Summing up, it should first of all be borne in mind that the norms and tendencies of the Deep Ecology movement are not derived from ecology or logic or induction. Ecological knowledge and the style of the ecological field worker have suggested, inspired and fortified the perspectives of the Deep Ecology movement.

Secondly, it should be fully appreciated that significant tenets of the Deep Ecology movement are clearly and forcefully normative. They express a value priority system only in part based on the results of scientific research. Today ecologists try to influence policy-making bodies largely through the warning that policy makers should accept at least certain minimum norms concerning health and just distribution. There are political potentials in this movement which have little to do with pollution and resource depletion.

Thirdly, in so far as ecology movements deserve our attention, they are ecophilosophical rather than ecological. Philosophy is the most general forum of debate on fundamentals, descriptive as well as prescriptive, and political philosophy is one of its subsections. By an ecosophy I mean a philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium. A philosophy, as a kind of sophia or wisdom, is openly normative, containing both norms and rules and postulates and value priority announcements, and hypotheses concerning the state of affairs in our universe.

Under the name of ecologism, various deviations from the deep movement have been championed, primarily with a one-sided stress on pollution and resource depletion.