston’s interest. It is quite possible, given the depth of his pessimism, that he thought such a path was impossible.

An ecological prophet and essentially a mystic, politically Livingston was on the deeper conservative side, with someone like his friend Graeme Gibson comparing him to conservative philosopher George Grant, author of Lament For A Nation. His thinking was quite rooted in his work as a naturalist, as an inter-species voice, which drew upon to present a savage and profound critique of the anthropocentrism of the worldwide industrial growth culture. This was his major focus. Livingston believed that this culture is destroying the Earth. In his interview with Livingston in Rescue The Earth, Farley Mowat calls him “the prime philosopher of the environmental movement in this country.” I would not disagree with the exuberance of such a classification.

Bibliography of John Livingston’s Writings

Darwin and the Galapagos, by John Livingston and Lister Sinclair, CBC Publications, Toronto, Canada, 1966, no pagination, hard cover.

Birds of the Northern Forest, by J. F. Lansdowne with John Livingston, McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto, Canada, 1966, 247 pages, hard cover.

One Cosmic Instant: A Natural History of Human Arrogance, by John Livingston, McClelland
and Stewart Limited, Toronto, Canada, 1973, 243 pages, hard cover.

Canada: The Wonders of Nature, by John Livingston, Mono Lino Typesetting Co. Limited, Canada, 1979, 150 pages, hard cover.

Arctic Oil: The Destruction Of The North? by John Livingston, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Toronto, Canada, 1981, 160 pages, hard cover, ISBN 0-88794-092-7.

The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, by John Livingston, McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto, Canada, 1981, 117 pages, soft cover, ISBN 0-7710-5336-3.

The Dilemma of the Deep Ecologist, by John Livingston, in The Paradox of Environmentalism, Symposium Proceedings, York University, 1984, 72 pages, soft cover, ISBN 0-919762-70-0.

Canada: A Natural History, by John Livingston with Tim Fitzharris, Penguin Books Canada Ltd., 1988, 199 pages, hard cover, ISBN 0-670-82186-1.

Letter to the North Shore Environmental Web, by John Livingston, York University Faculty of Environmental Studies, March 22, 1988.

Nature for the Sake of Nature, by John Livingston, in Endangered Spaces: The Future For Canada’s Wilderness, edited by Monte Hummel, Key Porter Books Limited, Toronto, Canada, 1989, 288 pages, hard cover, ISBN 1-55013-101-X.

The Prophetic View of John Livingston, in Rescue The Earth: Conversations With The Green Crusaders, by Farley Mowat, McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto, Canada, 1990, 282 pages, hard cover, ISBN 0-7710-6684-8.

Rogue Primate: An exploration of human domestication, by John Livingston, Key Porter Books Limited, Toronto, Canada, 1994, 229 pages, soft cover, ISBN: 1-55013-508-2.

An Earth-centred (Ecocentric) Manifesto, Comment by John Livingston, Biodiversity 5 (1), January-March, 2004.

Appreciation by Graeme Gibson, in The John A. Livingston Reader, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, Canada, 2007, 388 pages, soft cover, ISBN 978-0-7710-5326-6.

Other books

Avoiding Social & Ecological Disaster: The Politics of World Transformation, by Rudolf Bahro, Gateway Books, Bath, England, 1994, 355 pages, soft cover, ISBN 0-9446551-71-5.

The Environmentalists’ Dilemma, by Neil Evernden, in The Paradox of Environmentalism, edited by Neil Evernden, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Canada, 1984, 72 pages, soft cover, ISBN 0-919762-70-0.

A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River, by Aldo Leopold, Sierra Club/Ballantine Books, New York, 1949, 295 pages, soft cover, ISBN 345-24489-3-150.

Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology, by Andrew McLaughlin, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1993, 262 pages, soft cover, ISBN 0-7914-1384-5.

Aboriginal Tradition or Commercial Trapping? Fur Industry Masquerades as Politically Progressive, by David Orton, Earth First! Journal, August 1, 1995, Volume XV, No. VII.

A Manifesto for Earth by Ted Mosquin and Stan Rowe, in Biodiversity, 5(1): 3-9, January/March 2004.

The Selected Works of Arne Naess, Volume X, by Arne Naess, Springer, The Netherlands, 2005, 688 pages, hard cover, ISBN-10 1-4020-3727-9.

Home Place: Essays on Ecology, by Stan Rowe, NeWest Publishers Limited, Edmonton, Alberta, 1990, 253 pages, soft cover, ISBN 0-920897-78-9.

Earth Alive: Essays on Ecology, by Stan Rowe, NeWest Press, Edmonton, Alberta, 2006, 274 pages, soft cover, ISBN 13 978-1-897126-03-5.

Deep Ecology For The 21st Century: Readings On The Philosophy And Practice Of The New Environmentalism, edited by George Sessions, Shambhala, Boston & London, 1995, 488 pages, soft cover, ISBN 1- 57062-049-0.

Green Web
A Taste of Green Web Writings and Left Biocentrism
R.R. #3, Saltsprings,
Nova Scotia, Canada, BOK 1PO
E-mail: greenweb@ca.inter.net

Direct link to this article (PDF)

Asurvey of socio-political models and movements based on ecocentric ethics — left biocentrism, bioregionalism, global eco-village movement, post-historical primitivism, and the “coerced” biocentrism of Pentii Linkola — reveals that all these models share a common vision of an anti-capitalist, anti-industrial, and decentralized (self-sustained) society, while conventional political modes to this time have mainly been based on centralised, authoritarian, human structures—Monarchies, Empires, Republics—all designed to serve human needs. With the growing complexity and interdependence of ecosystems in the entire planet, these social organizations pose a grave threat to human beings, to the environment, and to non-human species. Incorrect decisions made at the top of the human power structure can easily propagate, augment their impact, and affect a great number of humans as well as animals of the non-human world. Decentralisation of power and “local” solutions seem to offer the only remedies that can avert us from imminent global destruction.

