The growth of environmental consciousness in the late 1960s and 1970s stimulated the emergence of an ecological paradigm within academia, encouraging the development of new fields like environmental science and environmental sociology, and an ecological worldview in some sectors of the larger society.  This new ecological perspective challenged the “human exemptionalism” prevalent in the Dominant Social Paradigm by emphasizing that modern, industrial societies are embedded in ecosystems and thus subject to ecological constraints.   The widespread recognition of global environmental change, wherein such societies are seen as altering ecosystems and in turn being affected by these human-induced changes, validated the ecological paradigm/worldview.  This new perspective has now evolved into the idea of the “Anthropocene,” suggesting a totally new geologic era of unprecedented human impact on the Earth.  While this fundamental paradigmatic shift is having considerable influence within the scientific/scholarly realm, it is strongly resisted by powerful societal forces as it clearly threatens current dominant neoliberal politico-economic ideology.  Consequently, at a time when societal embrace of an ecological worldview is needed more than ever, an ecological paradigm has come under intense attack.