Deep Ecology

Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, defines deep ecology as...

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Deep ecology is founded on two basic principles: one is a scientific insight into the interrelatedness of all systems of life on Earth, together with the idea that anthropocentrism - human-centeredness - is a misguided way of seeing things. Deep ecologists say that an ecocentric attitude is more consistent with the truth about the nature of life on Earth. Instead of regarding humans as something completely unique or chosen by God, they see us as integral threads in the fabric of life. They believe we need to develop a less dominating and aggressive posture towards the Earth if we and the planet are to survive.

The second component of deep ecology is what Arnie Naess calls the need for human self-realization. Instead of identifying with our egos or our immediate families, we would learn to identify with trees and animals and plants, indeed the whole ecosphere. This would involve a pretty radical change of consciousness, but it would make our behavior more consistent with what science tells us is necessary for the well-being of life on Earth. We just wouldn't do certain things that damage the planet, just as you wouldn't cut off your own finger.

Any thoughts?

I guess I'm a Deep Ecologist. I've heard the term often (mostly here), but never seen it defined. That description, however, explains my feelings perfectly. Thanks for the info Aaron.

Well I believe we are part of nature. Period. We are just a freak outcome of the evolution of life, exactly like every other animal on this earth is a freak outcome of the evolution of life.

Everything we do, then, is "natural" because we are product of the same nature from which all life is evolving.

But we - and we alone - seem to have developed a capacity to have a tremendous affect on the earth. We're not the first animal to have that affect, but we may be the first to be able to do it consciously. That is to consciously have an affect (or is it effect, damn, I'm a writer and still don't know that).

For instance, I know this is stupid, but we could destroy the earth if we wanted to commit mass suicide by strategically setting off all our nukes. In fact I think we could cause a sixth mass extinction.

But anything we do, by definition, is "natural". IF we destroy the earth than it was "natural" because afterall we are a product of good ol' neutral nature. Nothing more, nothing less.

Having said that, it is up to us absolutely to determine how we treat each other and how we treat nature.

I do think we will fail to take into consideration our impact on the web of life at our own peril.

I guess that's agreeing with you!

Uriah wrote:

I guess I'm a Deep Ecologist. I've heard the term often (mostly here), but never seen it defined. That description, however, explains my feelings perfectly.

Averroes in response wrote:

On the other hand, if we charge every ordinary American the actual market value of the amount of water they use, that would automatically lead towards a massive curtailment of water consumption. But then the left would again holler that somehow the scheme is disproportionately disadvantageous to the poor. Damn it, there are more poor than the rich, and their aggregate use of water supply is going to be more than that of the rich.

So why the dismal view of the world is so popular: Because the gate keepers of media and the vanguard of the environmental movement would only allow bad news to filter in, and the comprehensive free market remedies that will actually solve these problems are unacceptable to them. As I said, the real problem is not economic but philosophic. It is a clash of ideas between libetarians agaisnt the egalitarians of left and right; a war between individualist and collectivists from the left and right. Where do you stand?

As I've stressed; deep ecological or eco feminist environmentalism is another form of totalitarian egalitarianism. It is another form of communism except that from being international it has now morphed into something mystical and universal. But, consider the ramifications of Marx's prescription. No one can ever imply that Marx wanted all those horrors to occur that the likes of Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, or Castro committed under the auspices of his ideology. But Marx's motivations aside, it is the very nature of his receipe, that must inevitably lead us down "The Road to Serfdom."

Otherwise, by every indicator, the world is getting better, and will continue to, but from a deep ecological environmentalist point of view, the travesty must increase proportionally since it occurs by a continued "rape of the Earth."

Helium wrote:

Well I believe we are part of nature. Period. We are just a freak outcome of the evolution of life, exactly like every other animal on this earth is a freak outcome of the evolution of life.

Everything we do, then, is "natural" because we are product of the same nature from which all life is evolving.

But we - and we alone - seem to have developed a capacity to have a tremendous affect on the earth. We're not the first animal to have that affect, but we may be the first to be able to do it consciously. That is to consciously have an affect (or is it effect, damn, I'm a writer and still don't know that).

For instance, I know this is stupid, but we could destroy the earth if we wanted to commit mass suicide by strategically setting off all our nukes. In fact I think we could cause a sixth mass extinction.

But anything we do, by definition, is "natural". IF we destroy the earth than it was "natural" because afterall we are a product of good ol' neutral nature. Nothing more, nothing less.

