‘Environmental Problems Can Only Be Solved by Transforming Our Ethical Standpoints – Once This Is Achieved Our Social and Political Institutions Will Be Transformed as Well’ Critically Assess the Political Discourses

‘Environmental problems can only be solved by transforming our ethical standpoints – once this is achieved our social and political institutions will be transformed as well’

Critically assess the political discourses and ethical approaches that support this claim. Illustrate with reference to environmental problems and policy responses towards them.

The transformist political discourse of ecological socialism, anarchism and ecofeminism are concerned with human emancipation and incorporate solving the environmental dilemmas that are a symptom of our era. These discourses show that only by transforming our ethical standpoints will we be able to resolve the issues that face us in the future and from these transformations, new social and political institutions will emerge. These approaches challenge the historically based assumptions and values inherent in our conservative western society by asking us to think differently about things we take for granted. The social transformist discourses cover a wide range of political thought from the liberals, through social democrats to democratic socialists and at the extreme left, the Marxists. The anti-authoritarian anarchists are similarly wide-ranging from the militant grassroots activists to the pacifist supporter of Gandhi. The ecofeminist extends the anarchist thought but is a critic of the entrenched inequalities represented by androcentrism (male-centredness) suggesting that the domination of nature reflects man’s domination of the female in western society.

Ecological concerns are often viewed as opposing the capitalist ethics of modern society which is seen as ignoring the consequences in both human and environmental terms of industrialisation and wealth creation. The social transformists unite in their goal to represent the working classes leading to common concerns over the environment. The liberal approach would suggest that there is a need for fair play. Rules governing conduct provide the

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