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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
The book examines ecological issues such as climate change and biodiversity, articulating local and global scales, and short and long term perspectives, questioning what "development" and "progress" are. The goal is to show how diverging points of view are conflictingly articulated to one another, in a political ideology perspective. This perspective, which is close to the main actor's point of view, allows displacement of the usual analysis, and offers a new synthesis.
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Seitenzahl: 604
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Table of Contents
Cover
Preface
Part 1: The Situation in France
Introduction to Part 1
1 Exploring the Earth’s Hidden Face
1.1. What is ecology?
1.2. Ecology, a new science?
1.3. What can we learn from ecology and the natural sciences?
1.4. What should be taken seriously? Risk, relativism and constructivism
2 Who Are the Ecologists?
2.1. “Whisteblower” scientists
2.2. From environmentalism to ecologism
2.3. Ecology in politics, in France and around the world
Part 2: An Active Minority Against the Majorities
Introduction to Part 2
3 Liberal Skepticism
3.1. Liberalism or emancipation from the Ancien Régime
3.2. The rights of nature over humanism?
3.3. A refusal of the liberal rules of politics?
3.4. The “liberal-libertarianism” of French ecologism
3.5. The ecologist concern about an eco-fascism
4 Toward Eco-socialism?
4.1. What is socialism?
4.2. A difficult eco-socialism
4.3. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”
5 From Centrism to Eco-fascism
5.1. What is conservatism?
5.2. Is ecologism conservative?
5.3. Composing with the real: The question of alliances
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Series EditorChantal Ammi
The Coming Authoritarian Ecology
Fabrice Flipo
First published 2018 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd
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UK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2018
The rights of Fabrice Flipo to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934575
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-242-7
PrefaceAndrew Dobson and Green Political Theory
This book falls within the field of political theory, which requires a few explanations in the case of France because, as Jean Leca explains, “In its current practices, political theory is less a paradigm than a scientific (or cognitive) community [because] having an interest in the history of ideas, the logical constitution of a discourse, the explanation of a process, and the ethical value of a doctrine (or a practice) are fundamentally different activities” [LEC 85, p. 76]. In contrast, the reader can find the following sentence on the Princeton political science department’s website: “Political theory is the study of the concepts and principles that people use to describe, explain, and evaluate political events and institutions. Traditionally, [therefore: this is not new], the discipline of political theory has approached this study from two different perspectives: the history of political thought, and contemporary political philosophy”1. What is true on one side of the Pyrenees is not on the other: this brings us to the heart of our subject, in a way. Jean Leca was writing in 1985, but Benjamin Boudou noted in 2016 that the field of political theory was still “poorly defined” in France [BOU 16b]. Seeking to legitimize the process, Boudou presents four functions of political theory, in terms of utility, which readers may be interested to learn: heuristic (discovering new problems or new ways of framing problems), pedagogical (political theory is not only of interest to students but also relates to the formulation of deep philosophical questions), critical (non-normative function of knowing whether the world could be better than it is, without asking how it should be) and ethical (it contributes to asking oneself how the world should be in order to be more human). This book wholeheartedly endorses these four functions, as well as the definition proposed by Princeton University.
Political theory can be practiced in different ways. History tends to prefer extensive archival work; sociology places emphasis on fieldwork, like the political sciences, both having a tendency to focus on social movements and political parties, respectively. Our approach is mainly philosophical, in the sense that it is primarily interested in the elucidation of a situation, to use Castoriadis’ expression [CAS 75, p. 60]. Naturally, philosophy does not own this activity, which it does not always practice very diligently, often preferring the history of ideas. Secondary analysis [DAL 93] in sociology and social history of political thought in political science are relatively similar approaches, being both demanding in terms of concepts and concerned with the socially anchored nature of these ideas, and therefore situated at the intersection of fieldwork and analysis. The primary epistemological justification is that the ideas studied do not exist without the context of action in which they operate. This observation, which seems banal, has several implications such as recognizing the positioning of ideas in a language and therefore in a Saussurean system of significations; the performative function of ideas that seek to obtain practical effects against other ideas, to which they are opposed; their irreducibility to a set of major authors who have been entrenched by the academic tradition; or the fact that these ideas also “invent” precursors and traditions, as observed by Hobsbawm and Ranger [HOB 12]2. In addition, Walter Bryce Gallie noted that political concepts are essentially contested [GAL 56]3, in the sense that they are always defined in opposition, without it being possible to reach a signification with which all of the parties would agree, but without resulting in the radical incommensurability that Jean Leca reports either. More recently, Michel Dobry highlighted the importance of developing ideas in a context of action [DOB 03]. In this perspective, the academic division of labor can be counter-productive if it is constructed as a categorical imperative. If a political current does not emerge in a vacuum, if it is developed in opposition, if its process of individualization can only be dialectic, resulting from a confrontation that is often rough or even openly conflicting with its exterior, then the approach cannot help but become aware of this Other opposite where it is situated, which supposes having recourse to multidisciplinary and even transdisciplinary resources, if necessary.
