John Revington’s essay “Deep Ecology is not Enough” argues that Deep Ecology, whatever its value as spiritual and ethical ground, cannot on its own be a complete framework for effective environmental action. Using the Terania Creek rainforest campaign as his case study, he makes the case that protecting a place takes organised political engagement, not ecological philosophy alone: “without political action, there would be no more natural world to be Ecologically Deep about.” Deep Ecology answers “Who am I?” and “What matters?”; it was never built to answer “What’s the campaign strategy?” — using it for the latter, in his phrase, is “like using a violin to sweep the floor.”
Most relevant to this site’s own current concerns is the essay’s direct naming of a misanthropic current within the movement. Revington writes plainly: “I am convinced that for some people, Deep Ecology is attractive because it seems to provide a justification for their hatred of the human race.” He doesn’t treat this as incidental — he argues it’s counterproductive on its own terms, since contempt for people forecloses the understanding that any real change requires, and points to Edward Abbey as an example of a Deep Ecology–influenced figure who nonetheless held racist attitudes toward non-Western peoples, failing to see the connection between human liberation and ecological liberation.
His conclusion isn’t that Deep Ecology is wrong, but that it’s incomplete — a philosophy some of its own adherents misuse by treating as sufficient in itself, rather than as one part of a larger practice that also needs social and political understanding.
Read the full essay on John Seed’s site — Revington’s original page also links three companion essays: “Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There,” “Enacting an Earth-Centred Worldview,” and “Intimate Places.”