Is British Columbia about to transform governance?
As far back as 1964, Paul Sears, an eminent American ecologist and former chair of the graduate program in Conservation at Yale University, described ecology as “a subversive subject” and asked “if taken seriously as an instrument for the long-run welfare of mankind, would it endanger the assumptions and practices accepted by modern societies, whatever their doctrinal commitments.”
Several years later, Murray Bookchin, who developed the concept of social ecology, suggested the true subversiveness of ecology is seen when it is applied to the cultural, social, political, and economic situation of humankind as human ecology, for then “ecology is intrinsically a critical science—in fact, critical on a scale that most radical systems of political economy failed to attain.”
That, of course, is why Green politics is so threatening to the established order. It simply does not accept the “givens”—the core values—of modern society: the primacy of the economy, the belief in perpetual growth, and the accumulation of more and more “stuff,” humanity’s domination of and separation from nature, the valuing of the “wants” of the individual over the greater needs of the community, and all that follow from those core beliefs.
What if we changed our core beliefs? What if we believed:
• Humans do not dominate but are entirely dependent upon nature, of which they are but one small part?
• Perpetual economic growth on a finite planet is, as Kenneth Boulding, a former president of the American Economic Association, suggested way back in 1973, something only a madman or an economist would believe in?
• We can’t have all our selfish wants met, but have to recognize we are part of a community where everyone’s basic needs must be met first?
• The source of happiness is not to be found in the accumulation of even more stuff, that enough is indeed enough?