The history of environmentalism
concept map
Directives pour la synthèse
| Histoire de l'environnementalisme aux Etats-Unis The history of environmentalism |
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Directives pour la synthèse |
The Science of Ecology
The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis
Saving Nature, But Only for Man
[Deep Ecology's] Basic Principles
Ecofeminism
Globalization and America's poor environmental leadership
in connection with this document see
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_25_122/ai_n15968879. 25 March 2006. or this link
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Environmental Justice cultural studies  Do you eat fish? Watch this! |
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| Bibliography Glossary American studies and environmentalism Environmental justiceWater. . .is essential for life and our ecosystems, but only a small fraction of the water on our surface is suitable for consumption. When this water is polluted or not conserved, the supply we have becomes that much more valuable. Proper disposal is key to water conservation because water is easily contaminated. One gallon of improperly disposed motor oil can contaminate one million gallons of fresh water. Some of our most important appliances use the most water. Here's what you can do to help: The Toilet* Check for leaks by adding food coloring to the tank. Color will appear in the bowl within 30 minutes if there's a leak. * Check for worn out, corroded or bent parts. * Consider purchasing LowFlow toilets that can reduce indoor water use by 20 percent. * Install a toilet dam or a bottle in the tank to reduce water needed for each flushing. * Avoid unnecessary flushing. Dispose of tissues, insects and other waste in the trash. * Adjust or replace the flush handle if it frequently sticks in the flush position and lets water run constantly. The Shower/Bath* Replace your showerhead with an ultra low-flow version, saving up to 2.5 gallons per minute. * Take shorter showers. * In the shower, decrease the flow to achieve a comfortable temperature instead of increasing the hot or cold water. * For baths, close the drain before turning the faucet. To balance the initial burst of cold water add only hot water later. * Turn off the tap while shaving, washing your face or brushing your teeth. The Kitchen* Kitchen sink disposals require lots of water to operate properly. Start a compost pile for food waste instead. * Store drinking water in the refrigerator rather than letting the tap run for a cool glass of water. * Use the refrigerator or a microwave instead of running water to thaw frozen foods. * Consider an instant water heater on your kitchen sink so running water heats up quicker. Washing Dishes* For hand washing, fill one sink with soapy water and quickly rinse under a slow stream of water from the faucet. Use the dirty water to run your sink disposal if necessary. * Fully load automatic dishwashers; they use the same amount of water no matter how big of a load. * Look for water and energy saving options with new dishwashers. For more Eco-Tips visit: www.earth911.org. |
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DocumentsA brief history of environmentalism |
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| Bibliography Bibliography for environmental studies Bibliographie en français A very basic bibliography for environmentalism in the United States (Begin with Dowie or Shabecoff). Devall, Bill, George Sessions. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, Peregrine Smith Books, 1985. Dobson, Andrew, ed. The Green Reader: Essays Toward A Sustainable Society. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1991. Dowie, Mark. Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century. 1995, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press,1996. Ferry, Luc. Le nouvel ordre écologique : L'arbre, l'animal et l'homme. Paris: Grasset, 1992. Gottlieb, Robert. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1993. Nash, Roderick F. comp. American Environmentalism: Readings in Conservation History. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1990. Nash, Roderick F. The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. Nash, Roderick F. Wilderness and the American Mind, 3rd edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Shabecoff, Philip. Earth Rising: American Environementalism in the 21st Century. Covelo: California: Island Press, 2000. Duban, François. L'écologisme aux Etats-Unis : histoire et aspects contemporains de l'environnementalisme américain. Paris: Université de la Réunion/L'Harmattan, 2000. |
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From Denis Owen, What is Ecology? (Oxford: Oxford university Press, 1980) pp. 1-4,22-3,26-7,194-5.
Ecology is concerned with the relationships between plants and animals and the environment in which they live. This simple expla- nation is the kind of answer a school child would offer if asked 'What is ecology?' But the explanation, although apparently neat and simple, does not specify what is meant by relationships and what is meant by environment. These two words occur throughout this book and we shall therefore begin by considering what they mean.
There are many possible kinds of relationships between organisms (plants, animals, and other living things like viruses) and that part of the non-living world in which they occur. An extremely important one is who eats whom, and another, perhaps equally important, is who breeds with whom.
The concept of the environment covers just about everything associated with organisms, and includes other organisms and the non-living part of the world in which life occurs. The weather, the physical and chemical composition of the soil, and seasonal changes in the length of daylight, are all parts of an organism's environment, and the word therefore has about the same meaning as surroundings.
No organism exists without an environment; organisms and the environments in which they live constitute an extremely thin layer on the surface of the earth, often called the biosphere, in which the very complexity of ecological relationships tends to frustrate scien- tific analysis. Nevertheless careful consideration reveals some order in the biosphere which can be understood and defined, although it must be admitted that we are still a long way from formulating general theories of the kind familiar to students of chemistry, phys- ics, and mathematics.
The essential feature of living organisms as opposed to non-living objects is that they reproduce and replicate themselves. Organisms are associated with land or with water; many kinds spend the greater part of their life in the air, but none exists entirely in the air. The most familiar organisms, trees and plants, and the animals that feed on them, are obviously associated with the ground, but everyone knows that both fresh and salt water support a variety of plant and animal life.
The Greeks used the word oikos to describe a home, a place to which you could return and where you understood and were familiar with the local environment. From this word we have derived the terms ecology and economics to describe the subjects concerned with aspects of home life. Ecology began as descriptive natural history but nowadays scientists study and describe ecological phenomena in quantitative terms, often to such an extent that scien- tific magazines devoted to ecology publish articles that look more like pages from textbooks in mathematics. Much the same applies to the scientific study of economics. But economics and ecology are subjects in which intuition also plays an important role, and although both subjects have received rigorous mathematical treat- ment it could be doubted if this has told us a great deal that we did not know already.
In recent years ecology has become a household word. It has begun to enter into discussions about economic development, indus- trial growth, and standards of living, but there is often confusion. Many people think ecology is another word for pollution or the conservation of rare animals: others see it as something of apolitical plot against economic growth. Only now have a substantial number of people become concerned about trends in the growth of the human population and the consumption of natural resources, and with this concern fears for the future are increasingly expressed.
