these layers, largely determined by the need for food and energy. Industrialisation
has changed the pyramid in a number of ways. First, by reversing evolution:
evolutionary change lengthened the food chain through the emergence of more
complex life forms; industrialisation shortens the chain by the elimination of both
predators and of seemingly useless organisms. Second, by the exploitation, which
puts geological, and other formations, to new uses, such as the generation of energy,
and removes them from the ‘natural chain’. Third, transportation disconnects the
chain and introduces forms from one environment to a new, quite different, one,
and with sometimes unintended consequences. Leopold summarises the idea of the
pyramid as an energy circuit in three basic ideas:- Land is not merely soil.
- Native plants and animals keep the energy circuit open; others may or may
not. - Man-made changes are of a different order than evolutionary changes, and
have effects more comprehensive than is intended or foreseen.
(Leopold, 1987: 148)
Leopold does not assert dogmatically that human-made changes necessarily
threaten the continuation of life. He concedes that Europe has been transformed
over the last two millennia, but that the ‘new structure seems to function and to
persist’; Europe, he concludes, has a ‘resistant biota... its inner processes are
tough, elastic, resistant to strain’ (Leopold, 1987: 148). However, the correct
perspective for an ecologist to adopt is global, and the earth as a whole, he maintains,
is like a diseased body, where some parts seem to function well, but the whole is
threatened with death. As with many ecologists, he identified population growth as
a major cause of this ‘disease’:
The combined evidence of history and ecology seems to support one deduction:
the less violent the man-made changes, the greater the probability of successful
readjustment in the pyramid. Violence, in turn, varies with human population
density; a dense population requires a more violent conversion.
(Leopold, 1987: 149)
Conservationists fall into two groups, labelled by Leopold A and B: group A
regards the land as soil and its function as a commodity, whereas group B regards
the land as a biota, and its function as ‘something broader’, but ‘how much broader
is admittedly in a state of doubt and confusion’ (Leopold, 1987: 149). While he
may not have been aware of it, this distinction is an early statement of a divide
which becomes clear after the 1960s – that between environmentalists and ecologists.
Crucial to the coherence of ecologism is an explanation of that ‘broader’ function
or value which troubled Leopold.
Arne Næss and ‘deep ecology’
Arne Næss (1912–2009) is credited with coining the contrasting phrases ‘deep
ecology’ (more precisely: ‘long-range deep ecology movement’) and ‘shallow
ecology’, with the spatial language intended to denote the depth of questioning of364 Part 3 Contemporary ideologies