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ciple for decision-making in all but name  widely advocated in recent
debates regarding the experimental planting of genetically modified
crops, and supported by many political conservatives. Scruton sees a
related link between environmental thinking and conservatism in the
idea of the  maintenance of the social ecology (Scruton, 2006, p. 8). By
this he means the duty of the current generation to pass on our social
and ecological inheritance  of which we are the  temporary trustees
(ibid.). He also believes that there is a link between the idea of local
loyalties that is present in some conservative thinking, and the localism
of much of the green agenda.  There is no evidence that global political
institutions have done anything to limit global entropy , he writes (ibid.,
p. 16). Thus he finds it surprising that greens have not followed their
localism to its logical conclusion: i.e. the conservative view that we
 must retain what we can of the loyalties that attach us to our territory,
and make of that territory a home (ibid.). Conservatives are suspicious
of cosmopolitan rootlessness, and suspicious of it when they see it in
green globalists such as George Monbiot (2004). Scruton makes the
point that rooted localism should appeal to greens on the grounds that
it solves the  motivation problem : that of finding a non-egotistic
motive which may be elicited in ordinary members of society and relied
upon to serve the long-term ecological goal (Scruton, 2006, p. 13).
The evidence for congruence between radical political ecology and
conservatism, then, seems strong, but there are a number of areas where
the relationship is severely strained, and others still where it cannot be
said to exist at all. We can begin with Gray s  traditional conservative
tenet that individual flourishing can occur only in the context of forms
of common life (Gray, 1993b, p. 124), and that this is an idea shared by
 Green theory (ibid., p. 136). But just what is this  common life , and is
it the same for political ecologists and for conservatives? From a con-
servative point of view, Gray says that people s  deepest need is a home,
a network of common practices and inherited traditions that confers on
them the blessing of a settled identity (ibid., p. 125). The common life
162 Green Political Thought
of which he speaks is therefore defined in primarily historical and cul-
tural terms as expressed through tradition. There are indeed radical
greens for whom culture and history are very important. Some of the
resistance to road-building programmes, for instance, is based on a
belief in the cultural significance of features of the land which are
destroyed by building contractors. My own view, though, is that valuing
 nature in the currency of  culture in this way is precisely what dis-
tances conservative defences of nature from political-ecological ones.
The political ecologist sees value in nature in itself, and if this value
derives from history at all, it is natural history that counts, and not
human history in the form of tradition and culture.
This is as much as to say that the  common life of which radical
greens speak is an ontological and moral one that crosses species
boundaries. It is important for Gray that common cultural, conservative
forms:
cannot be created anew for each generation. We are not like
the butterfly, whose generations are unknown to each other; we are
a familial and historical species, for whom the past must have
authority (that of memory) if we are to have identity.
(Gray, 1993b, p. 124)
But the moral and ontological common life of political ecologists can
be created anew for each generation through the intellectual effort of
grounding inter-species responsibility in a thoroughgoing naturalism
that recognizes the implications of our being human animals.
Thus the ecocentrism of radical greenery sets it apart from conserva-
tism just as it sets it apart from all other modern political ideologies. The
only time Gray mentions anthropocentrism, the bête noire of the polit-
ical ecologist, is in the following context:  Green theory is an invaluable
corrective of the Whiggish, anthropocentric, technological optimism by [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]