Oct./Nov. 1983 RAIN Page 33 "natural resources." And as long as hierarchy persists, as long as domination organizes humanity around a system of elites, the project of dominating nature will continue to exist and inevitably lead our planet to ecological extinction. The emergence of the women's movement, even more so than the counterculture, the "appropriate" technology crusade and the anti-nuke alliances (I will omit the clean-up escapades of "Earth Day"), points to the very heart of the hierarchical domination that underpins our ecological crisis. Only insofar as a counterculture, an alternate technology or anti-nuke movement rests on the non-hierarchical sensibilities and structures that are most evident in the truly radical tendencies in feminism can the ecology movement realize its rich potential for basic changes in our prevailing anti-ecological society and its values. Only insofar as the ecology movement consciously cultivates an anti-hierarchical and a non-domineering sensibility, structure, and strategy for social change can it retain its very identity as the voice for a new balance between humanity and nature and its goal for a truly ecological society. This identity and this goal are now faced with serious erosion. Ecology is now fashionable, indeed, faddish— and with this sleazy popularity has emerged a new type of environmentalist hype. From an outlook and movement that at least held the promise of challenging hierarchy and domination have emerged a form of environmentalism that is based more on tinkering with existing institutions, social relations, technologies, and values than on changing them. I use the word "environmentalism" to contrast it with ecology, specifically with social ecology. Where social ecology, in my view, seeks to eliminate the concept of the domination of nature by humanity by eliminating the domination of human by human, environmentalism reflects an "instrumentalist" or technical sensibility in which nature is viewed merely as a passive habitat, an agglomeration of external objects and forces, that must be made more "serviceable" for human use, irrespective of what these uses may be. Environmentalism, in fact, is merely environmental engineering. It does not bring into question the underlying notions of the present society, notably that man must dominate nature. On the contrary, it seeks to facilitate that domination by developing techniques for diminishing the hazards caused by domination. The very notions of hierarchy and domination are obscured by a technical emphasis on "alternative" power sources, structural designs for "conserving" energy, "simple" lifestyles in the name of "limits to growth" that now represent an enormous growth industry in their own right—and, of course, a mushrooming of "ecology"- oriented candidates for political office and "ecology"- oriented parties that are designed not only to engineer nature but also public opinion into an accommodating relationship with the prevailing society. Nathan Glazer's "ecological" 24-square-mile solar satellite, O'Neill's "ecological" spaceships, and the doe's giant "ecological" windmills, to cite the more blatant examples of this environmentalistic mentality, are no more "ecological" than nuclear power plants or agribusiness. If anything, their "ecological" pretensions are all the more dangerous because they are more deceptive and disorienting to the general public. The hoopla about a new "Earth Day" or future "Sun Days" or "Wind Days," like the pious rhetoric of fast-talking solar contractors and patent-hungry "ecological" inventors, conceals the all-important fact that solar energy, wind power, organic agriculture, holistic health, and "voluntary simplicity" will alter very little in our grotesque imbalance with nature if they leave the patriarchal Ecology is now fashionable, indeed faddish. With this sleazy popularity has emerged a new type of environmentalist hype. family, the multinational corporation, the bureaucratic and centralized political structure, the property system, and the prevailing technocratic rationality untouched. Solar power, wind power, methane, and geothermal power are merely power insofar as the devices for using them are needlessly complex, bureaucratically controlled, corporately owned, or institutionally centralized. Admittedly, they are less dangerous to the physical health of human beings than power derived from nuclear and fossil fuels, but they are clearly dangerous to the spiritual, moral, and social health of humanity if they are treated merely as techniques that do not involve new relations between people and nature and within society itself. The designer, the bureaucrat, the corporate executive, and the political careerist do not introduce anything new or ecological in society or in our sensibilities toward
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