Left biocentrism

According to David Orton3, an originator of left biocentrism, this socio-political model has descended from several parallel anti-capitalist and anti-industrial movements in green politics and environmental activism, with the aim of marrying deep ecology and left perspective:

• “deep green theory” of Richard Sylvan14
• “socialist biocentrism” Helga Hoffman and David Orton2, 3
• “ecologism” of Andrew Dobson16;
• “radical ecocentrism” of Andrew McLaughlin15;
• “revolutionary ecology” of Judi Bari13;
• “green fundamentalism” of Rudolf Bahro12.

In fact, left biocentrism can be viewed as a left political wing of deep ecology4. The later, however, is known more as a philosophy of ecocentric ethics14. The “left” means that biocentrists try to weave ecoethics with the class issues and social justice, but do not hold them above biocentrism, or ecocentrism (like the left parties). At present, this direction is being developed within the international discussion group, comprising activists, philosophers, scientists, poets and ecologists. The group was initiated in the 90s by a Canadian writer-activist David Orton.3 The group has an on-line theoretical journal Dandelion Times1 and links with other left-wing “green” organisations.

Bioregionalism

Bioregionalism is a political, cultural, and environmental system based on naturally-defined areas called bioregions, or ecoregions18. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics. Bioregionalism stresses that the determination of a bioregion is also a cultural phenomenon, and emphasizes local populations, knowledge, and solutions19 The term appears to have originated in work by Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann in the early 1970s.20

The bioregionalist perspective opposes a homogeneous economy and consumer culture with its lack of stewardship towards the environment. This perspective seeks to:

• Ensure that political boundaries match ecological boundaries.21
• Highlight the unique ecology of the bioregion.7
• Encourage consumption of local foods where possible.
• Encourage the use of local materials where possible.
• Encourage the cultivation of native plants of the region.
• Encourage sustainability in harmony with the bioregion.22

So far, bioregionalism has spread primarily in North America. Since 1984 there have been bi-annual gatherings of bioregionalists23 that have given rise to national level Green Parties.

Global eco-villages

Today, the number of eco-villages in the world exceeds 10 000. They all are interconnected in the Global Ecovillage Network.6, 24 Eco-villages are the small communities (20 to 500 members) with tight social connections, united by common ecological and spiritual interests. These communities could be rural, urban, usually low-tech, depending on circumstances and the intentions of their members. For example, Ökodorf Seiben Linden  is a rural community in Eastern Germany with a minimum energy consumption. Eco-village “Los Angeles” is a small region in Los Angeles. Village Sasardi  is hidden in the tropical rain forest in northern Columbia. The world’s oldest (since 1962) Findhorn eco-village is located at the northern extremity of Scotland. They all have deep respect for nature and are striving to build self-sustainable communities with a minimal ecological footprint. Many eco-villages serve as a learning ground for those who seek to radically change their life ways.

Post-historical primitivism

This (theoretical) model is based on the works of Paul Shepard. According to Fred Bender,9, 10 Shepard recommends that we need to recover pre-history and reconnect to mythos (sacred story), ancestors, and nonhuman Others. He believes that history’s real lesson is that it is no guide to the future, because it is a declaration of independence from the deep past and its peoples, living or dead, and from the natural state of our being. Despite these deep-rooted prejudices, we must study primal peoples (who are not primitive in any defensible sense of the term) so we can begin to think about living ecologically in post-historic and post-industrial ways. Contrary to the deep-rooted prejudices, we must study aboriginal people, in order to learn how to live ecologically in post-historical and post-industrial times. Other deep ecologists, particularly, Jerry Mander11 also develops this theory.

The radical biocentrism of Pentti Linkola

Radical biocentrist Pentti Linkola stands at some distance from the aforementioned models, as his model is based on a coerced radical reduction of population, rejection of technologies and consumerist economy. His programme, elaborated mainly for his native Finland, despite its radicalism, does not differ in essence from other decentralist models.17 The only significant difference is that Linkola envisages the introduction of an authoritative government as the most radical solution for the transition of society and conservation of life (he does not have illusion about the voluntary transition to the new way of life). Linkola’s programme has 205 points and evokes admiration from some and severe critique from the others. Nonetheless, we can’t render Linkola a “fascist” because he speaks against nationalism or any expansion of a nation, or race, to the detriment of all others – which is the major feature of fascism.

Conclusion

To prevent the global catastrophe, provoked by an excessive anthropogenic pressure, deep change in individual consciousness is needed. But that is not enough. We need to radically change the social structures. Some ecocentric ideologues are sceptical as to voluntary transition of the large masses, let alone “the golden billion”, to the ecocentric society. The issue of the permissibility of a coerced transition remains open.

About the author

Viktor Ivanovitch Postnikov is a Russian-born independent scientist (DSc.) who lives in Kiev, Ukraine. A prolific poetry translator, he has also translated books on both eastern philosophies and deep ecology, and written many essays on Russian anarchism and eco-poetry for journals and other publications.

