Social barriers to biophilia: Merging structural and ideational explanations for environmental degradation

•Erich Fromm offers a unique and convincing theory of environmental degradation.•Structural and ideational variables are needed to explain degradation.•Fromm's theory integrates these explanatory frameworks.•We should recover the goal of building a biophilous social order and humanity.

Erich Fromm argues that the only reliable way to solve the environmental crisis is to alter current social formations in a way in which biophilia can flourish, so humankind can solve its existential dichotomy as well as meet survival needs in an ecologically sound way. However, society's preoccupation with the non-alive—elements such as technique, the mechanical, gadgets, and commodities—shows that the modern social character is far from biophilous. Instead, modern societies are inherently ecologically destructive due to systematic processes and attraction to its progress is a less acute form of, what Fromm terms, necrophilia. His insights can help formulate a social theory of environmental degradation that includes structural and ideational variables. Prescriptively, this means appeals for value changes must correspond with fitting appeals for structural changes in social systems.