What exactly has generated this interest, and why has ecology, until recently a rather obscure subject, come to the forefront?
In industrial countries the most important single event has been the realization and demonstration that pollution resulting from industry and agriculture is harmful to people and to the surround- ings in which people live. Industrial pollution comes from waste products of the manufacturing and service industries, and these products are difficult, or at least expensive, to dispose of, while agricultural pollution results from the accumulation of toxic chemi- cals derived from pesticides and fertilizers. But although the present awareness of ecology may have been stimulated by the apparent dangers of pollution, this is not primarily what ecology is about. It is a much bigger and more complex subject than this, and to under- stand ecology we must move away from this restricted though common viewpoint. Ecology is not even primarily about man; indeed it covers all living organisms, and although most people will undoubtedly be interested in the implications of ecology for human life and welfare, to understand the subject it is necessary to abandon an entirely man-oriented approach and to consider instead the inter- relationship of all life and the environment. Hopefully this will lead to a better understanding and more respect for plant and animal life and perhaps help to explain how the present lack of balance between man and the environment has come about.
Evidently,
then, there are two faces to our subject. One is mainly but not
entirely
disinterested scientific inquiry, the other more dif- fuse and
concerned
with political and economic problems of over- population, the
consumption
of resources, pollution, conservation, and the plight of
under-developed
countries. Ecology as a science involves detailed and painstaking
measurements
of population sizes of plants and animals, birth and death rates, the
supply
and utiliz- ation of energy and nutrients in the environment, and
related
sub- jects. It is really a sophisticated and academic form of natural
his-
tory. The other facet is more concerned with man's place in nature and
threats to the quality of life. The two facets are compatible although
curiously enough people active and vocal in one are rarely active and
vocal
in the other. Most scientific ecologists take no public stand on the
wider,
less clearly defined issues that afflict mankind, but apart from
journalists
and writers there are few pro- fessional 'political' ecologists.
One way
to begin an understanding of anew subject is to inquire into the
activities
of those who practise it, and this is what we shall now attempt.
There are probably no areas in the world however high, deep, cold, or barren, that are entirely free from the influence of man. It is therefore self-consciously academic to consider ecology as something apart from man and then assess man's impact on the 'natural' world. Rather, man's activities from building and operating nuclear power stations to factory farming should be considered as an integral part of the complexity of the living world and are just as 'ecological' as a fen or a forest. Ecology has grown from being a minor branch of biology to an interdisciplinary study which, as the American ecol- ogist E. p, Odum suggests, 'links the natural and the social sci- ences', Hence the special role of the ecologist may well be to take an all-inclusive approach to the world's problems in contrast to the approaches taken by economists and politicians and, it may be added, many scientists. . ..
Many human activities produce changes in the environment, fre- quently of a disrupting nature, but similar events occur in the natural world where man's impact is negligible. Natural environ- ments have a remarkable capacity to resist change, but the trouble with human activities is that they are on such a massive scale. Leaving aside for the moment the effects of man, it appears that natural environments persist for long periods more or less unchanged. Various species of plants and animals occur year after year, interacting with each other in a highly intricate way, yet despite the enormous potential of all species for increase in numbers, most species remain relatively rare for most of the time. A pro- fessional ecologist is interested in finding out how this balance of nature is achieved and his findings are likely to be of significance to us all because they will help to suggest the consequences of upsetting the balance.
It might be argued that lawns are not especially important, but at the same time maintaining a lawn is an example of upsetting the balance of nature because a lawn would not persist unless constantly attended by man. Cutting down avast area of tropical rainforest, the most complex environment in the world, is an ecological event of enormous magnitude, the consequences of which are poorly understood, although the result is often an impoverished environ- ment in which few crops can be grown. There is really much in common between maintaining a lawn and cutting down tropical forest, except that the effect of one seems small while the effect of the other may be disastrous to human welfare.
A world dominated by people who are systematically destroying natural environments that have taken millions of years to develop seems to be an inescapable legacy of the agricultural and industrial evolutions. Let us hope that there will be another revolution in which attempts will be made to reduce exploitation and to conserve environments, although it must be admitted that the prospects of such a revolution seem slender at the present time. Demands for space, food, and resources are now so intense that possibilities for conservation are becoming more and more remote, but we should at least be aware of what we are doing.
From
what
has been said so far it will be evident that ecology is not a discrete
subject and that it can be approached at several levels. In the
remainder
of this book we shall examine some of the more important ecological
properties
of living organisms and their environments, and when this has been
complete
we shall try and place man in an ecological framework. It is possible
that
some of the lessons of ecology can offer scope for planning more
intelligently
the kind of world that will be inherited by our children. . . .
It is an axiom of ecological theory that all organisms modify to some extent the ecosystems in which they live. Organisms are of course part of ecosystems, and the presence of this or that individual or species is bound to affect the way in which an ecosystem works. The spectrum of species in an ecosystem depends on a variety of factors, including climate, the amount of light, and the availability of inorganic materials (in both soil and water) which determine the productivity and diversity of photosynthetic plants. The plants and the animals that feed on them are capable of rapid population growth, but this tends to occur only when there is a breakdown of the natural balance of the ecosystem. It is, as we have seen, more likely to occur in 'simple' ecosystems, such as those at high latitudes or in environments unfavourable to all but a few species. Evidently complexity (in terms of species diversity) is correlated with stability. All tendencies for growth in numbers or consumption are necessarily temporary and sooner or later they are halted and stabilized by pressures exerted by the environment.
There is no reason to suppose that man's present rapid rates of population growth and consumption will remain immune from regulation, and unless there is a man-induced catastrophe like a nuclear war there is every reason to suppose that stability will be brought about in a density-dependent manner in the not too distant future. The question, of course, is how exactly this will occur, and when. It is particularly clear that our present consumption of oil will have to come to an end soon, as at the present rate there will be none left worth exploiting in the very near future. The price of petrol may soon become so prohibitive that the ordinary motorist will be unable to afford to run a car, although it must be admitted that the substantial increases in price since 1973 have not resulted in less petrol being used. Man's use of metals, at present an extremely wasteful process, could be reorganized in such a way that a substan- tial amount of material now thrown away is recycled in much the same way as materials are cycled in natural ecosystems.
