Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique by Ramachandra Guha This essay is from Environmental Ethics, Vol. 11, No.1 (Spring 1989), 71-83. Guha is an ecologist at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012, India. He wrote the essay during a visiting lecturership at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. I. Introduction The respected radical journalist Kirkpatrick Sale recently celebrated “the passion of a new and growing movement that has become disenchanted with the environmental establishment and has in recent years mounted a serious and sweeping attack on it—style, substance, systems, sensibilities and all.”l The vision of those whom Sale calls the “New Ecologists”—and what I refer to in this article as deep ecology—is a compelling one. Decrying the narrowly economic goals of mainstream environmentalism, this new movement aims at nothing less than a philosophical and cultural revolution in human attitudes toward nature. In contrast to the conventional lobbying efforts of environmental professionals based in Washington, it proposes a militant defence of “Mother Earth,” an unflinching opposition to human attacks on undisturbed wilderness. With their goals ranging from the spiritual to the political, the adherents of deep ecology span a wide spectrum of the American environmental movement. As Sale correctly notes, this emerging strand has in a matter of a few years made its presence felt in a number of fields: from academic philosophy (as in the journal Environmental Ethics) to popular environmentalism (for example, the group Earth First!). terms. I make two main arguments: first, that deep ecology is uniquely American, and despite superficial similarities in rhetorical style, the social and political goals of radical environmentalism in other cultural contexts (e.g., West Germany and India) are quite different; second, that the social consequences of putting deep ecology into practice on a worldwide basis (what its practitioners are aiming for) are very grave indeed. II. The Tenets of Deep Ecology While I am aware that the term deep ecology was coined by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, this article refers specifically to the American variant.2 Adherents of the deep ecological perspective in this country, while arguing intensely among themselves over its political and philosophical implications, share some fundamental premises about human-nature interactions. As I see it, the defining characteristics of deep ecology are fourfold. In this article I develop a critique of deep ecology from the perspective of a sympathetic outsider. I critique deep ecology not as a general (or even a foot soldier) in the continuing struggle between the ghosts of Gifford Pinchot and John Muir over control of the U.S. environmental movement, but as an outsider to these battles. I speak admittedly as a partisan, but of the environmental movement in India, a country with an ecological diversity comparable to the U.S., but with a radically dissimilar cultural and social history. First, deep ecology argues that the environmental movement must shift from an “anthropocentric” to a “biocentric” perspective. In many respects, an acceptance of the primacy of this distinction constitutes the litmus test of deep ecology. A considerable effort is expended by deep ecologists in showing that the dominant motif in Western philosophy has been anthropocentric—i.e., the belief that man and his works are the center of the universe—and conversely, in identifying those lonely thinkers (Leopold, Thoreau, Muir, Aldous Huxley, Santayana, etc.) who, in assigning man a more humble place in the natural order, anticipated deep ecological thinking. In the political realm, meanwhile, establishment environmentalism (shallow ecology) is chided for casting its arguments in human-centered terms. Preserving nature, the deep ecologists say, has an intrinsic worth quite apart from any benefits preservation may convey to future human generations. The anthropocentric-biocentric distinction is accepted as axiomatic by deep ecologists, it structures their discourse, and much of the present discussions remains mired within it. My treatment of deep ecology is primarily historical and sociological, rather than philosophical, in nature. Specifically, I examine the cultural rootedness of a philosophy that likes to present itself in universalistic The second characteristic of deep ecology is its focus on the preservation of unspoilt wilderness and the restoration of degraded areas to a more pristine condition—to the relative (and sometimes absolute) 1 neglect of other issues on the environmental agenda. I later identify the cultural roots and portentous consequences of this obsession with wilderness. For the moment, let me indicate three distinct sources from which it springs. Historically, it represents a playing out of the preservationist (read radical) and utilitarian (read reformist) dichotomy that has plagued American environmentalism since the turn of the century. Morally, it is an imperative that follows from the biocentric perspective; other species of plants and animals, and nature itself, have an intrinsic right to exist. And finally, the preservation of wilderness also turns on a scientific argument—viz., the value of biological diversity in stabilizing ecological regimes and in retaining a gene pool for future generations. Truly radical policy proposals have been put forward by deep ecologists on the basis of these arguments. The influential poet Gary Snyder, for example, would like to see a 90 percent reduction in human populations