Toward a Green Enlightenment

Toward a Green Enlightenment
by Craig Collins, Ph.D.
Cosmology is a fancy, yet useful, word for “the big picture.” Cosmologies
provide a grand story explanation for how the world/universe works, how it
started and where it’s going. They are sweeping explanatory maps that attempt
to help people get their bearings in a complex and confusing world. Some
cosmologies provide a basic understanding of the human condition: who and
where we are, where we should go from here, what problems we'll face on our
journey, and how to overcome them. Thus, a useful cosmology helps us know
ourselves as human beings more deeply; provides insight into the strengths and
weaknesses of our current way of life; and shows us how to improve it. It
directs our collective attention and common energies toward overcoming the
major crises plaguing modern life and guides our efforts to shape the future.
While many cosmologies are based on science, religious cosmologies use god(s)
as their starting point for explaining the world. Other cosmologies are
essentially secular and political in nature—they are called ideologies. Scientific,
religious and ideological cosmologies are all based on some underlying view of
human nature and our role in the grand scheme of things.
Cosmologies are uniquely human. We seem to be the only creatures both
capable of creating cosmologies and needing them to thrive. Yet cosmologies
should be approached with a critical eye and a healthy dose of skepticism. All
cosmologies must embrace some sweeping generalities in order to distill a
relatively uncomplicated worldview from a far more complex and confusing
reality. This distillation and simplification process alone—although essential to
any "map-making" process—provides ample justification for skepticism. In
order to make the cosmological map easier to read and increase its popular
appeal, critical elements of reality can be overlooked or distorted in the
distillation process; this inevitably reduces its accuracy and undermines its
ability to guide us through the treacherous currents of life. Yet, unless the
cosmological map is easy to read and makes the journey seem worthwhile, it
won't guide anyone anywhere.
Cosmologies are a lot like friends. We need them, but we should choose
them wisely because a bad friend can be worse than no friend at all. Like
friends, cosmologies have a profound impact on our behavior, for better or
worse. Since every cosmology seeks to govern our daily behavior by shaping
our identity and claiming the allegiance of our hearts and minds, they are not
neutral or ineffectual. They attempt to convince us that they possess the most

Collins Green Enlightenment
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accurate explanation of who we are; where we're going; and how best to get
there. The cosmologies we embrace and oppose in our daily lives have a deep
impact on the kind of life we live and how we affect the world around us.
Consciously embracing and advocating one of the many historically
renowned cosmologies can be dangerous. Throughout history people have been
persecuted and even exterminated for their religious and ideological beliefs.
Thus, most people shy away from openly endorsing unpopular cosmologies.
Instead, people usually quietly assimilate a personalized version of their
society's dominant cosmologies. For example, by adulthood most Americans
have been culturally immersed in a cosmological potpourri of Classic and
Contemporary Liberalism, Modern Conservatism and Judeo-Christianity.
Although there are tensions and contradictions between these contending
worldviews, their basic tenets are compatible enough to be accommodated
within mainstream American political culture. In varying degrees, all of these
cosmologies embrace the capitalist economic values of private property,
economic liberty, and the free market as well as the Enlightenment political
values of representative government, individual rights, freedom of speech, and
some measure of political equality.
Even in societies that profess respect for individual rights, diversity and
tolerance, it can be dangerous to advocate cosmologies outside the mainstream.
Yet, there is always a significant segment of any society that is dissatisfied with,
and critical of, part or all of their society's dominant beliefs. In the United
States, Communists, Anarchists, Socialists, Mormons, Atheists, Jews, Muslims,
Pagans, Native American Spiritualists and a host of other groups have been
jailed and persecuted for their cosmological beliefs. Conflict and even war
between people with different belief systems are as old as human history.
Although this may be a disturbing notion, we cannot avoid this conflict
even if we profess to reject all cosmological affiliations. Those who insist they
embrace no cosmology are simply kidding themselves. From birth, our most
fundamental attitudes about others and ourselves have been conditioned and
shaped consciously and subconsciously by the cosmological notions embedded
in our culture and our minds. Everyone who is consciously interacting with the
world employs a cosmology that shapes their identity, no matter how
inconsistent, capricious or muddled. We could not sensibly function on a daily
basis without making certain basic assumptions and judgments about human
nature, our place in society, how the world works (and should work), and what
behaviors, values and ideas we endorse, reject and tolerate in others and
ourselves. These assumptions and beliefs are the essence of each person's
cosmology.

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In fact, a strong case can be made that the most dangerous cosmology of
all is the one that is assimilated unconsciously and thus remains unexamined
and unquestioned at the conscious level. How much damage has been done by
people who have unconsciously accepted the notion that people of color are
subhuman; that women are inferior to men; that God is on our side and our
country is always right; that technology will solve all our problems; that nature
is an endlessly exploitable cornucopia; or that people should be judged by what
they own, not who they are? Although some people openly profess and
advocate these beliefs (and others flatly reject them), many more simply accept
them subconsciously, behaving as if they were true without ever questioning
these notions in themselves or others.
If cosmological beliefs are necessary and unavoidable—and their potential
dangers can only be magnified by pretending they do not affect us—the wisest
approach to cosmologies is to examine them carefully, especially those that have
become deeply embedded in our unconscious attitudes and daily behaviors. In
this way we can gain more clarity and control over which beliefs we make our
own, which we reject, and why we have made these choices.
In this spirit, the following contribution to an emerging Green/ecological
cosmology is offered. Green spiritual and political philosophy has been
germinating for several decades now but it is still in its infancy. Many of the
fundamental premises which form the skeletal framework of any developed
cosmology are still unclear and under debate. However, the need for greater
clarity on these basic premises becomes ever more pressing as the global
industrial system becomes mired in escalating militarism, mindless growth,
political corruption and environmental collapse. Greens cannot assume that the
deepening crisis of industrial civilization will inevitably give rise to the
peaceful, sustainable, democratic societies they would prefer to live in. The
kind of society that will replace a crisis-ridden, decaying global industrialism is
still undetermined. The ecological vision of the future will have to compete
against a host of less savory ideologies and political movements that posses
none of the moral reservations about violence, tyranny, oppression, exploitation,
corruption, and opportunism Greens embrace. Can Greens foster an ecological
enlightenment capable of responding to these challenges?
The world's most influential ideologies are premised upon basic
assumptions about human nature and history. These assumptions give rise to a
particular vision of the best form of government, the ideal society and how to go
about achieving them. For example, most of the Enlightenment philosophers of
the 18th
Century embraced a view of human nature that was individualist,
inventive, self-interested, and rational. Classic Liberals saw history as a

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progressive evolutionary process of individual rationality overcoming primitive
tribal superstitions and Medieval Absolutism, and liberating scientific
rationality and innovative self-interest to the betterment of all mankind. These
commonly accepted Liberal ideological premises guided their revolutionary
struggle against the feudal monarchies of Europe and gave them a vision of the
kind of capitalist republics and imperialist global relationships that would
replace them. Whether an Ecological Enlightenment eventually replaces the
Liberal Enlightenment will depend, in part, on how well Greens address these
same basic questions. Without growing clarity on who we humans are, how we
got into this mess, and how we can learn from the past to guide us into the
future, Greens cannot hope to germinate a powerful social movement capable of
leading the transition toward a more peaceful, democratic, sustainable future.
Human Nature: The Green View
The Green view of human nature begins with the basic assumption that we
humans are part of the animal kingdom—highly intelligent social primates. We
live in societies that are embedded in, and dependent upon, the complex web of
ecological relationships that sustain life on this planet. Human character is
shaped through a complex interaction between our genetic/biological heritage
and our experiential environment—both cultural and natural. The human
capacity for cultural evolution—learning and passing on knowledge through
language, especially written language—has partially liberated our species from
the slower pace of biological evolution. Cultural evolution has accelerated the
pace of human history relative to the more leisurely pace of biological evolution
that governs the development of other creatures. It has also changed the
fulcrum of this evolution from the anatomic attributes of our species to the
cultural attributes of our societies.* Instead of the primary engine of change in
our species being the biologically based process of natural selection, it has
become a culturally based historical process whose evolutionary dynamics are
heavily debated and only partially understood. However, this historical process
of cultural evolution appears to be closely linked to the conveyance of collective
knowledge, social organization and technological innovation and proficiency
from one generation to the next.
The ability to consciously collect and pass-on knowledge to future
generations is intimately connected with another highly developed human
characteristic—time awareness. Deep awareness of past, present and future has
had a profound impact upon our species. It has forced us to confront and reflect
upon the nature of life and our own mortality; filled us with wonder for the
unfolding universe; sparked our curiosity to discover the forces shaping it; and
* This could change drastically if genetic engineering technologies allow us to alter our genetic make-up.

