A Critique of Deep Ecology

Abstract  Our environmental crisis is commonly explained as a product of a set of attitudes and beliefs about the world which have been developed by post-Cartesian technological society. Deep ecologists claim that the crisis can only be overcome by adopting an alternative non-technological paradigm, such as can be discovered in non-Western cultures. In this paper I (a) express misgivings about the use of the expression 'Paradigm' by deep ecologists, (b) question the claim that a science-based world-view inevitably fosters manipulative and exploitative attitudes to the natural world, (c) suggest that non-technological cultures do not necessarily provide exemplary and superior models for relating to the natural world, and (d) defend a scientific naturalism as a satisfying way of realising our unity with the natural world.