Helium wrote:

Having said that, it is up to us absolutely to determine how we treat each other and how we treat nature.

Helium wrote:

I do think we will fail to take into consideration our impact on the web of life at our own peril.

Helium wrote:

I guess that's agreeing with [Uriah]!

Averroes wrote:

Uriah wrote:

I guess I'm a Deep Ecologist. I've heard the term often (mostly here), but never seen it defined. That description, however, explains my feelings perfectly.

Averroes in response wrote:

On the other hand, if we charge every ordinary American the actual market value of the amount of water they use, that would automatically lead towards a massive curtailment of water consumption. But then the left would again holler that somehow the scheme is disproportionately disadvantageous to the poor. Damn it, there are more poor than the rich, and their aggregate use of water supply is going to be more than that of the rich.

So why the dismal view of the world is so popular: Because the gate keepers of media and the vanguard of the environmental movement would only allow bad news to filter in, and the comprehensive free market remedies that will actually solve these problems are unacceptable to them. As I said, the real problem is not economic but philosophic. It is a clash of ideas between libetarians agaisnt the egalitarians of left and right; a war between individualist and collectivists from the left and right. Where do you stand?

As I've stressed; deep ecological or eco feminist environmentalism is another form of totalitarian egalitarianism. It is another form of communism except that from being international it has now morphed into something mystical and universal. But, consider the ramifications of Marx's prescription. No one can ever imply that Marx wanted all those horrors to occur that the likes of Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, or Castro committed under the auspices of his ideology. But Marx's motivations aside, it is the very nature of his receipe, that must inevitably lead us down "The Road to Serfdom."

Otherwise, by every indicator, the world is getting better, and will continue to, but from a deep ecological environmentalist point of view, the travesty must increase proportionally since it occurs by a continued "rape of the Earth."

I disagree with you on this one basic fact - the "World" is not getting better. Only your world is. The West has spent the last 500 years making their world better at the expense of the earth, and the indigenous populations of undeveloped areas, those areas we colonized and turned into our plantations, and ready sources of cheap material commodities - such as human beings. I find your view decidedly provincial and biased.

I've never argued that you are wrong in the abstract sense, only that your ideas are outdated and not holistic enough, in a true humanist sense, to really address the issues we will face in the coming century. The world will, invariably, operate according to your schema because that is the entrenched gestalt, but I see it as physically and spiritually unhealthy nonetheless.

I don't know exactly what it is you "suspect" AVerroes.

Having agreed with me on the fact that we humans weild great power over nature you then would deny that we have responsibility in how we use that power?

Helium wrote:

I do think we will fail to take into consideration our impact on the web of life at our own peril.

It was your wording of the sentence. I thought your were saying that we 'will' fail (as in necessarily fail), when you probably meant that as a cautionary note that we 'may' fail if we do not consider our impact on the web of life.

Ah, yes awkwardly worded!

Now that we all understand what you're trying to say....

What we are more likely to fail at is getting factual information about our impact on the environment. The "people-are-bad-the-Earth-is-good" crowd seems to be winning lately. They've managed to (mis)interpret a lot of data to show us that we are destroying our planet's climate.

But there has been a backlash from the scientific community, More and more climatologists are saying this may be a cyclical event over which we have little or no control. The mass media isn't reporting much of it, but it's there.

As a result, there has been a slight change in tone coming from the Chicken-Littles. We're hearing "Climate Change" more, and "Global Warming" a little less.

From Parade Magazine (today) Meteorologist Dr. Jack Hayes, Direstor of the National Weather Service was asked: "Are we in period of long-term climate change?" He replied: "There are definitely trends supporting that conclusion. Climate science is really in it's infancy. It's difficult to say for certain if or to what degree the changes we see are part of naturally occurring cycles".

Uriah wrote:

I disagree with you on this one basic fact - the "World" is not getting better. Only your world is.

We share the same world mate.

Uriah wrote:

The West has spent the last 500 years making their world better at the expense of the earth, and the indigenous populations of undeveloped areas, those areas we colonized and turned into our plantations, and ready sources of cheap material commodities - such as human beings.

