ABSTRACT
In 1963 the noted biologist and influential early environmentalist Sir Julian Huxley, co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund and then Director of UNESCO, addressed threats to the environment which he believed stemmed from the unfortunate confluence of overpopulation and an exploitative attitude to the natural world. Huxley illustrated his thesis with a biological metaphor, to highlight how environmental problems such as overpopulation soon become social problems. By adopting a putatively environmental and ecological discourse, fundamental issues of historical oppression, exclusion and exploitation were marginalized and overwritten by reference to concerns which normalized Western civilization as the natural order of society. James Howard Kunstler's romanticization of hierarchical white middle-class society illustrates how his adoption of quasi-ecological discourse works to marginalize not just by ethnicity, but also on grounds of gender, sexuality and class. In addition to being culturally and ethnically homogenous, the environmental and sustainability movements tend towards being ideologically homogenous, with orthodoxy and consensus being key values.
