In this post, we'll explore the roots of the deep ecology movement and the eight principles that make up the deep ecology platform.
During the 1970s, Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer Arne Naess began to delineate the differences in what he saw as the emerging deep ecology movement and that of an established, anthropocentric-based “human survival environmentalism” (shallow ecology) to a burgeoning environmental community.
Shallow Ecology vs. Deep Ecology
Arne Naess described shallow ecology as short-term thinking and shallow actions to address environmental issues without fundamentally changing our values or the way we live. This includes actions like recycling, driving electric vehicles, and buying energy efficient consumer products. While these approaches do some good, they allow us to continue with our human-centric, fossil fuel dependent, consumer oriented lifestyles with little inconvenience to ourselves and not much thought to all the other living creatures on Earth.
Deep Ecology recognizes the inherent value of all living beings. It involves deep questioning and acknowledging that tweaking our “business as usual” approach is not working. Global climate change, collapse of biodiversity, the extinction crisis, environmental degradation, and overpopulation are enormous problems. Deep ecology requires us to change our basic values and practices; to use a long-range deep approach to addressing environmental issues and preserving the diversity and beauty of the Earth we all rely on for life.
Arne Naess created a set of eight principles to characterize the deep ecology platform.
The Deep Ecology Platform
- The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: inherent worth, intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
- Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
- Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
- Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
- The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
- Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
- The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
- Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.