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encouraged us to ponder our place in "the grand scheme of things." These
qualities have given human culture (especially our scientific and spiritual
endeavors) a profoundly cosmological character.
Time awareness and the capacity for cultural evolution appear to be both a
blessing and a curse. They allow us to analyze, reflect upon and learn from our
personal and collective pasts; to plan, set goals and shape (but not control) the
future; and to wonder at the beauty and mystery of nature at the same time we
struggle to bend it to our will. Yet, because we realize that, ultimately, we can
never be the masters of the universe or even our own fates, our species is
characterized by a deep angst regarding death and what (if anything) comes
after it. For this reason the human psyche is strongly inclined toward fear and
insecurity. Our religions are preoccupied with the fear of death and developing
imaginary explanations of the "afterlife" to reduce and/or manipulate this fear.
In fact, the fear of death and the promise of an everlasting blissful afterlife for
devoted believers have long been the primary methods used by religious elites
for securing and maintaining the spiritual fealty of their followers.
A basic premise of Green cosmology is its commitment to honesty. It does
not seek to gain a following by distorting reality. If people choose to adopt a
Green cosmology, it will be because they see Greens trying to seek and speak
the truth and shunning opportunism and demagoguery. This commitment
requires Green cosmology to take an open-minded, agnostic position on the
existence of an afterlife, gods, and goddesses—since there is no way to prove
they do, or do not, exist. Green cosmology must openly admit ignorance in this
regard. However, this ignorance can be liberating because it is combined with
the recognition that many people need a faith-based belief system; further, it
permits individuals to freely embrace or reject these theological doctrines as a
matter of individual choice. Finally, by preventing Green cosmology from
rejecting or endorsing any deity or faith-based belief system, agnosticism forces
Greens to assess each religious worldview on its own practical merits. For
example, does it teach reverence for the planet and its creatures? Does it
discourage mindless consumerism and selfish individualism? Where does it
stand on the problems of class exploitation, race and gender oppression and
bias?
For many Greens, when it comes to the fear of death and the hope for an
afterlife, embracing the ecologically obvious provides adequate peace of mind.
Our life and death are intimately and inseparably linked to the larger,
continuous life-death-rebirth cycles of our planet. We cannot know for certain
what becomes of that unique spirit/soul that energizes our bodies in life.
However, we know that death recycles our material bodies to create new life;

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therefore, it seems plausible that this may be true for the life force that energizes
us as well.
Toward a Green View of History
Of utmost importance at this point in history is an understanding of how human
civilization has come to its current ecological crisis and how to handle it. Some
Greens are committed to the notion that a fundamental change of
consciousness—an ecological epiphany—is all that is necessary to open the eyes
of human kind and set us on the path to sustainable salvation. For them, history
is of little practical value; it cannot help us out of this mess. Therefore, they
believe Greens must simply foster a new ecological awareness and enthusiasm
for making peace with the planet. However, other Greens feel history has much
to teach us. They are convinced that many of the underlying causes of our
current crisis are the result of complex underlying historical forces and
unintended consequences that are only partially understood and require far
more than individual consciousness-raising to alter their destructive impact.
For them, a deeper understanding of history is vital for illuminating the path
away from ecological calamity.
Most of our everyday behaviors are short-term, practical responses to the
way our society is organized—work, school, family. Yet many of these small,
seemingly inconsequential, everyday behaviors are environmentally devastating
when everyone does them, over the long run. For example, many people have
become aware of the dire, long-term environmental impacts of driving. Some
have decided to bike, walk, or take mass transit to school or work. But
American society isn’t organized in a way that makes not driving a practical
choice for most people no matter how much they’d prefer to stay off the road. As
long as millions of people live in suburbs connected to workplaces by miles and
miles of freeway, no amount of mere consciousness-raising will allow them to
use clean, sustainable modes of transportation. Most people are compelled to
get behind the wheel whether they love or hate driving because it’s the only
convenient way to get around.
In fact, our society is organized to make it convenient for us to behave in
ways that are profitable for automakers and other businesses in the short-run,
yet wasteful, environmentally devastating and extremely hazardous to our
health and survival in the long run. Powerful business interests work overtime
to shape our daily choices by making the most convenient option for most of us
the most the most profitable option for them. Only when society is organized to
make the most convenient, immediate choices identical to the most healthy,
environmentally benign, long-term choices (instead of the most profitable
choices) will most peoples' lifestyles, behaviors and attitudes become “Green.”

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As long as the profit motive dominates transportation policy, resources use,
production, consumption, waste disposal and community development policy,
most people will be actively discouraged from choosing sustainable lifestyles
and no amount of consciousness-raising will make more than a moderate dent
in this process. In other words, averting ecological crises requires more than
just raising individual awareness, it requires transforming the systemic, social
and economic forces that shape our daily lives.
Even the limited goal of raising awareness is seriously inhibited by the
systemic imperatives of corporate media in a capitalist economy. Clearly the
sophisticated communication technologies of modern society have the potential
to foster enthusiasm for healing our planet. But in this society the media’s
central purpose is not promoting education, awareness and activism, or even
providing information and entertainment. Corporate media’s profits depend on
delivering huge audiences of potential consumers to the advertisers who
sponsor their programs, from superbowls to sitcoms. Advertising is the cash
cow of the entertainment and information industry. Advertising is designed to
promote consumption, which is both the father of economic growth and the
mother of most environmental problems. Of course, astute advertisers try to
resolve this conflict by selling us on the idea that we can promote economic
growth and solve our environmental problems by purchasing green products.
Buying green is not a bad idea, as long as we’re not just buying green hype. Yet
ultimately an economy addicted to greater consumption and unlimited growth
is incompatible with the planet’s ecological limits. Therefore, the greenest
consumers are those that consume the least--a proposition that sends shivers
down an advertiser’s spine and tremors throughout the economy.
Getting “unstuck” by transforming environmentally destructive social
policies requires political power and technological and social innovation, not
just “Green enlightenment.” Nevertheless, ecological awareness weaves the
cultural network for fabricating a cohesive political movement dedicated to
transforming our society and healing our planet. But, in addition to a
revolutionary Green cosmology, this movement will require an understanding
of how political power is achieved, used, and lost; how powerful opposing
interests can be outmaneuvered, neutralized and overcome and how wasteful,
decadent social systems can be replaced with healthy new ones.
Gaining power and using it properly is not only difficult and dangerous; it
is an enormous responsibility. Wisdom informed by a deep familiarity with
history—its hidden opportunities, patterns and pitfalls—will be essential. Even
those with the best intentions can produce unrealistically disastrous strategies
and polices without this historical wisdom. It is in this spirit that this

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preliminary conceptual framework for a Green understanding of history is
offered.
Ecology, Social Structure, & Historical Epochs
Humans, like all living creatures, can only survive by borrowing energy from
the surrounding ecosystem for food and shelter. In all human societies this
energy withdrawal process (what Karl Marx called production) is accomplished
with the aid of tools/technology. These technologies are designed to extract,
control, collect, store, transport and convert specific sources of environmental
energy (living and non-living) for human use. Therefore, every society's
primary survival relationship is between its energy withdrawal process (its
technologies and work patterns) & the ecological niche it exploits. Because this
energy extraction process is so basic to human survival, it has had a profound
and pervasive influence over our social structures, cultures and belief systems.
In short, a society’s way of life shapes its values and beliefs.
Humans have exploited 3 broad types of energy niche throughout history.
Each fundamental type of niche requires a qualitatively different set of
technologies, social structures, and cosmologies. Of course, within these
fundamental types there is a wide diversity and variation on this basic theme.
Nonetheless, human history can be characterized, so far, by three fundamental
ways of life—hunting & gathering, agricultural & pastoral, and mechanized—
each defined by a distinct set of technologies & lifestyles specifically fashioned
to exploit the environment in a different manner.
The Hunting & Gathering Epoch
For well over 90% of our time here on earth, all humans lived in hunting &
gathering societies (a tiny percentage still do). These foraging cultures generally
consumed an energy niche composed of wild biota—the plants and animals
native to their habitat. The tools and work patterns varied widely within this
foraging mode of survival; spears & harpoons, digging sticks, scrapers, bows &
arrows, fishing nets, and traps were all technologies designed to exploit a local
ecosystem's natural stores of wild flora and fauna. But, despite this obvious
diversity, the universally small size and relative simplicity of these societies was
required by both the caloric ceiling afforded by the natural stores of energy
available in any given habitat and by the abiding need for mobility. A
sedentary village life was unsuitable because, with few exceptions, wild sources
of food were not concentrated enough in any one place to sustain human life.
The cosmologies of these small mobile, foraging cultures varied greatly.
However, they all held at least two characteristics in common. First, they were
animistic—they attributed a conscious spiritual life to all living and non-living