References

1. http://dandeliontimes.net/category/left-biocentrism/

2. http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/

3. David Orton – My Path to Left Biocentrism: Pt.1- The Theory http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/GW63-Path.html

4. David Greenfield –The Left in Left Biocentrism http://dandeliontimes.net/2008/07/the-left-in-left-biocentrism/

5. Bill Metcalf – Sustainable Communal Living Around the Globe, Diggers and Dreamers 00/01, p.5 -19.

6. Albert Bates, Ecovillages – What Have We Learned? – Communities Magazine, issue #117.

7. V.Postnikov – Ecocentric Ukraine Project – a sketch http://www.proza.ru/2009/01/13/716 (In Russian).

8. V.Postnikov – Russian Roots: From Populism to Radical Ecology, Anarchist Studies, Volume 12, N.1, 2004.

9. Frederic Bender (2003). The Culture of Extinction: Toward a Philosophy of Deep Ecology. Amherst, NY: Humanity.

10. Frederic Bender, On the Importance of Paul Shepard’s Call for Post-Historic Primitivism and Palaeolithic Counter-Revolution against Modernity, The Trumpeter, Volume 23, Number 3 (2007)

11. Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991.

12. David Orton, Rudolf Bahro (1935 – 1997): A tribute, Socialist Studies Bulletin_ No. 50 (Oct.-Dec. 1997).

13. Judi Bari, Revolutionary Ecology. http://www.judibari.org/revolutionary-ecology.html

14. Patrick Curry, Deep Ecology and Left Biocentrism: An Introduction,
http://dandeliontimes.net/2008/08/deep-ecology-and-left-biocentrism-an-introduction/

15. Andrew McLaughlin – Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology (Albany, State University New York Press, 1993.)

16. Andrew Dobson, Green Political Thought: An Introduction  (London: Harper Collins      Academic, 1990). A book review by David Orton http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/Ecologism.html

17. Pentti Linkola, Can Life Prevail? http://www.evfit.com/linkola_CLP.htm

18. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioregionalism

19. Don Alexander, Bioregionalism: The Need For a Firmer Theoretical Foundation, Trumpeter, v.13.3, 1996.

20. Berg, Peter and Raymond Dasmann, “Reinhabiting California,” The Ecologist 7, no. 10 (1977)

21. Davidson, S. (2007) The Troubled Marriage of Deep Ecology and Bioregionalism, Environmental Values, vol. 16(3): 313-332

22. Bastedo, Jamie. Shield Country: The Life and Times of the Oldest Piece of the Planet, Red Deer Press, 1994.

23. North American Bioregional Congress website http://biocongress.org/

24. http://gen.ecovillage.org/index.html

We begin with “we.” How do we perceive and understand ourselves? For most of human history the question made little sense. We were of course members of an extended family, a community, a clan, a tribe. We had no independent social identity other than that conferred on us by our own community. Only quite late in this history did social differentiation, economic specialisation, and ethnic mixing bring about an alternative identity, that of a unique individual.

The development of capitalism has, among its multitude of ills, alienated us from our extended families, our community, our work, the products of our work, our houses, our recreation—indeed, almost everything with which we once felt naturally intimate and integrated. In their place capitalism offers its captive members the ever-greater material consumption of (alienated) goods and services. Under these conditions, the ideology of the unique, supreme individual, especially as sovereign consumer, has swept all before it.

Left-biocentrists know better. The natural world is everywhere organised into overlapping communities of families, species, ensembles of species, ecosystems. Alienation is impossible—can there be any special value for an individual of a species? Nature celebrates mothers, fathers, offspring, leaders and followers, but not one would survive long if stripped of its community. Intimacy, connectedness, and community are Nature’s organising principles, just as they were, over eons past, for us.

Return to communities

I suggest that for left-biocentrists, the ultimate social goal is the turn or return of our human species to social and ecological communities as our primary form of organisation. This is not nostalgia for the past, as these will be voluntary communities. The replacing of capitalism then becomes a necessary means to this end, an intermediate goal. For these reasons I often think of our social program as “Communitarianism,” even while regretting its historical associations and unnecessary length. I will continue to use it here, but with the hope that left-biocentric comrades and colleagues will soon discover a more serendipitous word.

We have not yet finished with “we.” Having set the goal, we turn to agency. What forces change history? Natural geological and environmental forces change history. Man-made environmental destruction changes history. Social and economic development changes history, as does population growth and movement. Conscious social movements change history (even if less than we would like). However, what has clearly brought about the most profound changes in recent centuries has been the engagement of whole social formations, i.e. castes and classes, in the pursuit of their perceived self-interest. We may note that religious, cultural, and household upheaval has often accompanied this class controversy; to touch any part of the social order is to touch it everywhere.

It is a given that our communitarian revolution, if it is to succeed, must be welcomed by the great majority of the people as a whole; thus it follows that the agents of this revolution, in general, must be those broad social formations whom it directly benefits. Although a tough-minded examination has yet to be made, I believe that class will prove to be a useful analytical category, as will race, gender, status in family, religious practice, perhaps sexual self-restraint, and other factors still to be identified.

Identify common themes

In trying to engage as many of our fellow citizens as seems reasonable, we need to identify common themes that resonate widely. In my variegated experience, frustration of aspiration, alienation from any community, lack of spiritual touchstones, and sickness at heart at ever-greater consumption and debt are all widely experienced and deeply felt. What links them together is the condition of perceived powerlessness, that we are on our knees before a vast omnipotent machine. It is here that we activists can show the opposite to be true: through organisation, solidarity, and flexing our collective strength, we can overcome most of these social and personal ills.