to allow a restoration of pristine environments, while others have argued forcefully that a large portion of the globe must be immediately cordoned off from human beings.3 Third, there is a widespread invocation of Eastern spiritual traditions as forerunners of deep ecology. Deep ecology, it is suggested, was practiced both by major religious traditions and at a more popular level by “primal” peoples in non-Western settings. This complements the search for an authentic lineage in Western thought. At one level, the task is to recover those dissenting voices within the Judeo-Christian tradition; at another, to suggest that religious traditions in other cultures are, in contrast, dominantly if not exclusively “biocentric” in their orientation. This coupling of (ancient) Eastern and (modern) ecological wisdom seemingly helps consolidate the claim that deep ecology is a philosophy of universal significance. Fourth, deep ecologists, whatever their internal differences, share the belief that they are the “leading edge” of the environmental movement. As the polarity of the shallow / deep and anthropocentric / biocentric distinctions makes clear, they see themselves as the spiritual, philosophical, and political vanguard of American and world environmentalism. III. Toward a Critique Although I analyze each of these tenets independently, it is important to recognize, as deep ecologists are fond of remarking in reference to nature, the interconnectedness and unity of these individual themes. (1) Insofar as it has begun to act as a check on man’s arrogance and ecological hubris, the transition from an anthropocentric (human-centered) to a biocentric (humans as only one element in the ecosystem) view in both religious and scientific traditions is only to be welcomed.4 What is unacceptable are the radical conclusions drawn by deep ecology, in particular, that intervention in nature should be guided primarily by the need to preserve biotic integrity rather than by the needs of humans. The latter for deep ecologists is anthropocentric, the former biocentric. This dichotomy is, however, of very little use in understanding the dynamics of environmental degradation. The two fundamental ecological problems facing the globe are (i) overconsumption by the industrialized world and by urban elites in the Third World and (ii) growing militarization, both in a short-term sense (i.e., ongoing regional wars) and in a long-term sense (i.e., the arms race and the prospect of nuclear annihilation). Neither of these problems has any tangible connection to the anthropocentricbiocentric distinction. Indeed, the agents of these processes would barely comprehend this philosophical dichotomy. The proximate causes of the ecologically wasteful characteristics of industrial society and of militarization are far more mundane: at an aggregate level, the dialectic of economic and political structures, and at a micro-level, the life-style choices of individuals. These causes cannot be reduced, whatever the level of analysis, to a deeper anthropocentric attitude toward nature; on the contrary, by constituting a grave threat to human survival, the ecological degradation they cause does not even serve the best interests of human beings! If my identification of the major dangers to the integrity of the natural world is correct, invoking the bogy of anthropocentricism is at best irrelevant and at worst a dangerous obfuscation. (2) If the above dichotomy is irrelevant, the emphasis on wilderness is positively harmful when applied to the Third World. If in the U.S. the preservationist / utilitarian division is seen as mirroring the conflict between “people” and “interests,” in countries such as India the situation is very nearly the reverse. Because India is a long settled and densely populated country in which agrarian populations have a finely balanced relationship with nature, the setting aside of wilderness areas has resulted in a direct transfer of resources from the poor to the rich. Thus, Project Tiger, a network of parks hailed by the international conservation community as an outstanding success, sharply posits the interests of the tiger against those of poor peasants living in and around the reserve. The designation of tiger reserves was made possible only by the physical displacement of existing villages and their inhabitants; their management requires the continuing exclusion of peasants and livestock. The initial impetus for setting up parks for the tiger and 2 other large mammals such as the rhinoceros and elephant came from two social groups, first, a class of ex-hunters turned conservationists belonging mostly to the declining Indian feudal elite and second, representatives of international agencies, such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), seeking to transplant the American system of national parks onto Indian soil. In no case have the needs of the local population been taken into account, and as in many parts of Africa, the designated wildlands are managed primarily for the benefit of rich tourists. Until very recently, wildlands preservation has been identified with environmentalism by the state and the conservation elite; in consequence, environmental problems that impinge far more directly on the lives of the poor— e.g., fuel, fodder, water shortages, soil erosion, and air and water pollution—have not been adequately addressed.5 Deep ecology provides, perhaps unwittingly, a justification for the continuation of such narrow and inequitable conservation practices under a newly acquired radical guise. Increasingly, the international conservation