As this book discusses political theory from both the French-speaking and English-speaking worlds, Andrew Dobson has been selected as a point of departure and point of reference because he is a well-known figure in both. The methods are more or less consistent. Dobson explains that his approach consists of understanding the intrinsic structure of ideologies, defined by Eatwell and Wright as “key tenets, myths, contradictions, tensions, even [their] morality and truth”4. Ideologies are historical, anchored and situated; they present a coherence that makes it possible to distinguish them from one another. Interdisciplinarity is present (sociology, philosophy, etc.), which generates certain heterogeneities in Dobson’s book: sociological data are presented side by side with an environmental ethics for which the analyses are extremely decontextualized. However, the whole thing is supplemented and structured for the reader’s enjoyment. Transdisciplinary sources are also present: the author often cites Jonathon Porritt, who was a director of Friends of the Earth EWNI (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) for several years and a member of the Green Party. We will also borrow from stakeholders in the field like the Friends of the Earth activists as well as authors who are involved with ecologism and not yet established, whom we will contribute to making more known. This is the first difference with Dobson to note: although the academic debate in France has often focused on English authors (such as Aldo Leopold and Arne Naess), French ecologism has produced several quality authors who have been marginalized, and continue to be, even though they are sometimes well-known elsewhere (such as Jacques Ellul in the United States) and even though recent work tends to rediscover them (for example [CHA 14]). Inversely, Dobson does not mobilize any references who could add to the academic corpus. In this book, there are approximately 500 books by ecologists and as many researchers working on the subject that we draw on, without citing them all, as this would be a tedious task.
This book is not part of a comparatist perspective properly speaking because our goal is to expand on the points that were not fully developed in Dobson and also to raise awareness about French ecologism. We will not be conducting a detailed comparison of contexts. The point of departure is the following: we believe that what this British author calls ecologism or green political theory from his context overlaps quite closely with the political ideology that carries the same name on the other side of the Channel. We will concentrate on a little-explored aspect: confrontations with other major political ideas. There is also a difference in method: rather traditionally, due to the division of labor, Dobson first constructed ecologism and then compared it to other political ideas, whereas we construct ecologism through this confrontation. That a political ideology can be essentially contested is the reason why a political movement can be characterized by main “sites of controversy” such as the inherent value of nature or modernity with regard to ecologism. These sites are dated, and they can evolve, being historical; this is also the case for actors and authors, such as Dominique Bourg, who was initially very hostile toward ecologism (for example [BOU 96a, BOU 96b]) but moved toward opposing and openly activist positions in the 2000s (for example, [BOU 16a, BOU 16b]. Sites of controversy identify fault lines and opposition, that are more or less important and direct. No method is without its pitfalls: this one tends to homogenize what is empirically presented as diverse. Researchers who demand a higher granularity will be troubled by the degree of generality of this study; we invite them to consider it as complementary to narrower works that have the opposite limitation of not offering a general perspective.
What political ideas should ecologism be compared with? Dobson chose liberalism, socialism, conservatism and feminism. The first three will be examined, as conservatives and Marxists have agreed that they constitute the three main ideologies of our time, which we can call “modernity”; consider, for example, Robert Nisbet [NIS 84] and Étienne Balibar [BAL 92] or Immanuel Wallerstein [WAL 92]. In our view, feminism raises a similar issue to ecologism: that of its incompleteness, inasmuch as it leaves several questions aside. Socialism also has this tendency, as we will see: by focusing on one form of oppression among many, it presents two faces. One is “unionist”, sectorial and limited, centered on the main struggle, and the other aims for an expansion to a societal project, bringing in questions that are more distant and more likely to divide activities. The question of knowing whether political ideologies are always dominated by a central conflict will be left aside however.
Dobson proposed a first confrontation; it is a belated topic in his work. This work will occupy the bulk of our time. We will not linger over the common points, and we will content ourselves with pointing them out; for example, the fact that, in both France and the UK, ecologism is a critique of growth and the solutions proposed are very similar (organic agriculture, decentralization, basic income and labor critique, regionalism, or even the relocalization of the economy); the differentiation between environmentalism and ecologism (the former is not a political ideology, because it does not seek to propose a government program or an alternative society: it is a “trade-unionism”); the insufficient place of ecologism in contemporary political theory research (French textbooks only rarely mention this trend and the situation seems similar in the English-speaking world [GOO 01]). Differences in opinion exist, such as the centrality of nuclear power in the case of France or the importance of animal cruelty and bioregionalism in the United Kingdom. They indicate the differences in sensitivities between the ecologisms, as well as the differences in context or history, but the high similarity of programs suggests that they come more from variations in the structure of local political opportunities than from strong doctrinal differences, which is confirmed by Simon Persico [PER 14]. A detailed comparative work was conducted by Florence Faucher [FAU 97, FAU 99]; it shows that the main differences are much more concerned with the context than with the body of the doctrine.
Without being comparatist, the fact of writing for a non-French context does however involve making national particularities understood. France is notably distinguished by the importance attributed to the French Revolution in confrontations between political ideas, a solid socialist and communist tradition, the absence of a declared conservative party, an important but specific colonial and imperial history, a marked republican and Jacobin dimension, the absence of constitutional monarchy or Commonwealth (“Francophone countries” are much less structured), a very different relationship to secularism and cultural pluralism (far from the English “communitarianism”) and a particular kind of relationship between the State and the economy or regionalisms. Dobson’s analysis is relatively indifferent to the British context: the authors drawn upon for liberalism are mainly Marcel Wissenburg [WIS 98], who is Dutch, and Mark Sagoff [SAG 88], a citizen of the United States; the socialism invoked is rather theoretical; regarding conservatism, the main author Edmund Burke is also used in the case of France [BUR 19]. We believe that we can show that a more detailed consideration of the context explains the large controversies between ideologies a bit better and facilitates their understanding. This volume can therefore be read in two ways: as an introduction to French ecologism or as a contribution to green political theory, complementary to that of Dobson. In a more secondary way, we will also dialogue with Kerry Whiteside who is also involved in political theory [WHI 02, p. 6] and sought to understand the particularities of French ecologism from an American context. The references used by Whiteside will also be used here.
