The first point to note about this book is that it has a misleading title. Any readers who expect a clear, concise summary of what environmentalists believe will be very disappointed. This is not a book for the beginner. For one thing, it takes a considerable amount of previous knowledge of political theory to make sense of it. I found it pretty heavy going myself, despite several years of fairly extensive reading about politics. For another thing, the author's vague, rambling, long-winded style of writing does not help.

A more accurate title would be Ecology and the Enlightenment: Friends or Enemies? The author's declared aim is:

To seek clarification of the real aspects of opposition between values of ecology and enlightenment, and thereby to foster communication between their respective proponents. (p.6)

Growth in wealth and cultural refinement for some only meant intensified exploitation, misery and even slavery for many others. (p.12)

Millions in the Third World (and not only there) ..... have been deprived of their erstwhile livelihood by the economic manoeuvres of the rich world's multinational companies. (p.139)

In Chapter 1, Mr Hayward argues that there is a potential conflict between ecology and enlightenment because the aim of enlightenment is mastery of nature, and this may cause damage to the natural environment if human reason is not quick enough to recognise and solve problems which arise during the struggle for mastery. However, he suggests that there is common ground between them because they are both searching for the truth about reality and are not afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom. He concludes that the conflict can be resolved if one of the aims of enlightenment is to identify the limits to human reason. He makes a serious blunder on page 30, where he quotes a passage from a speech about the environment and says it was made in 1854 by the Red Indian chief Seattle. It is now known that it was actually written in 1971 for a film script.

Chapter 2 is about the ethical aspects of the relationship between mankind and nature. Mr Hayward notes that the more extreme environmentalists, who call themselves "deep ecologists", have criticised Enlightenment thought on the grounds that it is anthropocentric - that is, it treats human beings as if they were the only living things in the world that mattered. He points out that:

Whatever is of value in the world, only humans apprehend it in the form of value. (p.53)

Whether it is possible to acknowledge the specificity of humans as valuing beings without assuming that they are the only beings of value in the world. (p.84)

Chapter 3 deals with economics. Mr Hayward starts by noting that the ideals of the Enlightenment cannot be fulfilled without a certain amount of wealth and prosperity, and asks whether this is compatible with protecting the environment, given that economic growth so often seems to damage the environment. He explains that economics cannot be reduced to ecology - he calls this "the fallacy of ecologism" (p.114) - and shows that political systems and property rights also matter. However, because he approaches economics from a socialist point of view (he mentions Marx a lot in this chapter), he does not realise how the problems of pollution and waste of natural resources can be dealt with. He mentions that air and water are polluted because they have no price in the marketplace, but he only suggests cost-benefit analysis as a solution. He does not appreciate the libertarian insights that natural resources are usually squandered when they are under state ownership or no effective ownership, not under private ownership, or that the way to stop air and water being polluted is to discover ways of extending property rights to them, so that victims of pollution can claim compensation from the culprits.

In Chapter 4, which is about rights and justice, Mr Hayward's socialist perspective is again obvious. It is rather alarming to see him casually mention that Karl Marx was against the idea of human rights, but neglect to mention that Marx's followers murdered millions of people - two facts which are not unconnected. Mr Hayward emphasises that rights are inseparable from responsibilities, which is nothing new to classical liberals, and finally comes to the conclusion that the concept of rights should not be abandoned altogether, but must be watered down to "overcome the abstract individualist limits of the liberal discourse" (p.172), which I suppose is better than advocating Gulag camps.

In one passage in this chapter, Mr Hayward discusses John Locke's Second Treatise of Government and says it implies that there is a right of access to the means of life on grounds of need, but no right to any property which exceeds the means of life. In fact this is a misinterpretation. What Locke actually says is that you have no right to claim more natural resources than you can use, not that you have no right to more than you need. If all property rights had to be justified on grounds of need, then, strictly speaking, no one would have a right to own anything but a cave, a bearskin and a lump of raw meat, because mankind survived for tens of thousands of years without needing anything more. Locke does say in Chapter 4 of the First Treatise of Government that you have a right to enough food and clothing to preserve life, if you have no other means of subsistence, and Mr Hayward would have been on firmer ground if he had turned to this passage for support. Mr Hayward later deals with the argument that a right of access to the means of life is impractical because the world does not have enough resources to go round, so some people must be left to starve. He points out, rightly, that population growth tends to slow down and stop as wealth increases, because people in poorer societies regard their children as a form of insurance against poverty in their old age, so they have as many of them as possible to ensure that at least some of them grow up to adulthood. He proposes that a right of access to the means of life would help to achieve this. However, he does not consider the possibility that, if the best way to increase wealth is a free market where property rights are secure, then a right of access to other people's property might hinder this. He mentions Garrett Hardin's famous article "The Tragedy of the Commons" (1968), but he does not see that private property rights are the way out of the dilemma.

There is another passage in the same chapter where Mr Hayward claims that if farmers in the Third World are allowed to grow cash crops for export instead of food crops for local consumption, this can raise food prices so much that it causes a famine. His authority for this implausible allegation is Henry Shue's book Basic Rights (1980). In fact, Mr Shue makes it clear that he is describing a hypothetical example, not a real case.

Chapter 4 does include some sound comments about animal rights. Mr Hayward emphasises that "animals cannot claim rights on their own behalf" (p.156), and argues that they cannot be put on a par with humans because, since they cannot communicate, people cannot understand exactly how they feel.

The fifth and final chapter is mainly about strategy. Mr Hayward discusses the relationship between ecology and democracy, and says a lot about the importance of participatory democracy and the difficulties of making it work in practice. The trouble is that he belongs to the school of thought which thinks participatory democracy is a substitute for individual freedom. In his ideal society, you would spend all your time voting on how other people should run their lives, but you would not be free to run your own life, because everyone else would be voting on that. Being a socialist, he does not realise that politics is not part of the solution but part of the problem. Whether a political system is democratic or despotic, environmental problems cannot be dealt with effectively as long as natural resources are under state control. The government's job should be to define and enforce property rights, and then leave private owners to manage resources themselves. Mr Hayward regards it as a serious problem that individuals may have different ideas about what is good, and he spends a lot of time discussing the problem of how to agree on the common good. However, this is only a problem if you take state ownership for granted. Private ownership enables people to agree to differ, so they can each pursue their own idea of the good on their own property, either by themselves or as members of voluntary associations. Mr Hayward dismisses the free market on the grounds that it only means "making choices between a narrow range of pre-packaged commodities" and "the consumers are not sovereign, despite certain illusory appearances" (p.202). In reality, the number of items on sale in the average shop is vastly greater than the number of names on the ballot paper in the average election, or the number of options in a referendum, so the market gives people a much wider choice than democracy.

If Ecological Thought: An Introduction persuades the lunatic fringe of the environmentalist movement to give up some of their dafter ideas,then it will have served a useful purpose, but libertarians are unlikely to learn anything new from it.

References.

Hardin, Garrett, "The Tragedy of the Commons", In: Science 162 (3859), 13 Dec. 1968, P.1243-1248.
Shue, Henry, Basic Rights, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1980.

Roderick Moore

(Roderick Moore is an information scientist who works in the north of England.)