Our revolutionary voice, then, is strongest if attuned to our agency. We should speak broadly as “we the powerless soon to be powerful” or “we the little people soon to be big.” At specific times in specific places we may speak as “we the workers,” “we the unemployed,” “we the harijans” and so forth. What dedicated communitarians must not do is to speak as a group of advanced thinkers above or ahead of the rest of us, as many Marxists did for six futile generations. The intelligentsia are, on the whole, also powerless and often marginalised. At the risk of igniting a firestorm, I believe that those left-biocentrist activists who think of themselves as intellectuals—somehow apart from us workers—perhaps they are not many—have a duty to remake themselves and their self-view to become workers like the rest of us.

This is not to say that we working people can leave ourselves unchanged! I believe if we looked more closely at the “freedom” and “choice” being sold to us, we would see that these are meaningless. What we seek at a deep level is in fact community and connectedness, and we will sooner or later have to alter our lives accordingly.

Tom Holzinger
Serowe, Botswana

Author’s note: I have tentatively put forward an ultimate social goal of voluntary ecological communities and, as the principal agency for this transformation, a self-aware social struggle based on shared powerlessness and alienation. It is up to Dandelion Times readers to criticise, correct, and enrich these views. In the meantime I will do my best to prepare the other half of my thesis, Conviviality not consumption, in which I will try to treat political questions such as organising a global Movement, evangelising the unconverted, strategic non-violence, spirituality, relations with reformists, and other contentious topics. If everything goes well, these will soon be collective pieces, and we will write “we” with great satisfaction!

About the author

Tom Holzinger grew up in America, fled to Botswana during the Vietnam War, raised his family in Montréal, and now lives in Serowe, Botswana. He has been aware of the deficiencies of classical social theory since becoming radicalised as a teenager. Tom believes that a communitarian theory of social change must replace industrial capitalism for humanity to reintegrate into the natural world.

By Viktor Postnikov

Windmill generators at Findhorn Bay in Scotland

My first spiritual breakthrough came at the Schumacher College (UK) in 2004. Initially, my secret hope was to meet Fritjof Capra, whom I had known since the late 1970s by his Tao of Physics and his later books, especially The Turning Point and The Uncommon Wisdom. The course I was admitted to (special thanks to Jan Slakov and Patrick Curry) was called Earth, Spirit and Action. It was absolutely fantastic. Course leaders John Seed, Ruth Rosenhek, Starhawk, Alastair McIntosh and Verene Nicolas, each provided a “signpost” that unambiguously spoke to my deepest aspirations.

Undoubtedly, I had received many signposts before in my life, but I was blind to them, never paying attention to their significance. Verene Nicolas first stirred a conscious interest in my inner life patterns when she asked each of us to draw a design that could reflect our life journey. I drew the spiral with the “signposts” that I thought were important for me. I was amazed by the consistency of these signposts. Since then my life has become far more meaningful, and my direction soon was set once and forever.

I found poetry in John and Alastair, courage and magic in Starhawk, grace and profoundness in Verene. Although I did not meet Fritjof Capra, Stephan Harding gave a brilliant introduction to holistic science and Gaia theory. Satish Kumar, a spiritual teacher at the College, told about his personal pilgrimage and Hindu spirituality, which was especially appealing to me as I translated several books by Swami Sivananda and was generally hooked on yoga.

The magic of coming to Schumacher College could be illustrated by a mysterious incident. I had brought my favourite books of poetry by Rabindranath Tagore with me, and to my astonishment, the very first day as I ascended the staircase I saw a painting by Tagore himself hanging on the wall! It was a gift of the poet, who had visited the Centre! For me, it was a magically significant sign.

Another “signpost”

I left Schumacher College inspired and enriched by the course. But I needed to go further, to create something beautiful both for myself and out of respect for the teachers. Coming home, though, I found myself once again drawn in the same exhaustive political, social and personal turmoil. Obviously, most people around me were moving in different direction. I badly needed another “signpost.”

Thanks to David Orton, it came through my acquaintance with Douglas Tompkins. I had suggested several books for translation, and without even knowing me, he agreed to finance the project. That was magic. I spent two years in translating in Russian, editing and publishing the two radical authors William R. Catton and Jerry Mander. To my delight and to the delight of many others, the books have attracted the attention of many people and their impact is growing. In 2006 I felt that I need to go on. At that time, I became seriously interested in the Ecovillage movement and eco-localism as an alternative to capitalism. Then I remembered that somebody I met at Schumacher College was from the Findhorn Foundation. The name of that village kept resonating in my head.

In 2007 I was accepted for the Experience Week in the Findhorn Foundation — definitely another signpost. The Experience Week was my coming back to humanity. We danced, played games, touched one another, and laughed and fooled around like children. I badly needed that because I was experiencing enmity towards people around home at that time. People differ widely; sometimes it seems we belong to different species. Experience Week brought me together with a group of like-minded people, and soon we felt like one great family.

The psychological games and the direct tactile contact exercises of the course created a unity among us more than dry lectures ever could. In the ordinary life we avoid tactile contact, narrowing the circle with whom such contacts are deemed desirable or acceptable. We do not allow ourselves to behave in a child-like way. On the contrary, we pretend to be learned adults. This is a major difference between Schumacher College and the Findhorn Foundation. While the former is a serious adult education establishment, the latter is definitely more of a child-like playground. Possibly, the child in me had long been waiting to awaken.