Apart from the work of studying the arguments that will occupy the majority of this book, we would like to lead an epistemological discussion about the status of the nature and the difficulties of interdisciplinarity in studies about ecologism and, more generally, in relationships between human beings and nature. Dobson started his work by evoking climate change or deforestation [DOB 00, p. 1] as if these problems were self-evident, but he does not say anything about the status of these objects in political theory. Yet this was one of the most hotly debated points in the French academic world in the 2000s, going as far as questioning the competence of scientists: one long-standing attitude consisted of affirming that axiological neutrality required not “believing” in climate change on the grounds that it was one of the activist “values” of ecologism. At the same time, this Durkheimian constructivist requirement of only explaining the social by the social [DUR 60, Chapter 5] was perceived by the natural sciences as leading to either an unacceptable relativism, incapable of discerning right from wrong, or to refusing knowledge, voluntary ignorance, that is, a non-scientific attitude. From their side, the natural sciences claimed scientificity just as much as the human or social sciences. The issue was to find out how to express the knowledge between them. The most common solution in social sciences was to pass through the sociology of natural sciences (Latour, notably [LAT 05, LAT 91, LAT 99]). However, the problem was only displaced: relativism was transferred to the scientists, who became “manufacturers” of facts, which angered many of them because it amounted to taking all scientificity away from them, a bit like if we said that symbolic capital was only an invention of Pierre Bourdieu and had no “real” return. The approach also moved away from the object of study: the relationship of ecologists to nature, and not that of scientists. In practice, the adopted solution was often extremely simple: to create distinct epistemic communities. Those who believed in climate change separated from those who doubted and each one left with distinct working hypotheses. The difficulty not only comes from a desire to marginalize the ecological question, but also arises from the requirement of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. Today, the difficulties have lessened, without being eliminated.
This book is organized into two parts. The first part establishes the general framework: reviewing ecological science and its main concepts; reviewing what ecological science teaches us about the metabolism of the two main contexts that we are concerned with (France and the United Kingdom, from a global perspective because that is the most general ecological framework); an exposé of the three main positions that exist in the case of France regarding the ecological question (dematerialization, “the other development” and degrowth) where Dobson only identified two (“light” green and “dark” green) and concentrated on the second one; an examination of the challenges of structuring human and social sciences and natural sciences; highlighting the question of expertise, that is, science in society; and, finally, the ordinary history of French ecologism, from “whistleblower” scientists to what was later called alter-globalization. These elements are still fairly neutral in terms of major political thought: we do not yet really know what to think of our research subject at this stage. The second part seeks to tease out ecologism through successive confrontations with liberalism, socialism and conservatism, which leads us to reconsider each of these three political ideas from the perspective of questions posed by the newcomer, which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. We choose pivotal authors like Luc Ferry who wrote on both liberalism and ecologism; we also selected issues for their persistence and the regularity with which they manifest in concrete political activity, for example the perennial accusation made against ecologists of wanting to “return to the stone age”. The serial and repetitive nature of the conflicts indicates ideological lines of force.
Faced with ecologism, liberalism first reveals itself to be skeptical, careful not to attribute nature a status that is other than instrumental, which leads it to rather strongly object to this cardinal benchmark of an “inherent value of nature”, which notably translates into the idea of granting “rights” to nature. For liberalism, ecologism rejects modern Prometheanism and reactivates conservative ideas that seek to anchor political order in a fixed natural state, even though its arguments were defeated in 1789 in favor of a modern (that is, mobile and constructed) order, with nothing escaping the domain of will. The criticism partly falls under the debate of deafness and incomprehension (voluntary or not) because ecologism, based on ecological science, does not intend to “renounce” this “conquest”, although it often questions the monopoly that modernity has on this subject. Rather, ecologism affirms that liberalism is much less open and tolerant than claimed by Wissenburg, who wants to believe that diversity in individual “life plans” must only be neutral in relation to a theory of the Good, as if everyone was equally capable of leading them and none of them had a harmful consequence for others. For Wissenburg, ecologism need only renounce its holism to be accepted. For ecologism, liberalism refuses above all to recognize that the life plans of the wealthy weigh heavily on others and on nature. It forces the greater number to work more and consume more, under threat of social exclusion. It is inhabited not by a rational examination of the causes and consequences but by a belief in the powers of technology. Through this systematic reference to individual choices in the general framework of action, ecologists seem to reactivate the “liberty of the Ancients” and the issue of virtue. This is partially not the case. First, liberalism itself is not as modern as it claims: it embodies a utilitarian ethic and a productivist conception of the Good, which are imposed as if derived from human nature, as Ferry explicitly states. Although small communities and direct government are often claimed, from the ecology side, this aspiration is never accompanied by the rejection of the economy and a purely contemplative attitude towards nature that Catherine and Raphaël Larrère attribute to the Greeks [LAR 97b, p. 175]. Finally, if the reference to the Whole is assumed, it is in a pragmatic way to acknowledge interdependence updated by the insertion of humanity into the “web of life.”
