We tend to think of environmental catastrophes -such as the recent Exxon Valdez oil-spill disaster in the Bay of Alaska-as “accidents”: isolated phenomena that erupt without notice or warning. But when does the word accident become inappropriate? When are such occurrences inevitable rather than accidental? And when does a consistent pattern of inevitable disasters point …

Continue reading “Death of a Small Planet: It’s growth that’s killing us”

Before the 1970s, Malthusianism in its various historical forms claimed to rest on a statistically verifiable formula: that population increases geometrically while food supply increases merely arithmetically. At the same time, anti-Malthusians could refute it using factual data. Arguments between Malthusians and their opponents were thus based on empirical studies and rational explorations of the …

Continue reading “The Population Myth (Part 2)”

Editors’ Note: The following article was written nearly a year ago in response to a supplement in the November I, 1987, issue of Earth First! The greater part of the supplement attacked the author, Murray Bookchin, for some six columns. After an orgy of personal recriminations, unfounded accusations. and sheer falsehoods, Earth First! refused to …

Continue reading “Yes!–Whither Earth First?”

The “population problem” has a Phoenix-like existence: it rises from the ashes at least every generation and sometimes every decade or so. The prophecies are usually the same namely, that human beings are populating the earth in “unprecedented numbers” and “devouring” its resources like a locust plague. In the days of the Industrial Revolution, Thomas …

Continue reading “The Population Myth (Part 1)”

No. 6, May 1988 American ecology movements — and particularly the American Greens — are faced with a serious crisis of conscience and direction.

This article originally appeared in Green Perspectives No. 2 February 1986. In my article, “Toward a Libertarian Municipalism2,” I advanced the view that any counterculture to the prevailing culture must be developed together with counterinstitutions to the prevailing institutions—a decentralized, confederal, popular power that will acquire the control over social and political life that is …

Continue reading “The Modern Crisis”

This article was originally published in Michael Zimmerman, ed., Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993) and has been slightly revised for publication here. What defines social ecology as social is its recognition of the often-overlooked fact that nearly all our present ecological problems arise from deep-seated social …

Continue reading “What Is Social Ecology?”

This article originally appeared in Green Perspectives No. 1 January 1986. There are two ways to look at the word “politics.” The first—and most conventional—is to describe politics as a fairly exclusive, generally professionalized system of power interactions in which specialists whom we call “politicians” formulate decisions that affect our lives and administer these decisions …

Continue reading “The Greening of Politics: Toward a New Kind of Political Practice”

An interview with Murray Bookchin conducted by the editors of Kick It Over magazine. K.I.O.: You’ve said in your writings that we are undergoing a change as far-reaching as the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture or from agriculture to industry. Could you elaborate on this and talk a bit about why this is …

Continue reading “Radicalizing Democracy: Murray Bookchin Interviewed by Kick It Over”

Note: This article was written and published in the River Valley Voice, a New England publication, during the 1984 Democratic primary campaign. Although it makes repeated allusions to the 1984 elections, the views it expresses have a more lasting value, and are submitted for discussion to the reader as a Green Program Project paper. A …

Continue reading “Popular Politics vs. Party Politics”