The Politics Of Nature Tom Hayden

In his recent book The Lost Gospel of the Earth: A Call for Renewing Nature, Spirit, and Politics (San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1997), California State Senator Tom Hayden undertakes the search for "an Earth-based spirituality." Believing that our worldview determines our ethics, he intends the book to be "a challenge to existing religion, but also the basis for a new vision of politics that honors the Earth." The essay that follows reviews a main theme in the book: the way in which nature has come to bear the brunt of human exploitation. "The values that we need to articulate," Hayden contends, "are those of Henry David Thoreau against those of George Armstrong Custer."

THE DEBASEMENT OF NATURE         THE MACHINERY OF politics is based on a heartless and hidden debasement of nature. Political scientists speak of the function of politics as the allocation of resources, assuming that nature's bounty is destined to become a Gross National Product for distribution to the powerful. In this way, the dominant politics of growth rests blindly on the death of nature.         Can all this change? Can politics represent ecosystems instead of special interests? Restoration instead of taking? Or does environmentalism have to reject and somehow replace the present political system for its inherent role in causing pollution?         These are questions I ask myself everyday as a state Senator. Until recently, not many political thinkers have addressed them. Now, as the environmental crisis begins to overwhelm our past assumptions, it is time for a theory and practice of politics based on restoration and sustainability.         In my lifetime, world population has doubled and natural resources have been cut in half, creating a collision course between industrial growth and the natural world. California is a microcosm, with the fastest-growing population in the U.S. pressing down on a land the first European explorers called "terrestrial paradise".

For example, the development of California has resulted in the loss of all but five percent of the state's original redwood forests. California forestry law promotes "maximum timber productivity" as an official policy goal. That means that a grove of ancient trees, which sheltered our ancestors for thousands of years, which preserved and promoted a living forest for millions of years, is valued only for the price it brings as the deck of a condominium. A NEW PARADIGM FOR POLITICAL ECONOMY         Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas argued 50 years ago that such trees should have standing in courts of law "to sue for their own preservation". His prophetic opinion has been ignored, and yet corporations, which are utterly artificial entities, are accorded such rights in perpetuity.         This devaluing of ecosystems is reinforced in the case of forests by the vast power of timber interests which, despite their relatively small voter base, can rent the services of willing politicians under a campaign finance system based on unlimited contributions. Corporate contributions are a form of "free expression" astonishingly protected under the First Amendment, at least as presently interpreted by the courts. By contrast, the standing of ecosystems in industrial society is similar to that of the native Americans or African slaves: a wilderness to be destroyed or domesticated for economic use.         The major strides in environmental law since 1970 must be seen in this context which overwhelmingly favors the utilitarian exploitation of nature. The Endangered Species Act, for example, cannot be triggered until an isolated species is on the edge of extinction. Even then, the dying species must survive for years until bureaucrats and interest groups determine its final fate.         To place a value on nature beyond its immediate use to human society requires a transformation of religious and cultural assumptions that ultimately must be reflected in politics and economics. In this "new paradigm", political economy will no longer be viewed in terms of the machine metaphor of the old industrial order, but in terms of the organic image of a sustainable human community living integrally with nature."

The difficulty of achieving this changed perception cannot be over-stated and yet the deepening environmental crisis will compel more and more people to creative adaptation and a rethinking of values. My faith is that the human survival instinct, which forces us to examine our place in the world, is stronger ultimately than the addictive need to cling to obsolete dogmas.         We are entering a transitional era with only two possible endings: either a downward spiral of violent human conflict over diminishing resources, or a spiritual redirection of 21st Century humanity towards harmony and reciprocity towards each other and the Earth. Each of us matters in this unpredictable journey.         In making the fateful choice to be a frontier nation, America's founders consistently rejected the alternative vision of living within limits in sustainable, community based, decentralized governing structures. In the Madisonian/Federalist view, an "extensive Republic" was necessary to provide an outlet for the inherent tendency to factionalism in human nature. Thinkers like Montesquieu, the anonymous anti-Federalist "Brutus" and, in his later life, Jefferson, all believed that democracy could flourish only in a human-scale and sustainable setting. As Robert Louis Stevenson eloquently wrote during the frontier era, "We cannot hope to escape the great law of compensation which exacts some loss for every gain". But the founders' doubts were swept aside in the inevitability of the conquest of the frontier once before them. "Indian society may be best", Jefferson once reflected, "but it is not possible for large numbers of people".         This historic debate remains at the core of political and environmental philosophy three centuries later. The dominant view among American and world political leaders is that expanding markets and environmental exploitation are basic to growth and progress, and that environmental mitigation can only be financed from the dividends of such growth. What has changed in our time, however, is the relationship of population to frontier. Where there was a certain logic to boundless expansion in 1775, pursuit of the same logic today is a dangerous and senseless addiction leading ever closer to human and ecological destruction.