The tendency of liberalism to refuse in practice the rights that it defends formally does not surprise socialism, which has been aware of this for a long time. However, ecologism raises questions and is not warmly welcomed. The movement is distinct from worker struggles, has its own agenda, and appears leftist or middleclass due to its composition and the positions it takes. Socialism often denies the importance of the issues and believes in technology, like liberalism. When the deterioration in nature is recognized, the ready-made solution is used to replace the capitalist social relations with “new” relations, as Pascal Acot said [ACO 88, p. 240]. Ecology therefore appears as a “secondary front” and must line up behind anti-capitalist forces. But what are these “new” relations, ask the ecologists? And how do we implement them? Who will support them? These questions are all the more interesting since socialist programs often differ very little from their liberal counterparts on the ecological plan, which leads them in practice to often be as productivist as them. And the fact is persistent. It notably translates into critiques of ecologism that are similar to the ones deployed by the liberals: criticism of the idea of the rights of nature, distrust toward all respect of nature and confidence in the powers of technology. However, socialism seems to contradict its own premises: how can we ensure everyone’s emancipation if a few generations consume everything? Why should other species be destroyed? Socialism does not respond clearly to these questions. It seems to maintain an unchanging agenda. What is the cause of this difficulty? To try to explain this fact, we return to the typology proposed by Marx that is often repeated to classify socialisms into four families. This leads us to underscore the structuring nature of a particular shape and space of oppression in this political ideology: the exploitation of labor. This observation leads to re-evaluating the role of environmentalism to the extent that it is often opposed to ecologism: is it not akin to a sectorial issue similar to the syndicalism of the payroll which, in order not to assert a perspective of greater social transformation, also plays a structuring role in the political orientations of the ideology that is constructed from it? What appears clear in this case is that what is missing from socialism, with regard to ecology, is a social base. This observation invites a second one because ecologism also lacks a concrete basis for the struggle when classic “social” questions are in play. There, we find one of the basic lessons of Marxism that Marxists tend to forget when they repeat the theory of the “secondary front” because this theory presumes, despite observable facts, that the worker base would be sufficient to defend the world. The difficulties of reconciling ecologism and socialism lead into a situation of pluralism in social movements; then the difficulty is to determine what happens to emancipation in such a context. The task is not limited to composing a program that adds the claims of one to the claims of the other, because social movements have their own repertoires, visions of the past and the future, traditions and cosmology, which are not necessarily compatible with each other: an entire world, or a paradigm, is involved in a political movement, as shown by the variety of problematics addressed in Manuel de sociologie de l’environnement [BAR 12]. Thus, socialism is not content to defend the rights of workers: it has a tendency to see the result of human progress in production.
The third and final part addresses conservatism, a political idea that is present in France under other names, such as “the right wing”. A typological debate also exists regarding the structure of this conservatism. The distinction between a liberal conservatism and an illiberal conservatism makes sense from the moment when currents exist that seem similar to ecologism: critiques of modernity, the Enlightenment, progress or even technology. Authors like Jean Jacob [JAC 94, JAC 99, JAC 00, JAC 06] have made their careers underscoring this fact. Stéphane François explained that the rejection of modern Prometheanism is the touchstone that makes it possible to distinguish progressive ecologism from conservative ecologism [FRA 12]. This is a somewhat hasty conclusion that excessively glorifies modernity. There is a movement that is in a minority position and is situated mostly in the center; it should be carefully distinguished from the vast majority of what is located on the side of emancipation while criticizing modernity, the Enlightenment, progress or technology. The practice of conflation is unfortunately frequent: differences are obscured by similarities and identities are decided upon too hastily. However, criticism of modernity, the Enlightenment, progress or technology are not new, regarding emancipation, and they are not only based on ecology. When Horkheimer critiques reason, for example, he attacks the characteristics that are common to liberalism and socialism, and therefore appears anti-modern, because these two ideologies embody modernity, according to their own points of view. In this sense, Horkheimer participates in “neither right nor left” that some experts consider as characteristic of fascism or the “Legitimist” right, loyal to the Old Regime. This is obviously not Horkheimer’s real position. Nor is it to implement a conservative order demanding that the vast majority of ecologists re-evaluate the so-called “primitive” societies or post-colonial societies: it is to take into account the forms of emancipation that have been neglected by modernity. The Vichy regime was a planning regime and yet no one has mistaken it with the ecological planning called for by the candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the French presidential elections held in 2012 and 2017.
The general conclusion retraces the general movement. What emerges is that liberalism and socialism both offer some flexibility to ecologism, which explains the alliances that can be observed in both of them; but they remain narrow so far which is why ecologism remains a minority and weak. The main obstacle from the socialist side is the social base, which again underlines the necessity of considering a situation of pluralism in social movements and situations of struggle that are recognized by analyses such as the ones by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau in terms of political theory, for example. Each struggle has its particularities and its tangible characteristics, sustained by specific knowledge that can be ignored by others, voluntarily or not, because they can also be difficult to perceive or beyond the reach of practical politics/struggles. From the liberal side, the obstacle comes from the conservative dimension of this movement, both from the underlying affirmation of power (especially national) and the respect for the rules of the game that are presented as neutral and, in reality, embody a kind of tradition. These characteristics of conservatism make a conservative ecologism very difficult due to the contradictions. The national populism of the National Front in France has no chance of becoming ecologist, from this point of view; neither does Alain de Benoist’s New Right, to the extent that their true motivation, beyond their strategy to win over the masses and opportunistic use of arguments, is to ensure French or European unity against everything that may threaten it, particularly Islam. From there, the two main positions of ecologism on the French political chessboard are: the center, which tries to influence or resemble the liberals, such as Antoine Waechter in the 1990s, and the left of the Socialist Party, which seeks to offer an “ecosocialist” synthesis. On this topic, the very strong influence of ecological ideas from Jean-Luc Mélenchon (France insoumise, an organization created in 2016 that has taken on a hegemonic position to the left of the SP) and Benoît Hamon (official SP candidate, but dropped by the party) is considered, although the former also promised the return of growth and the latter displays a great deal of faith in robotics. The conclusion is the title of this book and echoes the continued warnings from ecologists: not taking responsibility for ecological issues jeopardizes freedom and emancipation. The authoritative ecologism (also called “ecofascism”) that can emerge from ecological catastrophes is not really one properly speaking, because conservatives side with the fight and not nature, like the two duelists in Goya’s painting on the cover of the Contrat natural by Michel Serres (published in 1990) [SER 99], who dig themselves deeper into the quicksand rather than reaching out to one another. This conclusion largely confirms Dobson’s conclusion, which can be partially generalized to industrialized countries. The question of authoritative ecologism somewhat reduces the distinction often made between the so-called “southern” or “poor” ecologism characterized by a direct and immediate threat to ways of life and the “northern” ecologism that tackles more distant and less perceptible issues [GUH 97a, GUH 08, TAL 14], to the extent that there are other more immediate threats to freedom. It also highlights that the result of a crisis situation or “state of exception” is not written beforehand. This is also demonstrated by history, especially recent history with the example of Podemos in Spain, or even studies about the collapse of civilizations [TAI 13].