Attempts
to increase agricultural productivity to provide food for an expanding
population merely postpone what is inevitable, as there is ultimately a
limit to what can be produced that is suitable for human consumption.
Indeed
one could argue that the more food produced the worse the long-term
prospects
for mankind: the bigger the population the more dramatic its crash., We
should therefore be on the look-out for events likely to control human
population growth.
page
top
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Lynn White, Jr.
http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Falls/6185/lynwhite.htm (Feb. 4, 2002)------------------------------------------------------------------------
A conversation with Aldous Huxley not infrequently put one at the receiving end of an unforgettable monologue. About a year before his lamented death he was discoursing on a favorite topic: Man's unnatural treatment of nature and its sad results. To illustrate his point he told how, during the previous summer, he had returned to a little valley in England where he had spent many happy months as a child. Once it had been composed of delightful grassy glades; now it was becoming overgrown with unsightly brush because the rabbits that formerly kept such growth under control had largely succumbed to a disease, myxomatosis, that was deliberately introduced by the local farmers to reduce the rabbits' destruction of crops. Being something of a Philistine, I could be silent no longer, even in the interests of great rhetoric. I interrupted to point out that the rabbit itself had been brought as a domestic animal to England in 1176, presumably to improve the protein diet of the peasantry.
All forms of life modify their contexts. The most spectacular and benign instance is doubtless the coral polyp. By serving its own ends, it has created a vast undersea world favorable to thousands of other kinds of animals and plants. Ever since man became a numerous species he has affected his environment notably. The hypothesis that his fire-drive method of hunting created the world's great grasslands and helped to exterminate the monster mammals of the Pleistocene from much of the globe is plausible, if not proved. For 6 millennia at least, the banks of the lower Nile have been a human artifact rather than the swampy African jungle which nature, apart from man, would have made it. The Aswan Dam, flooding 5000 square miles, is only the latest stage in a long process. In many regions terracing or irrigation, overgrazing, the cutting of forests by Romans to build ships to fight Carthaginians or by Crusaders to solve the logistics problems of their expeditions, have profoundly changed some ecologies. Observation that the French landscape falls into two basic types, the open fields of the north and the bocage of the south and west, inspired Marc Bloch to undertake his classic study of medieval agricultural methods. Quite unintentionally, changes in human ways often affect nonhuman nature. It has been noted, for example, that the advent of the automobile eliminated huge flocks of sparrows that once fed on the horse manure littering every street.
The history of ecologic change is still so rudimentary that we know little about what really happened, or what the results were. The extinction of the European aurochs as late as 1627 would seem to have been a simple case of overenthusiastic hunting. On more intricate matters it often is impossible to find solid information. For a thousand years or more the Frisians and Hollanders have been pushing back the North Sea, and the process is culminating in our own time in the reclamation of the Zuider Zee. What, if any, species of animals, birds, fish, shore life, or plants have died out in the process? In their epic combat with Neptune have the Netherlanders overlooked ecological values in such a way that the quality of human life in the Netherlands has suffered? I cannot discover that the questions have ever been asked, much less answered.
People, then, have often been a dynamic element in their own environment, but in the present state of historical scholarship we usually do not know exactly when, where, or with what effects man-induced changes came. As we enter the last third of the 20th century, however, concern for the problem of ecologic backlash is mounting feverishly. Natural science, conceived as the effort to understand the nature of things, had flourished in several eras and among several peoples. Similarly there had been an age-old accumulation of technological skills, sometimes growing rapidly, sometimes slowly. But it was not until about four generations ago that Western Europe and North America arranged a marriage between science and technology, a union of the theoretical and the empirical approaches to our natural environment. The emergence in widespread practice of the Baconian creed that scientific knowledge means technological power over nature can scarcely be dated before about 1850, save in the chemical industries, where it is anticipated in the 18th century. Its acceptance as a normal pattern of action may mark the greatest event in human history since the invention of agriculture, and perhaps in nonhuman terrestrial history as well.
Almost at once the new situation forced the crystallization of the novel concept of ecology; indeed, the word ecology first appeared in the English language in 1873. Today, less than a century later, the impact of our race upon the environment has so increased in force that it has changed in essence. When the first cannons were fired, in the early 14th century, they affected ecology by sending workers scrambling to the forests and mountains for more potash, sulphur, iron ore, and charcoal, with some resulting erosion and deforestation. Hydrogen bombs are of a different order: a war fought with them might alter the genetics of all life on this planet. By 1285 London had a smog problem arising from the burning of soft coal, but our present combustion of fossil fuels threatens to change the chemistry of the globe's atmosphere as a whole, with consequences which we are only beginning to guess. With the population explosion, the carcinoma of planless urbanism, the now geological deposits of sewage and garbage, surely no creature other than man has ever managed to foul its nest in such short order.
There are many calls to action, but specific proposals, however worthy as individual items, seem too partial, palliative, negative: ban the bomb, tear down the billboards, give the Hindus contraceptives and tell them to eat their sacred cows. The simplest solution to any suspect change is, of course, to stop it, or better yet, to revert to a romanticized past: make those ugly gasoline stations look like Anne Hathaway's cottage or (in the Far West) like ghost-town saloons. The "wilderness area" mentality invariably advocates deep-freezing an ecology, whether San Gimignano or the High Sierra, as it was before the first Kleenex was dropped. But neither atavism nor prettification will cope with the ecologic crisis of our time.
What shall we do? No one yet knows. Unless we think about fundamentals, our specific measures may produce new backlashes more serious than those they are designed to remedy.
As
a
beginning
we should try to clarify our thinking by looking, in some historical
depth,
at the presuppositions that underlie modern technology and science.
Science
was traditionally aristocratic, speculative, intellectual in intent;
technology
was lower-class, empirical, action-oriented. The quite sudden fusion of
these two, towards the middle of the 19th century, is surely related to
the slightly prior and contemporary democratic revolutions which, by
reducing
social barriers, tended to assert a functional unity of brain and hand.
