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Abstract

Polarised choices have been a recurrent feature of
environmental debate in Australia and other Englishspeaking
“New World” societies: either development
or environment. The countercultural environmentalists
of the 1960s and ’70s viewed nature as locked in battle
with society, ecology as pitted against technology,
wilderness as the antithesis of the city. The field of
environmental ethics that emerged at this time reflected
these binary distinctions in a stark moral choice
between modern anthropocentrism (human-centred
ethics) or environmentalist ecocentrism (nature-centred
ethics). During the 1980s, environmental concerns
were taken up in modern institutions, becoming a
routine aspect of science, law, bureaucracy, education,
media and electoral politics. By the early 1990s, the
label “environmentalism” was attached to a wide
variety of competing moral positions. The resulting
intra-environmentalist debate has often polarised
around “dark green” or radical advocates of wholesale
transformation of modernity and “light green” or
reformist advocates of incremental evolution towards
eco-modernity.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Davison, A
Journal or Publication Title:	Bioethical Inquiry
ISSN:	1176-7529
DOI / ID Number:	10.1007/s11673-009-9190-1
Additional Information:	The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com
Item Statistics:	View statistics for this item

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