Ecology, Ideology and Power
This book warns against the effort to sell a reactionary economic,
political, and social agenda dressed up as concern for and protection of
the environment. The author is in no way opposed to any genuine
ecological concerns, but this work demonstrates that what we call
"environmentalism" is primarily an expression of the world view of
segments of the world's upper class. When they talk to us about
pollution, resource scarcity, and overpopulation, they are actually
talking about their own fears and hatreds of the common people, and
their ambitions for themselves. Whatever label we affix to today’s
environmentalism, it is certain that it carries over into the 21st
century the same kinds of reactionary, aristocratic, and elitist
tendencies evident two centuries ago in England and Germany. Such
tendencies also emerged in a significant way in the late 1800s in the
United States, involving Malthusianism, social Darwinism, and the
eugenics movement.
Softcover, 166 pages
Donald Gibson was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. He served as
a communications analyst in the United States Air Force during the
1960s. Don is a professor of sociology at the Greensburg campus of the
University of Pittsburgh. He received his PhD from the University of
Delaware and taught on that campus as well as at Middlebury and Oberlin
Colleges. Professor Gibson's research on social power and on U.S.
economic problems led him to writing on the administration of John F.
Kennedy and related topics around the struggle between economic
democracy and elitist oligarchy.