Our ecologic crisis is the product of an emerging, entirely novel,
democratic
culture. The issue is whether a democratized world can survive its own
implications. Presumably we cannot unless we rethink our axioms.
A second pair of facts is less well recognized because they result from quite recent historical scholarship. The leadership of the West, both in technology and in science, is far older than the so-called Scientific Revolution of the 17th century or the so-called Industrial Revolution of the 18th century. These terms are in fact outmoded and obscure the true nature of what they try to describe--significant stages in two long and separate developments. By A.D. 1000 at the latest--and perhaps, feebly, as much as 200 years earlier--the West began to apply water power to industrial processes other than milling grain. This was followed in the late 12th century by the harnessing of wind power. From simple beginnings, but with remarkable consistency of style, the West rapidly expanded its skills in the development of power machinery, labor-saving devices, and automation. Those who doubt should contemplate that most monumental achievement in the history of automation: the weight-driven mechanical clock, which appeared in two forms in the early 14th century. Not in craftsmanship but in basic technological capacity, the Latin West of the later Middle Ages far outstripped its elaborate, sophisticated, and esthetically magnificent sister cultures, Byzantium and Islam. In 1444 a great Greek ecclesiastic, Bessarion, who had gone to Italy, wrote a letter to a prince in Greece. He is amazed by the superiority of Western ships, arms, textiles, glass. But above all he is astonished by the spectacle of waterwheels sawing timbers and pumping the bellows of blast furnaces. Clearly, he had seen nothing of the sort in the Near East.
By
the
end
of the 15th century the technological superiority of Europe was such
that
its small, mutually hostile nations could spill out over all the rest
of
the world, conquering, looting, and colonizing. The symbol of this
technological
superiority is the fact that Portugal, one of the weakest states of the
Occident, was able to become, and to remain for a century, mistress of
the East Indies. And we must remember that the technology of Vasco da
Gama
and Albuquerque was built by pure empiricism, drawing remarkably little
support or inspiration from science.
In the
present-day vernacular understanding, modern science is supposed to
have
begun in 1543, when both Copernicus and Vesalius published their great
works. It is no derogation of their accomplishments, however, to point
out that such structures as the Fabrica and the De revolutionibus do
not
appear overnight. The distinctive Western tradition of science, in
fact,
began in the late 11th century with a massive movement of translation
of
Arabic and Greek scientific works into Latin. A few notable books--
Theophrastus,
for example--escaped the West's avid new appetite for science, but
within
less than 200 years effectively the entire corpus of Greek and Muslim
science
was available in Latin, and was being eagerly read and criticized in
the
new European universities. Out of criticism arose new observation,
speculation,
and increasing distrust of ancient authorities. By the late 13th
century
Europe had seized global scientific leadership from the faltering hands
of Islam. It would be as absurd to deny the profound originality of
Newton,
Galileo, or Copernicus as to deny that of the 14th century scholastic
scientists
like Buridan or Oresme on whose work they built. Before the 11th
century,
science scarcely existed in the Latin West, even in Roman times. From
the
11th century onward, the scientific sector of Occidental culture has
increased
in a steady crescendo.
Since
both
our technological and our scientific movements got their start,
acquired
their character, and achieved world dominance in the Middle Ages, it
would
seem that we cannot understand their nature or their present impact
upon
ecology without examining fundamental medieval assumptions and
developments.
In the days of the scratch-plow, fields were distributed generally in units capable of supporting a single family. Subsistence farming was the presupposition. But no peasant owned eight oxen: to use the new and more efficient plow, peasants pooled their oxen to form large plow-teams, originally receiving (it would appear) plowed strips in proportion to their contribution. Thus, distribution of land was based no longer on the needs of a family but, rather, on the capacity of a power machine to till the earth. Man's relation to the soil was profoundly changed. Formerly man had been part of nature; now he was the exploiter of nature. Nowhere else in the world did farmers develop any analogous agricultural implement. Is it coincidence that modern technology, with its ruthlessness toward nature, has so largely been produced by descendants of these peasants of northern Europe?
This same exploitive attitude appears slightly before A.D. 830 in Western illustrated calendars. In older calendars the months were shown as passive personifications. The new Frankish calendars, which set the style for the Middle Ages, are very different: they show men coercing the world around them--plowing, harvesting, chopping trees, butchering pigs. Man and nature are two things, and man is master.
These novelties seem to be in harmony with larger intellectual patterns. What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny--that is, by religion. To Western eyes this is very evident in, say, India or Ceylon. It is equally true of ourselves and of our medieval ancestors.
The
victory
of Christianity over paganism was the greatest psychic revolution in
the
history of our culture. It has become fashionable today to say that,
for
better or worse, we live in the "post-Christian age." Certainly the
forms
of our thinking and language have largely ceased to be Christian, but
to
my eye the substance often remains amazingly akin to that of the past.
Our daily habits of action, for example, are dominated by an implicit
faith
in perpetual progress which was unknown either to Greco- Roman
antiquity
or to the Orient. It is rooted in, and is indefensible apart from,
Judeo-
Christian theology. The fact that Communists share it merely helps to
show
what can be demonstrated on many other grounds: that Marxism, like
Islam,
is a Judeo-Christian heresy. We continue today to live, as we have
lived
for about 1700 years, very largely in a context of Christian axioms.
At the level of the common people this worked out in an interesting way. In Antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. These spirits were accessible to men, but were very unlike men; centaurs, fauns, and mermaids show their ambivalence. Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.
It is often said that for animism the Church substituted the cult of saints. True; but the cult of saints is functionally quite different from animism. The saint is not in natural objects; he may have special shrines, but his citizenship is in heaven. Moreover, a saint is entirely a man; he can be approached in human terms. In addition to saints, Christianity of course also had angels and demons inherited from Judaism and perhaps, at one remove, from Zorastrianism. But these were all as mobile as the saints themselves. The spirits in natural objects, which formerly had protected nature from man, evaporated. Man's effective monopoly on spirit in this world was confirmed, and the old inhibitions to the exploitation of nature crumbled.
When
one
speaks in such sweeping terms, a note of caution is in order.
Christianity
is a complex faith, and its consequences differ in differing contexts.