Fabrice FLIPO
March 2018
1
https://www.princeton.edu/politics/fields/political-theory/
.
2
These epistemological references were identified by Thibaut Rioufreyt and Arnaud Skornicki in a work group for the
Association française de science politique consacré à l’histoire sociale des idées politiques.
http://hisopo.hypotheses.org/
.
3
See also Volume 122 of the journal
Philosophie,
summer 2014.
4
[DOB 00, p. 4] citing [EAT 93, p. 1].
Part 1The Situation in France
Introduction to Part 1
Like their English counterparts, French ecologists feel that they are entering a new era, launching a new paradigm [DOB 00, p. 8]: “The grand adventure of the hidden face of the Earth begins!”, Alain Hervé [HER 78, p. 112] exclaimed, one of the founders of the journal Le Sauvage, which appeared in the 1970s and is emblematic of French ecologism, with several attempts to re-establish it since its disappearance in 1980 [VRI 17, p. 232]. Like many others, Hervé was convinced that the classic parties are “totally intellectually and ideologically helpless” in the face of the new situation [HER 78, p. 27]. One major element of disruption resides in the teachings of ecology; the goal of the first chapter is to provide an outline and the various tangible implications. The ecological situations of France and the United Kingdom are revealed to be very similar, which contributes to explaining the doctrinal convergence of the two ecologisms: these two countries are highly industrialized and closely involved with a dynamic of increasing division of labor, which tears the web of life to a great extent. The integration of ecological issues in the case of France results in three major positions that we will call degrowth (or rupture), dematerialization (or salvation by technology) and “other development” which most likely includes most contemporary ecologists, if only for the objective reasons that the catastrophe has not yet occurred and radical degrowth is not at hand, collectively speaking. The names that we give to these categories are not always the ones used by actors but the positions are identifiable. Dobson only noted the two extremes: “dark” green, which criticizes growth (without necessarily talking about degrowth) and “light” green, which puts faith in technology. Three positions reflect the French debate better than two because many positions refuse to be integrated into one or the other. Finally, we question the epistemological status of ecology, which has posed so many problems for the social sciences and political theory: must nature really disappear to engage in ecology, as Bruno Latour asked [LAT 99]? Is it necessary to “believe” in climate change? Can we work “objectively” on these questions or must we be “activists”? The second chapter of Part 1, which also provides a general introduction, focuses on the emergence of French ecologism. According to the traditional historiography [notably VAD 78, CAN 94, JAC 99, SAI 00, FRÉ 07, JÉR 14, VRI 17], everything started in the 1950s and 1960s with a series of warnings issued by scientists in the public domain. The authors are English-speaking as well as French-speaking and the translations circulate arguments whilst activists contribute to the dissemination effort. French ecologism is built by distinguishing itself from environmentalism, our definition of which differs from the one proposed by Dobson, for whom the term designates the “light green” position: here, it specifies instead an interest that is limited to “proximal” causes of ecological destruction (greenhouse gas effects, intensive agriculture, etc.) without looking deeper for “distal” causes (public policies and political ideologies). Ecologism is presented as a movement with fluid borders, as in the British context; the formation of political parties is more delayed, just like ministries, laws and, more generally, lifestyles. Finally – and Dobson insists little on this point – ecologism is immediately part of an international and global dynamic, with the counter-conference organized during the Stockholm Conference on the human environment in 1972 being a foundational moment, for example.
1Exploring the Earth’s Hidden Face
What is ecology? How does it perceive the world? The concepts developed by this science are partly used by ecologists: it is difficult to understand the second without knowing the first, especially because for some professionals in the discipline like François Ramade, applied ecology is the science about the ecological crisis [RAM 03]. The question of the relationships between human societies and nature is obviously older than this discipline, which emerged at the end of the 19th Century; the search for the origins of ecology as a science tends to be conflated with the debate about the causes of the ecological crisis that established ecologist political action. Broadly defined, ecology offers a reading of our industrial societies that is rather different from the ones provided by economics or even sociology: while these sciences focus primarily on the benefits of modernization and leaving underdevelopment behind, ecology reveals a growing and unsustainable footprint on the planet; a fact that remains globally as poorly perceived as it is poorly understood.
1.1. What is ecology?
Two French textbooks can serve as references: two volumes by François Ramade [RAM 03, RAM 05] and a more accessible book by Denis Couvet and Anne Teyssèdre [COU 10]. Both books refer to Ernest Haeckel’s definition of ecology [HAE 84]. Ecology is “the global science of the relations of organisms with their exterior surrounding world in which we include, broadly, all conditions of existence” [RAM 03, p. 2]. The specific subject of ecology is the biosphere, which designates “the region of the planet in which life is possible on an ongoing basis and that includes all living creatures” [RAM 03, p. 5]. It is a subset of the ecosphere, which includes the lithosphere (solid zone), hydrosphere (liquid zone) and atmosphere (gas zone). Relative to the enormity of the globe, the biosphere is an extremely limited zone: a few kilometers of maximum thickness, while Earth’s radius is 6,400 km. Known life forms are never found outside of this thin layer, being dependent on fairly restrictive conditions, from a cosmological point of view, which explains why the Earth appears to be quite alone in the immensity of infinite space.
