The Deep Ecology Movement

What do Henry Thoreau, Aldo Leopard, and Paul Shepard have in common? They were all well known environmentalists that influenced the creation of the Deep Ecology movement as well as the Foundation for Deep Ecology. Deep Ecology is the belief that “the well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves [and those] values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes” (Foundation for Deep Ecology). Rachel Carson’s novel “Silent Spring” started the major wave of environmentalism in the 1960s by bringing to light the devastating effects modern industrial technology had on the environment. The term “Deep Ecology”, however, was first used in environmental literature in 1973 by Arne Naess. Naess believed two types of environmentalism existed: “long-range deep ecology movement” and “shallow ecology movement”(FDE). He believed that the shallow ecology movement stopped before reaching “the ultimate level of fundamental change” and advocated technological fixes such as recycling and improving car efficiency compared to the deep ecological movement which involved deep questioning of human value and redesigning society’s systems, values, and methods to that of which would retain “the ecological and cultural diversity of [earths] natural systems” (FDE). To accept the Deep Ecology movement