Unless we realize that the present market society, structured around the brutally competitive imperative of “grow or die,” is a thoroughly impersonal, self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame technology as such or population growth as such for environmental problems.

Unless we clearly recognize this, we will surely fail to see that the hierarchical mentality and class relationships that so thoroughly permeate society give rise to the very idea of dominating the natural world.

The way human beings deal with each other as social beings is crucial to addressing the ecological crisis. Indeed, to separate ecological problems from social problems-or even to play down or give token recognition to this crucial relationship - would be to grossly misconstrue the sources of the growing environmental crisis. The massive oil spill by an Exxon tanker at Prince William Sound, the extensive deforestation of redwood trees by the Maxxam Corporation, and the proposed James Bay hydroelectric project that would flood vast areas of northern Quebec’s forests, to cite only a few problems, should remind us that the real battleground on which the ecological future of the planet will be decided is clearly a social one. If this approach seems a bit too “sociological” for those environmentalists who identify ecological problems with the preservation of wildlife, wilderness, or more broadly, with “Gaia” and planetary “Oneness,” it might be sobering to consider certain recent facts. To make this point more concrete: economic, ethnic, cultural, and gender conflicts, among many others, lie at the core of the most serious ecological dislocations we face today-apart, to be sure, from those that are produced by natural catastrophes. Conversely, present ecological problems cannot be clearly understood, much less resolved, without resolutely dealing with problems within society. What literally defines social ecology as “social” is its recognition of the often overlooked fact that nearly all our present ecological problems arise from deep-seated social problems. Society, and The Philosophy of Social Ecology. Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship, Remaking His many books include Toward anĮcological Society, The Ecology of Freedom, The Rise of

He is theĬofounder and director emeritus of the Institute for Murray Bookchin has long been a major figure in anarchlstĪnd utopian political theory, theory of technology,

Murray bookchin the ecology of freedom