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society distinguishable from the preferred pictures of other ideologies
is one of the reasons why ecologism may be seen as a political ideology
in its own right.
Thinking about ecologism 13
I shall outline what I understand the sustainable society to look like
in Chapter 3, but two points about it should be borne in mind from the
outset. First, political ecologists will stress that consumption of material
goods by over-consuming individuals in advanced industrial countries
should be reduced; and second (linked to the first), that human needs
are not best satisfied by continual economic growth as we understand it
today. Jonathon Porritt writes: If you want one simple contrast between
green and conventional politics, it is our belief that quantitative demand
must be reduced, not expanded (Porritt, 1984a, p. 136). Greens argue
that if there are limits to growth then there are limits to consumption
as well. The green movement is therefore faced with the difficulty
of simultaneously calling into question a major aspiration of most
people maximizing consumption of material objects and making its
position attractive.
There are two aspects to its strategy. On the one hand it argues that
continued consumption at increasing levels is impossible because of the
finite productive limits imposed by the Earth. On this view our aspir-
ation to consume will be curtailed whether we like it or not. Greens
argue that recycling or the use of renewable energy sources will not,
alone, solve the problems posed by a finite Earth we shall still not be
able to produce or consume at an ever-increasing rate. Such techniques
might be a part of the strategy for a sustainable society, but they do not
materially affect the absolute limits to production and consumption in a
finite system:
The fiction of combining present levels of consumption with limit-
less recycling is more characteristic of the technocratic vision
than of an ecological one. Recycling itself uses resources, expands
energy, creates thermal pollution; on the bottom line, it s just an
industrial activity like all the others. Recycling is both useful and
necessary but it is an illusion to imagine that it provides any basic
answers.
(Porritt, 1984a, p. 183)
This observation is the analogue of the distinction made earlier
between environmentalism and ecologism. To paraphrase Porritt, the
recycling of waste is an essential part of being green but it is not the
same thing as being radically green. Being radically green involves living
a different kind of collective life. Greens are generally suspicious of
purely technological solutions to environmental problems the techno-
logical fix and the relatively cautious endorsement of recycling is
just one instance of this. As long ago as the The Limits to Growth thesis
14 Green Political Thought
it was suggested that We cannot expect technological solutions alone
to get us out of this vicious circle (Meadows et al., 1974, p. 192) and
this has since become a central dogma of green politics.
The second strategy employed by green ideologues to make palatable
their recommendation for reduced consumption is to argue for the
benefits of a less materialistic society. In the first place they make a
distinction between needs and wants, suggesting that many of the items
we consume and that we consider to be needs are in fact wants that have
been converted into needs at the behest of powerful persuasive forces.
In this sense they will suggest that little would be lost by some possess-
ing fewer objects. The distinction between needs and wants is highly
controversial and will be considered in more detail in Chapter 3.
Second, some deep-greens argue that the sustainable society that
would replace the present consumer society would provide for wider
and more profound forms of fulfilment than that provided by the con-
sumption of material objects. This may profitably be seen as part of the
contention made by some greens that the sustainable society would be
a spiritually fulfilling place in which to live. There has recently been
something of a boom in happiness studies , and it has been pointed out
that there is no correlation between the raw wealth of a society and the
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