The deep ecology demonstrated in the novel Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach has been criticized from a number of perspectives by those who see it as a distortion of true ecological thinking, as an impossible utopian vision that has little to do with the real world, as an economic nightmare, as a political structure that will not work, and so on. The reporter who narrates the novel is exposed to a number of different aspects of this new society, and he is fascinated by some of the social structures and institutions he encounters and horrified by others. Similar responses are found among the critics.
Callenbach describes a society which has abandoned the structures and attitudes of industrial society in favor of a communal system in which there is shared ownership of farmland and major industries and a town-hall type political system, developed in small regions and without a centralized political system. Underlying this social and political system is a different attitude toward nature, an attitude that says that human beings and their lives have to fit into a larger natural world-picture and that human beings cannot see themselves as having the right to use and abuse nature for their own needs. This view is in keeping with the essential perspective of deep ecology, and critics of such a system see it as utopian and so unattainable because it ignores the reality of human needs in this world while exaggerating the degree to which man and nature can be equalized.
Harold Gilliam describes deep ecology as being in opposition to environmentalism. He says that deep ecology rejects the prevailing world view that nature and its species exist to serve man. Those taking this view see environmentalists as offering no more than a temporary and ineffective solution to ecological problems. Environmentalists have a stewardship view in which human beings care for the environment and exert control over its bounty at the same time, while deep e...