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and Winner s observation that A crude, consumer-driven culture pre-
vails, in which the spirit is denied and the arts are rejected or reduced
to a privileged enclave for the few (Porritt and Winner, 1988, p. 247)
and, more generally, that it is . . . worth stressing that the underlying
aim of this green consumerism is to reform rather than fundamentally
restructure our patterns of consumption (ibid., p. 199). Once more
we are forced to recognize the difference between environmentalism
and ecologism: the strategy of green consumerism, in its call for change
substantially in line with present strategies based on unlimited pro-
duction and consumption, is a child of the former rather than of the
latter.
122 Green Political Thought
The strategy of change in individual habits leading to long-term
social change takes no account, either, of the problem of political
power and resistance to which I referred in the previous section. It is
perhaps unrealistic to assume that those forces that would be positively
hostile to sustainability will allow current forms of production and
consumption to wither away. Of course, this is much less of a problem if
the green movement has in mind only some form of attenuated
environmentalism, but if (once again) it is serious about the desire to
usher in a radically ecocentric society, then it will eventually be forced
to confront the issue of massive resistance to change.
What seems common to these lifestyle strategies as I have treated
them is that they mostly reject the idea that bringing about change is
a properly political affair they do not hold that green change is
principally a matter of occupying positions of political power and
shifting the levers in the right direction. In Chapter 1 I noted that
spirituality is of greater importance to the green perspective than is
probably publicly realized, and this has made a significant impression
on some activists in the movement with regard to how change might
come about. The general point behind the spiritual approach is that the
changes which need to take place are too profound to be dealt with
solely in the political arena, and that the psyche is as important as the
parliamentary chamber. Jonathon Porritt writes that for sustainable
development . . . a spiritually inspired work ethic will be an important
instrument of change (Porritt, 2005, p. 144). Marilyn Ferguson has
recommended the use of psychotechnologies (Ferguson, 1981) to bring
about calmer, gentler, more green states of consciousness, and the
Findhorn community in Scotland bases its activities on the belief that
this is indeed the right path to change. Such an approach takes seriously
the point made above namely that political opposition to radical green
change will be massive and side-steps it. Bahro talks expressively of
needing to take a new run-up from so far back that we can t afford to
waste our time in the mock battles which are so typical of Green com-
mittees (1986, p. 159), and the change he envisages is the metaphysical
reconstruction advocated by Jonathon Porritt and David Winner
(1988, pp. 246 9).
This is, of course, in direct opposition to any theory which has
it that political and social change is primarily generated through
people identifying their immediate material (widely understood) inter-
ests and acting to satisfy them. (For an empirically informed assess-
ment of the role of psychotechnologies in social change see Seel,
1999, ch. 6.) I shall consider this kind of approach later in this
chapter.
Strategies for green change 123
Communities
A general problem with the strategy of lifestyle change is that it is
ultimately divorced from where it wants to go, in that it is not obvious
how the individualism on which it is based will convert into the com-
munitarianism that is central to most descriptions of the sustainable
society. It would appear more sensible to subscribe to forms of political
action that are already communitarian, and that are therefore both a
practice and an anticipation of the advertised goal. In this sense the
future is built into the present, and the programme is more intellectually
convincing and practically coherent.
In this context Robyn Eckersley has argued that The revolutionary
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