A MIXED LEGACY         A new political theory for the ecological era is needed, one which should restore and modernize the older beliefs in decentralization, community-scale institutions, and environmental sustainability which were the indigenous dreams of our ancestors on the continent.         The foundations of an American environmental politics can be recovered from the nineteenth century Romantics, Ralph Waldo Emerson and particularly Henry David Thoreau, whose visions ultimately animated John Muir towards founding the Sierra Club in 1892. Like the native Americans, they believed in revelation and transcendence through a Spirit within nature. The Romantics left a mixed legacy for those who seek to ground their politics in environmentalism today. On the one hand, they believed that nature had intrinsic and spiritual value rather than simply a utilitarian benefit. Drawing on native Americans, they originated an Earth-based spirituality in sharp contrast with the narrow interpretation of Genesis employed in defense of aggressive frontier plunder. They also embraced the idea that if politics is to have value, it must be rooted in personal commitment and behavior, arising from below. At the same time, they reinforced a dualistic concept of the environment as "environs", a setting outside the populated areas where social and ethnic politics dominated.         A century later, these ideas continued to have staying power in environmental literature. An eloquent example appeared in a short essay, titled simply "Ecology and Politics", by the eminent environmental philosopher Aldo Leopold in 1941. As an ecologist, Leopold pointed out that political economy is based on a demand for growth (what he called "take") in excess of the carrying capacity of nature. The result, he felt, was global war. At the end of his essay, Leopold asked an intriguing question: "do other animals select their form of government to fit their adaptations, or does circumstance dictate the form?". In the human case, he seemed to believe, technological society would always tend towards expansion of form instead of acceptance of ecological limit. In the spirit of Thoreau, Leopold saw technological society and its politics as the enemy, ending his essay in an ecological scorn:

"... a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements. Stability seems to vary inversely to the mental distance from fields and woods. The disruptive movements which now threaten the continuity of human culture are born not on the land where the take originates, but in the factories and offices where it is processed and distributed, and in the capitols where the rules of division are written". THREE ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES         In contemporary times, there are three contrasting environmental strategies that contend for dominance.        First, there are environmentalists working entirely within the present system of politics, trying to create market incentives for environmental reform. These new, respectable pragmatists are gambling on the argument that environmentalism can be proven in business leaders' minds to be more efficient than pollution and waste, and even profitable.        Second, there are community, or workplace-based, insurgent environmentalists, often people of color, who are organizing to challenge the narrow market system from the outside. Their assumption is that corporate and bureaucratic power are incompatible with environmental protection for their communities, and must be modified radically.        Finally, there are more spiritual or New Age environmentalists seeking to re-awaken a fundamental reverence for the Earth as a precondition for any change whatever. They seek to educate others to a new vision that is partly mystical and partly scientific, of a living universe and a living Earth with a deep spiritual dimension. When this new "paradigm" or "story" reaches enough people, they feel, the structures of society will change towards a new harmony with the Earth.         These alternate approaches to the environmental riddle are often successful by their own standards, and they sometimes complement each other in effective ways. But they all are struggling towards a more complete vision and effective practice capable of addressing the urgency of our times.