What I have said may well apply to the medieval West, where in fact
technology
made spectacular advances. But the Greek East, a highly civilized realm
of equal Christian devotion, seems to have produced no marked
technological
innovation after the late 7th century, when Greek fire was invented.
The
key to the contrast may perhaps be found in a difference in the
tonality
of piety and thought which students of comparative theology find
between
the Greek and the Latin Churches. The Greeks believed that sin was
intellectual
blindness, and that salvation was found in illumination,
orthodoxy--that
is, clear thinking. The Latins, on the other hand, felt that sin was
moral
evil, and that salvation was to be found in right conduct. Eastern
theology
has been intellectualist. Western theology has been voluntarist. The
Greek
saint contemplates; the Western saint acts. The implications of
Christianity
for the conquest of nature would emerge more easily in the Western
atmosphere.
The
Christian
dogma of creation, which is found in the first clause of all the
Creeds,
has another meaning for our comprehension of today's ecologic crisis.
By
revelation, God had given man the Bible, the Book of Scripture. But
since
God had made nature, nature also must reveal the divine mentality. The
religious study of nature for the better understanding of God was known
as natural theology. In the early Church, and always in the Greek East,
nature was conceived primarily as a symbolic system through which God
speaks
to men: the ant is a sermon to sluggards; rising flames are the symbol
of the soul's aspiration. The view of nature was essentially artistic
rather
than scientific. While Byzantium preserved and copied great numbers of
ancient Greek scientific texts, science as we conceive it could
scarcely
flourish in such an ambience.
However, in the Latin West by the early 13th century natural theology was following a very different bent. It was ceasing to be the decoding of the physical symbols of God's communication with man and was becoming the effort to understand God's mind by discovering how his creation operates. The rainbow was no longer simply a symbol of hope first sent to Noah after the Deluge: Robert Grosseteste, Friar Roger Bacon, and Theodoric of Freiberg produced startlingly sophisticated work on the optics of the rainbow, but they did it as a venture in religious understanding. From the 13th century onward, up to and including Leitnitz and Newton, every major scientist, in effect, explained his motivations in religious terms. Indeed, if Galileo had not been so expert an amateur theologian he would have got into far less trouble: the professionals resented his intrusion. And Newton seems to have regarded himself more as a theologian than as a scientist. It was not until the late 18th century that the hypothesis of God became unnecessary to many scientists.
It is often hard for the historian to judge, when men explain why they are doing what they want to do, whether they are offering real reasons or merely culturally acceptable reasons. The consistency with which scientists during the long formative centuries of Western science said that the task and the reward of the scientist was "to think God's thoughts after him" leads one to believe that this was their real motivation. If so, then modern Western science was cast in a matrix of Christian theology. The dynamism of religious devotion shaped by the Judeo-Christian dogma of creation, gave it impetus.
I personally doubt that disastrous ecologic backlash can be avoided simply by applying to our problems more science and more technology. Our science and technology have grown out of Christian attitudes toward man's relation to nature which are almost universally held not only by Christians and neo-Christians but also by those who fondly regard themselves as post-Christians. Despite Copernicus, all the cosmos rotates around our little globe. Despite Darwin, we are not, in our hearts, part of the natural process. We are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim. The newly elected Governor of California, like myself a churchman but less troubled than I, spoke for the Christian tradition when he said (as is alleged), "when you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all." To a Christian a tree can be no more than a physical fact. The whole concept of the sacred grove is alien to Christianity and to the ethos of the West. For nearly 2 millennia Christian missionaries have been chopping down sacred groves, which are idolatrous because they assume spirit in nature.
What we do about ecology depends on our ideas of the man-nature relationship. More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one. The beatniks, who are the basic revolutionaries of our time, show a sound instinct in their affinity for Zen Buddhism, which conceives of the man-nature relationship as very nearly the mirror image of the Christian view. Zen, however, is as deeply conditioned by Asian history as Christianity is by the experience of the West, and I am dubious of its viability among us.
Possibly we should ponder the greatest radical in Christian history since Christ: Saint Francis of Assisi. The prime miracle of Saint Francis is the fact that he did not end at the stake, as many of his left-wing followers did. He was so clearly heretical that a General of the Franciscan Order, Saint Bonavlentura, a great and perceptive Christian, tried to suppress the early accounts of Franciscanism. The key to an understanding of Francis is his belief in the virtue of humility--not merely for the individual but for man as a species. Francis tried to depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God's creatures. With him the ant is no longer simply a homily for the lazy, flames a sign of the thrust of the soul toward union with God; now they are Brother Ant and Sister Fire, praising the Creator in their own ways as Brother Man does in his.
Later commentators have said that Francis preached to the birds as a rebuke to men who would not listen. The records do not read so: he urged the little birds to praise God, and in spiritual ecstasy they flapped their wings and chirped rejoicing. Legends of saints, especially the Irish saints, had long told of their dealings with animals but always, I believe, to show their human dominance over creatures. With Francis it is different. The land around Gubbio in the Apennines was ravaged by a fierce wolf. Saint Francis, says the legend, talked to the wolf and persuaded him of the error of his ways. The wolf repented, died in the odor of sanctity, and was buried in consecrated ground.
What Sir Steven Ruciman calls "the Franciscan doctrine of the animal soul" was quickly stamped out. Quite possibly it was in part inspired, consciously or unconsciously, by the belief in reincarnation held by the Cathar heretics who at that time teemed in Italy and southern France, and who presumably had got it originally from India. It is significant that at just the same moment, about 1200, traces of metempsychosis are found also in western Judaism, in the Provencal Cabbala. But Francis held neither to transmigration of souls nor to pantheism. His view of nature and of man rested on a unique sort of pan-psychism of all things animate and inaminate, designed for the glorification of their transcendent Creator, who, in the ultimate gesture of cosmic humility, assumed flesh, lay helpless in a manger, and hung dying on a scaffold.
I am not suggesting that many contemporary Americans who are concerned about our ecologic crisis will be either able or willing to counsel with wolves or exhort birds. However, the present increasing disruption of the global environment is the product of a dynamic technology and science which were originating in the Western medieval world against which Saint Francis was rebelling in so original a way. Their growth cannot be understood historically apart from distinctive attitudes toward nature which are deeply grounded in Christian dogma. The fact that most people do not think of these attitudes as Christian is irrelevant. No new set of basic values has been accepted in our society to displace those of Christianity. Hence we shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.
