CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 809
Much the same can be said of Buddhism, which—if
those who also subscribe to Shinto, Taoism, and Confu-
cianism are also counted as Buddhists—has perhaps 700
million adherents, most of them in Asia. The barriers to
population control in Asia and the potential for accepting
it both seem to be connected much more with social
conditions than with religion. Therefore, it seems un-
likely that changes in the religion would have any
substantial effect on establishment of population policy,
although religious support for small families might
encourage acceptance of family planning.
Similarly, it is hard to picture Hinduism, as an entity,
becoming a force in population control. More than 99
percent of the 450 million or so Hindus live in Asia,
mostly in India. Like Buddhism, it is a rather heterogen-
eous, relatively noninstitutionalized religion. There is
still considerable opposition to population control
among Hindus, perhaps based more on medical beliefs,
local superstitutions, and a sense of fatalism than on
anything inherent in the religious structure.
For Westerners who favor population control, one a£
the best courses of action seems to lie in working with the
already establishedQ'eligious group3)to change people's^
attitudes toward population growth.. In the rest of the
world, the relative fragmentation of religious groups,
their lack of hierarchic organization, and their psychoso-
cial traditions would seem to limit their capacity to
influence population control efforts.
Religious Attitudes and the Environment
In the United States, the unorthodox but constructive
and quasi-religious attitudes first expressed widely in the
1960s by members of the whole-Earth, hippie movement
may well help save the environment. The initial phase of
the hippie movement was characterized by a groping and
testing that produced, among other things, the dangerous
macrobiotic diet and the horror of the Manson family.
Aside from such excesses, however, the hippies borrowed
many religious ideas from the East, particularly Zen
Buddhism, combined them with the collectivist, passivist
element from Christian tradition, and attempted ro fnrge
a code based on close personal relationships, spiritual
values, a reverence for life, group self-reliance, and an
abhorrence of violence. By the mid-1970s this code had
become well established in a more mature and praise-
worthy form that might be called the independence
movement. People in that movement are attempting to
find simpler, more ecologically sound modes of exis-
tence, and to reduce their dependence on fancy, nones-
sential, and vulnerable technological gimmickry. Their
unofficial publications such as Mother Earth News and
CoEvolution Quarterly abound with suggestions for
disconnecting oneself from the "effluent society." If any
one idea binds members of the movement together, it is
the belief—essentially religious—that human beings
must cooperate with nature and not attempt to subdue
nature with brute force.
Many people in our society are unhappy with these
attitudes, which go against long-cherished and reli-
giously sanctioned political and economic beliefs. They
feel that turning away from a consumer orientation has
grave implications for the future of the economy. Others
see in the independence movement the vanguard of a new
social revolution that
_ could lead to a very different, far
better society.^
White, Jr., professor emeritus of history at t h e |
^University of California, Los Angeles^nd past president ~"
of the American Historical Association, has suggested
that the basic cause of Western society's destructive
attitude toward nature lies in the Judeo-Christian tradi-
tion. He pointed out, for instance, that before the
Christian era, people believed trees, springs, hills^
streams, and other objects of nature had guardian spirits.
Those spirits had to be approached and placated before__
one could safely invade their territories: ^By destroying^)
fpagan animismyhristianitv made it possible rn
nature in a mood of indifference to the feelins of natural
objects."10 Christianity fostered the basic ideas of
""progress"^and of time as something linear, nonseparat-
ing, and absolute, flowing from a fixed point in the past to.
an end point in the future. Such ideas were foreign to the
Greeks and Romans, who had a cyclical Tftprpp1' 0<r TJrr"'
and did not envision the world as having a beginning.
Although a modern physicist's concept of time might be
somewhat closer to that of the Greeks than to that of the
'"The historical roots of our ecological crisis.
 810 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
Christians, the Christian view is nevertheless the preva-
lent one in the Western world: God designed and started
the universe for the benefit of mankind; the world is our_
oyster, made for human society to dominate and exploit.
Western science and technology thus can be seen to have
their historical roots in the Christian dogma of human-_
ity's separation from and rightful mastery over nature^
Europeans held and developed those attitudes long
before the nppominirv to exploit the Western hemi-
sphere arrived. The frontier or cowboy economy that has
characterized the United States seems to be a naturaL
extension of that Christian world view/Therefore, White
claimed, it may be in vain that so many look to science
and technology to solve our present ecological crisis:
Both our present science and our present technology
are so tinctured with orthodox Christian arrogance
toward nature that no solution for our ecologic crises
can be expected from them alone. Since the roots of
our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must
also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or
not.
A number of anthropologists and others have taken_
issue with White's thesis, pointing out that environmen-
tal abuse is by no means unique to Western culture, and
that animism had disappeared, at least in western
Europe, before Christianity was introduced. As examples
they cite evidence of ancient and prehistoric environ-
mental destruction, such as the human-induced extinc-
tion of Pleistocene mammals and the destruction of the
fertility of the Near East by early agricultural activity, as
well as the behavior of non-Western cultures today.
Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan of the University of Minne-
sota observed that there is often a large gap between
attitudes toward the environment expressed in a religion
or philosophy and the actual practices of the people who
profess those attitudes.11 While Chinese religions, for
example, stressed the view that man was a part of nature
(rather than lord of it) and should live in harmony with it,
the Chinese did not always live by that belief. Concern
for the environment, especially preserving forests and
protecting soils, were expressed throughout Chinese
history, but Yi-Fu Tuan suggests that this may often
'Our treatment of the environment in ideal and actuality.
^
have been in response to destruction that had already
taken place. The fact that China was a complex civiliza-
tion complete with a bureaucracy and a large population
doubtless militated against fulfillment of those ideals. By
the twentieth century, China's once-plentiful forests had
been nearly destroyed to build cities and clear land for
agriculture. All that remained in most areas were small
patches preserved around temples. Ironically, the present
government, which explicitly rejects the traditional reli-
gions, has attempted to restore the forests on a large
scale.12
Lewis W. Moncrief of North Carolina State Univer-
sitv^who might be described as an environmental
anthropologist, feels that the religious tradition of the.
West is only one of several factors that have contributed,,
to the environmental crisis.13 Along with some other
anthropologists, he has suggested that an urge to improve
one's status in society is probably a universal human
characteristic and that expressing this urge through
material acquisitiveness and consumption of resources is,
if not universal, at least common to a great variety of
cultures. Perhaps what is unique about Western culture
in this regard is the degree of its success.
Moncrief postulated several factors that he felt were
just as influential as the Judeo-Christian outlook in
determining European and North American behavior
toward the environment. The first were the development
of democracy and the Industrial Revolution, which
together provided individual control over resources (if
only a family farm) for a far greater proportion of the
population than before and simultaneously provided the
means to exploit those resources more efficiently. The
existence of a vast frontier fostered the belief in North
America that resources were infinite; all of our wasteful
habits derive from that. Moncrief thinks it is no accident
that the first conservation movement appeared just as the
frontier was closing; Americans suddenly and for the
first time began to realize that their resources were, after
all, finite.
In 1893, moved by a remark from the 1890 census
12
For an overview of present Chinese attitudes, see L. A. Orleans and
R. P. Suttmeier, the mass ethic and environmental quality, Science, vol.
170, pp. 1173-1176 (December 11,1970); a related account of Japanese
attitudes toward the environment is Masao Watanabe, The conception of
nature in Japanese culture.
I3
The cultural basis for our environmental crisis.

about the disappearance of public land and the con-
sequent disappearance of the frontier, Frederick Jackson
Turner, then at the University of Wisconsin and sub-
sequently at Harvard, observed:
American social development has been continually
beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial
rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion
westward with its new opportunities . . . furnish the
forces dominating American character.14
A generation earlier, E. L. Godkin, editor of the
Nation, had written that the American frontier popula-
tion had "spread itself thinly over a vast area of soil, of
such extraordinary fertility that a very slight amount of
toil expended on it affords returns that might have
''tisfied even the dreams of Spanish avarice."I5
Traditional North American (and, to some extent,
OCouncil of Churches) about the ethics of using
European) attitudes toward the environment thus are not
exclusively products of our religious heritage, although
that doubtless played an important part. These attitudes
may just spring from ordinary human nature, which in
Western culture was provided with extraordinary social,
political, technical, and physical opportunities, particu-
larly connected with the nineteenth-century American
frontier. Such opportunities were bound to engender
optimism, confidence in the future, and faith in the
abundance of resources and the bounty of nature. That
they also produced habits of wastefulness and profligacy
was not noticed. Past^ institutions in the United States,
rarely dealt with environmental problems; if they were
recognized at all, they were usually considered to be
someone else's responsibility.
In the twentieth century, as the growing population
became increasingly urban and industrialized, the en-_
virqnmental effects multiplied, and the nation was rather
suddenly confronted with a crisis. How today's Ameri-
cans ultimately resolve the environmental crisis will
depend on much more than changes in philosophical
outlook, but such changes unquestionably must precede
or at least accompany whatever measures are taken.
^Individual conduct is clearly capable of being modified
id directed by an appropriate social environment—the
u
The significance of the frontier in American history, in The early
writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, ed. F. J. Turner.
15
Aristocratic opinions of democracy.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS
change in reproductive habits in the United States
testifies to that, as does the great increase in environ-
mental consciousness. Unfortunately, the ppvirnnmpntal
problem may prove more difficult because it requires
changing more than the altitudes and behavior of indi-
viduals: those of firmly established, powerful institu-
tions—primaril business and governmental organiza-
tionS—
How large a role organized religion may play in
guiding the needed changes in individual attitudes
toward the environment or in influencing the behavior of._
other institutions is still uncertain. Many religious
groups have already shown leadership, including some
already mentioned in connection with population-
related issues. A particularly hopeful sign was [the
concern expressed in dfjnuarv 19f6^jby the
sprparHnp; rhp tprhnnlngv of nuclear power, and the
discussion promoted by thai World Council of Churches,
nrrthe mic]ea.r issue and on foe relation of energy policy
to the prospects for adjust and sustainablej,world.16
Ecological Ethics
Many persons believe that an entirely new philosophy
must now be developed—one based on ecological reali-
ties. Such a philosophy—and the ethics based upon
it—would be antihumanist and against Judeo-Christian
tradition in the sense that it would not focus on an
anthropocentric universe.17 Instead, it would focus on
human beings as an integral part of nature, as just one
part of a much more comprehensive system.
