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132 I THE PHirosorny oF Eco-PoLirics
the radical left searches for the revolutionary class it could lead but
makes do with repressed minorities, the dissatisfied masses join right¬
wing populist movements or take out their frustration in manufactured
identity-political hysteria. No positive program or social basis can be
tied to being left-wing anymore. It survives as an intellectual martial
art in the universities of the Western world, as long as it can find a
suitable right-wing to distance itself from.
Ecological considerations draw the Greens towards a program more
radical than that of the left: the just distribution of goods and rights no
longer suffices. They also know that the appropriation of the
appropriators, as foretold by Marx, would not solve anything. They must
reject the whole system of industrial mass societies built upon the increase
of production and the “scientific” organisation of society. Above all, they
must reject the inhumanity that has long lain hidden within even the
most reasonable forms of political centralisation — which, let us admit,
the socialist and communist left had no intention of doing. Ecological
politics sees the solution in localisation, the rethinking of the goals of
the good life, the revolution of eco-friendly technologies and the re¬
examination of modernity’s view of man and nature — by no means from
anti-modern motives. They wish to create the conditions for all this by
restoring the human scale of things. This cannot happen without ensuring
the self-regulation of communities, i.e., the development of grassroots
power structures, because this alone makes possible the responsible
participation of those concerned in decision-making. ‘This, if I am not
mistaken, is neither a specifically left-wing nor a right-wing program.
Conservatives and freethinkers alike can boldly call it their own; this is
made more difficult by the left-wing label attached to it.
It cannot be repeated often enough that ecopolitics does not revolve
around “environmental” issues. Rather, it seeks a way out of a
civilisational crisis. It moves beyond the age of politicising that pits
against each other the “liberal” perspective of freedom, the “socialist”
perspective of equality/justice and the “conservative” perspective of
fraternity/community. It focuses on the connection between the three
fundamental Enlightenment-era principles in the conviction that they
refer to three complementary sub-systems of social homeostasis, which
can only ensure the comparatively balanced — sustainable — functioning
of the system together. If any of the three, be it the market-individualist,
the bureaucratic-centralist or the consensual-solidarist, attain
predominance, the result is an oppressive force on the individual. Sooner
or later, it will damage the fabric of society irreparably.