Deep Ecology
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DISCUSSION: Eco-philosophy as Religion
Is Deep Ecology a religion? It is if you
believe the claims made in a lawsuit filed
on behalf of some northern Minnesota
timber companies. Not only is Deep
Ecology a religion, but the U.S. Forest
Service (USFS) violates the constitutional
separation of church and state when it
cooperates with groups that are committed
to Deep Ecology by restricting timber
harvests on federally owned public lands.
As discussed in previous chapters, the
USFS manages national forests by seeking
to balance the demands of multiple constituencies
while adhering to scientific
principles that ensure the long-term sustainability
of the forests. The groups that
make demands on the USFS include not
only loggers and preservationists but also
people advocating such recreational uses
as hunting, fishing, hiking, ATV riding
and snowmobiling, skiing, birding, and so
forth.
Two environmental and preservationist
groups, the Superior Wilderness Action
Network (SWAN), of northern Minnesota,
and the Forest Guardians, of Santa Fe,
actively seek to limit the amount of land
within national forests that is opened for
logging. Their activities have included
everything from lobbying the USFS
through letters and petitions, to filing
lawsuits appealing USFS decisions. Typically,
the relationship between the USFS
and SWAN and the Forest Guardians,
though civil, is antagonistic. The environmentalists
are, after all, seeking to prevent
the USFS from fulfilling one of its
major legal mandates, supporting logging
of national forests.
Listening to environmental groups
and waiting for the appeal process to be
exhausted takes time. Logging permits
are inevitably delayed, and timber companies
lose time and money. It was this
loss that the logging companies sought
to redress with their lawsuit. Minnesota
Associated Contract Loggers, a group
of independent loggers in Northern
CHAPTER 9 DEEP ECOLOGY 203
Minnesota, and Olson Logging Company
filed a lawsuit that would prevent the
USFS from cooperating with SWAN, the
Forest Guardians, and any other environmental
group that bases its claims on the
“religion” of Deep Ecology. The logging
companies alleged that by cooperating
with these groups and delaying or limiting
logging, the USFS was using the religious
beliefs of Deep Ecology to set public policy,
a violation of the First Amendment’s
separation of church and state.
The lawsuit was filed in September
1999. Pertinent sections of the lawsuit
follow:1
Plaintiffs seek to prevent the establishment
of religion by Defendant USFS,
or, at minimum, neutrality by Defendant
USFS in matters of religious faith.
. . . Defendants SWAN and Forest Guardians
have constrained Defendant
USFS to follow certain religious beliefs
on the sacredness of trees and other
natural flora and fauna such that
Defendant USFS is complicit in the
establishment of religion contrary to
the provisions of the 1st Amendment
to the Constitution of the United
States. . . . Defendant USFS has been
derelict in its duties . . . because it has,
at a minimum, shown favoritism to the
religion of Deep Ecology as manifested
in the actions and demands of Defendants
SWAN and Forest Guardians,
and, at a maximum, cooperated with
such Defendants in establishing the
premises of Deep Ecology as part of
government management of national
forests in Minnesota. Defendant USFS
has allowed itself to be used as a tool,
agent, or instrument of Defendants
SWAN and Forest Guardians for religious
purposes.
The purpose of Defendant SWAN is
to stop logging in Minnesota. SWAN
believes in the creation of natural
reserves within which limited or no
human access or interference with natural
forces is permitted. Since its formation
SWAN has advocated no
commercial logging in national forests.
SWAN is guided by the premises and
beliefs of Deep Ecology. Deep Ecology
is a rival to such religious texts as
Genesis from the Old Testament of
Judeo-Christian tradition. It is a religion
similar in many beliefs to the neopagan
religions of Druid practices,
Wicca and Gaia worship. Deep Ecology
has appropriated religious practices of
Native Americans.
The beliefs of Deep Ecology are also
reflected in the Religious Campaign for
Forest Conservation, an interfaith forest
ethic to articulate a right relationship
to forests and wild areas from a
religious perspective. The Episcopal
Diocese of Minnesota Environmental
Stewardship Commission considers the
Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness
and part of the Chippewa National
Forest to be “sacred ground.” The
Christian Environmental Council seeks
the end of all commercial logging on
U.S. National forests because, it
believes, Christian Scriptures clearly
teach that forests are a place where
God is present and cares and provides
for his creatures who inhabit them. The
Leadership of National Religious
Partnership for the Environment
believes that “environmentalism
started with Genesis, not Earth Day.”