The
greatest
spiritual revolutionary in Western history, Saint Francis, proposed
what
he thought was an alternative Christian view of nature and man's
relation
to it; he tried to substitute the idea of the equality of all
creatures,
including man, for the idea of man's limitless rule of creation. He
failed.
Both our present science and our present technology are so tinctured
with
orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature that no solution for our
ecologic
crisis can be expected from them alone. Since the roots of our trouble
are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially
religious,
whether we call it that or not. We must rethink and refeel our nature
and
destiny. The profoundly religious, but heretical, sense of the
primitive
Franciscans for the spiritual autonomy of all parts of nature may point
a direction. I propose Francis as a patron saint for ecologists .
page
top
Essay
Charles
Krauthammer
Krauthammer,
Charles. "Saving Nature, But Only for Man." Time 17 June 1991:
56.
page topEnvironmental sensitivity is now as required an attitude in polite society as is. say, belief in democracy or aversion to polyester. But now that everyone from Ted Turner to George Bush. Dow to Exxon has professed love for Mother Earth, how are we to choose among the dozens of conflicting proposals. restrictions. projects. regulations and laws advanced in the name of the environment? Clearly not everything with an environmental claim is worth doing. How to choose?There is a simple way. First. distinguish between environmental luxuries and environmental necessities. Luxuries are those things it would be nice to have if costless. Necessities are those things we must have regardless. Then apply a rule. Call it the fundamental axiom of sane environmentalism: Combat-ting ecological change that directly threatens the health and safety of people is an environmental necessity. All else is luxury .
For example: preserving the atmosphere-stopping ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect-is an environmental necessity . In April scientists reported that ozone damage is far worse than previously thought. Ozone depletion not only causes skin cancer and eye cataracts, it also destroys plankton, the beginning of the food chain atop which we humans sit.
The reality of the greenhouse effect is more speculative, though its possible consequences are far deadlier: melting ice caps, flooded coastlines, disrupted climate, parched plains and. ultimately, empty breadbaskets. The American Midwest feeds the world. Are we prepared to see Iowa acquire New Mexico's desert climate? And Siberia acquire Iowa's?
Ozone depletion and the greenhouse. effect are human disasters. They happen to occur in the environment. But they are urgent because they directly threaten man. A sane environmentalism, the only kind of environmentalism that will win universal public support, begins by unashamedly declaring that nature is here to serve man. A sane environmentalism is entirely anthropocentric: it enjoins man to preserve nature, but on the grounds of self-preservation.
A sane environmentalism does not sentimentalize the earth. It does not ask people to sacrifice in the name of other creatures. After all. it is hard enough to ask people to sacrifice in the name of other humans. (Think of the chronic public resistance to foreign aid and welfare.) Ask hardworking voters to sacrifice in the name of the snail darter. and. if they are feeling polite. they will give you a shrug.
Of course, this anthropocentrism runs against the grain of a contemporary environmentalism that indulges in earth worship to the point of idolatry. One scientific theory-Gaia theory-actually claims that Earth is a living-organism. This kind of environmentalism likes to consider itself spiritual. It is nothing more than sentimental. It takes. for example. a highly selective view of the benignity of nature. My nature worship stops with the April twister that came through Kansas or the May cyclone that killed more than 125.000 Bengalis and left 10 million (!) homeless.
A nonsentimental environmentalism is one founded on Protagoras' maxim that "Man is the measure of all things." Such a principle helps us through the thicket of environmental argument. Take the current debate raging over oil drilling in a corner of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Environmentalists, mobilizing against a bill working its way through the U.S. Congress to permit such exploration, argue that Americans should be conserving energy instead of drilling for it. This is a false either or proposition. the u.s. does need a sizable energy tax to reduce consumption, But it needs more production too. Government estimates indicate a nearly fifty-fifty chance that under the ANWR lies one of the five largest oilfields ever discovered in America. -
The U.S. has just come through a war fought in pan over oil, Energy dependence costs .Americans not just dollars but lives. It is a bizarre sentimentalism that would deny oil that is peacefully attainable because it risks disrupting the calving grounds of Arctic caribou.I like the caribou as much as the next man. .And I would be rather sorry if their mating patterns are disturbed. But you can't have everything. And if the choice is between the welfare of caribou and reducing an oil dependency that gets people killed in wars, I choose man over caribou every time.
Similarly the spotted owl in Oregon. I am no enemy of the owl. If it could be preserved at no or little cost. I would agree: the variety of nature is a good, a high aesthetic good. But it is no more than that. And sometimes aesthetic goods have to be sacrificed to the more fundamental ones. If the cost of preserving the spotted owl is the loss of livelihood for 30.000 logging families, I choose family over owl.
The important distinction is between those environmental goods that are fundamental and those that are merely aesthetic. Nature is our ward. It is not our master. It is to be respected and even cultivated. But it is man's world. And when man has to choose between his well-being and that of nature. nature will have to accommodate.
Man should accommodate only when his fate and that of nature are inextricably bound up. The must urgent accommodation must be made when the very integrity of man's habitat-e.g., atmospheric ozone-is threatened. .When the threat to man is of a lesser order (say, the pollutants from coal- and oil-fired generators that cause death from disease but not fatal damage to the ecosystem), a more modulated accommodation that balances economic against health concerns is in order . But in either case the principle is the same: protect the environment-because it is man's environment.
The sentimental environmentalists will call this saving nature with a totally wrong frame of mind. Exactly, A sane-a humanistic-environmentalism does it not for nature's sake but for our own .
Devall,
Bill and George Sessions. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered.
Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, Peregrine Smith Books, 1985. (70-71)
page top1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inher-ent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.RE (1). This formulation refers to the biosphere, or more accurately, to the ecosphere as a whole. This includes individuals, species, pOpU-lations, habitat, as well as human and nonhuman cultures. From our current knowledge of all-pervasive intimate relationships, this implies
2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
5. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is exces-sive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life qual-ity (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.