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forces in their universe. Second, the Earth (meaning their habitat) was
considered sacred—the mother of all life. The creatures that were given
prominence in any particular culture's cosmological order depended upon the
specific ecosystem and energy niche it used to survive. It is no accident that the
indigenous peoples of the North American plains exalted the buffalo or that the
native Americans of the coastal Northwest revered the salmon, their very
survival depended upon these species. Other species that possessed qualities
and capabilities highly valued by a culture were also endowed with great
spiritual power. Among the tribes of the coastal Northwest, the grizzly, the
osprey and the orca were exalted for their fishing and hunting prowess and the
spirit of one of these creatures would often be invoked as the tribal totem. Thus,
the cosmologies of all hunting and gathering cultures reflected their total and
direct dependence upon—and reverence for—their natural ecosystem and
especially the particular plants and animals that sustained them or showed
them how to survive.
The Agrarian/Pastoral Epoch
Even if they eventually came to occupy the same territory as earlier foraging
tribes, agricultural societies exploited a qualitatively different energy niche.
Farmers dramatically altered—domesticated—their ecosystems by creating their
own habitats. The solar-powered life cycles of select plants and animals were
modified and managed to increase the energy flow for human use. This was
done at the expense of those wild species of plants and animals considered
"weeds", "pests", and "vermin", because they hindered the farmer's ability to
withdraw energy from the agricultural process. Detrimental or competitive
species were eliminated or marginalized, beneficial ones were nourished,
protected, harvested, and selectively bred in unnatural abundance. This process
of domestication demanded more human labor, but it had the potential to
dramatically increase the amount of energy available to society. Thus, because
agricultural society had both the need for more labor and the capacity to
increase in size, humans and their domesticated animal and plant populations
grew dramatically. Because energy was now drawn from tilling and/or
irrigating the soil, society became settled—“rooted” to a specific territory
instead of nomadic. Also, its behavior patterns became more seasonal,
repetitive, and based on traditional patterns of cultivation.
The increased size and complexity of agricultural society required more
specialized, routinized, collectivized and stratified modes of social organization
to manage the energy extraction process. This was especially true of river based
agricultural societies that depended on the construction and maintenance of
extensive irrigation systems of dams, canals, levees and dikes. Those who
engineered and managed this process gained exceptional power because of their

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unique position in the management, planning, control and mobilization of the
production process. Their control over the supply of surplus grain and their
strategic capacity to deny water to those who refused to submit to their
hierarchical dominance increased their coercive power. However, to minimize
the need for coercion and maintain social cohesion, agricultural elites relied
mainly upon religion to sanctify their authority and reinforce the social
behaviors the masses must adopt to sustain this way of life—sacrifice,
obedience, conformity and cooperation.
While the cosmology of each agricultural society was unique, they all held
some characteristics in common. The natural forces governing the fertility of the
agricultural process—the seasons, the sun and moon, the rains, rivers and even
the volcanoes—were endowed with spiritual power and significance. In
addition, since human intelligence and foresight were essential to dramatically alter
and domesticate the surrounding environment and predict and adapt to climatic
variation, agricultural societies were the first to create goddesses and gods by
projecting human intellectual, emotional and physical characteristics upon
natural forces. The priests and priestesses that managed the agricultural process
were supposedly uniquely favored by these gods. In some religions, they were
considered demigods themselves. Sacrifice and obedience were necessary to
keep them happy. The spiritual message of agrarian-based religions was based
on conformity, cooperation, sacrifice and obedience to authority—all of the
behaviors necessary to sustain an agrarian system managed by a religious elite.
It was dangerous—in this life and the afterlife, and both personally and
collectively—to ignore or disobey the moral codes of behavior laid down by the
gods & goddesses through their priests and priestesses. Punishment for
disobedience usually came in the form of "natural" disasters—crop failures,
drought, flood, pestilence, famine, and disease. And, indeed, these were the
ultimate repercussions of a poorly managed agricultural society.
Sacrifice was a key element of all agrarian cosmologies. Most of the
religions of this era stressed the need for humans to sacrifice something of great
value to the gods in order to avoid their wrath and gain their assistance in
preventing personal and social catastrophe. This was an effort to gain some
measure of psychological security and "control" over an environment that was
both mysterious and potentially devastating. The profound insecurity of being
at the mercy of nature's wrath was reduced if the deities that controlled these
forces could be placated with the proper sacrificial rituals. The notion of
sacrifice was also a lever of social control over the collective labor process.
Religious leaders could induce humble obedience and great personal sacrifices
from their followers in the form of religious offerings and labors if god's grace in
life and the afterlife was their promised reward. It was this ability to induce

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sacrifice and cooperation that raised the wealth and mobilized the labor to dig
canals, build complex networks of dikes, levees and aqueducts, and construct
roads, great pyramids, magnificent palaces, and awe-inspiring temples.
The Industrial Epoch
Mechanized/industrial societies exploit a non-renewable carboniferous energy
base (coal, oil, natural gas) to electrify society and replace slower paced wind,
water, human and animal powered technologies with machine technologies.
With access to the tremendous amounts of energy stored beneath the earth, this
high-energy society leaves behind (at least partially and temporarily) the slower
pace of life constrained by dependence on the seasonal energy cycles that
reproduce plant and animal energy. Using the electric light and the steam
engine, factories were even able to avoid the work cycles imposed by day and
night and changes of season. Industrial society had the energy to work around
the clock, rain or shine, 365 days a year, turning out commodities in enormous
amounts and at an incredible pace, and transporting them around the world in a
matter of hours. Of course, with this giant storehouse of carboniferous energy
at its disposal, industrial society became even larger in size and far more
complex than agricultural society. In addition, industrial society's capacity to
exploit tremendous stores of fossil fuels provided it with the illusion that, for the
first time, humanity was no longer dependent upon nature.
To adapt to, and take advantage of, the increased pace of the petroleum-
powered production process humans adopted methods of production,
distribution, and exchange that were flexible and efficient. Efficiency and
flexibility were best served by allowing the profit motive to govern the pace of
production and market mechanisms, like supply and demand, to allocate
resources—including human labor. Human labor was reduced to a commodity,
and its unique creative nature was subordinated to the repetitive, fast-paced,
mind-numbing dictates of industrial production.
Because carboniferous energy is so rich and highly concentrated, it has the
capacity to do far more work than the minimal labor needed to simply extract it
from the earth. Since extraction costs were so low for this abundant source of
rich energy, fossil fuel powered machinery was much cheaper than human
labor. Also, machines didn’t complain or go on strike. Therefore, industrial
bosses endeavored to automate production as much as possible. Automation
had the added advantage of embodying many of the most complicated aspects
of production in the machines rather than in the skills of the labor force. By
dumbing-down the labor process and concentrating the skills in the machine,
management made workers more easily replaceable. Of course, this reduced

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labor’s bargaining power because unskilled workers were more easily replaced
in the event of a strike.
This rapid, impersonal, dumbed-down, highly automated, market-driven
production process, while extremely labor-efficient and flexible, is highly
resistant to social control even by those who are nominally "in charge" of
society's most powerful economic and political institutions. To stay in business
or keep their jobs, workers, managers and CEOs must conform to the disciple of
the machine, the profit motive and the market. This requires the mindless
acceptance of labor efficiency, relentless growth and constant consumption. The
entire industrial system appears locked into a process of non-stop acceleration
with no particular destination. Instead of a means to an end, growth is an end
in itself.
Many people continue to embrace religious cosmologies that imbue life
with a higher meaning during the industrial epoch because of the deep sense
purposeless, powerless, alienation that accompanies labor exploitation and
mindless, repetitive, production and consumption. However, the cosmologies
that grew out of the industrial period are primarily secular and political in
character. These secular, more political, cosmologies became known as
"ideologies.” Most of them openly lauded the supremacy of humans,
rationality, and science over nature, spiritualism, and theology. Modern
Conservatism, Classic & Modern Liberalism, Socialism, and Communism all
assumed, and extolled the virtues of, boundless industrial "progress" and
reduced living ecosystems to vast cornucopias of lifeless natural resources.
Instead of holding either nature or deities as sacred, these industrial era
ideologies worshiped the gospel of growth and placed their faith in technology
and science.
While ignoring the resource and ecological limits to industrial growth,
each of these ideologies offered political rationales for ever-escalating rates of
production and consumption. For some, like modern conservatism and classic
liberalism, the purpose of pursuing limitless growth was primarily individual—
expanding access to personal wealth and liberty. For others—like Marxism,
socialism, and modern liberalism—the purpose was primarily social: ending
poverty, oppression, scarcity, war and class exploitation; promoting peace,
prosperity, equality, democracy and social justice. But whether the purpose was
individual or social, endless economic growth was assumed to be both possible
and necessary. This is the most basic dividing line between all of the industrial era
ideologies and Green cosmology. Greens begin by assuming that limitless economic
growth is both impossible and unnecessary. This belief is deeply grounded in