elite is using the philosophical, moral, and scientific arguments used by deep ecologists in advancing their wilderness crusade. A striking but by no means atypical example is the recent plea by a prominent American biologist for the takeover of large portions of the globe by the author and his scientific colleagues. Writing in a prestigious scientific forum, the Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Daniel Janzen argues that only biologists have the competence to decide how the tropical landscape should be used. As “the representatives of the natural world,” biologists are “in charge of the future of tropical ecology,” and only they have the expertise and mandate to “determine whether the tropical agroscape is to be populated only by humans, their mutualists, commensals, and parasites, or whether it will also contain some islands of the greater nature—the nature that spawned humans, yet has been vanquished by them.” Janzen exhorts his colleagues to advance their territorial claims on the tropical world more forcefully, warning that the very existence of these areas is at stake: “if biologists want a tropics in which to biologize, they are going to have to buy it with care, energy, effort, strategy, tactics, time, and cash.”6 This frankly imperialist manifesto highlights the multiple dangers of the preoccupation with wilderness preservation that is characteristic of deep ecology. As I have suggested, it seriously compounds the neglect by the American movement of far more pressing environmental problems within the Third World. But perhaps more importantly, and in a more insidious fashion, it also provides an impetus to the imperialist yearning of Western biologists and their financial sponsors, organizations such as the WWF and IUCN. The wholesale transfer of a movement culturally rooted in American conservation history can only result in the social uprooting of human populations in other parts of the globe. (3) I come now to the persistent invocation of Eastern philosophies as antecedent in point of time but convergent in their structure with deep ecology. Complex and internally differentiated religious traditions—Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism—are lumped together as holding a view of nature believed to be quintessentially biocentric. Individual philosophers such as the Taoist Lao Tzu are identified as being forerunners of deep ecology. Even an intensely political, pragmatic, and Christianinfluenced thinker such as Gandhi has been accorded a wholly undeserved place in the deep ecological pantheon. Thus the Zen teacher Robert Aitken Roshi makes the strange claim that Gandhi’s thought was not human-centered and that he practiced an embryonic form of deep ecology which is “traditionally Eastern and is found with differing emphasis in Hinduism, Taoism and in Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism.”7 Moving away from the realm of high philosophy and scriptural religion, deep ecologists make the further claim that at the level of material and spiritual practice “primal” peoples subordinated themselves to the integrity of the biotic universe they inhabited. I have indicated that this appropriation of Eastern traditions is in part dictated by the need to construct an authentic lineage and in part a desire to present deep ecology as a universalistic philosophy. Indeed, in his substantial and quixotic biography of John Muir, Michael Cohen goes so far as to suggest that Muir was the “Taoist of the [American] West.”8 This reading of Eastern traditions is selective and does not bother to differentiate between alternate (and changing) religious and cultural traditions; as it stands, it does considerable violence to the historical record. Throughout most recorded history the characteristic form of human activity in the “East” has been a finely tuned but nonetheless conscious and dynamic manipulation of nature. Although mystics such as Lao Tzu did reflect on the spiritual essence of human relations with nature, it must be recognized that such ascetics and their reflections were supported by a society of cultivators whose relationship with nature was a far more active one. Many agricultural communities do have a sophisticated knowledge of the natural environment that may equal (and sometimes surpass) codified “scientific” knowledge; yet, the elaboration of such traditional ecological knowledge 3 (in both material and spiritual contexts) can hardly be said to rest on a mystical affinity with nature of a deep ecological kind. Nor is such knowledge infallible; as the archaeological record powerfully suggests, modern Western man has no monopoly on ecological disasters. In a brilliant article, the Chicago historian Ronald Inden points out that this romantic and essentially positive view of the East is a mirror image of the scientific and essentially pejorative view normally upheld by Western scholars of the Orient. In either case, the East constitutes the Other, a body wholly separate and alien from the West; it is defined by a uniquely spiritual and nonrational “essence,” even if this essence is valorized quite differently by the two schools. Eastern man exhibits a spiritual dependence with respect to nature—the one hand, this is symptomatic of his prescientific and backward self, on the other, of his ecological wisdom and deep ecological consciousness. Both views are monolithic, simplistic, and have the characteristic effect— intended in one case, perhaps unintended in the other—of denying agency and reason to the East and making it the privileged orbit of Western thinkers. The two apparently opposed