Blatantly false. This is typical of latent white supermicist arrogance to over play the destruction or the domination of the world by the West. So the the Europeans enslaved some poor Africans, or their encounter with the Ameridians let to the almost extinction of that race on account of their lack of immunity to the diseases of the old world; how was the behavior of the Europeans any different than that of any other civilization? I suggest you read about the civilizations of Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, China, or MesoAmerica; they were as brutal and barbaric in their savagery of the conquered people as the Europeans. The only difference between the European conquest and colonization vs. that of any other civilizations was that the Europeans were developing the ideas of universal human rights and equality in the eyes of the law, while subjugating foreigners. Hypocritical, maybe, but vicious, I think not.

There are three civilizations that on par have resulted in the betterment of mankind: Hellenic, Arabic, and Anglican. All there are jointly known as Western Civilization or the dominant part of it.


However, thanks to the ideas developed by the Europeans, the world today is far much better off than barely a century ago. In every corner of the world, in every major culture or ethnicity, the life span of human beings, literacy, quality of life, food supply, provision of clean water, and adequate housing are on the rise. There are some places in the world that are genuinely worse off, than a century before, no doubt, but then usually they are the result of indiginous strife and primitive tribal mentality. Clearly, US imperialism has a lot to do with worsening situation in the Middle East, but I'm on record saying that if we were living in the age of empires, I'd support US imperial excursions into the Middle East; because like their British predecessors, where the Americans have gone and conquored the people there they have improved the lives of the people.
The reason for my opposition to US imperial enterprise is because like slavery, imperialism is anathema to the "ideals" of the what is means to be an American, and part of the Great British heritage--the most cherished ideas of Western Civilization. No other civilization (neither in the Near East, nor the Far East) has ever produced those ideas or implemented them. When the Europeans were colonizing "others, there were Europeans who were fighting or writing against such activities. Where else, in the history of mankind do you find such a schism? Name any author from India or China, Persia, or Arabia that preached such doctrine of restraint? Read the Manu Samurti (Dharma Shastra) or Kautalya Samurti (Artha Shastra) or the Confucian classics; and no where do you find any one ever discussing the rights of man qua man... no where is there ever a consideration given to the individual and his "individuation" (to quote Jung).

Uriah wrote:

I find your view decidedly provincial and biased.

Please! Don't try to preach to me about the abuses and crimes of the white men. I was born and raised in South Asia and the Middle East, and heavily indoctrinated into believing that much of the evil in this world stemmed from European colonization and exploitation of the world. In the history books of Pakistan we often read sentences such as:
The cunniving Hindu and the sly British conspired to subdue the might of the Muslims in India and dethrown them from their rightful place as the rulers of all India...
In Indian texts you'll habitually find phrases such as: The British conspired with the Muslims to destroy the glory of India by splitting it apart as part of their divide and conquor policy and their common lineage as part of the Abrahamic faiths... they demonized Hinduism by cherry picking portions of archaic institution such as suttee (the burning of the widow on her husband's pyre) and caste system--which if properly understood is an efficient form of organizations... no consideration of rights....

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to imagine the hate and inequity that lives in the mind of the non Western population, for their ethnic neighbors and cultural rivals (of non European origin) then try to imagine the hatred felt by Southern White Americans in the antebellum America, when they heard that a white woman had copulated with a Black man. This is how a majority of people in the world actually think and feel.

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I've never argued that you are wrong in the abstract sense, only that your ideas are outdated and not holistic enough, in a true humanist sense, to really address the issues we will face in the coming century. The world will, invariably, operate according to your schema because that is the entrenched gestalt, but I see it as physically and spiritually unhealthy nonetheless.

That is why I laugh and cry at those naive leftist internationalist pacifists that love the United Nations and call themselves world citizens. They don't have the slightest idea of what the world would do to them if God forbid, we truely had a worldwide gov't under the auspices of the UN.

No! the only solution is the pacific Europeanization/Westernization/ Americanization the world and then we can talk of a World Gov't in holistic terms:
The day when the vast majority of the world accepts the three pillars of Western Civilization, is the day we'll can truely call for a worldwide brotherhood.
Political Liberalism
Cultural Humanism
Scientific Materialism


The bottom line is that you complain about the system you live in but you don't know what to replace it with--because every holistic idea that has tried to synthesize east and west, has resulted in chaos. Whenever good is mixed with evil, the end product is more evil
NO! the only solution is the Western way of differentiation, and then the integration of the remainder. Not the holistic Eastern mythological way of Sylvia Brown meets Charles Manson of incorporating everything and anything as part of some mystical yin yang of all for one and one for all.