What is problematic politically is that none of these approaches directly seeks to maximize the power of the environmental issue among the majority of voting Americans who consider themselves in some sense environmentalists.         The huge gap between environmentalism and politics, especially in comparison with other social movements, suggests a failure to seize the possibility of shifting the American debate. The fact that Americans in polls consistently indicate strong environmental values is all the more reason to ask whether environmentalism has defaulted on a historic opportunity. Without forming a more viable and organized green voting-bloc and running candidates, environmentalists will continue to be marginalized and treated as secondary by politicians of both parties. WHAT IS TO BE DONE?         What is to be done? I am not suggesting that environmentalists abandon their agendas to become reform Democrats. But they should become a more organized presence, like a "party" but more fluid, in all our stagnating institutions. The difficult task is to achieve broad consensus on an alternative environmental vision and program, followed by a plan of action that not only educates people to the existence of a choice, but threatens and pressures the existing order of power.         My own firm belief is that environmentalists must speak of values, alternatives to the present system, and practical steps all in one breath. Values need to be grounded in programs, programs need to be grounded in vision, and both need to be expressed in positive action that arouses people from numbness, denial and apathy. The concepts of community and personal self-reliance, environmental restoration and sustainability, reverence for nature instead of things, must be translated into practical efforts to reform and eventually transform a completely dysfunctional system. Here the work is endless, and the examples many, including:

1. Revision of school and university curriculums to integrate ecological values and science throughout the process, as exemplified by the work of Lynn Margulis and Carolyn Merchant. Why don't environmentalists run for school boards instead of yielding to the fundamentalists who still fight Darwin?         2. Reform of economic models to internalize environmental costs and replace GNP-measurements with Quality-of-Life ones. (Herman Daly, Hazel Henderson, Paul Hawken)         3. Restructuring of economic incentives and regulations to penalize pollution, waste and throw-away consumption patterns; mandatory recycling and re-use of all wastes; reliance on renewable resources in place of non-renewable fossil fuels; and the creation of products which last. Such changes would be possible only with a transition to taxes on waste, consumption and pollution instead of income and payrolls. (Al Gore's book, and Paul Hawken again)         4. Extending the democratic process to the marketplace and corporate bureaucracy by empowering individuals to participate in decisions on the basis of greater access to information and technology (the enduring vision of Ralph Nader)         5. Restoration of democratic government by campaign finance and lobbying reform to weaken the stranglehold of oil, chemical, agricultural and other special interest groups over the fate of environment and society. (Jerry Brown)         6. Redesign of representative electoral districts to include natural bio-regions as well as voter blocs, and restoration of habitat for such species as salmon and grizzly (the politics of Gary Snyder, the writing of Schumacher)         7. Acceptance of "the rights of nature" (the concept of Justice Douglas, the phrase of Roderick Nash) as the next great extension of the moral community of respect that democracy represents.         8. The return of the spiritual to politics as in the tradition of the Great Council Fire, the end of government as Leviathan. (Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy, Matthew Fox, and Al Gore, the author)

STRANDS IN A SINGLE PROCESS         No one of these efforts at transformation is more important or more urgent than the others. But none of them alone is sufficient for the great transition, indeed the evolutionary leap, that we need to accomplish. Taken together, they are strands of a single process of that unravels and re-weaves our whole social order at the same time.         This agenda is an alternative to both withdrawal from political engagement and piecemeal efforts at reforming a hopeless system. The alternative for the environmental movement is to develop a "medicine" stronger than the coercive power and escapist fantasies of the present growth machine.         It means working to transform ourselves from frontier personalities to citizens at home in our communities and bio- regions.         It means transforming ourselves into green consumers and voters.         It means transforming the institutions where we work and worship into centers of ecological action.         It means storming politics--and all the castles of the obsolete--with a transforming spirit, a ruah, breath of God, that brings an Earth-politics to life. Such an Earth-politics cannot be co-opted or denied. Such a politics overcomes the love of power with the power of love, the logic of power with the power of logic-but also with millions of people ready to vote, as Thoreau did, "not with a mere piece of paper, but your whole life".

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© 1997 The Ecopsychology Institute