ABSTRACT
As we have seen, ideologies are born of crisis. Starting from a shared sense that something is wrong, that the world is not as it should be, ideologies attempt to explain or account for puzzling or problematic features of people’s lives. Then, on the basis of these explanations, they offer diagnoses and prescriptions for the ills of a troubled time. The ideology we examine in the present chapter is certainly no exception to this rule. Although many of its ideas are quite old, this ideology is quite new-so new, in fact, that it has, as yet, no generally agreed-upon name. The term “ecologism” has caught on and gained acceptance in Great Britain, as has “environmentalism” in the United States. But because many within this broadbased international movement call their perspective green politics and themselves “Greens,” we will refer to them and their ideology in this way.1