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the Green interpretation of the constantly evolving relationship between human
society and the natural environment.
Energy, Vital Functions & Early Social Structure
To insure their survival, all societies must be able to withdraw energy from the
environment and direct it toward three primary vital functions: 1) production; 2)
reproduction; 3) protection. Without the ability to perform these three
functions, no society can survive.
Production:
As mentioned above, production, the process whereby society extracts &
transforms raw environmental energy into forms fit for human consumption
and use, is the primary process of survival. For humans, this process has been
carried out through cooperative social effort (labor) and the use of
tools/technology.
Reproduction:
In order for any society to survive past a single generation, it must maintain a
constant enough energy flow to reproduce itself. This means there must be
adequate energy to permit both sexual and cultural reproduction. Adequate
numbers of new members of society must mature to reproductive age and
become capable of culturally assimilating and passing on the accumulated
storehouse of knowledge and skills essential for maintaining society's energy
flow. Thus reproduction means raising each new generation to take on the
responsibilities of parents and grandparents.
Protection:
Society has also found it necessary to protect and defend itself, and its energy
base, from "predator forces"—both human and non-human—who threaten the
life of society and its vital energy sources. Defense from microscopic energy
parasites like bacteria which cause illness and disease in humans and their
domestic plants and animals has required knowledge of nutrition, hygiene,
plant and animal biology and the healing arts. Protection from the elements has
required knowledge of architecture and clothing. Defense from attack—human
or animal—or confiscation of vital resources has required knowledge of
weapons, warfare, and fortification.
Society's earliest divisions of labor:
The earliest and most fundamental divisions of labor grew up around these
three vital functions and were based on the genetic/biological differences
between men and women, young and old. However, in earliest tribal cultures
these functions were not strictly divided along gender or age lines. Strict

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divisions did not promote the kind of unifying bonds necessary to keep small
foraging societies working together smoothly. Nevertheless, tribal societies
were not strictly gender blind and egalitarian. While all members of the clan
were valued and respected, those with greater experience and wisdom (the
elders) were held in higher regard. Also, because tribal societies were so
dependent on the mysterious reproductive powers of women, women were
generally considered more central to tribal life and survival than men.
Gender & Production:
While both men and women were involved in the production process of
foraging societies, divisions of labor differed from culture to culture. Most tribal
societies depended more upon plant gathering than hunting for their primary
source of calories. Gathering was usually the primary province of women
because they were often pregnant, nursing, or watching out for toddlers and
could not participate in hunting parties. Also, the need to treat the maladies of
infancy made women more aware of the vast, subtle and complex healing
properties of many plants. Men engaged themselves mainly in hunting and
fishing. In most societies this division was not strictly observed. Generally,
societies that depended on hunting (or fishing) for their main supply of energy
gave men greater prestige than those that primarily supported themselves
through gathering, but nearly all early foraging cultures were matrilineal,
women-centered societies.
Gender & Reproduction:
The strictest divisions of labor were in the area of reproduction. Here, women
were clearly central. For thousands of years it was not known that sexual
intercourse produced children. Thus, fertility was considered a magical power
belonging to women alone. This reproductive power made women the center of
all kinship relations. Nearly all foraging societies were matrilineal; and a young
man left the tribe of his mother and sisters to marry into the tribe of his wife.
Women were the center of tribal life. The older women, matriarchs, were the
most respected members of the tribe and often the tribe's most revered spiritual
leaders.
Gender & Protection:
Because women were the source of new life, their lives were considered more
essential to tribal survival than men's. Thus, in most tribes, women were not
expected to risk their lives as warriors. Also, men were generally more
experienced in the use of weapons and were never burdened by pregnancy or
nursing infants. For all these reasons, the warriors—those who defended the life
of the tribe and its energy niche—were usually men, although it was not
uncommon for women to be warriors as well.

15
In the other area of tribal protection—from disease and illness—women
were primary. More often than not, it was women's knowledge of the healing
properties of plants and their intimate knowledge of pregnancy, childbirth, and
the maladies of infancy that gave them superiority in the healing arts. Although
men were often healers and shamans, it was usually women who performed
this function.
Explaining Social Change: The First Great Transition
For over ninety percent of our time on earth, humans lived in small foraging
societies. To understand why, after millions of years, foraging societies around
the earth began to transform themselves into settled agricultural societies within
a relatively short period of historical time, it is important to understand what
was happening to the ecological niches of these foraging cultures.
It took hundreds of thousands of years for tribal cultures to spread out
over the globe, but eventually most of the habitable energy niches (bioregions)
were “spoken for.” This epic migratory expansion was driven by climate
changes and slow but relentless population growth. Despite efforts to control
population through herbal contraceptives and abortions, cultural restrictions on
intercourse, and infanticide, every society had a natural incentive to preserve
the life of its infants and guarantee its reproductive survival. As long as
bountiful habitats were accessible, tribal division and migration could handle
overcrowding in any particular area. But eventually most areas became
overcrowded and tribes began to compete for hunting grounds and to over-
exploit their bioregion's stores of wild plant and animal energy. This growing
scarcity, increasing competition and slow degradation of habitable ecosystems
could be intensified by climate changes that made some ecosystems even less
habitable. Eventually this situation became unsustainable for many foraging
peoples and elicited a response with profound historical repercussions.
Resource depletion and territorial competition encouraged warfare, and
consequently a rise in the stature of men and the importance of weapons. This
spurred the development of ever more sophisticated technologies of warfare
and hunting and gathering as each culture endeavored to protect its territory
and develop more intensive methods for expropriating its energy stores. As
game became less plentiful and more wary of humans ever more sophisticated
implements and strategies were needed to hunt them. Thus we find a steady
improvement from primitive stone tools and weapons to more sophisticated
traps, bows & arrows, and fishing nets. Many of these implements doubled as
weapons of war.

16
As the wild plants and animals that formed the energy niche of many
foraging cultures became depleted and their territories hemmed-in by
competing tribes, hunger set in. Women began to use their knowledge of plants
to raise crops for the first time. While foraging tribes were well aware of how to
cultivate plants, this kind of hard labor was considered unnecessary as long as
there were plentiful stores of useful plants growing naturally. But as wild
sources became scarce, women supplemented them by raising crops, usually in
fertile, constantly irrigated, riverbed soils. In addition, shrinking supplies of
wild game were supplemented by domesticating animals, usually goats (and
sometimes cattle and oxen), for their milk and meat—and (for bovines) their
labor. Often, herding was thought to be the work of women (and children) who
could feed young stray goats breast milk to keep them alive and whose babies
could benefit from goat's milk, which was much like human milk, if their own
supply of mother's milk was low.
Thus, in fertile river valleys around the planet where the conditions for
agriculture were optimal, demographic pressure and the depletion of the "wild"
ecosystems eventually induced foraging tribes to supplement hunting and
gathering with horticulture. The technologies and work patterns associated
with farming were fundamentally different from foraging because they
exploited a domesticated energy niche that ultimately required a qualitatively
new way of life. Once again, since women were most familiar with plants,
raising crops, and domesticating animals, they became more central to these
early Neolithic horticultural village societies. However, farming societies that
found themselves in constant competition with their neighbors and engaged in
frequent warfare developed a tendency to elevate men into positions of power
and authority.
In a few areas of the planet where agriculture was difficult but the
conditions for herding were excellent, like the vast grassland steppes of Eurasia,
hunting and gathering were replaced with nomadic, horse-riding, pastoral
cultures instead of farming. The first cultures to domesticate goats, sheep and
horses harnessed this new energy to vanquish and drive out other cultures and
to migrate over wide expanses of grassland herding their goats and defending
their vast pasturelands on horseback. These mobile cultures were smaller,
simpler and less diverse than settled agricultural societies. However, they
became more adept at using the most powerful weapon of the agricultural
epoch—the horse. This was only true for Eurasian herding cultures because
there were no horses in the Americas.
The Emergence of Patriarchy, Classes, & States

