Ecologism is a new political ideology based on
the position that the non-human world is worthy of moral
consideration, and that this should be taken into account in
social, economic, and political systems.
Ecologism has a biological and an economic
root. These came together in the 1970s with the political
emergence of the 'Greens', as a political group. They were
unified through the acceptance of the holistic values of ecology
which proved and justified humankind's links with nature. Ecology
emphasises our interdependence with soil, air and
food. It also shows the importance of instinctive
and inbuilt patterns of behaviour, that have been elucidated by
rational ways of thought, testable hypotheses and
experiments. Ecology thereby demonstrates that
our human genetic potential included a grammar of behaviour and
ecosacy, as powerful as our inborn sense of language.
Starting from this perspective of a evolved relationship with
environment, the greens reject the traditional politcal system and
adopted a set of values, which while not unique to ecologists, were
first put by them.
The economic root is less secure because
economics is not an experimental science. However, ecologism takes
the view that 'rational' economic policies of redistribution and
reorganisation can solve what are seen as resource shortages and
inequality that have come from global industrialism. The cost of
the redistribution is either not quantified, or counted in as a
necessary sacrifice towards improving the quality of people's
lives. It leads to the formulation of solutions from outside
the traditional political and social systems on the belief that
trained minds can plan life better than those living the
life.
The central feature of ecologism – the
belief that nature is an interconnected whole, embracing humans,
non-humans as well as the inanimate world – is concerned not
only with separate instances of poisoned rivers or dying species.
It provides solutions not only for addressing the most pressing
environmental concerns, but also explains why the widespread
ecological degradation began in the first place. Green theory draws
our attention to the fact that separate efforts to clean up one
lake or save one species from extinction will not remedy the fact
that our reckless environmental practices have jeopardised the
well-being of present and future generations of humans and other
species on this planet. In short, the Greens provide answers not
only to environmental problems, but also, more generally, attempt
to formulate a new answer to the old existential question of
“how we should live” by arguing that we should live in
harmony with nature because humans are a part of nature.
The Green perspective appears to have the main
components of what constitutes a political theory. It has core
moral values, philosophical principles; it is inclusive and general
in its scope. However, Cardinal Paul Poupard, the Vatican 'minister
of culture' sees ecologism as a new form of paganism, which
recognises some undefined cosmic power (holism). He says respect
for nature belongs to the Christian tradition. Let it suffice the
example of St Francis. But the contemporary ecologism is rather a
new form of paganism, which believes in the maternal nature of Gaia
as the fundamental reality. Therefore, the protection of nature is
the most important command for the 'believers' of ecologism and man
is seen as a sponger, who rapes this nature.
The economic analysis of
John Kirton reveals that since its 1975
inception, the G7 has continually asserted and progressively
developed a doctrine of “embedded ecologism.” This
doctrine has defended the employment and social welfare values at
the core of the 1945 consensus on embedded liberalism, while
reinforcing them with a new array of ecological values that it has
integrated into the employment and trade spheres in protective and
proactive ways. In its fully developed form, the doctrine of
“embedded ecologism” asserts that employment and social
cohesion (and the democratic practices and polities they sustain)
are fundamental to the G7’s mission, that environmental
protection as well as trade liberalization fosters such objectives,
and that trade liberalization should take place only insofar as it
protects and promotes environmental and labour values. External
liberalization is thus bounded both by domestic welfare and by
domestic and global ecological concerns.
While the elements of “embedded
ecologism” were evident at the G7 Summit’s outset, the
effort to elaborate edifice encountered two major challenges.
First, during its first quarter century, the G7 adopted a
conception of trade liberalization far more aggressive than that of
1945 and 1975, added investment and finance (but not capital
account) liberalization to it, and entrenched its new conception in
the powerful institution of the WTO that it did much to create.
Second, prompted by the OECD, the G7 turned during the 1980’s
from a macroeconomic trade and growth-based conception of
employment to one privileging market-oriented structural policies.
In both cases the weight of these economic and trade generation of
international institutions lack. This flexibility, however, can be
exercised equally easily in any of the three ways the competing
schools of thought suggest.