perspectives have then a common underlying structure of discourse in which the East merely serves as a vehicle for Western projections. Varying images of the East are raw material for political and cultural battles being played out in the West; they tell us far more about the Western commentator and his desires than about the “East.” Inden’s remarks apply not merely to Western scholarship on India, but to Orientalist constructions of China and Japan as well. Although these two views appear to be strongly opposed, they often combine together. Both have a similar interest in sustaining the Otherness of India. The holders of the dominant view, best exemplified in the past in imperial administrative discourse (and today probably by that of ‘development economics’), would place a traditional, superstition-ridden India in a position of perpetual tutelage to a modern, rational West. The adherents of the romantic view, best exemplified academically in the discourses of Christian liberalism and analytic psychology, concede the realm of the public and impersonal to the positivist. Taking their succor not from governments and big business, but from a plethora of religious foundations and self-help institutes, and from allies in the ‘consciousness’ industry, not to mention the important industry of tourism, the romantics insist that India embodies a private realm of the imagination and the religious which modern, western man lacks but needs. They, therefore, like the positivists, but for just the opposite reason, have a vested interest in seeing that the Orientalist view of India as ‘spiritual,’ ‘mysterious,’ and ‘exotic’ is perpetuated.9 (4) How radical, finally, are the deep ecologists? Notwithstanding their self-image and strident rhetoric (in which the label “shallow ecology” has an opprobrium similar to that reserved for “social democratic” by Marxist-Leninists), even within the American context their radicalism is limited and it manifests itself quite differently elsewhere. To my mind, deep ecology is best viewed as a radical trend within the wilderness preservation movement. Although advancing philosophical rather than aesthetic arguments and encouraging political militancy rather than negotiation, its practical emphasis—viz., preservation of unspoilt nature—is virtually identical. For the mainstream movement, the function of wilderness is to provide a temporary antidote to modern civilization. As a special institution within an industrialized society, the national park “provides an opportunity for respite, contrast, contemplation, and affirmation of values for those who live most of their lives in the workaday world.”10 Indeed, the rapid increase in visitations to the national parks in postwar America is a direct consequence of economic expansion. The emergence of a popular interest in wilderness sites, the historian Samuel Hays points out, was “not a throwback to the primitive, but an integral part of the modern standard of living as people sought to add new ‘amenity’ and ‘aesthetic’ goals and desires to their earlier preoccupation with necessities and conveniences.”11 Here, the enjoyment of nature is an integral part of the consumer society. The private automobile (and the life style it has spawned) is in many respects the ultimate ecological villain, and an untouched wilderness the prototype of ecological harmony; yet, for most Americans it is perfectly consistent to drive a thousand miles to spend a holiday in a national park. They possess a vast, beautiful, and sparsely populated continent and are also able to draw upon the natural resources of large portions of the globe by virtue of their economic and political dominance. In consequence, America can simultaneously enjoy the material benefits of an expanding economy and the aesthetic benefits of unspoilt nature. The two poles of “wilderness” and “civilization” mutually coexist in an internally coherent whole, and philosophers of both poles are assigned a prominent place in this culture. Paradoxically as it may seem, it is no accident that 4 Star Wars technology and deep ecology both find their fullest expression in that leading sector of Western civilization, California. Deep ecology runs parallel to the consumer society without seriously questioning its ecological and sociopolitical basis. In its celebration of American wilderness, it also displays an uncomfortable convergence with the prevailing climate of nationalism in the American wilderness movement. For spokesmen such as the historian Roderick Nash, the national park system is America’s distinctive cultural contribution to the world, reflective not merely of its economic but of its philosophical and ecological maturity as well. In what Walter Lippman called the American century, the “American invention of national parks” must be exported worldwide. Betraying an economic determinism that would make even a Marxist shudder, Nash believes that environmental preservation is a “full stomach” phenomenon that is confined to the rich, urban, and sophisticated. Nonetheless, he hopes that “the less developed nations may eventually evolve economically and intellectually to the point where nature preservation is more than a business.”12 The error which Nash makes (and which deep ecology in some respects encourages) is to equate environmental protection with the protection of wilderness. This is a distinctively American notion, borne out of a unique social and environmental history. The archetypal concerns of radical environmentalists in other cultural contexts are in fact quite different. The German Greens, for example, have elaborated a