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

Green political thought

3.1 Survivalism: leviathan or oblivion?

Many environmental theorists in the early 1970s

had an overriding preoccupation with human

survival. The leading environmental ‘doom-

sayers’ were driven by a sense of urgency

about the impending ecological crisis, which

prompted them to recommend drastic – often

authoritarian – solutions.

Garrett Hardin’s ( 1968 ) famous essay on the

‘Tragedy of the Commons’ (see Box7.1)

warned that, in a world of finite resources,

freedom in the unregulated commons brings

ruin to all. He proposed the illiberal solution of

‘mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the

majority of people affected’. His ‘lifeboat ethic’

(Hardin 1977 ) callously recommended that

‘developed’ countries should abandon ‘less

developed’ countries if their governments

refused to control population growth and

prevent ecological destruction. Thus rich

countries in the North would be the ‘lifeboats’

loaded with survivors, cutting off aid to the poor

nations of the South, who would ‘drown’ (even

though the North consumes most resources

and places most pressure on fragile

ecosystems).

Robert Heilbroner ( 1974 ) and William Ophuls

(1977) concluded reluctantly that the

management of the commons required a

strong central authority to persuade

self-interested people to change their ways. For

Heilbroner, only a centrally planned,

authoritarian state – ruled by a monastic

government that combined religious orientation

and military discipline – could force the

required sacrifices and restructure the

economy along ecologically sustainable lines.

Ophuls envisaged a strong central authority

dominated by ‘ecological mandarins’ who

would govern by the application of ecological

principles. If self-restraint was not forthcoming,

then mildly coercive methods were needed in

the short term to avoid resorting to more

draconian methods in the longer term.

The illiberal recommendations of survivalism

have been attacked from all sides: by

capitalists and socialists, the Catholic church

and ecofeminists. Despite the emphasis on

practical solutions, the draconian prescriptions

of survivalism seem impractical in a modern

world dominated economically by global

capitalism and politically by liberal democracy.

See Eckersley ( 1992 ) and Dryzek ( 2005 : ch.2)

for a wider discussion of survivalism.

Survivalism:Approaches characterised by

an overriding preoccupation with human

survival, a sense of urgency about an

impending ecological crisis and drastic,

often authoritarian, solutions.

The Limits to Growth report was enormously
significant in the development of environmental
thought.^2 The immediate impact of its apocalyp-
tic message was to catapult environmental issues
into the public eye and onto the political agenda.
Its pessimism also resonated with the contempo-
rary‘survivalist’concern (see Box3.1)about population growth (see Box3.2).
In the longer term, ‘the belief that ourfiniteEarth places limits on industrial
growth’ has become a ‘foundation-stone of radical green politics’ (Dobson
2000 : 62; emphasis added). Specifically, greens draw several lessons from the
‘limits to growth’ thesis (Martell 1994 : 27–33; Dobson 2000 : 63). First, the
concept of finitude underpinning the ‘limits to growth’ thesis is unique to
ecologism; it implies that any future sustainable world will be characterised
bymaterial scarcity rather than abundance. Secondly, by plotting the com-
bined impact of the five variables, the report underlined theinterdependent