The biosphere is irregular and diversified. Apart from the physical environments (liquid, solid and gas), the term “biodiversity” appeared in the 1980s [MAR 16] to designate and consolidate three types of diversity: genetic (DNA), special (diversity of species) and ecosystems. A species is a set of individuals that can breed with one another, which results in a population [COU 10, p. 134]. A total of 1.7 million different species have been counted since Linnaeus (1707–1778) and tens of millions of others must still be identified, mainly among small organisms such as bacteria or insects. The average life span of a species is estimated at several million years; some, like sharks, are several hundreds of millions of years old. The ecosystem is everything constituted by individuals living in interaction (or “biocoenosis”) and their chemical and physical environment (or “biotope”) [COU 10, p. 11]. Ecosystems vary in size. The largest is the biosphere, then the biome: these are the rainforests, prairies or deserts that are distributed according to altitude and longitude. Land can also be classified in this way: mountain, steppe, tundra or the brown earth of the deciduous forests. The multiple subsets involved extend to ecosystems that are just a few square centimeters. The precise boundaries of the units are up for debate; division is a recurring issue because everything is connected with everything, hence the frequently used metaphor of the “web of life”, suggesting the absence of seams; however, ecologists rely on criteria like the degree of internal coherence, interaction or interconnection.
In an ecological analysis, the organism is either not human or understood in a narrowly ecological way, out of concern for disciplinary and paradigmatic rigor as well as out of respect for the scientific division of labor. It is defined as “an elementary ecological agent, whose metabolism, actions and reactions (movements, dietary/reproductive/social behaviors, impact on habitat, etc.) contribute to transformations and higher levels of organization” [COU 10, p. 10]. Ecology is sub-divided into sub-disciplines: behavioral ecology focuses on interactions between individuals and their environment; population ecology considers these interactions from the perspective of the dynamics and genetics of populations of individuals. The environment includes ecosystems, and physical and chemical influence factors like climate, soil composition, topography, water circulation or even mineral salts (phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium and trace elements). Based on the characteristics of the environment and the individual, two limits (minimum and maximum) can be roughly set beyond which a given environment can be considered inhospitable for a given species, knowing that it is always possible for an individual to make temporary forays outside of their comfort zones. The environment evolves: the Sahara, lush during the ice age, became a desert. Species can move and adapt to new conditions, within certain limits.
Despite an apparent stability, everything circulates and everything is interconnected: the water cycle (transpiration, evaporation, precipitation, runoff, etc.) and gaseous elements (carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, which compose the atmosphere, the molecules of cells, etc.), and sedimentary geochemical cycles such as sulfur or phosphorus (indispensable for cellular reproduction) [RAM 03, p. 430]. It is a complex, multi-scale order, in which the physicochemical elements move at different speeds, different viscosities, determined by and determining the movements of the living world. Although everything is mobile, the biosphere also presents a remarkable stability and regularity: seasons return, populations of individuals, which do not stop proliferating, maintain relatively fixed quantitative relations with each other (large predators reproduce little, unlike their prey). Our body is an example of this stability in the permanent fluidity: after a space of two years, we no longer have one single identical atom; materially speaking, we are entirely other, and yet our social and psychological identity is preserved. Life also operates on a large scale: small blue algae generated the chemical composition of the atmosphere over billions of years and it is still the activity that maintains the current proportions between the different chemical elements carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. “From an evolutionary point of view, the biosphere as we know it today appears to be the result of an extraordinary combination of favorable cosmic, geophysical and geochemical circumstances” [RAM 03, p. 35]. This led James Lovelock to formulate the famous “Gaia hypothesis”: that the biosphere is equipped with the same homeostatic properties as a living being [LOV 74, RAM 03, p. 34], even if the Earth does not eat or reproduce in the same way as an organism (for more detail, see [DUT 16]).
Ecology includes several theoretical frameworks and methods. Approaching ecosystems only from the perspective of the flow of matter and energy is eco-energetics [ODU 76]. Three distinct functional units emerge: autotrophs, which synthesize mineral elements with solar energy; producers, which transform light energy into chemical energy; and heterotrophs, which are either consumers (animals) or decomposers (bacteria and mushrooms). Knowing that energy only comes from the Sun and that every living being only converts the energy contained in its prey with losses, we can establish “ecological pyramids” from grass to large predators that show connections of dependency. Another way to see things is to proceed by observing populations, which reveals different interactions between species: predation, interspecies competition (rivalry for the same resource), antagonism, commensalism (B is the host of A), cooperation (mutualism – association with reciprocal benefits) and symbiosis. In symbiosis or mutualism, “the two organisms are related by links that are both structural and functional, the association being so direct that the symbiotic organisms generally cannot develop – or at least, they encounter greater difficulties surviving – without their host” [RAM 03, p. 272]. Ramade cites the example of micro-organisms that attach nitrogen to the roots of plants: without them, no plants; but without plants, no micro-organisms. Every species has a functional role in the ecosystem, occupying an “ecological niche” that indicates “the profession of the species” [RAM 03, p. 322]. Ecosystems are not static; they evolve, develop or, on the contrary, weaken. They demonstrate “resilience”, that is, the capacity “to resist an exterior disturbance” [RAM 03, p. 394] such as storms, changes in climate and fires. Publications tend to establish a relationship between the complexity of trophic networks (that is, biodiversity) and the resilience of ecosystems.