"Moderator Warning"

Averroes wrote:

Blatantly false. This is typical of latent white supermicist arrogance to over play the destruction or the domination of the world by the West.

Averroes, I will not put up with ad hominem attacks on this forum. Disagreements over issues among rational thinkers can be expected, however suggesting that someone may be "a latent white supermicist" because they place importance on environmental issues is out of line.

Please stick with the issues and leave personal comments out of it.

Thank you.

Averroes, I simply don't agree with your view. There is hate and enmity for foreigners (xenophobia) in every culture, but there is also goodness. If we are not trying, as a species, to come together without conflict, without war and destruction - then we are failing as a species to evolve.

But this a place for ideas, this is all just words here on the web, and as such I can say that even though I understand the reality of your points, and basic fact that the world does operate accordingly to how you describe it, I think they are very bad, and ultimately unhealthy, ideas.

I have to believe that we can make changes, that the human race can grow out of its violent adolescence, because the only alternative is that we suicide ourselves with our technological blindness. Oftentimes, I truly feel that we are a doomed species, and I take small pride in the fact that I'm not the only one.

As far as "deep ecology" goes, I think it's main importance is in it's skepticism. It arises out of the same questioning spirit that lead to "the Enlightenment". Just as the early rationalists were often overly idealistic and naive, I think the same holds true for the deep ecology movement.

What's important is that people are beginning to open their eyes to an even larger picture than before. The way the problems have been framed have changed because of this. We are now more aware of "the web of life" and how our actions effect more than just those in the immediate vicinity.

It could be argued that without the "deep ecology" and environmental movements that the "libertarian world" wouldn't have become aware of the costs associated with things like air, soil, and water pollution and the overuse of our natural resources. Due to this, things like carbon exchanges have been set up that can deal with these "hidden costs" more effectively than before.

It is true that environmental romanticism was one of the main differences early Deism had from Christianity. In a sense, Deism was the first kind of environmentalism.

In Wilderness & the American Mind, Roderick Nash describes Deism as the response to a materially centered, utilitarian, Christian ideology on nature that taught the earth was made for man, and that by the command of God we were to multiply, subdue the land, and use the earth as we saw fit.
He speaks of the Enlightenment giving birth to Deism, which in turn fueled the aesthetic movement of Romanticism that worked to change the American perception of nature and wilderness. Saying,
"Sublimity suggested the association of God and wild nature; Deism with its emphasis on the Creator or First Cause of the universe used the relationship as a basis for religion. Of course, since the beginnings of thought men believed that natural objects and processes had spiritual significance, but "natural" evidence was usually secondary and supplemental to revelation. And wilderness, somewhat illogically, was excluded from the category of nature. The Deists, however, based their entire faith in the existence of God on the application of reason to pure nature. Moreover, they accorded wilderness, as pure nature, special importance as the clearest medium through which God showed his power and and excellency." (Page 46)

Interesting...

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In Wilderness & the American Mind, Roderick Nash describes Deism as the response to a materially centered, utilitarian, Christian ideology on nature that taught the earth was made for man, and that by the command of God we were to multiply, subdue the land, and use the earth as we saw fit.
He speaks of the Enlightenment giving birth to Deism, which in turn fueled the aesthetic movement of Romanticism that worked to change the American perception of nature and wilderness.

The esthetic counterpart of Enlightenment was Neo-classicism. The difference between neoclassical and renaissance art was that the former was secular while the latter predominantly commissioned for religious purposes. Romanticism is a post enlightenment ideology (although it rose along with Elightenment's faith in empirical rationalism); in philosophy we have Voltaire and Roussou as the two complete diametric opposites that espouse the affinity for Enlightenment and its rejection in the form of Romanticism: Man is born free but everywhere in chains.

Deism, was also a child of Enlightenment and, along with neoclassical art, was uniquely founded upon (rather naively) the worship of reason. Ergo, one of the first things done in Frace, post revolution, is the conversion of Notre Dame into the Temple of Reason, the abolition of the first estate (clergy and church) and the declaraion of a 10 day week etc. etc.

Now, I do not agree with these steps, but the point is that Ramanticism has never been the dominant esthetics of Deism--although Roussou was a Romantic and a Deist. Both Neoclassicism in art, and Deism in religion, celebrate the triumph of reason over emotions, and thus symbolically the triumph of man over nature.

