the late environmentalist, author, & philosopher
This article examines in depth how even Canada, a vast country blessed with abundant resources and with a realtively small population, is far from immune to the problems arising from industrialism and its associated social and economic disruption. It was published in The Ecologist vol. 7 no. 5, June 1977. See also Part One and [...]
The ecological breakthrough we have all been waiting for has occurred in France. Almost a thousand Ecology candidates presented themselves at the municipal elections on the 13th March and they did unexpectedly well, obtaining anything between 8% and 14% of the votes, which is enormous in a country with a multi-party system. The fact is [...]
In 1972 a group of eminent scientists whose specialised work has led them to consider different aspects of the environmental crisis got together at Helsinki, at the instigation of Professor Nicholas Polunin, one time Professor of Ecology at Oxford University and now editor of the journal Environmental Conservation, to examine together the future of the [...]
We are proud to present to our readers this special triple-sized issue of The Ecologist. It is dedicated to President Jimmy Carter. We feel that he shows signs of being the first statesman since the beginning of the Industrial Age to have had the courage and foresight to seek to apply—against considerable odds—socio-economic policies that [...]
By now ecologists have grown accustomed to established politicians stealing their clothes and turning them into rags—be it President Giscard sporting an oak leaf as his electoral symbol whilst commissioning yet more nuclear power stations along the Rhine, or the Prime Minister of Japan describing Narita as an ‘environmental airport’. Rare indeed is the party [...]
The nature of development is to force people to exchange the essential for the superfluous—to sacrifice the biosphere on which life depends, for short term increases in material consumption. The only possible outcome is increased poverty and deprivation. This is why development must be reversed – degrowth, or ‘de-development’, is the way forward. Editorial article, [...]
Chapter 3 of The Stable Society: its structure and control: Towards a Social Cybernetics, Wadebridge Ecological Centre, UK, 1978 « previous chapter · contents · next chapter » We all think that we know what is meant by religion, yet if we were asked to define it, we would probably all do so differently. In the irreligious [...]
Does an ecosystem become more stable as it becomes more complex? Many do not think so. The problem, however, is that ‘stability’ and ‘complexity’ have never been defined. Published in The Ecologist Quarterly, Winter 1978. Until recently ecologists have tended to assume along with Elton that as a system becomes more complex so does it [...]
