Deep Ecology & A Landscape Survey of Environmentalism

The Four Quadrants: Conservationism, Market-based Solutions, Solarpunk, & Deep Ecology.

This post introduces a four-quadrant framework for the environmental movement: Conservationism, Market-based Solutions, Solarpunk, and Deep Ecology. It addresses the current prospects for each with an additional focus on Deep Ecology, a “biocentric” movement calling for socio-economic restructuring around reciprocity with nature. It ends with a brief prospective on the next quarter century in environmentalism with a call for a big tent mentality.

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The Four Quadrants of the Environmental Movement

I enjoy creating conceptual frameworks; they refine my thinking and help find threads of connection. So, I made one for the environmental movement. In doing so, I’ve realized my focus has been rather narrowly set on Solarpunk topics: futuristic, exciting techno-fixes like mycelium-based building materials or cell-cultivated meat. I love Solarpunk, but it’s only a small part of the omni-pronged strategy needed to reverse ecological degradation. There are at least three other camps to ally with.

I organized environmental tactics or interventions on two continua. First, is the degree to which the intervention relies on technology or private industry versus social change or government policy. Second, is the degree to which the intervention is established in terms of prior usage or development. It’s an over-simplification and there is always cross-over, but this yields four quadrants which I call Conservationism, Market-based Solutions, Solarpunk, and Deep Ecology. I’ve situated some illustrative examples in that framework, below, and will touch on each. Many thanks to Juan B. García Martínez for pointing out that if the axes were rotated 90 degrees, the solutions would largely track the “political compass” of authoritarianism/libertarianism and left/right economics (see version 2). This helps make my later point that environmentalists exist all across the political landscape.

Conservationism

Conservation is arguably the most successful and historic form of environmentalism. Powerful groups with brand names like the Sierra Club, WWF, NRDC, Nature Conservancy, and National Audubon Society have achieved major wins in pollution mitigation, preservation of wilderness, and protection of endangered species. They primarily use the socio-political tools of litigation, lobbying, and public relations campaigns.

Conservation’s greatest strength, the romantic otherization of nature, is also a vulnerability. As described by Prof. John Head, traditional conservation is predicated on a dichotomy of the human world versus the natural world, which ignores the ubiquity of both. We cannot compartmentalize our way out of the 6th Mass Extinction. Conservationists often work against discrete targets (protect species X, forest Y, or repeal law Z), which provides concrete but incremental progress towards a better world. It also has features of colonialism—often the places set aside by conservationists are undeveloped because their previous settlers were eradicated or enslaved.

Market-Based Green Solutions

Capitalism is such a powerful idea that it has transformed the planet in the last 300 years since the industrial revolution. Any meaningful global environmental effort must be responsive to capitalism as well as the >10x population boom in that interval.

Thus, activist-industrialists aim for technological or commercial innovations that simply outcompete unsustainable incumbents. Green/clean products, like electric vehicles, solar energy generators, or plant-based meats can outcompete in terms of quality or cost; often either bolstered or blocked by government subsidy regimes.

Sometimes the environmental benefits are radical and undeniable, like with biofertilizers. Other times the benefits are marginal, incremental, or arguable, such as the case of corn ethanol biofuel.

There are hazards to this approach, such as the reliance on fickle capital markets, government subsidies, and corporate boards under quarterly earnings pressure. The unit economics can turn red quickly and leave us with massive sunk costs and broken CSR pledges. Whether it’s intentional greenwashing or not, it’s much easier for companies to promise greener operations than to implement them. And it can feel wrong when some of the wealthiest people are Earth use this approach to get wealthier. Although unfavorable winds are blowing against the green economy, the ability of the market to innovate, scale, and adapt to conditions in unparalleled.

Solarpunk

Solarpunk is the sustainable development of humanity towards an environmental utopia. Solarpunk is the manifestation of optimistic science fiction. It’s similar to what’s been called Bright Green Environmentalism or the Viridian Design Movement and is generally pretty techno-maximalist.

Solarpunks believe that progressive innovations like cultivated meat, benevolent AI, carbon capture, and agricultural robotics can eventually solve our environmental dilemmas if used wisely. I wrote about it here.