This is not really a new perspective. In one sense,
Western philosophy has been a continuous attempt to
establish the position of Homo sapiens in the universe,
and the extreme anthropocentrism of thinkers like Karl
Marx and John Dewey has been strongly attacked by,
among others, Bertrand Russell.18 Russell, for example.
i6
See The plutonium economy: A statement of concern, Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, January 1976, pp. 48-49; P. M. Boffey, Plutonium: its
morality questioned by National Council of Churches, Science, vol. 192,
pp. 356-359 (April 23, 1976); Paul Abrecht, ed., Facing up to nuclear
power, Anticipation, no. 21, October 1975, pp. 1—47.
1
'See Frank E. Egler, The icay of science: A philosophy of ecology for the
layman; and George S. Sessions, Anthropocentrism and the environmen-
tal crisis. The latter is a good, brief summary with a useful bibliography.
tB
A history of Western philosophy; the debate is summarized in Sessions,
Anthropocentrism.

of theprimeval forests,yrilling for oil on the northern)
C slope of Alaska} and so on. It is a tribute to the
conservationists, past and present, that any of our primi-
tive areas remain relatively unspoiled.^ Political and
financial power tend to be arrayed against conservation,
and, as people increase and resources dwindle, the
situation seems bound to deteriorate further. In many
parts of the world the situation is worse than in the
United States; in a few it is better.
There are encouraging signs that a new thrust is
appearing in the conservation movement. Growing
numbers of people have realized that conservation is a
global problem, that in the lon^ run it is not enough to
surh isnlarpH treasures as a Prove of redwood
trees. If global pollution causes a rapid climatic change,
the grove cannot long survive. Many conservationists
now recognize thaiLif the growth of the human popula^
tion is not stopped, and the deterioration of the planetary
environment is not arrested, nothing of value will he
conserved.
This understanding and the growing general public
awareness of the problems of the environment have given
rise to a number of new organizations. Some of them, like
Friends of the Earth (FOE1. are more militant offshoots
of older conservation groups. Others, including. En-
vironmental Action (which grew from the organization
that sponsored the first Earth Day in 1970) and F.coiogy;
Action, are new. Zero Population Growth (ZPG) is
primarily concerned with the population problem but is
also interested in the environmental consequences of it.
ZPG, one branch of the Sierra Club. Environmental,
Action, and FOE have foregone the tax advantages of an
apolitical posture in order to campaign and lobby for
their goals, frequently combining their efforts on issues
of common concern.y'hev also cooperate in environ-)
Cmentalist lawsuits) (see "The Legal System," below)
through organizations such as The Environmental De-^
fense Fund (EDF) and the Natural Resources Defense__
Council (NRDC). Such organizations generally differ
from many of the older conservation groups in being
more oriented to humanity as an endangered species than
to preserving wilderness and wildlife only for their
aesthetic and recreational values^ Sister organizations of
FOE, as well as ZPG, have been established in other
countries.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 813
In Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, the environ-
mental movement has established its own political par-
ties, known in Britain as the Ecology Party, in France as
Ecologie et Survie, in New Zealand as the Values Party,
etc. These parties have succeeded in winning seats in
Britain's Parliament and gaining significant percentages
of the vote in several countries.22b In March 1977, the
ecology party in France won a nationwide average of 10
percent of the vote in municipal elections. In some towns
in Alsace (where the party originated) they won 60
percent.221'
It seems likely that conservationist and environmentaL
organizations will become still more militant and more
united—especially in their global concerns. While im-
portant local battles must continue to be fought, more
general programs of public education and political action
should become predominant. Obviously, it is no longer
necessary to plead for conservation only on aesthetic or
compassionate grounds, since the preservation of the
diversity of life and the integrity of the ecological
systems of Earth is absolutely essential for the survival
of civilization.
(SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY;
For many people, science and technology have taken on ___
the aspect of{a religidfl) How often one hears statements
beginning, "any society that can send a man to the moon_
can^. . ." and ending with some problem—usually
immensely more complex and difficult than space
travel—that science and technology are expected to
solve!23 The population-food imbalance is a common
candidate; others are various types of pollution or other.
ecological problems.
Three things are generally wrong with these state-
ments of faith. First, science and technology have not yet
reached the point relative to those problems that they had
reached relative to the man-on-the-moon project by
"''Edward Goldsmith, Ecology—the new political force.
"''Ecologists emerge as a potent force in French election, New York
Times, March 20, 1977.
23
0ne book on the human predicament written from this point of view
(but in which the science is often very weak) is John Maddox's The
doomsday syndrome. See the retrospective review written three years later
by John Woodcock, Doomsday revisited.