The New Ecological Order
by Luc Ferry and Carol Volk

Originally published as 'Le nouvel ordre écologique: L'arbre, l'animal et l'homme' in Paris in 1992.

Is ecology in the process of becoming the object of our contemporary passions, in the same way that Fascism was in the 30s, or Communism under Stalin? Luc Ferry offers a penetrating critique of the ideological roots of the 'Deep Ecology' movement spreading throughout the United States, Germany, and France. Traditional ecological movements, or 'democratic ecology', seek to protect the environment of human societies; they are pragmatic and reformist. But another movement has become the refuge both of nostalgic counterrevolutionaries and of leftist illusions. This is 'deep ecology'. Its followers go beyond practical critiques of human greed and waste: they call into question the very possibiltiy of human coexistence with nature. Ferry shows how deep ecology casts aside all the gains of human autonomy since the Enlightenment. Far from denying our 'duty in relation to nature', 'The New Ecological Order' offers a bracing caution against the dangers of environmental claims and, more important, against the threat to democracy contained in the deep ecology doctrine when pushed to its extreme.