17
The earliest, agrarian, village-based Neolithic cultures were usually matrilineal,
goddess-worshipping, societies that remained relatively peaceful and generally
egalitarian until they became threatened by each other or conquered by those
hunting & gathering tribes which had turned to horse-mounted warfare and
pastoralism as a way of life. Unlike the matrilineal agriculturists, these
warrior/pastoralists were male dominated social systems because the
predominantly male skills of equestrian herding and warfare were prized above
all else. Originally, these two kinds of cultures were geographically isolated
from each other. The early matrilineal agricultural societies evolved in fertile,
easily irrigated river valleys like the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Mississippi
and the Yellow & Yangtze rivers or around the fertile Mediterranean Basin;
while the horse riding pastoralists occupied the grassy steppes of northern
Eurasia. However, as each type of system expanded, collisions and conflicts
multiplied.1
Domesticating horses gave the highly mobile, male-dominated pastoral
clans a decisive military edge over agrarian cultures that could be raided and
plundered or exterminated and their lands taken for hunting or herding. When
they came into contact with agricultural settlements, mounted pastoralists
would either loot and destroy them if they saw them as competitors for land, or
parasitically raid them for stores of grain (and women). As their numbers grew,
both their power and need for land grew. Eventually, instead of merely raiding
agricultural societies they began conquering them and imposing themselves as
the ruling caste, taxing and exploiting peasant labor but eventually adopting
many of their settled, more "civilized" ways. Thus, male-dominated, class
society emerged, at least in the Eurasian land mass, primarily as the result of
warfare, conquest and the imposition of a culturally militaristic patriarchy upon
more peaceful, matrilineal, agrarian cultures. This was true even for those
agrarian cultures, like the Minoan civilization on island of Crete, who were
protected by the sea and never completely conquered by their nearby, more
warlike, patriarchal rivals. To successfully defend themselves, they too had to
rely on the military prowess of men, thus elevating their own warrior caste to
the dominant position in society. In this manner, both the Greek and the
Minoan civilizations were slowly transformed from matrilineal to more
militarized, patriarchal societies.
This historical scenario does not fit the New World. Horses were not
native to the New World and were not introduced until the Spanish conquered
the Aztec Empire, which, by that time, was already strongly patriarchal in
nature. At the time of the European invasion, most of the Americas were
1 Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future.

18
covered with small foraging cultures of diverse types. However, long before the
European invasion, many sizable agricultural societies had inhabited the New
World (the Hoden Oshoné or Iroquois Confederacy of the Northeast, the Olmec
civilization and the Anasasi and Pueblos of the Southwest, the Cahukia Mound
Builders of the Mississippi Valley, etc.).
Finally, the New World also had a few large, patriarchal, elite-dominated
agrarian civilizations—the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Incas. Somehow these
civilizations had become patriarchal—ruled by a caste of male warrior/priests—
without having to do battle with, or be conquered by, armies of equestrian
warriors. Despite the apparent differences, the rise of patriarchy in the New
World is based on the same fundamental underlying process whereby male
dominated, class-divided societies became prominent in Eurasia. Male
dominance, in both New and Old World foraging and agrarian cultures was
caused by intensified competition for resources and an ever-increasing reliance
on warfare for both defensive and offensive purposes. Successful warriors were
not only able to defend their society's established territory, but expand and
conquer new land and possibly enslave its population. This process invariably
raised the status of men to inordinate positions of military, political, and
spiritual power while disenfranchising women and creating subordinate castes
of slaves and servants.
Even in times of prolonged peace, once any dominant civilization
encompassed a sizable slave or conquered population it must be prepared to
suppress revolts from within. The need for permanent institutions of social
control and coercion, including a standing army supported by taxing the
domestic peasant-farming population, is necessary to maintain this type of
social order. Thus, the earliest states, in Eurasia/Africa and the New World,
were born for the same basic reasons: territorial protection and expansion and
the suppression of domestic unrest.
The Demise of the Agrarian Epoch
As agricultural and pastoral societies emerged and spread out over the planet
around 6,000 years ago, they marginalized and exterminated many foraging
cultures. The remaining foraging cultures were considered "barbaric" and sub-
human by agricultural civilizations. However, by the twilight of agricultural
epoch there were still many foraging, fishing or semi-horticultural cultures,
especially in the New World, Africa, and the South Pacific.
Despite their superior numbers, higher technological levels, advanced
military capabilities and attitudes of superiority, many agrarian civilizations
rose and fell in a relatively short period of time. While more powerful rivals

19
conquered some, many collapsed because the climate altered their environment
or they simply over-exploited and degraded their forests and topsoil. Often
societal collapse was induced by a combination of these primary factors and
many secondary ones as well. Expansive agricultural civilizations soon
exhausted their energy base by deforestation, over-grazing, and the depletion of
their topsoil and water supplies. Within a few hundred years they became
highly vulnerable to abrupt climate variations, crop failures, famine, internal
revolt and external conquest.
Occasionally, collapse was temporarily averted by military conquest and
further expansion. This empire-building expansionism worked until it reached
its ecological limits. Often, supply lines from the fertile periphery to the
depleted imperial core became so long and vulnerable they were impossible to
protect from raiders and "barbarians". Eventually—when the armies necessary
to suppress unrest, protect the empire's borders and guard its supply lines
nearly consumed more energy than they extracted, transported and protected—
even the greatest agrarian empires, like Rome, collapsed from over-extension.
Even the most enduring agrarian civilizations, like the Chinese and the
Egyptian, experienced cyclical crises and near collapses, only to re-emerge. The
underlying reason for their repeated re-emergence is linked to their location on
land kept perpetually fertile and irrigated by the work of the enormous rivers
that flow through them. Floods, droughts, crop failures and famines threatened
successive Chinese dynasties. Their vast hydraulic system of dikes, dams,
levees and irrigation canals went through periods of over-silting,
mismanagement and disrepair by imperial rulers. Yet the foundation for
rebuilding their civilization was always there—the relatively abundant, river-
fed, perpetually fertile land. The less access an agrarian society had to the
restorative powers of fertile river valleys the more vulnerable it became to
permanent collapse from limited access to water, erosion, deforestation and
topsoil depletion.
In the century prior to the Industrial Revolution, the entire agrarian epoch
was approaching a critical socio-environmental threshold similar to the
ecological-demographic crisis that lead to the first great transition from the
foraging to the agricultural epoch. Under extreme duress in the final century of
the Agricultural Era, the global rate of technical innovation had begun to revive
after a long period of relative techno-environmental stasis. Despite increased
interaction between agrarian societies and rapid advances in agricultural
technology, deforestation, topsoil depletion and serious demographic pressures
were pushing agricultural civilizations from Central America and Eurasia, to the
Middle East and Europe to the brink of environmental collapse.

20
In Europe, despite enclosure and the intensification of farming
technologies & methods, there simply wasn't enough fertile land to raise sheep
for clothing, grow grain for bread, and still have enough virgin timberland left
over for wood—society's most versatile and rapidly disappearing energy source.
Thus, population growth, combined with timber famine and land scarcity,
intensified the territorial competition between west European monarchies and
fueled military rivalries. Of course, this only further accelerated the pace of
resource depletion, especially the felling of forests to build rival navies.
Europe was technologically and culturally backward in many respects
compared to China and the Islamic world. However, the absence of a unified
European political system produced intense political-military rivalry for
territory between the continent’s many monarchies as well as an emerging
highly competitive market economy relatively free of domination by any single,
unified political authority. This intensified trade and military rivalry spurred
rapid innovation in the areas of transport and weaponry resulting in the
invention of rifles and cannons mounted on fast moving sailing vessels that
could reach, vanquish and conquer any other society on the planet. Resource
depletion and the rising cost of warfare drove European states to explore the
world in search of gold, spices, slaves, land and other precious resources. With
the most advanced weapons in the world, these explorer-conquerors subjugated
and enslaved other civilizations, pillaging their wealth and enslaving their
people to supply them with the resources to finance their incessant continental
arms race. Global supply lines eventually sustained several competing
expansionist agrarian/colonial empires crowded onto the continent of Europe.
Despite dramatic demographic fluctuations due to the "importation" of
several devastating plagues and diseases from other continents (especially Asia
and Africa), Europe's rebounding urban population continued to tax the
continent's resources. Energy in the form of water power, and especially wood,
had become scarce and expensive. European manufacture was dependent on
either wood burning or waterpower. Both were in extremely limited supply.
There were only a finite number of ideal locations near rivers where currents
could be harnessed to power machinery and the entire continent was
experiencing an extreme timber shortage.
European forests were disappearing at an alarming rate. Wood was not
only industry's primary energy source; it was used for heating, cooking,
housing, wagons, carriages and, of course, ships. Nowhere was this timber
famine more acute than the British Isles. After clearing its own forests, England
began importing timber from Scandinavia and its New World colonies and
slaughtering whales by the thousands for oil to fuel its growing economy.