During Findhorn’s’ Experience Week I met beautiful people from around the globe, both in our group and among the teachers. We met 80-year old Dorothy Maclean, one of the three founders of the Findhorn Foundation, and Craig Gibsone, the elder of the community, who is a shaman and a visionary. The stately architecture of the Cluny Hill College where I stayed vaguely reminded me of Schumacher College. But the excursions to the eco-village The Park near Findhorn Bay, the forest and the sea, planted the seeds of hope in me that some day I would live in nature.

Return to Findhorn

The very next year I enrolled in the Exploring Community Life course with a desire to develop an in-depth knowledge of the community. I landed in a group of six wonderful women and a fantastic facilitator (also a woman), and was absolutely pleased with my life. We were having a lot of fun together, and I definitely felt that I was at the right place. The Transformation Game was the crux of the program, a psychic journey through one’s own life. I played the game with two women from our group, and the experience was awesome. It was as if our lives were correlated and intercepted.

Meeting Craig Gibsone during the Experience Week was definitely another signpost. Craig told about his life in the ’60’s, his acquaintance with aboriginal culture, his study of permaculture, and his pioneering work with the founders of the ecovillage. I began seriously thinking about his course on Ecovillage Training, and how my own affiliation with alternative energy could fit into his course and the life in the ecovillage in general. I wrote him, and my wife and I were invited to join the course. I was not sure we could afford it until the very last moment, but after receiving a bursary, I knew we had to go.

The course had to begin on February, 14th, 2008. We flew to London on Friday the 13th. (Perhaps that was the reason for the cheap tickets?) The aeroplane took off into the snowy night sky with a shudder. However, the sky over London was clear. We took the midnight London-Inverness bus, and after endless attempts to sleep in a sitting position, reached Inverness thirteen hours later. The ancient Highlands capital greeted us with spring in its surrounding mountains, beautiful and fresh. Another bus to Forres, a little snack, and we were nearly in the village.

When we finally arrived at the Ecovillage we ran immediately to the community center, where the program had already started two hours previously. Gosh! It had been a stressful journey: Would the plane arrive on time? Would we catch up the bus? How we can exchange the money? But as soon as we saw Craig’s smiling face as he rose to hug us, all our fears evaporated and we began to relax.

The room was full of people, 32 participants from 15 countries, sitting in a circle. Each was given a few minutes to speak. The number of participants, the diversity of faces was at first overwhelming. To remember all their the names seemed a hopeless endeavour. Craig had two sympathetic facilitators, Gabriella and Elizabeth. Their friendly smiles immediately won our hearts. They had both been raised at Findhorn, and despite their youth, they are experienced facilitators. Following the Findhorn practice, we draw an angel for the group, it is Abundance. Then everyone draws his or her own angel. Mine is Clarity — exactly what I needed. The whole month confirmed the relevance of these “messages from above.”

Soon we become a family or tribe, or as someone put it, “a perfect ashram,” talented passionate youth, eager to change the world for the better. For the first time, my scepticism had been shaken. We thoroughly studied the principles of permaculture, which included People Care (building effective eco-villages), Fair Share (new social economy and sustainable food), and Earth Share (eco-design, wilderness restoration) presented by Craig and other teachers. Craig built his own house and garden on permaculture principles to act as a model and laboratory for all. My respect for Craig had grown enormously, as he masterly steered the program with ease, shamanic wisdom, and a child-like openness.

The fourth week was dedicated to the projects we developed around the course material. Each of us was to bring our expertise home and to implement a project. While rambling in the dunes of the nearby seashore during this time, I found a beautiful white Turbinella pirum shell. According to Wikipedia, “the shell has considerable significance in Buddhism, representing the beautiful, deep, melodious and interpenetrating sound of the Buddhadharma, which being appropriate to different natures, predispositions and aspirations of disciples, awakens them from the deep slumber of ignorance and urges them to accomplish their own welfare and the welfare of others.”

Could I have ever found a better sign?

About the author

Viktor Ivanovitch Postnikov is a Russian-born independent scientist (DSc.) who lives in Kiev, Ukraine. A prolific poetry translator, he has also translated books on both eastern philosophies and deep ecology, and written many essays on Russian anarchism and eco-poetry for journals and other publications.

Aknowledgement

My deepest thanks to Stuart Hertzog for tidying up the text and placing it on Dandelion Times.

Global Warming
For Dummies

by Elizabeth May
and Zoe Caron
John Wiley Canada, 2009
362 pages, paperback
ISBN: 978-0-470-84098-6

“Although global warming is connected to scary scenarios featuring soaring temperatures and worsening hurricanes and monsoons, it’s also a link to a better future. Global warming is opening doors for the development of new types of fuels, leading the shift to reliable energy sources, and creating a vision of a greener tomorrow.” — May and Caron, p.1.

“This small band of deep ecologists seem to realize more than other green thinkers the magnitude of the change of mind needed to bring us back to peace within Gaia, the living Earth.” — James Lovelock, The Revenge Of Gaia, p. 198.

“The more you know about both climate change and energy, the less moderate you are.” — Joseph Romm, climateprogress.org

Global Warming For Dummies by Elizabeth May and Zoe Caron contains much information about climate change and offers solutions from an individualistic, “what you can do” perspective. Reading Global Warming For Dummies can raise a person’s general level of knowledge about climate change. But along with co-author Zoe Caron, Elizabeth May has chosen to play the Pollyanna role of promoting optimism in fighting climate change, at a time in which most government and corporate climate change initiatives are at best token greenwash.

Elizabeth May is intelligent, passionate, and hard-working, in touch with a wide range of environmental information. The current leader of the Green Party of Canada and its shadow cabinet spokesperson for climate change, we can look to this book to see the kind of ideas on climate change and related topics advocated by the Green Party. Unfortunately, this book and its published policies indicate that the Canada’s Green Party is in the business of putting forward fudge and “market” or soothing eco-capitalist positions, which do not call industrial capitalism into question or bring about the needed fundamental shift in societal consciousness.

