The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy, 2nd Edition

Green political thought

3.10 The technocentric–ecocentric dimension

Technocentric orientation


 an adherence to cornucopian assumptions

that there are no limits to growth


 an unrestrained commitment to economic

growth


 scientific and technological optimism that

human ingenuity will find an answer to every

ecological problem


 a strong emphasis on material values and

resistance to widening public participation in

decision-making


 an anthropocentric world-view

Ecocentric orientation


 a belief that there are both ecological and

social limits to growth


 a development philosophy that seeks

to minimise resource use and operate

within the carrying capacity of

ecosystems


 an appreciation of the complexities of

ecosystems and the limits to human

understanding and elitist expertise; i.e. we

cannot solve every problem and we must

adopt a cautious approach to the use of

technology


 the belief that materialism for its own sake is

wrong and an emphasis on non-material

values such as education, fellowship, civic

responsibility, democratic participation and

community


 an ecocentric respect for nature and a belief

that all lifeforms should be given the

opportunity to pursue their own destinies

Modelled on O’Riordan ( 1981 ).

It is helpful to illustrate the relationship between ecologism and other
ideologies diagrammatically. Conventional political discourse is dominated
bydistributive issues: who gets what, when and how? Thus ideologies are
typically categorised along the familiar left–right dimension according to

Technocentric:A mode of thought which

optimistically believes that society can solve

all environmental problems, using

technology and science, and achieve

unlimited material growth.

theposition they take on key political dualisms
such as ‘state v. market’ or ‘equality v. hierar-
chy’. Incontrast, ecologism, whilst not denying the
importance of distributional issues, is driven by an
ecological imperative, which is not picked up by
theleft–right dimension. By adapting O’Riordan’s
classictechnocentric–ecocentric dimension (Box3.10), it is possible to cate-
gorise different ideologies according to their perspective on environmental
issues (see Figure3.2).
The technocentric–ecocentric dimension cuts across the left–right dimen-
sion, thus giving some force to the green claim to represent a fundamentally
different approach to politics. This sharp distinction holds good as long as
wefocus on those two ideas of non-anthropocentrism and limits to growth.
However, as soon as the broader set of green principles is introduced into
theequation, the distinction becomes more blurred. In Figure3.4the rela-
tionship between ecologism and other ideologies is illustrated by superim-
posing the technocentric–ecocentric dimension onto the conventional left–
right dimension (based on attitudes to state intervention in the market).^14 If
ecologism consists of the core ecological imperative supplemented by green
principles of democratisation, decentralisation and social justice, then the