The environmental sciences are a relatively new field of study that draw from a diverse set of previously established sciences such as as ecology, geology, and chemistry. Yet, the environmental sciences are also based in a much older philosophical tradition of environmentalism following industrialization that found appreciation for the natural, not yet industrialized environment. Inspired by romantic and transcendentalist artists such as Casper David Friedrich, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, early environmentalists found spiritual solace in the natural environment, and a conservationist ethic was created to protect the world they were so inspired by. This makes the environmental sciences a varied and interdisciplinary field that is intrinsically related to its history of ethical, aesthetic, and spiritual concerns. Unlike other sciences, such as physics where a primary agenda is to simply uncover truths about our world, the environmental sciences strive for solutions to help our world. This different approach to science has continued to define the environmental sciences through its history as an academic field through issues such as climate change, nonrenewable resources, and environmental justice. However, through environmentalism’s unique history, a new environmental paradigm emerged that encompasses all truths in the environmental sciences.
In Riley Dunlap and Kent Van Liere’s seminal 1978 research paper, they outline a “new environmental paradigm” described as valuing, “the inevitability of ‘limits to growth,’ the necessity of achieving a ‘steady-state’ economy, the importance of preserving the ‘balance of nature,’ and the need to reject the anthropocentric notion that nature exists solely for human use” (Dunlap et al. 1978). While these are now seen as traditional environmentalist values, at the time this contrasted the “dominant social paradigm” that valued uninhibited growth, faith in science and technology, and laissez-faire economy (Dunlap et al. 1978). Dunlap and Liere found overwhelming evidence that the new environmental paradigm had been adopted surprisingly fast among, not only the environmentalist community, but the general public as well (Dunlap et al. 1978). The speed in which the paradigm took hold shows the inordinate precedence set through these environmental values. A history of environmentalism valuing limits to growth, tragedy of the commons, and purity of nature has created a dystopian environmental paradigm.
Limits to growth is one of the essential ideas in the new, dystopian environmental paradigm. This idea was popularized through Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, The Population Bomb. Ehrlich was heavily inspired by Thomas Malthus’ theory of population growth in which populations grew exponentially until falling after overshooting the carrying capacity (Ehrlich 1968). Ehrlich, a Neo-Malthusian, saw how this applied to the human population and feared that the earth’s carrying capacity had been reached. He wrote, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate” (Ehrlich 1968). While this dystopic vision clearly failed to come true, it inspired a whole new generation of people to think critically about population and consumption in way not previously considered (Ehrlich 2009). This is reflected in Dunlap and Liere’s “new environmental paradigm” where 73% of the general public and 93% of environmentalists agreed that, “We are approaching the limit of the number of people the earth can support” (Dunlap et al. 1978). Limits to growth clearly inspired an environmental paradigm.
Another key contributor to the new environmental paradigm is the idea of tragedy of the commons, or shared resources. Popularized by Garrett Hardin, Tragedy of the Commons looked at overpopulation from a moral perspective. Hardin writes, “The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality” (Hardin 1968). He argues against Adam Smith’s claims in Wealth of Nations that an individual driven by self gain in a capitalist economy will promote the public interest. Instead, he believes that selfish interests only leads to fewer resources for everyone (Hardin 1968). Similarly to the idea of limits of growth, tragedy of the commons deals with dystopian ideas of limits and cutting down consumption.
Finally, the idea of nature and purity drives the new environmental paradigm as well. Implicit in dystopian concepts, like limits to growth and tragedy of the commons, is the idea that things were better before. This also harkens back to the romanticism of the early environmentalists who expressed wonder, beauty, and spirituality through nature. Nature became idealized as something pure and worth protecting. Dunlap and Liere’s new environmental paradigm demonstrates this through 93% of environmentalists and 80% of the general public agreeing that “The balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset” (Dunlap et al. 1978). This belief is one of the strongest in the new environmental paradigm, despite the human construction of “balance of nature”. In a world that is in a constant state of change, before and after human intervention, it is impossible to define the “balance of nature” without reference to a bygone time and place. Inherent in the concept of nature, as also demonstrated by the romanticists, is a sense of nostalgia for the past. By problematizing this human perception of nature, one can see that nature as pure and balanced exists only within this paradigm. Idealizing nature plays an essential role in the new environmental paradigm, but it is not without its flaws.
The prevalence the framework created by the new environmental paradigm has made it impossible for standalone facts to exist outside the paradigm. For example, facts in limits to growth have many problems. Paul Ehrlich’s claim of the human population overshooting the earth’s carrying capacity in the 1970s was so far off because he made several false assumptions when considering the size of the carrying capacity of the earth. First, he falsely related food production shortage with famine when most famines occur due to oppression and injustice in distribution (Sargoff 2011). Ehrlich also failed to account for the effects of the Green Revolution and an influx of technologies that fundamentally that changed how food was produced (Sargoff 2011). In short, Ehrlich did not account for the complexity and rapid advancement of the human population. Limits to growth is not without problems and is very much a product of the dystopian environmental paradigm.