Like other books she has written, Global Warming For Dummies does not espouse any critical eco-philosophical tradition. May and her co-author are both pragmatists: they point the reader to practical engagement with the capitalist industrial society. Yet this industrial society has brought on the climate change crisis that is destroying this Earth. For these two writers, the existing system just needs fixing, not replaced. They do not raise fundamental questions that climate change and diminishing fossil fuel availability bring to the foreground, such as:

• How do we humans reduce our industrial impact upon the Earth?
• What are our vital needs as societies, taking into consideration the needs and habitat requirements of all other nonhuman life forms?
• How do humans become Earth-centred in our many cultures not just human-centred?
• How do we bring about social justice for all people in a world-wide context so everyone’s full potential may be liberated; and
• How do we bring about such profound cultural changes for humankind, if we never raise such questions?

May’s career shows that she “works the system”, which means that she accepts and works within the industrial paradigm. May does not seriously threaten the system’s legitimacy with her eco-politics, and society in turn has rewarded her with its accolades.

Arne Naess, the founder of deep ecology (1912-2009) made a distinction in the early 1970s between those who practice “shallow” ecology and those who follow a “deeper” ecological path. Those on the deeper ecological path see the industrial system itself as unsustainable from an ecological and social justice standpoint, and climate change as one manifestation of this.

To deep ecologists and eco-centric greens, addressing climate change means addressing the problem of replacing industrial capitalist society entirely. This book shows clearly that May and Caron follow the shallow path.

Pollyanna optimism

“No one likes the blame game; pointing fingers and making accusations doesn’t solve anything.” (p. 69)

“Governments all over the world at every level, are already doing leading-edge work, moving toward low-carbon technologies and ways of life.” (p. 160)

“Can humanity actually avoid getting to the point of huge, devastating, and irreversible changes in the world’s climate? Of course!” (p. 200)

“Believe it or not, letters to your elected representatives make a difference…. Politicians are eager to know what the people think.” (p. 318)

The Pollyanna title for this review – meaning a false optimism or attitude of looking for the good side of any situation – is perhaps misleading given the situation we face. The basic assumption permeating this book is not that we are facing a civilizational and ecocide crisis of hard to grasp proportions, which require seismic cultural and institutional changes and lifestyle change that are difficult to comprehend and with the outcome very much in doubt; but the promotion of the view that good things are being done around climate change and global warming, that we are moving in the right direction, and only need to accelerate our efforts.

I believe this to be a false, harmful, and very misleading Pollyannaish message. It is totally inappropriate, considering the dire climate change situation generally, and particularly in Canada, which is proud to be the main fossil fuel supplier to the United States. Very little significant work regarding reducing green house gas emissions is being done. Carbon dioxide emissions are increasing, not declining, each year. Climate feedback mechanisms, which introduce an extreme unpredictability into what is going to happen – including a potential acceleration of indicators of climate change – are already underway. There is a fair amount of talk about climate change, but this can always be pushed aside by governing political and economic elites and the bourgeois media when there is so-called bad economic news, like declining economic growth and consumption rates.

The Pollyanna message also reflects an erroneous but common political organizing belief, characterizing not only May’s (and presumably Caron’s) environmental politics, but running throughout Green Party electoralism in Canada – that is, for social mobilization purposes, one has to be optimistic, non-threatening and non-radical to gain popular or electoral support. However, the kind of institutional, economic and personal lifestyle changes that should be on the climate change table are extremely radical when someone of the scientific stature of climate scientist James Hansen, among others, is saying that carbon dioxide emissions have to be reduced to at most 350 parts per million, from the existing about 387 ppm.

Erroneous assumptions

Clearly system change is needed. The problems cannot be solved by more conservation effort on the part of individuals and firms within consumer-capitalist society. They are being caused by an overshoot that is far too big for that, and they are being caused by some of the fundamental structures of this society. Consequently much of what is said under the heading of ‘sustainability’ is nonsense and much of the effort being made to ‘save the planet’ is a waste of time. Most irritating are the ‘What you can do in your own home’ campaigners. ‘Buy biodegradable wash up liquid, use a low-flow shower head, recycle your bottles, buy a smaller car, etc.’ Such efforts can make no more than a negligible difference to household impact, when we need something like a 90% reduction in national consumption. Nothing remotely like this is possible within a consumer-capitalist society committed to affluent lifestyles and limitless economic growth. It is only possible through dramatically reducing the volume of production and consumption and therefore by changing from such a society to one that is about frugal but adequate ‘living standards’, as little production and consumption as possible and a stable economy.” (Ted Trainer, Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society, p. 117.)

