ENVIRONMENTALISM
After data have been
collected, and concern has been voiced, the central question for
environmentalists is 'So what? What is likely to be done to remedy
environmental problems like the "destruction" of the
countryside?'
One school of
thought believes that if only people know about what is going on
then remedial action will naturally follow. However,
conservationists need to realise that scientific evidence, rational
arguments and compromise do not win political arguments. In other
words, sheer volumes of data - of facts and figures - are unlikely
to be very persuasive in themselves. For, as the contemporary
environmental debate has shown, people have an almost infinite
capacity either to ignore or to heed selectively the 'facts of the
matter'. Having first made up our minds, frequently from an
irrational base, about what we want, we all tend to look for 'facts
and figures' to support our position, from which we will be
dislodged only very gradually if at all.
Thus, we argue, and
perceive the arguments of others, not in an objective and unbiassed
way. We have presuppositions, or even vested-interest positions
that colour our perception of the facts. These are frequently
economically based, as in the case of the pro-business lobby, which
has such an effective anti-conservation voice in the corridors of
power, but they are also shaped by a host of non-economic factors.
These will be socially and culturally derived, and imparted to us
via our education and socialisation. Anyone who wants to influence
us or change our minds will have to understand and take account of
these presuppositions and vested interests. It will be no good
bombarding us with 'facts' which we are anyway predisposed to
dismiss. A wiser strategy would be to shake the foundations of our
beliefs by undermining the assumptions on which they are based. And
this is how we should approach differences with other people. As
Bertrand Russell put it:
"When an intelligent man expresses a view which
seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that
it is somehow not true but we should try to understand how it ever
came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological
imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps
us to realise how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will
seem to an age which has a different temper of mind".
We should listen to
what others say, and reflect not necessarily upon the 'truth' of
their arguments, but on why they make them and believe in them,
i.e. from what material or ideological vested interest position
they speak, and what broader assumptions and philosophy serve this
interest. And if we wish to influence their thinking, we shall have
to study the history of how their thinking came to be as it is -
for we cannot effect a process of change without first knowing how
changes came about in the past. It is irrelevant to ask
whether concepts, categories and relationships are 'true' or
'false'. We have to ask, rather, what it is that produces them and
what is it that they serve to produce?
If we seek for the
future the kind of real social and environmental changes which much
of the standard environmentalist literature calls for, then we must
develop an historical perspective on how we and others have arrived
at our present set of attitudes. The shift has to be
accompanied by widespread attitudinal changes, and we should
understand what material changes will be needed to help foster a
new set. People differ according to the prescription
that should be followed to resolve the environmental
dilemma.
The emergence of
technocentric thought is traced to the development of rationalism
and the scientific revolution of the 16th century onwards, and
attention is focussed on attitudes of dominance over nature which
stemmed from them. The contrasting ecocentric ideology, of equality
between man and nature, or subordination of the former to the
latter, is then traced to its romantic and scientific roots - the
latter based particularly on Malthus and Darwin. Both groups
will recognise the existence of the same environmental
roblems and desire to solve them.
