Ecology and The Environmental Crisis

What can we learn from the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess's idea of deep ecology in relation to our current environmental crisis? His theory delves into the principles underlying the psychology of the environmental crisis (and this is perhaps what we need to comprehend the most in order to make relevant shifts in behavior - taking into account that cognition and behavior are not separate).

The environmental crisis is underpinned by the illusion of separation between humans and the rest of the world. An example of this might be our infatuation with shopping. Enough is never enough. We're always looking for the latest trends to satisfy our insatiable appetite for shopping when in-fact, we don't need such ego driven forms of consumerism. I would argue that it makes us miserable and destroys the planet too.

This particular way of thinking which drives pretty much all the systems of industrial growth stems from the idea that humans are at the center of everything. We are the crown of creation, the measure of all being.

On the one hand you have humans and on the other hand you have resources. The traditional way of looking at the relationship between the two is some-kind of pyramid with humans at the top. It's ironic that most, if not all corporations, have been built on the same pyramid scheme (a top down ideology).

I also find it ironic that this ideology is to be found in the Bible - "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" (Genesis 1:26).

Whereas indigenous people and the science of ecology recognize a more useful metaphor is a web, with humans as merely one strand of that interconnected web. So as we destroy other strands, we essentially destroy ourselves.

This is becoming more and more apparent in the way industrial growth systems driven by non-renewable energy sources have raped the planet of it's biodiversity. As the climate changes and the arctic vanishes, as oceans acidify at alarming rates killing whole species of fish, as aquifers run dry, as the energy needed to keep the industrial food system afloat gets more expensive and destructive, so the very systems we have built on the premise of divide and conquer, fall under the microscope.

But the time we have to examine such disastrous implications is running out. Either we change all the systems so that they fall in harmony with the environment, or the planet will shake humanity off its surface the way a dog shakes fleas off its body. The clock is ticking. Can we question or contradict the notion of endless growth so as to have a significant effect on our behavior before it's too late?