Here are some of the erroneous assumptions we find in the Dummies book:

1) The choice of the tipping point for carbon dioxide in this book, which helps minimize a sense of climate emergency: if one chooses to align with a higher tipping point regarding global warming for carbon dioxide emissions, then immediate emergency action becomes downplayed. This is the situation with the Dummies book. This book in the main promotes 450 ppm as climate tipping point: “Scientists know only that humanity has a choice to avoid it (tipping points) by holding carbon dioxide concentrations to no more than 450 ppm, to keep the planet’s average temperature increase at or below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).” (p. 52) This number is much too high and, as noted earlier, James Hansen says that carbon dioxide has to be reduced to at most 350 parts per million to avoid substantive climate change. The book authors do mention elsewhere, as an afterthought, that “Many scientists are arguing that we must keep carbon at no more than 350 ppm.”. (p. 332)

2) Saying that global population trends should not be basically opposed but have to be accepted in the climate change discussion. While seemingly acknowledging that growing human populations are a consideration in increased green house gas accumulations, May and Caron adapt to a projected world population of nine billion people and do not call for societal policies to reduce human populations on Earth: “Luckily, population growth is slowing and should level off. (The bad news is that this isn’t expected to happen until the Earth’s population reaches 9 billion people) …It all depends on reducing fertility rates, which all depends on improving the economic, educational, and political status of women and girls.” (p. 68) Thus, and with a bow to feminist orthodoxy, there is nothing we can do about population reduction. The position of May and Caron, that with increasing affluence/education/democracy, population rates will fall, presupposes more economic growth and affluence – in other words, more overall consumption of the Earth. Contrast this with James Lovelock’s views in his 2006 book, The Revenge Of Gaia. Lovelock, who is very pessimistic about the possibilities of turning global warming around or seriously mitigating its impact (as anyone who is informed should be), sees the crucial importance of population reduction in the climate change discussion and speaks of aiming for “a stabilized population of about half to one billion, and then we would be free to live in many different ways without harming Gaia.” (Lovelock, p. 181) Arne Naess has called for a world population of 100 million people (Selected Works, Volume Ten, p. 270). But Naess makes it clear that the so-called developed countries’ lifestyle cannot be one of overconsumption, Rather, it must be a lifestyle satisfying only what he calls “vital needs” and such a lifestyle should be attainable for all others in the world.

3) Assuming that new energy sources are out there waiting to be utilized and can replace fossil fuels, and hence the existing industrial ‘civilization’ can switch over to these sources and just continue: “Fortunately, a wide array of energies is waiting to take the place of oil, coal, and gas. Some of these energy sources aren’t yet ready for modern civilization to use them on a grand scale, but if businesses and governments commit to developing these energies, they soon will be.” ( p. 21) This book is oohing-and-aahing over clever new energy innovations, which do not change the overall constant picture of ecosystem degradation, while climate change intensifies. Deeper Green thinkers, like Ted Trainer in his 2007 book Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society have shown that the line of argumentation here retains a commitment to affluent living standards and economic growth, through a belief in supposed technical advances which will rectify the problems of climate change. In addition, through a complex and erudite discussion in his book covering wind energy, solar thermal electricity, photovoltaic solar electricity, liquid and gaseous fuels derived from biomass, the ‘hydrogen economy’, storing electricity and why nuclear energy is no answer, Trainer has the position, which I support, that the “very high levels of production and consumption and therefore of energy use that we have in today’s consumer-capitalist society cannot be sustained by renewable sources of energy.” (p. 2) There is one additional point made by Trainer which is vital to understand, namely that, in a growing economy, which is clearly being promoted in the Dummies book, “whether or not renewable energy can sustain consumer-capitalist society is not a matter of whether it can meet present demand. The crucial question is can it sustain the demand generated by growth of the economy?” (p. 115)

4) Assuming that carbon emissions trading and the use of “market” mechanisms is the way to go for reducing greenhouse gas emissions as does the Kyoto Protocol. This position was also advanced in May’s 2005 revised edition of At the Cutting Edge: The Crisis in Canada’s Forests. As she says in the forestry book “Assigning dollar values to carbon is essential in the effort to reduce greenhouse gases. We can give it value through carbon taxes, or allow the market to set carbon prices.” (pp. 64-5) (Elizabeth May seems to be a promoter of the forest industry. In her book and in her role as Green Party leader, where, presumably under her authorization, the February 2009 Convention of the federal Green Party, in Pictou, Nova Scotia, has outrageously invited Avrim Lazar, President and CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada to address the Convention.) May and Caron explain well the intricacies of carbon emissions trading or cap and trade, but whatever their criticisms, they both support this in the Dummies book. Coming into a new relationship with the Earth, which should be on any deeper Green agenda, means seeing the atmosphere as part of the global commons and something which cannot be privatized. From this philosophical position, emissions trading is a continuation of the ongoing enclosure movement, the attempt to assert private property rights – rife with fraud and speculation – over the atmospheric commons by governments and industries.

5) Promoting so-called sustainable development as something desirable. A section of the book is called “Choosing Sustainable Development” (p. 192), where it says, “Climate change and sustainable development are linked.” The 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, which birthed the widespread acceptance in some quarters of the sustainable development scam, ties environmental protection to continued economic growth, increasing consumerism, human-centredness and an expanded human population. This was a concept which enabled the business class to reinvent itself as environmentally virtuous while expanding or growing their firms. May has helped build her career on the promotion of sustainable development, so this Dummies book is in character. We need sustainable retreat, as James Lovelock has called for, not sustainable development.

6) Assuming that making money and reducing greenhouse gases can go hand-in-hand, and that this path should be promoted, e.g. business and industry “can cut back on their greenhouse gas emissions and make money, to boot.” (p. 3) This implies industrial growth can continue, notwithstanding climate change and peak oil. This leads the authors to non-critically promote more economic growth, throughout this book, and to speak positively about countries which reduce greenhouse gas emissions but increase their economic growth. The following three examples are among several in this book:
“Many European countries have benefited with continued GDP growth because they started acting on climate change decades ago.” (p. 133)
“Germany cut greenhouse gas emissions by 17.2 percent while watching its GDP rise 28.6 percent in that time frame.” (p. 133)
“Sweden has seen 44-percent economic growth while reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 8 percent below 1990 levels.” (p. 69)
Given the existing overshoot impact of humans upon the Earth, promoting more economic growth in any form in industrialized countries, is fundamentally opposed to basic deeper green thinking.