21
Desperate for a new source of cheap energy, it was here that a solution to the
timber famine was found that would fundamentally change the world—the
mechanical exploitation of fossil fuels.
Coal and the steam engine allowed European civilization to overcome the
resource and energy bottlenecks of the agricultural epoch for the first time in
history and enter the industrial epoch. Once carboniferous energy was tapped
to power the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, the factory and a
vast electrical grid, industrial civilization quickly metastasized, subduing and
consuming the entire planet in a few generations.
What Lessons Can Be Gleaned From Our History on this Planet?
One clear lesson that can be gleaned from history is that many civilizations have
collapsed by fouling their own nests. Further, demographic pressure and
resource depletion lie at the core of the major historical transitions from foraging
to agriculture and from agriculture to industrial civilization.
An Increasing Pace of Growth, Exhaustion & Crisis
It appears that both the foraging and the agricultural way of life were relatively
stable for many generations; eventually, however, both fell into serious
ecological crisis. For the small, relatively egalitarian foraging societies this crisis
did not mature for many thousands of years. Perhaps this is because the
mechanisms driving it were based on the slow pace of gently rising population
pressure, gradual shifts in climate, the accompanying scarcity of hunting
grounds and the depletion of wild plants and animals. While the agricultural
epoch may seem long and relatively static compared to the hectic 2 centuries of
modern industrial civilization, the agricultural epoch was much shorter than the
foraging epoch. This is because the agricultural epoch produced new forces that
accelerated the pace of population pressure and resource depletion that
hastened its own demise:
• Agriculture required more labor (both human and animal) than foraging and
generally produced more calories to feed this labor. Thus, unless populations
were kept at or beneath carrying capacity, agriculture had the potential to
deplete the soil and the stocks of timber it required to sustain itself. Yet limits
were seldom put on population growth because the short-run need for
laborers tended to outweigh the long run need to limit population.
• By creating a storable surplus of grain and requiring higher levels of labor
organization and management, agriculture tended to encourage the
development of an elite class of priests, overlords, monarchs and military men
who were not directly involved in farming. This elite protected society and its
surpluses from invasion and plunder, led the rituals that promoted soil

22
fertility and abundant harvests, and directed the labor process from above.
This elite had to be fed. In fact, it was quite common for the agrarian elite to
exhaust the land and the peasants beneath them in an effort to live an ever
more opulent lifestyle.
• The above dynamics often led to war as elites depleted their homelands and
went in search of new territories to exploit. Warfare consumed even more
resources because armies had to be fed. Successful conquests used conquered
territory to temporarily feed an expanding class of warrior-kings; however,
vanquished efforts at empire building usually resulted in total social and
ecological collapse.
Although agricultural civilization introduced these additional dynamics
that tended to hasten the advent of ecological depletion and crisis, industrial
civilization went much further, much faster. It introduced qualitatively new
economic forces that accelerated the pace of boom and bust past anything the
agricultural epoch had witnessed. By technologically tapping the earth's vast
rich stores of fossil fuels the pace of industrial society took-off. With abundant
supplies of fossil fuels to overcome the energy limitations of agricultural life, the
masters of this new industrial technology tore down the traditional political and
religious barriers to rapid production for profit. The credo of the new industrial
elite—whether capitalist or “communist” was: KEEP GROWING! THE BIGGER,
THE BETTER!
Today, rival economic and political units—multinational corporations and
nation-states—dominate the hierarchical power structure of this high-energy
globalized civilization. Locked into a system based on intense national and
corporate competition, where wealth and military might are derived from this
petroleum-powered capacity to create and destroy, neither political nor
corporate elites appear willing or able to free themselves from the systemic
compulsion for constant growth. Beneath this system’s corporate, political and
military elite lies a large class of middle managers, educated professionals and
skilled workers who form the consumer base of this global system. This
relatively affluent middle class is reluctant to abandon their media-hyped
culture of over-consumption. Though many partially recognize the serious
social and environmental downsides of pursuing this lifestyle, and a small
minority has voluntarily embraced a simpler, more sustainable lifestyle, the vast
majority continues to court bankruptcy in order to buy into the dream of “living
large.” This is unfortunate, because behind the chic facade of affluence and
power the entire system is rapidly devouring its ecological foundations like a
voracious serpent eating its own tail.

23
Pushed by the invisible hands of supply and demand and the competitive
drive to maximize profit, the hyper-metabolism of industrial society has
required and fueled global rivalry for expanding markets, as well as new
sources of energy, raw materials and cheap labor. In just a few centuries, fossil
fuel-powered global tentacles of resource extraction, transportation, production,
processing and consumption have pillaged and polluted the entire planet. By
the middle of the 20th
century, this system was teetering on the brink of nuclear
annihilation and marinating in its own toxins. Today, even the “successes” of
high-energy global industrialism are morphing into ecological nightmares.
Over consumption and over population are driving thousands of species to
extinction and shredding the very web of life that supports human survival.
Meanwhile, the skyrocketing combustion of petroleum around the planet is
beginning to drastically alter global climate patterns with potentially disastrous
results.
It is highly unlikely that modern industrial civilization will last another
century. In fact, it is already poised on the brink of self-extinction. Its once-
abundant power supply of carboniferous energy is rapidly disappearing and, by
most accounts, will become effectively exhausted over the next 50-100 years. In
many ways this is fortunate because fossil fuel combustion—which is
responsible for the most dangerous forms of air, water and land pollution—is
beginning to disrupt the biosphere to the point of threatening human survival.
Further, the demographic growth, resource extraction, industrial pollution,
urban sprawl and toxic wastes of modern civilization are destroying the habitats
of countless species. The current rate of extinction, which is estimated to be
between 10-100,000 species a year, is already faster than the period of mass
extinction that buried the dinosaurs. For humans, this amounts to playing a
perilous game of ecological Russian roulette because no one can predict how far
this mass extinction must go before the ecological web that supports human life
unravels beneath us.
Although industrial civilization has permitted millions of people to live
relatively affluent, comfortable lifestyles and has permitted thousands to
become unbelievably rich, billions have hardly benefited from global
industrialism while, for millions more, life has become substantially worse.
Nothing has been more destructive to life at the bottom of the industrial system
than the global transition from solar-based, localized subsistence and local-
market agriculture to fossil fuel based, global, export agriculture. This process
has displaced and uprooted rural communities all over the world, especially in
the developing nations. These uprooted farming families have migrated to the
cities desperately looking for scarce, low-paying jobs. They have become the

24
cheap labor of the modern global economy. Their desperation keeps wages low
throughout the global system by undermining the bargaining power of labor.
In the developed nations, bankrupt small farmers--unable to compete with
petroleum-powered, government-subsidized industrial agriculture--have
abandoned rural life and migrated to the cities looking for work. In the US, they
provided much of the cheap labor that allowed industry to abandon its
unionized, relatively well-paid, Northern workforce by moving to the South.
This poorly paid Southern workforce has been kept docile and un-unionized by
the constant threat that industry may move again; this time to poorer nations
like China, Brazil, Mexico and Thailand where an even more desperate landless
workforce scrambles for survival in the urban slums surrounding all of the
Third World’s major cities.
Meanwhile, a small handful of giant agro-industrial corporations have
assumed control of the global food chain. Their control over the technologies of
petroleum-based mechanization, fertilization, pest control, food storage,
marketing, processing and transport—combined with their access to vast pools
of financial credit and government subsidies—give them an unfair advantage
over the world’s declining number of small farmers. For now, this advantage
has meant enormous profits for corporate agri-business and ruin for small
farmers, while the middle class stills enjoys a relatively affordable supply of
highly processed, industrially grown, genetically engineered foods from all over
the world. But is this food system healthy and sustainable? Or will it soon run
out of energy while it poisons the land, water and air with its wastes?
Understanding the Great Leaps of History:
The Role of Necessity, Opportunity, and Capacity
In a few brief centuries, industrial civilization has rushed toward the brink of an
ecological crisis it took agricultural and foraging societies thousands of years to
reach. Can the careful study of past ecological crises help us find a way out; or
at least give us some idea what the way out looks like and where and when
potential emergency exits may appear?
As the brief overview of history presented so far indicates: necessity is indeed
the mother of invention. The agrarian epoch did not replace the foraging epoch
until a severe ecological crisis necessitated a dramatic shift in lifestyle. People
are reluctant to give up a familiar, time-tested way of life and replace it with a
new one unless they feel there is little alternative. Hunter-gatherers had been
aware of how to grow plants and domesticate animals long before they adopted
the settled, agricultural way of life. As long as there was plenty of wild plants

25
and animals to sustain life, there was no point in going to all the trouble of
domesticating them.
Likewise, it had long been known that coal could be burned for fuel, but
going to all the trouble of digging it out of the ground was pointless as long as
there were plenty of forests nearby to supply more clean-burning wood. Also,
as long as there was plenty of wood and water power, there was no need for
steam engines to power factories, and, as long as there was plenty of land to
provide horses with hay there was no need to lay miles of track and build
steam-powered railroads to haul coal and other goods into the cities. Thus, it
becomes clear by examining these two great historical transitions, that necessity
played a major role in both of them.
However, if we look closer and ponder the question: "Why did these
transformations happen where they did?" we quickly realize that necessity was
not the only factor at work here. Was it sheer coincidence that agriculture
emerged in the crowded river valleys of the Fertile Crescent? Here, where
relatively dense populations of hunter-gatherers found the agricultural lifestyle
relatively easy to adopt, necessity met up with another important condition—
opportunity. No plows were necessary, minimal irrigation was required, and
rivers constantly replenished the soil’s fertility. All of the first major
agricultural civilizations were located in fertile river valleys that provided the
techno-environmental opportunity to make the transition to a settled farming life
with minimal effort.
Likewise, no matter how hard-pressed for timber a society becomes it
cannot make the transition to fossil fuels unless they are there to be found.
Many areas of Europe (and the world) were short on wood, but nowhere will
you find a greater combination of necessity and opportunity than the British
Isles. Here the timber famine was most serious; and here too coal could be
found in great abundance not far underground. Thus, the English had both the
necessity to find an alternative fuel and the opportunity to profitably mine its
vast coal reserves with a minimal application of mining and mechanical
technology.
However, some astute historians have pointed out that China was short of
timber and had discovered large deposits of coal that they had begun using as
fuel 700 years before England. Thus, if necessity and opportunity were all that
was required to make the leap to industrial civilization, why wasn't China the
site of the industrial revolution? The comparison between England and China is
instructive because it alerts us to a third critical factor involved in the process of
major historical transformations—capacity.