SWAN’s Executive Director, Ray
Fenner, points out the religious aspects
of saving forests from logging in
everything he does. Tactics used by
Defendants SWAN and Forest Guardians
to interfere with the decisionmaking
process of Defendant USFS
constitute devices to deceive in the
nature of smokescreens and subterfuges
about the religious purposes
advanced by such Defendants contrary
to Federal Constitutional guarantees
that federal power will not be used to
favor or establish any religion or religious
beliefs.
Mike Dombeck, Chief of Defendant
USFS in February 1999, stated that
“spiritual values” have become more
and more important as national goals
for management of national forests by
Defendant USFS. On March 28, 1999,
the same Mike Dombeck announced
that conservation biology would be
the first priority of Defendant USFS in
the future. On June 12, 1999, Defendant
USFS issued the first draft of
planning regulations making conservation
biology and ecological
204 PART III THEORIES OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
sustainability the first priority on
national forests. The draft stated that
“the fundamental goal of the National
Forest System is to maintain and
restore ecological sustainability, the
long-term maintenance of the diversity
of native plant and animal communities,
and the productive capacity
of ecological systems.” This plan shifts
Defendant USFS away from multipleuse
of national forests in line with the
theological dictates of Deep Ecology
on the sanctity of non-human nature.
Declaratory relief [sought is] that
no action taken by Defendants SWAN
or Forest Guardians be acknowledged
by any federal or state Court in Minnesota,
or affecting Minnesota lands, or
by Defendant USFS unless and until
there has been an affirmative showing
acceptable to the Courts of the
United States that such action by
Defendants SWAN and Forest Guardians
will not advance, favor or establish
any religious belief or tenant, or that
such action serves a compelling interest
of the United States of America. . . .
Injunctive relief [sought is] that Defendant
USFS cease and desist in establishing,
promoting, or favoring Deep
Ecology or any similar religion.
The attorney for the logging groups,
Stephen Young, argued in court that
“Deep Ecology is a set of religious beliefs.”
Young was quoted by the Los Angeles
Times as claiming that “You can preach
that trees are sacred, that the Earth is my
mother, the sun is my father and all that,
but in demanding that the government
accept your beliefs, you’ve crossed the
line.”2
The USFS, SWAN, and the Forest Guardians
disputed each aspect of the lawsuit.
They argued that the preservationists’ beliefs
were not based on Deep Ecology,
that Deep Ecology is not a religion, and
that even if it were, the U.S. Constitution
would require the USFS to give these
groups a fair hearing rather than prohibiting
it. The defendants claimed that
the lawsuit was more likely to be an attempt
to intimidate them from further activities
than a legitimate legal challenge.
The courts seemed to agree. In
February 2000, the Minnesota District
Court dismissed the lawsuit as “unseemly,”
“baseless,” and “contumacious.”
The district judge ordered the loggers’
attorney to pay $5,000 to the two environmental
groups. A U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals agreed with the district court
and denied Young’s appeal. Late in 2001,
Young appealed to the Supreme Court.
In that appeal he claimed, “Just as
devout faith in the literal words of various
Hadith of Mohammad gave the
Taliban license to impose through state
power harsh conditions on the women
of Afghanistan, so Deep Ecology gives
license to its adherents to take extreme
actions against those who would live by
different beliefs. Deep Ecology is the
belief system that has spawned the ecoterrorists
of recent years.” In January
2002, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to
hear the case, bringing an end to the
suit.
9.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter examines the Deep Ecology movement. Unlike the land ethic,
Deep Ecology has not developed out of one primary source, nor does it
refer to one systematic philosophy. Deep Ecology has been used in a variety of
ways, ranging from a general description of all nonanthropocentric theories to
the highly technical philosophy developed by the Norwegian philosopher Arne
Naess.3 In recent years, the phrase Deep Ecology has come to refer primarily to
the approach to environmental issues developed in the writings of academics
Naess, Bill Devall, and George Sessions, which is how it is used in this chapter.4
Arne Naess first introduced a distinction between deep and shallow environmental
perspectives in 1973.5 Naess characterizes the shallow ecology
movement as committed to the “fight against pollution and resource depletion.”