Ecology also has an “applied” component that is found in the books of Ramade as well as in Couvet and Teyssèdre. Ecology intends to “scientifically” (that is, based on the concepts and methods of ecology) measure the transformations of the biosphere, particularly under the effect of a particular species that has played a major role for some time now: humanity. It distinguishes the “proximal” (or secondary) causes from the “distal” (or primary) causes: on the one hand, the practices that are directly involved in the evolution of ecosystems (such as cutting down trees) and, on the other hand, their more distant determinants like economic policies or the behavior of actors, which ecologists believe fall quickly outside of their field of expertise, obeying other logics than the ones they know how to deal with. Therefore, they limit themselves to measuring the effects on the biosphere. The “applied” character of this component is also translated by the elaboration of solutions whose goal is to avoid the reduction of biodiversity or to restore it: this is the ecology of conservation or preservation (in situ or ex situ, for example in zoos or other locations such as the Svalbard Ark situated under a mountain in Norway) and the ecology of restoration. At an even higher level of interaction with human societies, the ecology of reconciliation mobilizes engineering and the economy to integrate biodiversity into decisions. The study of human values and behaviors requires implementing an interdisciplinarity that, when it becomes permanent, leads us toward the creation of new disciplines applied to human societies such as eco-energetics, ecological economics, the study of “socio-systems” or sustainability studies; there are many names around today. With the rise of ecologism comes the term “ecologist”, which scientists claim in order not to be confused with activists [VRI 17, p. 36]; however, the debate over this issue still persists (for example, [GUI 14]). On this topic, we must underscore a distinction in the French debate: the term “ecologist” is reserved to designate scientists, while “ecologism” is the name of the activist movement; in English, “ecologist” designates both, including in this book. One way to overcome the difficulty is to call the activists “environmentalists”; however, in French, “environmentalism” is reserved for “light” ecology, which is concerned with proximal causes and not distal causes. In this book, we chose to preserve the English usage, and so the term “ecologist” designates both activists and scientists and the context makes it possible to distinguish between the two.
1.2. Ecology, a new science?
While attributing the creation of the word to Ernst Haeckel, French historians of ecology suggest that this author played no role in the constitution of the discipline as a modern science [ACO 88, p. 17, DEL 91, p. 8]. They all agree that ecology was gradually constructed like the other sciences at the turn of the century, each historian highlighting a given reference point that they deem more essential than another one. The British Ecology Society was a pioneering figure with its creation in 1913; the United States followed soon after and founded The Ecological Society of America in 1916 [ACO 88, p. 96]; the pioneers are Eugen Warming, Henry Cowles and Frederic Clements. Jacques Grinevald emphasizes, however, that the concept of the biosphere was invented in Soviet Russia by Vladimir Vernadski [VER 29, GRI 07]. In the case of France, the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN) founded in 1793 played a major role in the study and protection of nature, although it does not seem to have been on the cutting edge of the construction of concepts. It was a part of the continuity of the works of Buffon including the monumental Histoire naturelle in 36 volumes, which was a bestseller at the time. Étienne Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844) accompanied Napoleon in Egypt and participated in building the wealth of the Museum’s collections; this naturalist stated a half-century before Darwin that species evolved and transformed, in opposition to his colleague Georges Cuvier (1769–1832), who defended a fixist perspective. In 1854, his son Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire created the Société zoologique d’acclimatation, which became the Société impériale zoologique d’acclimatation (1855–1870) before taking the name of the Société nationale de protection de la nature (SNPN), which is still active today. The concepts of ecology were slowly introduced into French naturalist circles; a more detailed study of the evolution of these concepts remains to be conducted because historians have not detailed their circulation. Its appearance in the public space was more delayed; the concept of ecology retained a narrow and technical meaning until the 1970s [ACO 88, p. 19]. In their general public texts, trailblazing scientists like Jean Dorst (1924–2001) or Roger Heim (1900–1979), director of MNHN from 1951 to 1965, were more willing to speak about “nature” or “the environment”, although the analyses deployed already borrowed extensively from the categories of ecological science, in terms of flow, interconnections, environments and populations.
The relative consensus of French historians about the evolution of ecology and its importance in challenging limitless growth masks serious disagreements when it comes to situating this science in relation to older issues. Essentially, if ecology concerns the relationships between organisms, who could do without these teachings, human or beast, under threat of condemning themselves to a rapid disappearance? The definition proposed by Haeckel does not break completely with the older definitions, particularly with the notion of the “economy of nature” proposed by Carl von Linnaeus (1707–1778); although it is fixist and creationist, nature is a place of continuous interactions. Haeckel was a disciple of Darwin, and it is above all on the explanations of long periods of time that they diverge: “Ecology or the geographical distribution of organisms [is] the science of all relationships between organisms in the surrounding world, with organic and inorganic conditions of existence; [it is] what we call the economy of nature, the mutual relationships between all organisms, living in one and the same place, their adaptation to the environment around them, their transformation through the struggle for survival, especially parasitism phenomena, etc. It is precisely these facts about the ‘economy of nature’ that, in the superficial opinion of people around the world, seem to be the wise measures of a Creator carrying out a plan; yet these facts, say I, when seriously examined, necessarily result from mechanical causes. These are the facts of adaptation” [HAE 84, p. 551, DEL 91, p. 61, DEW 92, p. 500]. These interactions are not unknown either in “first nations”, “aboriginal” or “indigenous” populations. The anthropologist Philippe Descola wrote extensively on this subject in France [DES 10, DES 86, DES 05, DES 14, DES 11], helped by or preceded by many others, in particular the ethnologist Robert Jaulin (1928–1996), who played an important role in the creation of political ecology, with the social psychologist Serge Moscovici (1925–2014). Ecology is therefore thought of as a philosophia perennis, an awareness that has always been present, in diverse forms, of which even non-humans are aware. The continuity is not total, of course; ecology is also a modern science, in the sense that it uses counting or instrumentation methods that are radically different from aboriginal knowledge (satellites, etc.); however, some aspects are similar, such as the observation of populations that is practiced by aboriginal peoples with great precision, up to the level of the non-human individual and its personality.
