Ecology movement

The global ecology movement is one of several new social movements that supported the formation of Green Parties in many democratic countries beginning at the end of the 1970s. It is centered around the political and lifestyle implications of the science of ecology and the idea of nature as a value in itself. "Ecology movement" is an umbrella term[?] for different groups, ideology[?] and attitudes[?]. An older precedessors of the ecology movement is the conservation movement, going back to the beginning of the 20th century. The borderline to the environmental movement is blury.

Looking under the umbrella

Many people confuse the ecology movement as a whole with political Greens - who have social justice concerns beyond ecology. Green parties have roots in the ecology movement, though.

Today the term "ecology movement" is associated often with the more moral, more confrontational, and more rigorous stance taken by Greenpeace and other even more radical NGOs, e.g. Earth First, Earth Action[?], Sea Shepherd[?] in favor of the Precautionary Principle and strong fundmental preventive measures for biosafety, biosecurity and biodiversity. The methods of these groups often involve the idea of Direct Action.

A radical wing of the ecology movement opposes and actually sabotages or destroys infrastructural capital of what they deem to be "Earth rapist" activities. This includes the Anarchist Golfing Association[?] and the Earth Liberation Front, which are sometimes accused of "terrorism", despite no documented incident of either ever having harmed a single animal, humans included. A very few in the ecology movement would accept doing bodily harm by non-legal means to achieve their goals - they have no organized presence and are rejected by almost all players in the ecology movement. Some who hold property damage and bodily harm in moral equivalence, may reject this distinction, e.g. the US FBI which has labelled the Earth Liberation Front as a "terrorist group" (although the U.S. Department of Defense does not).

On the other side of the spectrum, there are individuals and groups that believe in either a more political-lobbyist or more scientific than activist approach.

At least since the Rio World Summitt in 1992, the discussion about sustainable development and sustainability has surfaced and partly replaced older ecological oriented ideologies. This and the establisment of a global anti-globalization movement in the late 1990s can be seen as follow-ups to the ecological movement.

See also:

factions

• Greens
• green economists
• Gaians
• environmental movement

ideologies

• sustainable development
• deep ecology