SOCIAL ECOLOGY IS an ecological vision for the future developed by the anarchist thinker Murray Bookchin. This theory is part of a left-wing tradition that rejects notions of hierarchy, domination, power, and place to advocate political reformism, or restructuring that will resolve basic issues of societal, gender, and environmental imbalance. Social ecology is based on the understanding that all our present ecological problems are a result of deep-seated social problems. As Bookchin states, “economic, ethnic, cultural, and gender conflicts, among many others, lie at the core of the most serious ecological dislocations we face today.” Specifically, social ecologists argue that the chief source of ecological destruction is the capitalist system and its products, such as overconsumption, consumerism, and concomitant economic growth.

Trade for profit, industrial expansion, ...