devastating critique of industrial society which turns on the acceptance of environmental limits to growth. Pointing to the intimate links between industrialization, militarization, and conquest, the Greens argue that economic growth in the West has historically rested on the economic and ecological exploitation of the Third World. Rudolf Bahro is characteristically blunt: The working class here [in the West] is the richest lower class in the world. And if I look at the problem from the point of view of the whole of humanity, not just from that of Europe, then I must say that the metropolitan working class is the worst exploiting class in history. ...What made poverty bearable in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century Europe was the prospect of escaping it through exploitation of the periphery. But this is no longer a possibility, and continued industrialism in the Third World will mean poverty for whole generations and hunger for millions.13 Here the roots of global ecological problems lie in the disproportionate share of resources consumed by the industrialized countries as a whole and the urban elite within the Third World. Since it is impossible to reproduce an industrial monoculture worldwide, the ecological movement in the West must begin by cleaning up its own act. The Greens advocate the creation of a “no growth” economy, to be achieved by scaling down current (and clearly unsustainable) consumption levels)14 This radical shift in consumption and production patterns requires the creation of alternate economic and political structures—smaller in scale and more amenable to social participation—but it rests equally on a shift in cultural values. The expansionist character of modern Western man will have to give way to an ethic of renunciation and self-limitation, in which spiritual and communal values play an increasing role in sustaining social life. This revolution in cultural values, however, has as its point of departure an understanding of environmental processes quite different from deep ecology. Many elements of the Green program find a strong resonance in countries such as India, where a history of Western colonialism and industrial development has benefited only a tiny elite while exacting tremendous social and environmental costs. The ecological battles presently being fought in India have as their epicenter the conflict over nature between the subsistence and largely rural sector and the vastly more powerful commercial-industrial sector. Perhaps the most celebrated of these battles concerns the Chipko (Hug the Tree) movement, a peasant movement against deforestation in the Himalayan foothills. Chipko is only one of several movements that have sharply questioned the nonsustainable demand being placed on the land and vegetative base by urban centers and industry. These include opposition to large dams by displaced peasants, the conflict between small artisan fishing and large-scale trawler fishing for export, the countrywide movements against commercial forest operations, and opposition to industrial pollution among downstream agricultural and fishing communities.15 Two features distinguish these environmental movements from their Western counterparts. First, for the sections of society most critically affected by environmental degradation—poor and landless peasants, women, and tribals—it is a question of sheer survival, not of enhancing the quality of life. Second, and as a consequence, the environmental solutions they articulate deeply involve questions of equity as well as economic and political redistribution. Highlighting these differences, a leading Indian environmentalist stresses that “environmental 5 protection per se is of least concern to most of these groups. Their main concern is about the use of the environment and who should benefit from it.”16 They seek to wrest control of nature away from the state and the industrial sector and place it in the hands of rural communities who live within that environment but are increasingly denied access to it. These communities have far more basic needs, their demands on the environment are far less intense, and they can draw upon a reservoir of cooperative social institutions and local ecological knowledge in managing the “commons”—forests, grasslands, and the waters—on a sustainable basis. If colonial and capitalist expansion has both accentuated social inequalities and signaled a precipitous fall in ecological wisdom, an alternate ecology must rest on an alternate society and polity as well. This brief overview of German and Indian environmentalism has some major implications for deep ecology. Both German and Indian environmental traditions allow for a greater integration of ecological concerns with livelihood and work. They also place a greater emphasis on equity and social justice (both within individual countries and on a global scale) on the grounds that in the absence of social regeneration environmental regeneration has very little chance of succeeding, Finally, and perhaps most significantly, they have escaped the preoccupation with wilderness preservation so characteristic of American cultural and environmental history.17 IV. A Homily In 1958, the economist J. K. Galbraith referred to overconsumption as the unasked question of the American conservation movement. There is a marked selectivity, he wrote, “in the conservationist’s approach to materials consumption. If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is plausible to seek to increase the supply, to decrease waste, to make better use of the stocks available, and to develop