He maintains that it is an anthropocentric approach with the primary
objective of protecting the “health and affluence of the people in developed
countries.” Deep Ecology, on the other hand, takes a “relational, total-field”
perspective, rejecting the anthropocentric “man-in-environment image” in
favor of a more holistic and nonanthropocentric approach.
Perhaps a simpler characterization that is still faithful to Naess’s basic point
could be made in terms of symptoms and underlying causes. By focusing on
issues such as pollution and resource depletion, the shallow approach looks
only at the immediate effects of the environmental crisis. Just as a sneeze or a
cough can disrupt a person’s daily routine, pollution and resource depletion
disrupt the lifestyle of modern industrial societies.However, it would be a mistake
for medicine merely to treat sneezing and coughing and not to investigate
their underlying causes. So, too, it is a mistake for environmentalists to be concerned
only with pollution and resource depletion without investigating their
social and human causes.
Seen in this way, of course, Deep Ecology would refer to a wide variety of
approaches. What distinguishes Deep Ecology as a philosophical approach is its
tenet that the current environmental crisis can be traced to deep philosophical
causes. Thus a cure for the crisis can come only with a radical change in our
philosophical outlook. This change involves both personal and cultural transformations
and would “affect basic economic and ideological structures.”6 In
short, we need to change ourselves as individuals and as a culture. But this
change, according to Devall and Sessions, is not the creation of something new
but a “reawakening of something very old.” It involves the cultivation of an
“ecological consciousness,” an “ecological, philosophical, and spiritual
approach” to the crisis that recognizes the “unity of humans, plants, animals,
the Earth.”7
Deep Ecologists trace their philosophical roots to many of the people and
positions that this textbook has already examined. The debate between Gifford
Pinchot and John Muir examined in Chapter 3 was an early version of the
tension between shallow (Pinchot) and deep (Muir) approaches. Rachel
Carson’s critique of anthropocentrism in Silent Spring and Lynn White’s critique
of Western Christianity, along with the nineteenth-century romanticism
of Thoreau,were precursors of Deep Ecology.8
As a philosophical movement, Deep Ecology indicts what it calls the “dominant
worldview” as being responsible for environmental destruction. This critique
is based on two positions we have examined: ecocentrism and
nonanthropocentrism. Deep Ecologists attempt to work out an alternative
philosophical worldview that is holistic and not human-centered. For many
people involved in radical environmentalism as a political movement (members
of Earth First!, for example), Deep Ecology provides the philosophy that
legitimizes their form of activism. This type of connection between Deep
Ecology and radical environmentalism was part of the allegation of the lawsuit
described in the opening discussion.
But any call for a radical change in people’s philosophical worldview
immediately faces a major challenge. How do we even begin to explain the
CHAPTER 9 DEEP ECOLOGY 205
alternative if, by definition, it is radically different from the starting point? How
do we step outside our personal and cultural worldview or ideology to compare
it with something radically different?
Deep Ecologists use a variety of strategies to meet these challenges, including
reliance on poetry, Buddhism, spiritualism, and political activism via civil
disobedience and ecosabotage. Perhaps the best way to begin exploring this
movement is to consider the platform of general principles that Naess and
Sessions drew up to articulate the ideas on which all its adherents agree. This
platform serves as a core around which the diverse Deep Ecology movement
can be unified.
9.2 THE DEEP ECOLOGY PLATFORM
Deep Ecologists are committed to the view that solutions to the current grave
environmental crisis require more than mere reform of our personal and social
practices. They believe that a radical transformation in our worldview is necessary.
Thus Deep Ecologists proceed in two directions. On the one hand, they
are committed to working for the types of changes needed. Many people who
can be identified as Deep Ecologists dedicate their work as scientists, artists,
and political activists to bringing about these changes. On the other hand,
Deep Ecologists also seek to develop and articulate an alternative philosophy
to replace the dominant worldview that is responsible for the crisis. Naess
assigns the name ecophilosophy to the field that considers such questions and
seeks alternative worldviews, and he calls any particular working out of an
alternative worldview an ecosophy. Just as a variety of strategies for bringing
about the necessary changes is possible, so, too, is it possible for a variety of
ecosophies to be developed.