Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements. Environmentalism advocates the preservation, restoration and/or improvement of the natural environment, and may be referred to as a movement to control pollution or protect plant and animal diversity. For this reason, concepts such as a land ethic, environmental ethics, biodiversity, ecology and the biophilia hypothesis figure predominantly.
Environmentalism
is an attempt to balance relations between humans and the various natural
systems on which they depend in such a way that all the components are accorded
a proper degree of sustainability. The exact measures and outcomes of
this balance is controversial and there are many different ways for
environmental concerns to be expressed in practice. Environmentalism and
environmental concerns are often represented by the color green, but
this association has been appropriated by the marketing industries and is a key
tactic of greenwashing. Environmentalism is opposed by anti-environmentalism, which takes a skeptical
stance against many environmentalist perspectives.