substitutes. But what of the appetite itself? Surely this is the ultimate source of the problem. If it continues its geometric course, will it not one day have to be restrained? Yet in the literature of the resource problem this is the forbidden question. Over it hangs a nearly total silence.”18 The consumer economy and society have expanded tremendously in the three decades since Galbraith penned these words; yet his criticisms are nearly as valid today. I have said “nearly,” for there are some hopeful signs. Within the environmental movement several dispersed groups are working to develop ecologically benign technologies and to encourage less wasteful life styles. Moreover, outside the self- defined boundaries of American environmentalism, opposition to the permanent war economy is being carried on by a peace movement that has a distinguished history and impeccable moral and political credentials. It is precisely these (to my mind, most hopeful) components of the American social scene that are missing from deep ecology. In their widely noticed book, Bill Devall and George Sessions make no mention of militarization or the movements for peace, while activists whose practical focus is on developing ecologically responsible life styles (e.g., Wendell Berry) are derided as “falling short of deep ecological awareness.”19 A truly radical ecology in the American context ought to work toward a synthesis of the appropriate technology, alternate life style, and peace movements.20 By making the (largely spurious) anthropocentric-biocentric distinction central to the debate, deep ecologists may have appropriated the moral high ground, but they are at the same time doing a serious disservice to American and global environmentalism.21 Notes 1. Kirkpatrick Sale, “The Forest for the Trees: Can Today’s Environmentalists Tell the Difference,” Mother Jones 11, No.8 (November 1986): 26. 2. One of the major criticisms I make in this essay concerns deep ecology’s lack of concern with inequalities within human society. In the article in which he coined the term deep ecology, Naess himself expresses concerns about inequalities between and within nations. However, his concern with social cleavages and their impact on resource utilization patterns and ecological destruction is not very visible in the later writings of deep ecologists. See Arne Naess, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary,” Inquiry 16 (1973): 96 (I am grateful to Tom Birch for this reference). 3. Gary Snyder, quoted in Sale, “The Forest for the Trees,” p. 32. See also Dave Foreman, “ A Modest Proposal for a Wilderness System,” Whole Earth Review, no.53 (Winter 1986-87): 42-45. 4. See, for example, Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977). 5. See Centre for Science and Environment, India: The State of the Environment 1982: A Citizens Report (New Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1982); R. Sukumar, “Elephant-Man Conflict in Karnataka,” in Cecil Saldanha, ed., The State of Karnataka’s Environment (Bangalore: Centre for Taxonomic Studies, 1985). For Africa, see the brilliant analysis by Helge Kjekshus, Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977). 6. Daniel Janzen, “The Future of Tropical Ecology,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 17 (1986): 305-06; emphasis added. 6 7. Robert Aitken Roshi, “Gandhi, Dogen, and Deep Ecology,” reprinted as appendix C in Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985). For Gandhi’s own views on social reconstruction, see the excellent threevolume collection edited by Raghavan Iyer, The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986-87). 8. Michael Cohen, The Pathless Way (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), p. 120. 9. Ronald Inden, “Orientalist Constructions of India,” Modern Asian Studies 20 (1986): 442. Inden draws inspiration from Edward Said’s forceful polemic, Orientalism (New York: Basic Books, 1980). It must be noted, however, that there is a salient difference between Western perceptions of Middle Eastern and Far Eastern cultures, respectively. Due perhaps to the long history of Christian conflict with Islam, Middle Eastern cultures (as Said documents) are consistently presented in pejorative terms. The juxtaposition of hostile and worshiping attitudes that Inden talks of applies only to Western attitudes toward Buddhist and Hindu societies. 10. Joseph Sax, Mountains Without Handrails: Reflections on the National Parks (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980), p. 42. Cf. also Peter Schmitt, Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), and Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979). 11. Samuel Hays, “From Conservation to Environment: Environmental Politics in the United States since World War Two,” Environmental Review 6 (1982): 21. See also the same authors book entitled Beauty, Health and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-85 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 12. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). 13. Rudolf Bahro, From Red to Green (London: Verso Books, 1984). 14. From time to time, American scholars have themselves criticized these imbalances in consumption patterns. In the 1950s, William Vogt made the charge that the United States, with one-sixteenth of the world’s population, was utilizing one-third of the globe’s resources. (Vogt, cited in E. F. Murphy, Nature, Bureaucracy and the Rule of Property [Amsterdam: North Holland, 1977 p. 29]). More recently, Zero Population Growth has estimated that each American consumes thirty-nine times as many resources as an Indian. See Christian Science Monitor, 2 March 1987. 