It was in 19th century rise of Indian mysteries in German Idealism, and it's correlate the Transcendentalist movement in United States, that lead towards the increased alignment of secular or non-scriptural spiritualism with Romanticism or the love of the natural.

But then neither the German Idealist nor the American Transcendentalists can be called Deists proper without stretching the definition of that term too thin. Of course, on a very superficial level they were indeed Deists--although, they mostly wrote deriding the Deist thought of 18th century.

The point is that it was not Christianity that lead the West to subdue the Earth. No one in the thousand year reign of the Church had ventured to do so. It may have been the Protestant work ethic as it arose in the Dutch Republic and from there transfered to the British isle, and from there spread to America; but not withstandin Max Weber, I disagree that it much to do with religion. The fact of the matter is that by the 18th century, when the rape of the Earth began in ernest, most of European and American elites had become quite secularised: the precedding century with it's empirical giants--Newton and Locke--had laid down without much doubt that human mind was perfectly capable of understanding the laws of nature and thereby conquoring it; and that it was the rational overview of human customs that gives birth to a just form of gov't. These triumph of political liberalism, and scientific materialism, were then matched by a culture of humanism--where the love of humanity reigned supreme, civic virtue, gallantry, and chivalry was taught, and it was assumed--by the Encyclopediatis such as Diderot et al-- that through education the masses can be awakened from their slumber of faith--too ambitious perhaps, and the same naivety we see operating in the United States of the post WWII which became the fist country to universalizing higher education.
The admiration of nature was certainly increasing as more and more humans were leaving the natural settings and advancing in civilization: But even as Thoreau would recognize, his fascination with nature was not that of a savage, but that of a rational man, a product of a civilization that has left the wilderness far and behind. But aside from Thoreau's Walden and its rather eco-centric view, the predominant view of Deists had always been that through human ingenuity and honest labor human felicitiy is near at hand; that nature is beatiful because it is bountiful; and if preservation rose as a matter of concern in classical Deist thought it was almost always premised upon anthropocentric concerns for posterity and not because of any naive natural universal egalitarianism as espoused by Thoreau in Walden where he compares the fruitlessness of a man working in a quarry to a Brahmin standing on one leg.
Now, I understand the subjectivity of pleasure and purpose, but somehow I doubt if that is what Thoreau was driving at....

Averroes wrote:

The point is that it was not Christianity that lead the West to subdue the Earth. No one in the thousand year reign of the Church had ventured to do so. It may have been the Protestant work ethic as it arose in the Dutch Republic and from there transfered to the British isle, and from there spread to America; but not withstandin Max Weber, I disagree that it much to do with religion. The fact of the matter is that by the 18th century, when the rape of the Earth began in ernest, most of European and American elites had become quite secularised: the precedding century with it's empirical giants--Newton and Locke--had laid down without much doubt that human mind was perfectly capable of understanding the laws of nature and thereby conquoring it; and that it was the rational overview of human customs that gives birth to a just form of gov't. These triumph of political liberalism, and scientific materialism, were then matched by a culture of humanism--where the love of humanity reigned supreme, civic virtue, gallantry, and chivalry was taought, and admiration of nature was certainly increasing as more and more humans were leaving the natural settings and advancing in civilization: But even as Thoreau would recognize, his fascination with nature was not that of a savage, but that of a rational man, a product of a civilization that has left the wilderness far and behind.

This jibes with what Nash is saying in the broader sense. His main assertion was that Christian - Puritan - ideology drove the early Colonists to view the wilderness as something to be subdued and conquered, that the wilderness itself, and thusly its inhabitants (Native Americans) were considered ungodly, associated with paganism, and the loss of paradise.

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This jibes with what Nash is saying in the broader sense. His main assertion was that Christian - Puritan - ideology drove the early Colonists to view the wilderness as something to be subdued and conquered, that the wilderness itself, and thusly its inhabitants (Native Americans) were considered ungodly, associated with paganism, and the loss of paradise.