Another instance of the problems with the dystopian environmental paradigm is in the famous World3 model, initially described in the 1974 book, The Limits to Growth. Meadows et al. described three different scenarios for the state of the earth based on exponential growth of population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resources depletion, and linear growth of technology’s ability to provide more resources (Meadows et al. 1974). Only one of the scenarios did not involve mass starvation (Meadows et al. 1974). Despite the increased complexity of the World3 model, this computational representation of the fate of the world falls into the same dystopian pitfalls of Ehrlich’s Population Bomb by failing to capture the complexity and rapid innovation of the human population. Even taken as purely speculative situations, World3 had a huge impact on the new environmental paradigm by normalizing dystopian ideas of overconsumption driving environmental crises.
The impact of the new environmental paradigm is evident in all major environmental concepts. For example, the idea of sustainable development is popularly defined by the Brundtland Commission as being “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987). This demonstrates limits to growth and tragedy of the commons through the implications to limit resource use, consumption, and population in order to sustain a thriving society. The purity of nature is also seen in this definition though the reliance on the present and reluctance towards changing and adapting to the future. Another key environmental concept, biodiversity as an inherent good, is also firmly within the new environmental paradigm. Biodiversity is commonly seen as system of balance where the variety of species keep each other in check and no one species reigns supreme (Benson 2014). This clearly relates to the idea of nature and all of its diverse species as balanced and pure without human contact. Biodiversity also contains the idea of limits to growth in that there is a limit to how well an environment can support biodiversity and solely humans can pass that limit. Dominant environmental concepts are all rooted in the new environmental paradigm.
Concepts in the environmental sciences are important as so many truths are based in the assumptions of the new environmental paradigm. It is difficult if not impossible to even address large environmental issues such as climate change without making assumptions about limits and purity. Even a fact with plenty of numerical evidence, such as the accelerated changing climate, exists only within a framework where there this change is seen as a problem. There is an implied limit to how far climate can change before the earth becomes uninhabitable and a framework of nature and how humans are sacrificing a pure, ideal version of the earth. An implied dystopian future and nostalgic past persists through the rising temperatures and increased natural disasters. Truths such as climate change exist only within the new environmental paradigm.
The paradigm is also evident within mathematical models of environmental problems, such as Carbon Footprints, which quantify how individual actions contribute to carbon dioxide production, or the IPAT equation (Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology), which examines the qualities of nations that negatively impact the environment. Despite that these models, like the World3 model, fail to capture human complexity and innovation, the fact that they are even trying to measure and compare personal and national environmental impacts shows how they are completely ingrained with the new environmental paradigm. Measuring impact implies that the ideal is the absence of any impact, or a pure, balanced nature, and comparison between individuals or nations leads to everyone being brought into the paradigm.
Truths failing to escape the new environmental paradigm is also shown in the deep seated belief of nature as pure and balanced. In The Problem with Purity essay, scholar Richard White describes this as a spiritual belief. White writes, “[Humans] have touched everything, our mark is everywhere; there is nothing left but us… [yet] people go on preserving wild lands, planting gardens, hiking in the mountains, worrying about floods, wildfires, and earthquakes” (White 2000). Even if people are aware of evidence showing that nothing is truly “pure” from humans, the paradigm is so persistent that people still stick to their spiritual-like belief of nature as still being more “pure” than the urban environment and worth protecting.
With a nostalgic view of the past and a dystopic view of the future, truths within the environmental sciences are obscured by the new environmental paradigm. This is evident through the influential ideas of limits to growth, the tragedy of the commons, and the purity of nature that have completely shaped the way the environmental sciences are conducted and publically perceived. However, many environmentalists recognize this and are calling for a paradigm shift, dubbed ecomoderism, that embraces technology, innovation, and global development. This would reverse the paradigm by giving a bleak image of the past and a utopian image of the future. However, with the environmental science’s deep historical, ethical, and spiritual ties, it may prove difficult for a complete shift of the environmental community. For now, truths in the environmental sciences remain within the established environmental paradigm.
Works Cited:
Benson, Melinda Harm, and Robin Kundis Craig. 2014. “The End of Sustainability.” Society & Natural Resources 27 (7): 777–82. doi:10.1080/08941920.2014.901467.
Dunlap, Riley, and Kent Van Leire. 1978. “The New Environmental Paradigm.” Journal of Environmental Education 9: 10–19.
Ehrlich, Paul R. 1968. The Population Bomb. London: Ballantine Books.
Ehrlich, Paul R., and Anne H. Ehrlich. 2009. “The Population Bomb Revisited.” The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development.
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (3859): 1243–48. doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243.
Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens. 1974. The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Books.
Sagoff, Mark. 2011. “The Rise and Fall of Ecological Economics.” In Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, edited by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus. The Breakthrough Institute.
WCED. 1987. Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. New York: Oxford University Press.
White, Richard 2000. “The Problem with Purity.” Tanner Lectures on Human Values 21: 211–28.