THE DEEP ECOLOGY MOVEMENT*

BILL DEVALL**
NATURAL RESOURCES JOURNAL

There are two great streams of environmentalism in the latter half of the twentieth century. One stream is reformist, attempting to control some of the worst of the air and water pollution and inefficient  land use practices in industrialized nations and to save a few of

the remaining pieces of wild lands as "designated wilderness areas."

The other stream supports many of the reformist goals but is revolutionary, seeking a new metaphysics, epistemology, cosmology, and environmental ethics of person/planet. This paper is an intellectual archaeology of the second of these streams of environmentalism,
which I will call deep ecology.

There are several other phrases that some writers are using for the perspective I am describing in this paper. Some call it "eco-philosophy" or "foundational ecology" or the "new natural philosophy." I use "deep ecology" as the shortest label. Although I am convinced
that deep ecology is radically different from the perspective of the dominant social paradigm, I do not use the phrase "radical ecology" or "revolutionary ecology" because I think those labels have such a burden of emotive associations that many people would not hear
what is being said about deep ecology because of their projection of other meanings of "revolution" onto the perspective of deep ecology.

I contend that both streams of environmentalism are reactions to the successes and excesses of the implementation of the dominant social paradigm. Although reformist environmentalism treats some of the symptoms of the environmental crisis and challenges some of the assumptions of the dominant social paradigm (such as growth of the
economy at any cost), deep ecology questions the fundamental premises of the dominant social paradigm. In the future, as the limits of reform are reached and environmental problems become more serious, the reform environmental movement will have to come to
terms with deep ecology.

The analysis in the present paper was inspired by Arne Naess' paper on "shallow and deep, long-range" environmentalism.'1 The methods used are patterned after John Rodman's seminal critique of the resources conservation and development movement in the United
States.2 The data are the writings of a diverse group of thinkers who have been developing a theory of deep ecology, especially during the last quarter of a century. Relatively few of these writings have appeared in popular journals or in books published by mainstream publishers. I have searched these writings for common threads or
themes much as Max Weber searched the sermons of Protestant ministers for themes which reflected from and back to the intellectual and social crisis of the emerging Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.' 3 Several questions are addressed in this paper: What are
the sources of deep ecology? How do the premises of deep ecology differ from those of the dominant social paradigm? What are the areas of disagreement between reformist environmentalism and deep ecology? What is the likely future role of the deep ecology movement?

READ ON

*Thanks and acknowledgement to George Sessions, Philosophy Department, Sierra College, Rocklin, California. His sympathetic support and ideas made it possible to develop and deepen many of the ideas expressed in this paper.

**Professor of Sociology, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California 95521. An extensive discussion of "Reformist Environmentalism" written by Professor Devall was published in the Fall/Winter 1979 issue of the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations. This is available from the Dept. of Sociology, Humboldt State University.

1. Naess, The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement, 16 INQUIRY 95 (1973). 

2. J. Rodman, Four Forms of Ecological Consciousness: Beyond Economics, Resource Conservation, (1977) Pitzer College.

 3. M. WEBER, THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM (1930)


Recommended Citation Bill Devall, The Deep Ecology Movement, 20 Nat. Resources J. 299 (1980). Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol20/iss2/6