The tragedy of the Amerindians was that they refused to become civilized. I don't mean to malign their culture, as I really romanticize a lot of it living here in Arizona. But seriously, it is the old Able and Cane story, and it had nothing to do with Christianity or the Bible. After several thousand of years of being subjugated by the Abelites and their maurading conquests of sedentary people, by the 15th century the Cainanites all over the world, in all cultures and civilizations, had become sufficiently powerful--mostly by reproducing and mutiplying and by raping the Earth--to dominate their natural foe: the nomads. And from then onwards it was a progressive increase in sedentary life styles that swept across the Earth, even introduced into Sub Saharan Africa. The most valiant last stand by the Abelites was made here in the Americas: They resisted their settlement to the very end. And while we may decry the blatant racism of the Europeans (as indeed we must), the violation of treaties by the US gov't (as indeed ought to be rectified even after such a long lapse of time), nevertheless, we cannot help but watch with a sense of apathy that the outcome was inevitable and clear to every one--including the Amerindians who, to their credit or dispair, would not give up their life of a nomad.


Of course, today we can say that the civilized man has become a nomad in his lifestyle. One can say that the Americans were always the sons of Able, always the frontiersmen, and that the world of civilization is now progressing towards an integration of sorts where no longer tribes but individual nomands and their families would be able to move across the globe with impunity. But then, this neo-nomadic lifestyle, which is what beckons us back to the wilderness, would be sustained only under the superstructure of civilization and its sedentary laws.

PS. I recommend watching "Into The West" a great American drama directed by Spielberg. It accurately documents the glorius rise and the tragic fall of the American people. That is, the rise of the European settlers and the decimation of the Amerindian culture--who too were Americans.

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Uriah wrote:
The West has spent the last 500 years making their world better at the expense of the earth, and the indigenous populations of undeveloped areas, those areas we colonized and turned into our plantations, and ready sources of cheap material commodities - such as human beings.

Averroes wrote:
Blatantly false. This is typical of latent white supermicist arrogance to over play the destruction or the domination of the world by the West. So the the Europeans enslaved some poor Africans, or their encounter with the Ameridians let to the almost extinction of that race on account of their lack of immunity to the diseases of the old world; how was the behavior of the Europeans any different than that of any other civilization? I suggest you read about the civilizations of Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, China, or MesoAmerica; they were as brutal and barbaric in their savagery of the conquered people as the Europeans. The only difference between the European conquest and colonization vs. that of any other civilizations was that the Europeans were developing the ideas of universal human rights and equality in the eyes of the law, while subjugating foreigners. Hypocritical, maybe, but vicious, I think not.

You're both right.
Uriah's right about the west's imperialistic exploitation.
Averroes is right that it was no different than any other preceding civilization except, as he points out, that at least along the way "the Europeans were developing the ideas of universal human rights and equality in the eyes of the law."

Amidst all the pain we caused that does seem to be the gift we will hopefully bestow to the future.

Helium wrote:

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Uriah wrote:
The West has spent the last 500 years making their world better at the expense of the earth, and the indigenous populations of undeveloped areas, those areas we colonized and turned into our plantations, and ready sources of cheap material commodities - such as human beings.

Averroes wrote:
Blatantly false. This is typical of latent white supermicist arrogance to over play the destruction or the domination of the world by the West. So the the Europeans enslaved some poor Africans, or their encounter with the Ameridians let to the almost extinction of that race on account of their lack of immunity to the diseases of the old world; how was the behavior of the Europeans any different than that of any other civilization? I suggest you read about the civilizations of Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, China, or MesoAmerica; they were as brutal and barbaric in their savagery of the conquered people as the Europeans. The only difference between the European conquest and colonization vs. that of any other civilizations was that the Europeans were developing the ideas of universal human rights and equality in the eyes of the law, while subjugating foreigners. Hypocritical, maybe, but vicious, I think not.

You're both right.
Uriah's right about the west's imperialistic exploitation.
Averroes is right that it was no different than any other preceding civilization except, as he points out, that at least along the way "the Europeans were developing the ideas of universal human rights and equality in the eyes of the law."

Amidst all the pain we caused that does seem to be the gift we will hopefully bestow to the future.

Yeah, that's funny. I was thinking about what Averroes said there and it kind of reminded me of that scene in Life of Brian where they're discussing what the Romans have done.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Ya gotta love Monty Python.

"HE'S NOT THE MESSIAH! HE'S A VERY NAUGHTY BOY! NOW PISS OFF!"

It still sounds anthropocentric because the whole point is to look at nature as something that we need to take care of so that we can survive. It's just a move from "raping the Earth" to "the Earth consenting". I don't see anything wrong with giving people a new attitude about taking care of nature but we must still keep an anthropocentric world view because if we look at all of nature as being equally valuable then we may start convicting people of murder for just cutting down trees.