15. For an excellent review, see Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, eds., India: The State of the Environment 1984-85: A Citizens Report (New Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1985). Cf. also Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Indian Himalaya (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming). 16. Anil Agarwal, “Human-Nature Interactions in a Third World Country,” The Environmentalist 6, no.3 (1986): 167. 17. One strand in radical American environmentalism, the bioregional movement, by emphasizing a greater involvement with the bioregion people inhabit, does indirectly challenge consumerism. However, as yet bioregionalism has hardly raised the questions of equity and social justice (international, intranational, and intergenerational), which I argue must be a central plank of radical environmentalism. Moreover, its stress on (individual) experience as the key to involvement with nature is also somewhat at odds with the integration of nature with livelihood and work that I talk of in this paper. Cf. Kirkpatrick Sale, Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1985). 18. John Kenneth Galbraith, “How Much Should a Country Consume?” in Henry Jarrett, ed., Perspectives on Conservation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1958), pp. 91-92. 19. Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, p. 122. For Wendell Berry’s own assessment of deep ecology, see his “Amplications: Preserving Wildness,” Wilderness 50 (Spring 1987): 39-40, 50-54. 20. See the interesting recent contribution by one of the most influential spokesmen of appropriate technology— Barry Commoner, “ A Reporter at Large: The Environment,” New Yorker, 15 June 1987. While Commoner makes a forceful plea for the convergence of the environmental movement (viewed by him primarily as the opposition to air and water pollution and to the institutions that generate such pollution) and the peace movement, he significantly does not mention consumption patterns, implying that “limits to growth” do not exist. 21. In this sense, my critique of deep ecology, although that of an outsider, may facilitate the reassertion of those elements in the American environmental tradition for which there is a profound sympathy in other parts of the globe. A global perspective may also lead to a critical reassessment of figures such as Aldo Leopold and John Muir, the two patron saints of deep ecology. As Donald Worster has pointed out, the message of Muir (and, I would argue, of Leopold as well) makes sense only in an American context; he has very little to say to other cultures. See Worster’s review of Stephen Fox’s John Muir and His Legacy, in Environmental Ethics 5 (1983): 277-81. 7 Our household is committed to reducing our environmental impact through recycling, conserving electricity, and avoiding fast fashion purchases. These actions aim to minimize waste, preserve resources, and reduce our contribution to overconsumption and environmental harm. Electricity use, in particular, stands out as a significant issue for us, and we will focus on thoughtful usage of appliances and lighting. Avoiding fast fashion is another key step, as it helps us lessen our support for resource-intensive production and wasteful consumer habits. The article I chose for my paper is Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique by Ramachandra Guha. Reflecting on Guha’s critique, I now see how his arguments refine and challenge certain ideas within the deep ecology movement. Guha critiques deep ecology’s focus on opposing anthropocentrism, arguing instead that the key drivers of environmental degradation are overconsumption and militarization. These issues are more pressing than a strict focus on reducing human-centered perspectives or prioritizing wilderness preservation. Guha emphasizes a more holistic approach, which aligns closely with my personal environmental goals. Recycling in our household helps address the overconsumption that Guha highlights. By limiting the waste we send to landfills and reducing the demand for raw materials, recycling becomes a practical way to counter resource depletion. This approach respects Guha’s argument that solutions should consider everyday human needs alongside environmental preservation, rather than focusing narrowly on wilderness protection. Conserving electricity is another step toward combating overconsumption. By reducing our home energy use, we directly address the strain that overuse places on power grids and ecosystems. Guha’s critique also reminds us that environmentalism must consider fairness and practicality—solutions should be accessible and beneficial to all communities, rather than idealized or exclusionary. Finally, avoiding fast fashion reflects Guha’s criticism of consumerism. Fast fashion epitomizes the wastefulness and exploitation of environmental resources that Guha opposes. By shifting to sustainable, long-lasting clothing, my household takes a conscious stand against unsustainable production and waste. This choice also reflects Guha’s call for environmental actions that integrate economic and social justice, ensuring they respect both human and non-human life. In conclusion, my household’s efforts align with Guha’s broader critique of overconsumption and resource exploitation. By integrating his emphasis on holistic solutions and social equity, our actions represent small but meaningful steps toward respecting nature and fostering sustainable living. 
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