Because humans are now an intrinsic component of practically all existing ecological systems, some degree of ecological management is imperative, Dubos felt, although such management needs to embrace a long-term perspective. For there has to be some stability in the relationships between the components of any living system, whether a human personality or a human settlement. Such environmental designs should go beyond mere survival, and the simple avoidance of disease and suffering, but rather create the conditions favourable to the full development of the human personality – physical and psychological, as well as social. For the human person is fundamentally a ‘social animal in a deep biological sense’.
Brian Morris, Pioneers of Ecological Humanism: Mumford, Dubos and Bookchin
Brian Morris, Pioneers of Ecological Humanism: Mumford, Dubos and Bookchin
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We are given options to buy “green” products, encouraged to exercise our consumer choices responsibly, to participate as citizens in recycling programs, to constantly consider whether our individual actions are green. This becomes a certain kind of environmental moralism that privileges those in the middle and upper classes who can afford to buy organic food or pay for carbon offsets, those secular indulgences, and thereby fit the picture of a respectable and conscientious green individual. It is clear that this capitalist response to the environmental crisis is not enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change and offers us no way of thinking differently in order to avoid perpetuating destructive ways of living. The political and social response to the environmental crisis is doomed if it perpetuates a thinking based on individual responsibility and corporatist-individual action.
Anthony Paul Smith, Philosophy and Ecosystem: Towards a Transcendental Ecology
Anthony Paul Smith, Philosophy and Ecosystem: Towards a Transcendental Ecology