Naess and Sessions Provide Comments on the Basic Principles..
a fundamental deep concern and respect. Ecological processes of the planet should, on the whole, remain intact. "The world environment should remain 'natural' " (Gary Snyder).
The term "life" is used here in a more comprehensive nontechnical way to refer also to what biologists classify as "nonliving"; rivers (watersheds), landscapes, ecosystems. For supporters of deep ecology, slogans such as "Let the river live" illustrate this broader usage so com-mon in most cultures.
Inherent value as used in (I) is common in deep ecology literature ("The presence of inherent value in a natural object is independent of any awareness, interest, or appreciation of it by a conscious being.") 5RE (2). More technically, this is a formulation concerning diver-sity and complexity. From an ecological standpoint, complexity and symbiosis are conditions for maximizing diversity. So-called simple, lower, or primitive species of plants and animals contribute essen-tially to the richness and diversity of life. They have value in them-selves and are not merely steps toward the so-called higher or rational life forms. The second principle presupposes that life itself, as a process over evolutionary time, implies an increase of diversity and richness. The refusal to acknowledge that some life forms have greater or lesser intrinsic value than others (see points I and 2) runs counter to the formulations of some ecological philosophers and New Age writers.
Complexity, as referred to here, is different from complication. Urban life may be more complicated than life in a natural setting without being more complex in the sense of multifaceted quality. RE (3). The term "vital need" is left deliberately vague to allow for considerable latitude in judgment. Differences in climate and related factors, together with differences in the structures of socie-ties as they now exist, need to be considered (for some Eskimos, snow-mobiles are necessary today to satisfy vital needs).
People in the materially richest countries cannot be expected to reduce their excessive interference with the nonhuman world to a moderate level overnight. The stabilization and reduction of the human population will take time. Interim strategies need to be deve-loped. But this in no way excuses the present complacency-the extreme seriousness of our current situation must first be realized.
From
Judith Plant 'Women and Nature', Green Line (Oxford) offprint, not
dated,
pp. 1-8.
Ecofeminism is hardly a household word, but it has begun to make an impression both on the Green movement and also on the feminist movement at large. Its aims are not the same as those associated with the dominant liberal feminist position. This means that ecofeminists do not seek equality with men, as such, but rather want us to recognize that women's liberation means liberation for women as women. They have a specific understanding of what 'being a woman' involves, and they believe that women's liberation will require a positive revaluation of those activities and sites of activity traditionally associated with women - giving birth, nurturing and the domestic arena. This has led other feminists to baulk at the ecofeminist project, seeing it as reinforcing the stereotypes which are used to oppress women. Below, the Canadian ecofeminist Judith Plant sets out the main principles: the closeness of women to nature (with the implication that women are potentially in the political-ecological vanguard); the belief that the domination of women and the despoliation of nature have the same root cause: patriarchy; and the need to re-establish for nature the organic metaphor over the machine metaphor (Fritjof Capra*). Finally, Plant suggests that the bioregional project* comes closest to providing the socio-political context within which ecofeminism's schemes could best be carried out.
From
Judith Plant 'Women and Nature', Green Line (Oxford) offprint, not
dated,
pp. 1-8.
page topWomen have long been associated with nature - metaphorically, as in 'Mother Earth', for instance. Our language says it all: a 'virgin' forest is one awaiting exploitation, as yet untouched by man. In society, too, women have been associated with the physical side of life. Our role has been 'closer to nature', our natural work centred around human physical requirements: eating, sex, cleaning, the care of children, and sick people. We have taken care of day-to-day life so that men have been able to go 'out into the world', to create and enact methods of exploiting nature, including other human beings. Then to return to a home-life which waits in readiness. (A man's home is his castle.)Historically, women have had no real power in the outside world, no place in decision-making. Intellectual life, the work of the mind, has traditionally not been accessible to women - due in part to society's either/or mentality, coupled with a valuing of the spiritual over the natural. Women have been generally passive, as has been nature. Today, however, ecology speaks for the earth, for the 'other' in human/environmental relationships; and feminism speaks for the 'other' in female/male relations. And ecofeminism, by speaking for the original others, seeks to understand the interconnected roots of all domination, and ways to resist and change. . . .
Before the world was mechanized and industrialized, the metaphor that explained self, society and the cosmos was the image of organism. This is not surprising since most people were connected with the earth in their daily lives, being peasants and living a subsistence existence. The earth was seen as female. And with two faces: one, the passive, nurturing mother; the other, wild and uncontrollable. Thus the earth, giver and supporter of life, was symbolized by woman, as was the image of nature as disorder, with her storms, droughts, and other natural disasters.
These images served as cultural constraints. The earth was seen to be alive, sensitive; it was considered unethical to do violence towards her. Who could conceive of killing a mother, or of digging into her body for gold, or mutilating her? In relation to mining, people believed that minerals and metals ripened in the uterus of the earth; they compared mines to Mother Earth's vagina, and metallurgy itself was an abortion of the metal's natural growth cycle. So rituals were carried out by miners: offerings to the gods of the soil and the subterranean world, ceremonial sacrifices, sexual abstinence and fasting were conducted and observed before violating what was considered to be the sacred earth. . . .
The organic metaphor that once explained everything was replaced by mechanical images. . . .
The new images were of controlling and dominating: having power over nature. Where the nurturing image had once been a cultural restraint, the new image of mastery allowed the clearing of forests and the damming of rivers. Nature as unlimited resource is epitomized today by scarred hillsides, uranium mine tailings poisoning river systems, toxic waste, and human junk floating in space.
One theory bases this propensity for domination over nature on the human fear that nature is more powerful than human beings. By subduing and controlling nature, society thus can assume power over life. Women, with their biological connection with life-giving, are a constant reminder of the reality of human mortality. Thus patriarchal society, based on a view that subjugated nature to the spirit of man (sic), also subjugated woman. . . .
Once we understand the historical connections between women and nature and their subsequent oppression, we cannot help but take a stand on war against nature. By participating in environmental stand-offs against those who are assuming the right to control the natural world, we are helping to create an awareness of domination at all levels. From this perspective, consensus decision making and non-hierarchical organization become accepted facts of life.
