4 - Wednesday, May 9, 1990 - North Shore News

THE IDEA exists that the ecology movement is a late-
blooming fad, something to do with yuppies and hippies; a
fad, moreover, that will vanish the moment serious jobs-
versus-nature battles come down in the wake of the first

macro waves of recession.

This kind of dismissive anti-
ecological thinking is the result of
a shallow or deliberate mis-reading
of Western history, and of nothing
short of complete ignorance of
non-Western societies where no
alienation between man and nature
had ever occurred.

In Buddhist and indigenous
North and South American
religions, for instance, the place of
man in relation to other life and
nature was the central considera-
tion. How else could the life of
man be grasped without seeing the
great, natural planetary and uni-
versal whole of which he was but a
part?

As early as the dawn of the 18th
century, a Western philosophical
belief had been articulated which
claimed to perceive an “‘integrated
order” in nature, which function-
ed, having been designed originally
by God, like an orderly, harmoni-
ous machine. The World had a
Soul. Nature had a Spirit.

Today’s Gaian school of
thought can hardly be described as
novel. But this was esoteric stuff
back then.

The ‘ecology movement’”
reached the mainstream of
Western thought in the 1880s with
the emergence of a new set of con-
cepts, according to which natural
law had replaced God.

Thus, nature’s laws must
become known so man could
follow them — a new pantheism
with Nature at the centre, as both
teacher and oracle.

Today, we are into the third
century of intellectual furor con-
cerning the implications of
ecological thought, meaning
unavoidably: ecolcgically sound
lifestyles, morality, law, order,
strategies, acceptance of responsi-
bility, both individual and collec-
tive, and, yes, even ecological
spirituality.

Rather than being a band-
wagon, ecology is plainly an
agonizingly slow train coming in
very, very late indeed.

I think ecological thought comes
down to defining the survival of
the whole eco-system as the highest
international public policy priority,
even if it means the United Nations
sending in international troops to
prevent the destruction of an en-
dangered mahogany forest some-
where, and even if it does ultimate-
ly mean lotteries to determine fam-
ily size worldwide,

There would be rewards, of
course.

Do you hear an unpleasant echo
here? You should. With this line of
reasoning, can eugenics be far
behind? Do we re-deify the cow to
prevent mountains of methane
from destroying the ozone layer?
If we decide to, who could inipose
such an order?

There are critics of ecological
thought, as you may imagine.

They point tellingly to a certain
branch of the original ‘German

ecologism”’ school of thought,
which includes the first Back-to-
The-I and movements, people who
saw ‘‘blood and soil’’ as being in-
divisible; who believed themselves
possessed of a ‘‘natural seif’’
which was the ‘‘volk’’ of the natu-
ral world, the avowed enemy of
industrialism.

In the 1920s, Green Shirts ap-
peared, believers that nothing
could solve the world’s ecological
problems except a complete
world-wide social and economic
transformation. The Green Shirts
considered themselves committed
to neither capitalism nor com-
munism. (Sound familiar?)

When the Third Reich eventually
arose, it claimed to be a defender
of rural, i.e. ecological, values.

By the 1930s, the environmen-
talists — no longer true revolu-
tionary ecologists — had spliniered
off into a faction that believed that
the route to go was through denio-
cratic reform of existing municipal
boards, councils, commissions and
parliaments, fighting the war to
preserve the planet with an
“unscorched earth’’ strategy.

These Churchillian people, pit-
ted againt developers — today to
be found among Sierra Club and
Audubon Society members, for in-
stance — view true ecologists
(‘‘eco-freaks’’ we cal! them now)
as idealogues; that is, impractical
twits, possibly dangerous.

And the ecologists — wouldn’t
you know? — naturally sneer at
the environmentalists. This is the
main division between conserva-
tionist forces today.

So while nature-lovers are in-
credibly diverse and numerous —
to be found in every country in the
world — the basic polarity between
ecologists and environmentalists
remains fixed, with Earth First!,
spike and hammer in hand, on one
side of the forest, and Ducks Un-
limited, shotgun safety off, down
in the estuary.

Or Paul Watson and his Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society
shoving out from one port, the
seven-ship Greenpeace fleet leaving
from different ports to avoid him
like the plague, each tiny navy try-
ing to defend life in the seas, but
unable to join forces to succeed —
a classic small-power error in the
face of horrendous odds.

There are lingering fears and
animosities to explain this.

One of the early hardcore
ecology ‘‘cells’’ in Germany
dutifully donned Lord Baden-
Powell-like Boy Scout uniforms, as
determined as Red Guards to do
good eco-deeds every day.

The Green Shirts later merged
with the evil force that was the Na-
tionalist Socialist Party.

This example alone is a clear,
impossible-to-miss historic warning
that the Eco Thing has at Jeast a
partial predisposition toward
fascism.

6

ARDAGH HUNTER TURNER

Barristers & Solicitors

IMPAIRED DRIV:NG

AFTER HOURS
645-8989

[986-4366 |

FAX
986-9286

300-1401 LONSDALE, NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C.

College program
wins award

CAPILANO COLLEGE’S labor
studies program, a partnership
program between the college and
B.C. trade unions, has won the
1990 national Partnership Award,
sponsored by the Association of
Canadian Community Colleges
(ACCC).

Dr. Paul Gallagher, a former
Capilano College president and
currently the president of Van-
couver Community College, will
present the award May !7 on
behalf of the ACCC.

Capilano College's labor studies
program was chosen for recogni-
tion by a national selection com-
mittee from among 20 nomina-
tions.

Members of the committee were
particularly impressed by the dura-
tion and nature of the collabora-
tion between the college and the
B.C. trade unions.

The scope of the labor studies
program includes courses aimed at
eCucating trade unionists and
educating the general public about
trade unions.

To date more that 1,200 students
have participated in the program.
Two semesters are offered each
year with 15 to 20 courses given
each semester.

A critical factor in the pro-
gram’s high level of success has
been its 26 instructors, many of
whom have been with the program
for more than 10 years.

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