7) Two further assumptions in the Dummies that are not directly related to climate change concerns are bird kills by wind turbines and Forest Stewardship Certification. Bird kills by wind turbines are minimized and the frivolous attitude, e.g. “wind turbines are far from a bird’s worst enemy” is well conveyed by the title given to this discussion “A big flap over wind power.” (p. 210). Bat kills by turbines are mentioned only in passing. The potential ecological concerns coming from the disruption of wind flows by turbines are not discussed. What also comes through is that these two authors are prepared to let the countryside be despoiled, i.e. by becoming industrialized in the placement of wind turbines. Also, landscape aesthetics are not a concern. The placement of wind turbines, usually on the highest ground around, in the name of generating alternative energy is becoming more common in rural Nova Scotia, as where I live. The only human concern granted some small legitimacy in their placement usually concerns the noise of wind turbines for those who live close to sites. On the forestry issue, this text promotes the Forest Stewardship Council’s certification stamp as both an example of “steps” taken by the forest industry, “to ensure that forests are sustainably managed” (p. 239), and as some kind of guarantee that “the forests are grown and harvested without soil damage or clear-cutting.” (p. 297) This is an erroneous or false claim which an internet search could verify. (See for many examples of FSC perfidy the internet posting “This-week-in-trees”.) FSC certification can still mean the cutting of old growth forests, clear cutting, plantations, and the use of forest spraying – in other words, the continuation of the industrial forestry model. When major pulp and paper companies can become FSC approved, as in Nova Scotia and across Canada, then clearly this forestry standard is basically meaningless, except for promoting green wash sales.

Conclusion

In some ways, the Dummies title seems appropriate, because climate change ideas are really dumbed down by the two authors. Climate change is important in its own right, but it is a reflection of the larger issue of humankind treating Nature as a commodity. I believe a very misleading picture is presented of what trying to address climate change means for the fate of industrial capitalist societies. The authors refuse to say that we need to move to a post-industrial age, where the old ways of economic activity go to the dust bin and an Earth-centred all species spirituality is embraced by those seeking a way out of the climate change crisis.

As Naess has said “The earth does not belong to humans.” This basic position means that it is only by human-made social conventions, which should not be supported, that humans acquire “ownership”or private property rights over the Earth. This means that from a deep ecology point of view, with regards to climate change, opposing carbon emissions trading both within and outside the Kyoto Protocol, because this is putting a price on the atmosphere. Asserting that the Earth does not belong to humans, is also a stand against treating other life forms, living or dead (like fossil fuels), as “resources” for human or corporate utilization. All life forms have value in themselves, independent of any human valuation. All life is ultimately one, so there are no absolute distinctions between living and non-living ecosystem components.

Given the importance of fossil fuels, clearly they should not “belong” to corporations. If they do, as in Canada, they should be taken back by the appropriate collectivity, here the Canadian state. Fossil fuels, in today’s world of ever increasing carbon dioxide emissions, should only be minimally further exploited in our country, and only as a transition to a non-fossil fuel, post-industrial economy. All fossil fuel exports should be ended, NAFTA notwithstanding. A national oil and gas pipeline should be built, in order to have some national self sufficiency, as we wean ourselves off fossil fuels, in moving to a post-industrial, ecocentric, carbon-free economy. In Canada, deeper Greens should be calling for the end of the Alberta tar sands’ exploitation, oil and gas wells off the East Coast, and the projected Mackenzie Valley pipeline. We have to get out of the “business” of fossil fuels in Canada. Also, in order to have international moral authority in climate change negotiations, Canada must be seen as walking the talk within its own national boundaries. The long term economic direction is to a much more bioregional or localized self-sufficient world, as globalization starts to unravel with the “peaking” of oil and natural gas. Masses of people have to relearn basic life skills of survival in place. Ted Trainer in his book Renewable Energy calls this “The Simpler Way” and outlines what he sees as some basic principles for low ecological footprint and energy use and Earth-bonding lifestyles. Elizabeth May and Zoe Caron in Global Warming For Dummies unfortunately do not support this kind of perspective in their book.

This book is “Pollyanna-=ish” and non-threatening regarding fundamental changes to life styles. As May and Caron say in one memorable remark, “You can use a dishwasher without guilt.” (p. 292) What is very worrying is that this book is now being promoted by the federal Green Party as a “Green” view of climate change. It is not.

Climate change, the growth of industrial societies and the expansion of human populations (now approaching seven billion persons), are directly linked to the exploitation and consumption of fossil fuels. These same fuels have not only contaminated the atmosphere but, when worked into biocides, fertilizers, and plastics, have contaminated large areas of the Earth – people, wildlife and increasingly the oceans. The kind of climate change debate set forth in Global Warming for Dummies is clearly inadequate from any deeper perspective. Greens need to set their sights on transforming popular consciousness, in order to build a base for the needed revolutionary change, not dumbing down climate change and other ecological messages in order to gain parliamentary seats. For industrial capitalism to commodify the Earth, its spirituality had to be undermined. Greens who are influenced by deep ecology see the necessity for a new spiritual relationship to the natural world. This means that we come to see the Earth as alive and part of ourselves. We need to extend our sense of personal self-identity to include the well being of the Earth, if we are to seriously engage with climate change.

[Editor’s note:] This is an edited extract from the full article, which can be found online at Green Web.