The big idea: Nature is caught between two kinds of value. Is a rainforest like a £20 note (valuable for what it gives us), or like a friendship (valuable in itself)?
Two kinds of valuable
- A £20 note is valuable — but only for what you can swap it for.
- A friendship is valuable too — but not for what you can get out of it; it's just worth having.
Extrinsic / instrumental value
- Valuable for what it does for us
- A forest = timber, clean air, holiday photos
- Take away the use, and the value's gone
Intrinsic value
- Valuable in itself, full stop
- A forest is worth something even if no one uses it
- Worth protecting for its own sake
So the deep question of this micro is: does nature have intrinsic value, or only instrumental value?
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One thinker built a whole outlook on the answer 'yes — nature has value in itself'.
Naess: deep ecology: The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess argued for deep ecology. Every living thing — a whale, a beetle, a patch of moss — has its own worth, whether or not it's useful to humans.
Shallow environmentalism
- 'Protect nature so we stay healthy'
Deep ecology
- The living world matters for its own sake
Self-realisation: From this Naess drew a radical idea — self-realisation. A mature person comes to feel the living world as part of a wider self, so protecting it is not sacrifice but self-care.
Checkpoint — deep ecology: In one line: Naess says all living things have worth in themselves, so humans are part of the web, not its master. Hold that — the next thinker agrees nature matters but blames something different for the crisis.
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A rival green thinker accepted that nature matters but located the crisis somewhere surprising.
Bookchin: social ecology: Murray Bookchin argued for social ecology. The environmental crisis, he said, isn't really about our attitude to beetles — it's about power between people.
Bookchin's argument
- Societies are built on some humans dominating others (rich over poor, boss over worker).
- They naturally extend that habit of domination to the land.
- So you can't fix nature without fixing unjust human societies first.
- Change how people treat each other, and how we treat nature will change with it.
Go further — higher-level insight: Notice the two diagnoses can combine. Maybe we harm nature both because we forgot it has intrinsic value (Naess) AND because our societies run on domination (Bookchin). A top-band answer weighs them rather than picking a team — and asks which fix comes first.
Checkpoint — social ecology: In one line: Bookchin says the root of the crisis is humans dominating humans — heal society and we'll heal our bond with nature.