The ongoing collapse of both the venture capital market and the fundamental research funding base will make it more difficult to develop or commercialize breakthrough scientific capabilities in the next decade, but it’s still worthwhile to imagine and demand radically better outcomes. That way, if there is an accelerating social movement or technology like the Green New Deal or AGI, respectively, we have a roadmap of possible eco-futures.

Deep Ecology

Deep Ecology realigns our social, economic, and political systems around ecology. Non-human interests are centered alongside our own in an ever-expanding moral circle of concern. Fundamentally, non-human life is viewed as something of inherent value rather than a unit of incremental utility to mankind. Professor Head calls this core tenant of Deep Ecology species decolonization.

Deep Ecology recognizes that “sustainability” falls short as both a goal and a mindset: it suffers from conceptual shallowness. Sustainable development is not the goal of the Deep Ecologist. Rather, Deep Ecology seeks ecological restoration, or regeneration, for the wellbeing of the environment rather than humanity’s continued ability to exploit natural resources. Or, at least, there is a healthier balance of give-and-take. Professor Robin Wall Kimmerer terms this reciprocity in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, that beautifully describes Indigenous American perspectives on nature–which influence many concepts in Deep Ecology.

The ideology of Deep Ecology is like a great forest: diverse, dynamic, ancient and emergent. It is the result of many concepts like biocentrism, biophilia, lifeworlding, animism, lifeworlding, Daoism, Gaianism, Land Back, and the Honorable Harvest.

Deep Ecology may sound anti-human or anti-technology. I don’t believe this is the case. Deep Ecology is anti-domination. As a grassroots, popular movement, Deep Ecology can happen outside the incumbent industrial-financial-political complex in the corporatized world. It is the understanding that achieving certain environmental goals will require personal sacrifice and social reorganization, rather than placing the onus on a third-party solution with an indeterminate timescale. Deep Ecology is similar to a civil rights movement for the planet, which emerges from both moral and scientific progress.

Environmentalism in the Next Quarter Century

It can feel like dark times for the American environmental movement. Private investment in clean tech has tanked and public funding for climate science is even worse. Tough economic conditions give both corporations and consumers an excuse not to pay the “green premium” for goods like cage-free eggs or plant-based meat. 60 million more acres of national forest for are now open for logging. One of the world’s most unethical companies, JBS, went public on the NYSE to a share pop. And most major subsidies for the carbon transition are gone or threatened. The modern day plutocracy of robber barons have more tools than ever before.

We are probably only a few years from overshooting the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C. It’s obviously a critical time as we enter Q2 of the 21st Century. And yet, the environmental movement faces serious austerity due to the challenging financial and political situation. That’s why it is especially important to avoid infighting within the movement. In a dynamic and sometimes ethically or strategically ambiguous situation, it’s best to have multiple contingencies in operation.

A “big tent” mentality in environmentalism will help us avoid tribalistic infighting that wastes time and reduces “shots on goal.” I think categorizing the movement into these quadrants helps us realize that there are distinct strategies influenced by deeply engrained ideologies, backgrounds, and incentive structures. All are generally pushing in the right direction, opposed to the >90% of people not trying to help at all.

Take a look at these prominent figures in the environmental movement. Would a Greta Thunberg versus Elon Musk feud really be useful in changing minds, or is each side just preaching to their own myopic choir? Can’t we agree all these approaches are worthwhile, flaws and all? Maybe it would be possible to build an open-minded multi-party environmental coalition instead, like the bipartisan support Teddy Roosevelt built for the first major US wilderness conservation legislation a century ago. Would it be possible for such a diverse group of activists today to agree on a set of first principles? Maybe it’s naive, but I think the Earth would provide bedrock somewhere.

Thanks for reading. What do you think? What did I miss?

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This is Fifth Industrial, a blog scouting emerging technologies and ideas for a regenerative economy and lifestyle. See the posts on the most impactful bioproducts, plant cell culture, cellular agriculture, mycelium materials, synthetic silk, microbiomics, deep space food, alt cheese, alt protein CPG, biophilia, agricultural innovation engines, longevity, egg sexing, mosquito-borne disease, wild animal welfare, The Great Depletion, and agroecology.