ABSTRACT
Environmentalism is an ideology full of contradictions. We are conflicted beings: self-interested and cooperative, xenophobic and empathetic, utilitarian and preservationist, spiritual and material, in need of the natural world and eager to be separated from it. And yet, it is from this collective discord that our next sociocultural improvisation must emerge. Environmentalism should be the collaborative effort that provides us with a road map. In practice, it has had difficulty moving past its own internal disagreements. I reject the notion of environmentalism based on the premise that foraging human cultures had it right, and that the relationship our ancient ancestors had with the Earth was ruined by the emergence of agriculture, technology, hierarchical relationships, materialism, and rational science. Similarly, I reject progressive environmentalism as innovation that isolates, divides, polarizes, and dehumanizes as much as it provides viable solutions to environmental problems. Instead, I propose a hybrid environmentalism that is inclusively material, collectively anthropocentric, and broadly relational. This sort of environmentalism emphasizes responsibility thinking. We must identify and protect ecological structures and functions that are critical for human life, and we must be mutually accountable to all other members of our species.
