Looming Ecofascisms in the Value of Nature

Abstract

What popular opposition there is to environmentalism tends to root itself in the same conceptual mistake: that if we care about nature, then it is to the detriment of the human race. This sentiment underlies the contention that backing away from resource development will cost people jobs and income, that reforming unsustainably high-yield farming and fishing practices will make people go hungry. Nature’s loss is our gain, and to restrain human action in the name of environmental protection threatens and ultimately destroys humanity’s freedom. Worse, to privilege nature over humanity would debase human rights and destroy the political liberties that the Western tradition of moral discourse has established and protected over the centuries. This perspective makes environmentalism a perverse philosophy that would sacrifice human children to save a whale, a fir, a flounder, or a valley. Ecocentrism and biocentrism, goes this critique, is a disguise for a new kind of fascism. However, this conception of environmentalism as ecofascism is based on a concept that, although popular and culturally intuitive, is false: that humanity and nature are ontologically separate: polar opposites in essence, any competition between which is a zero-sum contest.