that studies the relationship between organisms and their physical
environment. As scientific study has proceeded, the multiple inter-
dependencies between the different organic species on the planet and
the crucial impact of climatic and geological influences have become
clear to us in a way that was not obvious to earlier generations.
With the development of an industrial urban civilisation dependent
upon the consumption of fossil fuels, and our own increasing
knowledge, it has become clear that the environment is being moulded
in potentially dangerous ways by human beings as never before. The
Rio Earth Summit of June 1992 found political leaders from all over
the globe discussing seriously the depletion of world resources
(especially non-renewable energy sources); the phenomenon of global
warming; the dangers of chemical, biological and radiation pollution in
the atmosphere and oceans; the destruction of animal and plant species
through the destruction of valuable habitats such as the rain forest.
Non-governmental groups at the same summit stressed the human
population explosion and the unequal distribution of resources
between North and South as contributors to a single problem result-
ing essentially from uncontrolled industrial growth.
The various wings of the green movement are inclined to unite in
seeing these problems as the dominant political agenda for humanity
in the early twenty-first century. Ecology or green campaigners
usually suggest that both capitalist and communist ideologies are part
of the problem. Resources are being used up at an exponential (ever-
increasing) rate, whilst the healthy complexity of the ecology of the
planet is being continually reduced by commercial agriculture and
industrial pollution. Thus virtually all issues from human repro-
duction, through patterns of industrial investment and domestic
consumption to tourism can be viewed in an ecological light.
Divisions within the movement can be observed – particularly
between what one might call the romantics and the scientists. On
the ‘romantic’ side, the stress is on back-to-nature ideas such as
homeopathy, vegetarianism, naturism and developing folk-music-
playing rural communities. On the ‘scientific’ side, the stress is on
projections of economic and ecological disaster if present trends in
industrialisation and consumption continue. A different division has
also been observed between what is sometimes called the ‘light
anthropocentric’ and the ‘deep ecology’ wings (Vincent, 1992: 217).
The first group stress the practical problems for human beings and
IDEOLOGIES 85