Which brings me to the points you’ve made–that often environmentalism goes counter to humanism. And that is actually pretty startling. How often are appeals to authority made? How often do we hear calls for the “replacement” of democracy? Forget Humanism’s questioning of dogma and promotion of freedom–to save the planet we need more dogma and less freedom!! It really is a startling contradiction, when you consider that environmentalism is supposed to be a step FORWARD for the world.

Now I’m really quite curious as to how this came about. I’m sure there must be a whole variety of influences, as different sorts of people got involved and they each brought their own values systems to bear on the problem. Everything including marxists, fascists, evangelists, buddhists, new agers. But nevertheless, I’m wondering about the two main schools of thought on the environment–or so I’m told–namely Deep Ecology and Ecofeminism.

Is there really a humanistic thread to environmentalism?

Protesters have recently claimed that there is. They say that they are concerned about future generations and the poorer people in the world, who will, according to environmentalism, suffer the consequences of climate change first, and hardest.

But the desire to ‘protect’ people is a curious way of expressing belief in humanity. When it turns out that what you are protecting them from is themselves, it is the expression, not of humanism, but its antithesis. Consider, for example, a form of feminism or a racial equality movement that made the claim that women or black people needed ‘protection’. They would be regarded as paternalistic, and probably chauvinist.

The protesters making appearances at airports in the UK were outnumbered by people attempting to use the airports many times over. Millions of people fly, many millions more want to. But the protesters say that this desire renders the democratic process a failure. “individual choice alone cannot curb CO2 emissions if we are to stop runaway global warming”, say Climate Rush. Laws are needed to save us from ourselves, to control us to make sure our impulses don’t get out of hand.

This is not the expression of belief in humanity. It is an expression of contempt. It says that people can’t be trusted with the freedom to make their own consumer *or democratic* choices.

You make a different point which is also worth considering: that environmentalists claim that there is more to life than being part of some kind of industrial machine. Indeed there is. And there is a lot to criticise the bland ‘consumer society’ for. But what would environmentalists put in its place? After the demands of environmentalists were met, we wouldn’t be able to travel far. Working life would be more labour-intensive: we wouldn’t have labour saving devices. These factors would limit the potential for varied and intellectual employment, and would reduce the opportunity for cultural experiences. Horizons would draw closer. Opportunities would narrow. Rather than liberating us from our roles as ‘cogs’ in a consumerist machine, the necessity of survival in Ecotopia would likely make us slaves – both materially, and politically.

Consumerism is limited. But it is not a necessary (nor even likely) consequence of industrial society. The critique of consumer society is very confused, and it is as much a symptom of the forces which has produced it (eg relativism, individuation, political disengagement) as its object. The criticism is the opposite side of the same coin that consumerism exists on, if you like. The important point here is that industrial society by itself isn’t sufficient to create the possibility of being ‘free to be and free to live in harmony’, but we would argue that it is necessary.

After all, for all the blandness that industrial society has created, there is a hell of a lot of richness, diversity and opportunity that previous generations – especially those cultures celebrated by environmentalists – could not even conceive of. The fact that environmentalists don’t recognise the liberating possibility surely only reflects their lack of imagination, and their low estimations of humanity.

In summary, the ‘consumer society’ which environmentalists criticise has been poorly defined, and we doubt it even exists in a way that could be meaningfully explained. It seems to us to be a stand in for a range of personal whines and gripes about contemporary life that don’t seem to be the expression of anything more sophisticated than a desire to be free from the influence of others, compounded by an inability to articulate it. In other words: it’s infantile – exactly the view environmentalists have of the rest of humanity.

Perhaps broadly speaking, they are not really anti-establishment… and if they think they are then they have some rethinking to do.

For whatever reason they seem to be a whole load of stuff, mixed from different sources. There is to my eye a strong Humanistic thread (we are not cogs in a machine of greedy useless consumption, we are free to be and free to live in harmony!). There is also some amount of socialist or leftist current (redistribution of wealth, of wanting to help the poor by giving to them, leveling the economic playing field), a fair amount of feminism (rooting out of oppression, in all its forms, wherever it is found, including racism and speciesism), and there is some amount of new age spirituality (what is of ultimate concern? Nature, Gaia, and the great Web Of Life, sacred and pure).

And I’m sure there’s more. So perhaps there is not one environmental movement, but several movements. It can even be attractive to new-fascists, so that’ll mix things up even more.

But yes, I mean, your article is great, because we do need to stop and look at these people and ask, just where are they coming from? Do they themselves even know? Apparently not, given they keep contradicting themselves.