26
The iron masters of North China fueled blast furnaces with coke in the
first decades of the 11th Century, thereby solving the chronic fuel problem in
the tree-bare landscape of the Yellow River Valley. Historian William McNeill
reports that:
"Within a relatively small region of north China, on or adjacent to
bituminous coal fields...[iron] production went from nothing to 35,000
tons per annum by 1018. Large scale enterprises arose...employing
hundreds of full-time industrial laborers,..."2
However, according to McNeill, China's iron and steel industry had decayed
by the 12th Century and "by 1736 the once busy blast furnaces, coke ovens and
steel manufactories were abandoned entirely,...Production was not resumed
until the 20th Century."3 Thus, despite the pressures of timber scarcity and
over-population, China turned her back on a ready supply of fuel (coal) and a
valuable source of construction material (iron & steel). Why?
Unlike England (and the rest of Europe), China was a large, unified
political system with few serious rivals or enemies. The feudal emperors of
China had the power to dominate economic activity within their borders and
they kept a close watch on the merchant/industrial class that had the potential
to erode their monopoly on power. McNeill says that the Chinese state was the
sole buyer for iron, and that as long as its policies favored rapid technological
development and expansion of iron and steel production, the coal and steel
industries grew. However, if government policy changed, production could be
halted easily. McNeill believes that the Sung Dynasty cut-off support for iron
and steel production because it feared the growing power of a group of
industrial entrepreneurs who appeared to be allying themselves with a cabal of
treasonous military leaders against the dynasty. With no other market for steel,
the minute the dynasty stopped buying, the industry died. What factors gave
Chinese dynastic rulers such economic and political omnipotence? Why were
they so unwilling to experiment with change?
Unlike feudal Europe, which was divided by many small fiefdoms in
constant rivalry with one another, China possessed a long history of unified
dynastic political rule. This unified system was based on an extensive system of
hydraulic agriculture: a vast network of dams, levees, dikes, drainage projects,
canals and flood control systems designed to maximize the area devoted to
agriculture. Without this extensive water management complex, these relatively
arid river valleys would not have produced much food; but with irrigation,
yields were high and relatively stable. Thus water constituted the most valuable
2 McNeill, Pursuit of Power: 27.
3 McNeill, Pursuit of Power: 33.

27
resource in China's agricultural energy base; and managing and maintaining its
flow was the key to political power.
Managing China's vast, complex hydraulic infrastructure was the
centerpiece of each dynasty's widespread, yet centralized power structure.
Agricultural surpluses, in the form of taxes, allowed Chinese emperors to build
a powerful bureaucracy of administrators, religious leaders, scholars, generals,
and tax collectors. The emperor and the state were all powerful. Total
submission was demanded from those at the bottom. Nevertheless, the Chinese
system was a relatively well-administered, top-down structure of villages,
under provinces, under urban administrative centers connected by efficient
networks of roads, canals, and rivers.
By controlling this vast hydraulic infrastructure a long succession of
Chinese dynasties dominated the East Asian land mass and squelched any rivals
to their extensive political power. This political system, once in place, was
extremely resistant to change. A qualitative transformation of China's energy
base toward fossil-fueled industry was precluded by both the extreme costs of
maintaining the traditional system and the dynasty's power to squelch any rival
technologies and their promoters.
European history, in sharp contrast to China, is one of political
fragmentation and rivalry. Based on a system of rainfall agriculture and lacking
any vast, complex infrastructure as a foundation for establishing political
domination over the entire continent, European feudal politics was
characterized by many small, weak, rival kingdoms that were scarcely able to
control the local landed nobility or the growing merchant class. Rivalrous
European monarchs found alliances with the merchant-manufacturing class
useful as a source of credit, resources, innovation and colonial expansion.
Over taxing merchants and suppressing manufacturers could easily drive
them into an alliance with political rivals across the border. The survival of
European monarchies became increasingly dependent on their ability to channel
and maximize the benefits of trade and manufacture to increase their economic
and military power by establishing colonial empires—a system known as
mercantilism. Eventually, this conflict prone, fragmented system allowed the
industrial-merchant class to challenge the landed aristocracy’s control over
European states.
In this setting, the British royalty saw coal-powered, steam engine
technologies not as a threat, but as a benefit in their rivalry with other nations.
The fate of the British crown became dependent on an alliance between coal
powered factory owners and the landed gentry. Instead of suppressing the use

28
of fossil fuels and the industries they powered, the landed gentry and the British
government teamed up with them to expand and protect their empire from rival
European monarchies. Unlike China, Britain possessed the capacity to embrace
fossil fuels and use them to advance its political interests.
To summarize, the opportunity to exploit untapped energy resources (like
coal) will only be realized if society possesses the political capacity to seize,
rather than suppress, this opportunity. If this political will is discouraged or
stifled, the final factor that allows great historical transitions to unfold may not
emerge.
It is this historical convergence of ecological necessity, techno-
environmental opportunity and political capacity that determined the historical
time and place of the major transitions from foraging to agricultural society and
from agriculture to industrial civilization. If this hypothesis is accurate, it may
prove useful to examine these waning decades of industrial civilization in order
to locate the convergence of these factors once again. At this point in history it
appears that the convergence of fossil fuel scarcity and ecological crises
(necessity), the technological expertise necessary to adopt of alternative energy
sources (opportunity) and the political support for embracing a renewable/solar
mode of production (capacity) is most clearly emerging in places like Western
Europe, Japan, and perhaps China.
The primary political/military hub of the current world system—the
United States—has the technological opportunity to move away from fossil fuel
based civilization. However, the necessity factor is subdued by America’s lack
of the extreme fossil fuel scarcity based on its own carboniferous resources and
its military control over global petroleum reserves. Also, the capacity factor is
restrained by the powerful retrograde influence over American politics wielded
by the coal, oil and automobile industries (as well and the military/petroleum
complex). The combination of politically subsidized cheap oil and political
resistance to promoting renewable energy technologies keeps the United States
far behind the cutting edge of the coming sustainable energy transition.
In the periphery of the current system, the necessity factor is very
prominent in the poor nations that lack fossil fuel resources. However, these
poor countries do not have the technological opportunity to respond to this
scarcity by tapping solar energy. In addition, some of these countries are major
oil exporters. These petroleum exporters possess none of the 3 factors needed to
embrace the transition to a new historical epoch.
Thus, it is the technologically rich, petroleum poor, politically innovative
countries of Europe and Japan where these three factors may converge to

29
promote an avenue of escape from a dying system of carboniferous industrial
capitalism. It is also possible that China could move rapidly in this direction if
its political leadership has the foresight to abandon coal, which is causing
serious environmental and health problems for Chinese society despite its
relative abundance. However, China’s political stability is based on the promise
of continual, rapid economic growth. The Chinese middle class is already
approaching the size of America’s. This cannot continue without rapidly
expanding China’s combustion of fossil fuels.
Renewable energy cannot sustain China’s growth engine. Thus, the
Chinese government would have to abandon its commitment to exponential
growth and adopt economic and ecological sustainability as its fundamental
priority in order to provide the political capacity needed to respond to its
escalating ecological crisis with a concerted commitment to building a solar-
powered, steady-state society. At present, such a policy reversal seems remote.
Yet, the politically directed nature of the Chinese economy provides the
potential to reverse course and move quickly in a new direction if such a
reversal was ever adopted by the country’s political elite. Because of China’s
enormous population and powerful economy, the future decisions made by
Chinese leaders will have a major impact on the fate of the entire planet.
Green Theory & The Demise of Industrial Civilization
Green theory contends that modern civilization lives on a life-support system of
non-renewable carboniferous energy (coal, oil, natural gas). Since the industrial
revolution, slower paced wind, water, human and animal powered technologies
have been replaced by carbon-powered technologies that have accelerated and
electrified modern life. With access to the tremendous amounts of concentrated
energy stored beneath the earth, this high-energy society "leaves behind" (at
least partially and temporarily) the slower pace of life constrained by
dependence on the seasonal energy cycles that reproduce plant and animal
energy. Using the electric light and the steam engine, factories were able to
avoid the work cycles imposed by day-and-night and changes of season.
Industrial society had the energy to work around the clock, rain or shine, 365
days a year, turning out commodities in enormous amounts and at an incredible
pace, and transporting them around the world in a matter of hours. With this
extra storehouse of energy at its disposal, human society became far larger and
more complex than ever before. In addition, industrial society's capacity to
exploit tremendous stores of carboniferous energy provided it with the illusion
that, for the first time, people were no longer dependent upon nature.

