The Coming Authoritarian Ecology

The book examines ecological issues such as climate change and biodiversity, articulating local and global scales, and short and long term perspectives, questioning what "development" and "progress" are. The goal is to show how diverging points of view are conflictingly articulated to one another, in a political ideology perspective. This perspective, which is close to the main actor's point of view, allows displacement of the usual analysis, and offers a new synthesis.

Table of Contents:
Preface.ix Part 1 The Situation in France 1 Introduction to Part 1 3 Chapter 1. Exploring the Earth’s Hidden Face 5 1.1. What is ecology? 5 1.2. Ecology, a new science? 9 1.3. What can we learn from ecology and the natural sciences? 12 1.3.1. The planet 12 1.3.2. France. 14 1.3.3. The United Kingdom. 18 1.3.4. What must be done? Three positions: green growth, degrowth and other development 20 1.4. What should be taken seriously? Risk, relativism and constructivism 23 1.4.1. Social sciences and natural sciences: the “Great Divide”?24 1.4.2. Expertise and public decisions 29 Chapter 2. Who Are the Ecologists? 33 2.1. “Whisteblower” scientists33 2.2. From environmentalism to ecologism.36 2.2.1. Naturalist associations37 2.2.2. A “movement” with unclear outlines40 2.2.3. “Ecologists” and “environmentalists”44 2.3. Ecology in politics, in France and around the world. 49 2.3.1. Ecologism in the French political arena49 2.3.2. Early alter-globalization and international ecopolitics54 Part 2. An Active Minority against the Majorities.59 Introduction to Part 2 61 Chapter 3. Liberal Skepticism 67 3.1. Liberalism or emancipation from the Ancien Régime70 3.2. The rights of nature over humanism? 77 3.2.1. Animal rights.78 3.2.2. The rights of nature80 3.2.3. The legal dimension. 83 3.2.4. The “preference for nature” over human rights? 85 3.2.5. The rights of nature: a new universalism? 88 3.3. A refusal of the liberal rules of politics? 89 3.3.1. A rejection of the Rule of law? Catastrophism and “direct action”. 90 3.3.2. “Natural order” against “unnatural humans”? 94 3.4. The “liberal-libertarianism” of French ecologism.105 3.4.1. Neither the State, nor the market: libertarian inspiration 106 3.4.2. Neither right nor left: The centrist position. 107 3.4.3. Faced with “Khmers verts”, the solution of technology and green capitalism. 109 3.4.4. Ecological economics or the return of virtue.113 3.5. The ecologist concern about an eco-fascism 115 Chapter 4. Toward Eco-socialism? 117 4.1. What is socialism? 121 4.1.1. When the science of wealth produces pauperism 121 4.1.2. Marxism or the moral unit of socialism 125 4.1.3. Four socialist currents 133 4.2. A difficult eco-socialism 141 4.2.1. The theory of the “secondary front” 142 4.2.2. What does “socializing” mean in the age of the Anthropocene? 152 4.3. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” 168 Chapter 5. From Centrism to Eco-fascism 171 5.1. What is conservatism? 175 5.1.1. Contemporary Orléanism 177 5.1.2. Illiberal conservatisms: from Bonald to the “extreme” right-wing183 5.2. Is ecologism conservative? 198 5.2.1. A real, but very minor, conservative current.200 5.2.2. The war of partial connections and partial conclusions214 5.2.3. “The ecology of the right”: Liberal, groupuscular or ecofascist 238 5.3. Composing with the real: The question of alliances  241 Conclusion 243 Bibliography 249 Index 291