If we assume that knowledge is power, then the quest for the origins of ecology as a science (an applied science in particular) also interferes with the research about the causes of what is called the “ecological crisis” or “environmental crisis” [LAR 97a]. For the biologist Jean-Pierre Raffin [RAF 93], the forefathers are Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and Georges Perkins Marsh (Man and Nature, 1864), of naturalist inspiration [DOB 12a]; for the ecologist Yves Frémion [FRÉ 07, pp. 19–29], it is the anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus (1830–1905); this claim of double natural and libertarian descent is also found in the English-speaking world, because for Donald Worster [WOR 09, p. 28], the pioneers are Gilbert White [WHI 13] and H.D. Thoreau (1817–1862). Others go back further and anchor ecology in another, spiritual framework; thus Lynn White Jr., for example, in an article published in 1967 and well-known in France, uses ecology to challenge Christianity, which put humans at the center of creation [WHI 02]. For the philosopher Catherine Larrère and the agrologist Raphaël Larrère, protecting nature is “a modern task” [LAR 97b, p. 175], which only appeared when humans were, thanks to the power of their tools, able to have an impact on nature that was disproportionate to what had been observed in the past. This list is not exhaustive but to the extent that defining its roots also overlaps with qualifying the problem, it covers the main possible positions: universalist (the relationship of humanity to nature, in general), political (to the extent that knowledge is power, again) and civilizational or cultural (the specific question of industrial modernity).
1.3. What can we learn from ecology and the natural sciences?
Due to its theoretical framework, ecology considers the human species to be part of ecosystems the same way that other populations are, which is what makes its scientific identity unique; generally, it is reluctant to differentiate more, notably within humans, considering that to be the responsibility of social sciences like sociology, economics and political science. Considering human beings as a species is also one of the reasons that leads ecology to immediately position itself on a global scale: that of the biosphere. In 1975, the biologist Joël de Rosnay, future director of the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie (Paris) published Le macroscope [ROS 75], a book in which he states that we are now confronted with complexity and that the macroscope, in which ecology and the science of systems have a firm place, is the appropriate tool. De Rosnay is a prospectivist, a talented popularizer and a huge supporter of the systemic approach that characterizes one of the five currents of French ecologism, following Kerry Whiteside, and which includes Edgar Morin and the Groupe de dix (Henri Atlan, Jacques Attali, Jean-François Boissel, Robert Buron, Joël de Rosnay, Henri Laborit, André Leroi-Gourhan, Edgar Morin, René Passet, Michel Rocard, Jacques Robin, Jacques Sauvan and Michel Serres) who tried to formalize the “new paradigm” which is based on political ecology (complexity, etc.) [ROB 75, ROB 89, RIB 78, p. 27]. An ecological reading of the contemporary world shows that the human species has placed an enormous weight in the biosphere. We will provide a few points of reference here on the biosphere and the proximal and distal causes of its evolution, in French and British thought, on a global scale.
1.3.1. The planet
Generally, the ecological sciences show that the pressure of humanity and more specifically of industrialized societies on ecosystems has augmented regularly and even increasingly quickly since the mid-19th Century, to the point that the geologist Paul Crutzen created the hypothesis of a new geological era called the Anthropocene [CRU 02]. The term appeared in the 2000s in France, notably thanks to the works of the historian Christophe Bonneuil [BON 16]. The Anthropocene means that humanity must now be considered as a geological force, whose scope equals that of other ecological processes like the carbon cycle, whether this provokes a feeling of victory or concern. The word is new but the sentiment is not; in 1952, Roger Heim, director of the Museum, published Destruction et protection de la nature [HEI 52] and then, in 1973, he published L’angoisse de l’an 2000: quand la nature aura passé, l’homme la suivra [HEI 73], which supported similar arguments; even earlier, in 1855, Eugène Huzar expressed concern about the possible implications of science for the future of humanity as a whole [HUZ 08]. In contrast, in 1868, Élisée Reclus praised trade and shipping routes, which he believed to be the means by which humanity would become self-aware: the idea that humanity had become a “geological agent” [REC 68, Tome 2, Chapter 3, p. 670] thrilled him. Indications of the influence of human populations on the global or biospheric scale include global warming, the thinning of the ozone layer, the destruction of biodiversity to the point that many scientists are discussing the sixth mass extinction of life on earth, and quantities of displaced material. We can read in scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals that the 20th Century saw the disappearance of 260 times more species of vertebrates, 500 times more mammals, 200 times more birds and 300 times more species of fish than the ordinary pace of evolution; one out of every four species of mammals are endangered, as are one out of very eight species of birds, and more than one out of every three amphibians. Humans and their domesticated animals represent the incredible proportion of 97% of the total biomass of terrestrial vertebrates, which only leaves 3% for about 30,000 species [SMI 02, p. 284]. The human species uses 160% of the Earth’s ability to renew itself [WWF 16]. The human appropriation of net primary productivity (HANPP) doubled over the course of the 20th Century, reaching 30% globally [VIT 86, HAB 07]; some areas like Europe and India are already at 40% and 65%, respectively. Pastures, crops and cities, which covered 5% of land surface in 1750 and 12% in 1900, represent almost 83% today. 83% of the biomes on ice-free land surfaces are partially or totally anthropized. The Millennium Ecosystem Report estimates that 60% of ecosystems are damaged or used by humanity in an unsustainable way [MIL 04].
The same report indicates the five proximal causes of this situation: overexploitation, pollution (pesticides and various chemicals), habitat transformation (for example, when a forest is cleared to make way for a prairie used for intensive farming), invasive species and climate change [MEA 04]. Some “distal” causes are also noted. Meat-based diets require dedicating nearly two-thirds of land globally either to animals or their food, causing 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions; in order for 7 billion people to eat like a person in a developed country, it would require 20% more than the entire amount of land available on Earth, cultivable or not – at the current state of technology. The standardization of agriculture and livestock farming has caused a reduction in domestic biological diversity from 50 to 75%. A study published in Science showed that at the current rate, the oceans will be totally depleted before 2050 [WOR 06]. The lithosphere has also seen unprecedented changes. The consumption of oil, carbon and uranium has increased 40-fold between 1800 and 2000 [STE 11]1