30
To adapt to, and take advantage of, the increased pace of carbon-powered
production, humans adopted methods of work, social interaction and exchange
that were flexible and efficient. The essence of “efficiency” became the
replacement more expensive human labor with cheaper fossil-fueled machinery.
Society’s new rulers became those who controlled this complex, high-powered
system of production. Efficiency and flexibility were best served by allowing
the profit motive to govern the pace of production and market mechanisms, like
supply and demand, to allocate resources--including human labor. Yet these
impersonal mechanisms, while highly efficient and flexible, tend to resist all
attempts at social control even by those who are nominally "in charge" of
society's most powerful economic and political institutions. Thus, the survival
of workers and managers alike requires the mindless acceptance of relentless
economic growth and constant consumption, while the entire industrial system
appears to be locked into a process of non-stop acceleration with no particular
destination.
Partially because many people continue to feel uncomfortable with
mindless production and consumption, religious belief systems that imbue life
with a higher purpose have continued to be influential during the industrial
epoch. However, the belief systems that grew out of the industrial period have
been primarily secular and political in character. These secular, more political,
belief systems became known as "ideologies". Most of them have openly
extolled the supremacy of humans, rationality, and science over nature,
spiritualism and theology. Conservatism, Liberalism, Socialism and
Communism all assume, and extol the virtues of, limitless industrial "progress"
and reduce nature to a vast cornucopia of natural resources. Instead of holding
either nature or deities as sacred, these ideologies worship the gospel of growth
and place their faith in technology and science.
While ignoring the ecological limits to industrial growth, each of these
ideologies posits political rationales for ever-escalating rates of production and
consumption. For some, like conservatism and liberalism, the alleged purpose
of pursuing limitless growth is primarily individual--expanding access to
personal wealth and liberty. For other “isms”--like socialism and communism--
the purpose is supposedly more collective and social: ending poverty,
oppression, scarcity and class exploitation; promoting equality, peace,
democracy and social justice. But whether the purpose is individual or social,
endless economic growth is assumed to be both possible and necessary. This is
the most basic dividing line between all of the industrial era ideologies and the
Green perspective. Greens begin by assuming that limitless economic growth is both
unsustainable and unnecessary. This belief is deeply grounded in the Green

31
interpretation of the constantly evolving relationship between human society
and the natural environment.
With abundant supplies of fossil fuels to overcome the energy limitations
of agricultural society, the masters of this new industrial technology tore down
the traditional political and religious barriers to rapid production for profit. In
the early decades of the industrial revolution, the credo of the new industrial
elite—whether capitalist or “communist” was: KEEP GROWING!
Today, the top of the global “power pyramid” is dominated by rival
economic and political units—multinational corporations, banks, and nation-
states. These global institutions are locked into a system based on intense
national and corporate competition, where wealth and power are derived from
a petroleum-fueled technological capacity to create and destroy. Neither
political nor corporate elites appear willing or able to free themselves from the
systemic imperatives of constant growth and military rivalry.
Beneath this system’s corporate, political and military elite lies a large
class of middle managers, educated professionals and skilled technocrats who
form the consumer base of this global system. This relatively affluent middle
class is reluctant to abandon their media-hyped culture of over-consumption.
Though many partially recognize the serious social and environmental
downsides of pursuing this lifestyle, and a minority have voluntarily embraced
a simpler, more sustainable way of life, the vast majority continue to court
bankruptcy in order to buy into the dream of “living large”. This is unfortunate,
because behind the chic facade of affluence and power the entire system is
rapidly devouring its ecological foundations like a voracious serpent eating its
own tail.
Pushed by the invisible hands of supply and demand and the competitive
drive to maximize profit, the hyper-metabolism of industrial capitalism has
required and fueled global rivalry for expanding markets, new sources of raw
materials and cheap labor. In just a few centuries, fossil fuel-powered global
chains of resource extraction, transportation, production, processing,
consumption and disposal have ravaged the entire planet. By the middle of the
20th
century, this system was teetering on the brink of nuclear annihilation and
marinating in its own toxins. Today, even the “successes” of high-energy global
industrialism are morphing into nightmares. Over consumption and over
population are driving thousands of species to extinction and shredding the
very web of life that supports human survival. Meanwhile, the skyrocketing
combustion of petroleum around the planet is beginning to drastically alter
global climate patterns with potentially disastrous results.

32
It is highly unlikely that modern industrial civilization will last another
century. In fact, it is already poised on the brink of self-extinction. The
abundant stores of petroleum that form its primary energy base are rapidly
disappearing and, by most accounts, will become effectively exhausted over the
next 50 years. In many ways this is fortunate because fossil fuel combustion—
which is responsible for the most dangerous forms of air, water and land
pollution—is beginning to disrupt the biosphere to the point of threatening
human survival. Further, the demographic growth, resource extraction,
industrial pollution, urban sprawl and toxic wastes of modern civilization are
destroying the habitats of countless species. The current rate of extinction,
which is estimated to be between 10-100,000 species a year, is already faster than
the period of mass extinction that buried the dinosaurs. For humans, this
amounts to playing a perilous game of ecological Russian roulette because no
one can predict how far this mass extinction must go before the ecological web
that supports human life unravels beneath us.
Although industrial civilization has permitted millions of people to live
relatively affluent, comfortable lifestyles and has permitted thousands to
become unbelievably rich, billions have hardly benefited from global
industrialism while, for millions more, life has become substantially worse.
Nothing has been more destructive to life at the bottom of the industrial system
than the global transition from solar-based, subsistence and local-market
agriculture to fossil fuel based, globalized, export agriculture. This process has
displaced and uprooted rural communities all over the world, especially in the
developing nations. These uprooted farming families have migrated to the
cities desperately looking for scarce, low-paying jobs. They have become the
cheap labor of the modern global economy. Their desperation keeps wages low
throughout the global system by undermining the bargaining power of labor.
In the developed nations, bankrupt small farmers have abandoned rural
life and have migrated to the cities looking for work. In the US, they provided
much of the cheap labor that allowed industry to abandon its unionized,
relatively well-paid, Northern workforce by moving to the South. This poorly
paid Southern workforce has been kept docile and un-unionized by the constant
threat that industry may move again. This time to the poor, peripheral nations
like Mexico and India where an even more desperate landless workforce
scrambles for survival in the urban slums surrounding all of the Third World’s
major cities.
Meanwhile, a small handful of giant agro-industrial corporations have
assumed control of the global food chain. Their control over the technologies of
petroleum-based mechanization, fertilization, pest control, food storage,

33
marketing, processing and transport—combined with their access to vast pools
of financial credit and government subsidies—give them an unfair advantage
over the world’s declining number of small farmers. For now, this advantage
has meant enormous profits for corporate agri-business and ruin for small
farmers, while the middle class still enjoys a relatively affordable supply of
highly processed, industrially grown, genetically engineered foods from all over
the world. But is this food system healthy and sustainable? Or will it soon run
out of energy while it poisons the land, water and air with its wastes?
Can International Cooperation Prevent Environmental Collapse?
Most Greens are fairly pessimistic about the prospect that world leaders will be
able to turn the looming environmental catastrophe around. Their pessimism is
based on the fact that these political and economic elites owe their positions of
wealth and power to the current unsustainable system. With such a deep stake
in the status quo, will they be willing to make changes that will undermine
corporate profit, threaten military might and decentralize political power? Can
they afford to stop selling lifestyles of mindless consumption to the middle
class, while pillaging the planet’s resources and profiting from the de-
humanizing labor of those at the bottom?
Greens generally agree that any hope for change lies with those who recognize
the serious crises on the horizon and are willing to rock-the-boat and demand
change from the powers-that-be. These people have become part of a
movement that is neither corporate nor governmental. They have created
activist organizations and political movements within “civil society” in
countries all over the planet. The transnational efforts of these non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) have forced political and corporate leaders
to respond to the serious environmental problems facing industrial society.
They are creating communities of survival, networks of solidarity and nodes of
resistance all over the planet. But many fear that change will be too little, and
too late.

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