Ecofeminism gives women and men common ground. While women may have been associated with nature, this does not mean that somehow they have been socialized in a different world from men. Women have learned to think in the same dualities as men, and we feel just as alienated as do our brothers. The social system isn't good for either - or both - of us. Yet, we are the social system. We need some common ground from which to be critically self-conscious, to enable us to recognize and affect the deep structure of our relations, with each other and with our environment.
In addition to participating in forms of resistance, such as non-violent civil disobedience, we can also encourage, support and develop within our communities a cultural life which celebrates the many differences in nature, and which encourages reflection on the consequences of our actions, in all our relations. . . .
Women's values, centred around life-giving, must be revalued, elevated from their once-subordinate role. What women know from experience needs recognition and respect. We have had generations of experience in conciliation, dealing with interpersonal conflicts daily in domestic life. We know how to feel for others because we have been socialized that way.
At the same time, our work - tending to human physical requirements - has been undervalued. As discussed earlier, what has been considered material and physical has been thought to be 'less than' the intellectual, the 'outside' (of home) world. Women have been very much affected by this devaluation and this is reflected in our images of ourselves and our attitudes towards our work. Men too have been alienated from child-care and all the rest of daily domestic life which very much nurtures all who participate. Our society has devalued the source of its humanness. Home is the theatre of our human ecology , and it is here that we can effectively think feelingly. Bioregionalism, essentially, is attempting to rebuild human and natural community. We know that it is non-adaptive to repeat the social organization which left women and children alone, at home, and men out in the world doing the 'important' work. The real work is at home. As part of this process, woman and nature, indeed humans and nature, need a new image of ourselves, as we mend our relations with each other and with the earth. Such an image will surely reflect what we are learning through the study of ecology , what we are coming to understand through feminism, and what we are experiencing by participating in the bioregional project. Much depends on us, on our determination to make things different and to take a stand.
Shabecoff,
Philip.
A New Name For Peace: International Environmentalism, Sustainable
Development, and Democracy. Hanover: University Press of New
England,
1996. (188-89)
page topThe end of biopolarity [sic] set the needle of geopolitics into a bewildered spin. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Warsaw Pact was being followed, it appeared at the beginning of 1995, by the slow disintegration of the Western Alliance. The old allies seemed to be casting about for new diplomatic bearings, with western Europe turning its eyes to the East and the United States to the South of its own hemisphere. And as Barbara Crossette of the New York Times observed, "the fraternal third world" that charismatic leaders of the 1950s and 1960s-Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, Sukamo, and Zhou Enlai-had hoped to build, was effectively "dead" by 1994. Despite efforts to maintain solidarity, the once more or less solid South was split between increasingly poor and increasingly affluent countries, between nations with democratic and authoritarian regimes. The old "second world" of the Soviet Union and its Socialist allies also had disintegrated, and its fragments were now competing with its former clients in the nonaligned world for the crumbs of economic assistance falling from the tables of the European Community, North America, and Japan. In those countries of the developing world that were achieving economic takeoff, primarily in parts of Asia and Latin America, there was a clear danger that patterns of production and consumption would replicate the wasteful, unsustainable practices of the North and multiply the environmentally destructive effects of industrialism to levels that could not be sustained by the earth's life-support system.In theory, the UN could be a beacon, leading the international community through these perplexing waters to the safe haven of anew system of political stability. And as noted in the previous chapter, the summit meeting on environment and development was a major initiative by the UN system to lay the foundation of a rebuilt structure of collective security based on cooperation to protect the planet and the well-being of all of its inhabitants now and in future generations. A livable planet and economic and social justice for all of its people is not a bad start on a new central organizing principle.
Events after Brazil have demonstrated, however, that the UN is much better in laying out organizing principles than as an organizer of action by nations and peoples. The sluggishness and ineffectiveness of its response to recent crises, particularly its long inability to end the tragic fiasco in Bosnia, has once again, confirmed that the UN does not have the power or capacity by itself to determine the course of geopolitics. It cannot by itself, therefore, assure that the principles and pledges made in Rio are observed by its member nations.
As former Under-Secretary-General Brian Urquhart observed, "The U .N . is a channel for leadership. It cannot exercise leadership. You can't move this international body without Olympian leadership. . . . The United States provided remarkable leadership after World War II but it no longer does so." Urquhart made those remarks during the preparatory process for the Rio meeting, when the Bush administration was deliberately abdicating leadership for political reasons. But the "sea change" in U.S. leadership that Strong and others had hoped for after the election of Bill Clinton and Al Gore also failed to materialize, at least in the first two years of their administration. Clinton 's weak presidency was overwhelmed by fierce political and ideological opposition conducted by the Republican minority. The Republicans, joined by conservative Democrats, were able to block most of his domestic agenda, including virtually all of his efforts to improve antipollution laws and protect public lands and endangered species. They provided no help in strengthening an uncertain foreign policy, except for supporting the NAFTA and GATT treaties, which were favored by most American corporations, and actively sought to undermine many of the administration's diplomatic initiatives.
The United States, the only superpower left standing in the geopolitical coliseum as the end of the twentieth century approached, was a confused, bumbling giant, unsure of where to turn, unable to exercise its strength. Despite efforts by Vice President Gore, Tim Wirth at the State Department, and others in the administration, Washington proved incapable of leading the international community toward a new system of collective security based on the principles enunciated in Rio.
With the smashing triumph of right-wing politics in the U.S. Congressional elections of 1994, any chance that America would exercise such leadership in the near future was extinguished. It was clear that not only would the reactionary Republican majority fail to support major new environmental and development assistance programs, it was prepared to conduct a full-scale withdrawal. Increased development assistance? Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who would be the next chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said after the election that he distrusted "cutesy" ideas such as sustainable development; Senator Mitch McConnell, who would head a key subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he thought the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) should be eliminated. The only increase in spending on the nation's global interests that was likely to be approved by the new majority would be to resume building up the defense budget. It was also clear that the Republicans would seek to roll back many domestic environmental and resource conservation programs as part of their effort to reduce the role of government and give capital and corporations freer rein to pollute and to exploit resources and consumers without fear of penalty.