Ecotopia

Callenbach describes a society which has abandoned the structures and attitudes of industrial society in favor of a communal system in which there is shared ownership of farmland and major industries and a town-hall type political system, developed in small regions and without a centralized political system. Underlying this social and political system is a different attitude toward nature, an attitude that says that human beings and their lives have to fit into a larger natural world-picture and that human beings cannot see themselves as having the right to use and abuse nature for their own needs. This view is in keeping with the essential perspective of deep ecology, and critics of such a system see it as utopian and so unattainable because it ignores the reality of human needs in this world while exaggerating the degree to which man and nature can be equalized.

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denigrate the empirical study of the natural world, and Grey says that such a scientific approach need not be manipulative as charged, and indeed he states that modern science has provided us with the basis for a sense of unity with the world of nature: Living systems are temporary, stable, dynamic structures whose material components were forged inside stellar furnaces. Life is one of the many levels of organization assumed by the world-stuff. . . (Grey 214). Grey sees the scientific view as offering just ass rich a connection to the world of nature as does the animistic or pantheistic view that seems more to accord with the Ecotopian ideal and with the ideal of deep ecology. For that matter, as noted, the ecotopians themselves make use of nature in some degree. Their favorite material is wood, and they even make their plastics from wood. The relationship they see as necessary with nature is a renewable one so that what they use will return to the soil in time. The difference between this view and that of most environmentalists is not that great on this score, for renewable resources have been promoted by environmentalists for some time. Tim Luke notes that deep ecology involves principles beyond a new philosophy of natu
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Tim Luke, Descartes Church, Ernest Callenbach, Harold Gilliam, William Grey, Church Christianity, deep ecology, , deep ecologists, political system, deep ecology critics, conservation movements, world nature, natural world, view human, grey deep ecology, political action, political structures, industrial society,
Approximate Word count = 1508
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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