Copyright © 2010 by The International Association for Environmental Philosophy. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. Environmental Philosophy 7 (1), 27–46. Turn Around and Step Forward: Ideology and Utopia in the Environmental Movement Brian Treanor Philosophy Department, Loyola Marymount University, One LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90045; btreanor@lmu.edu Insuficiently radical environmentalism is inadequate to the problems that confront us; but overly radical environmentalism risks alienating people with whom, in a democracy, we must ind common cause. Building on Paul Ricoeur’s work, which shows how group identity is constituted by the tension between ideology and utopia, this essay asks just how radical effective environmentalism should be. Two “case studies” of environmental agenda—that of Michael Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, and that of David Brower—serve to frame the important issues of cooperation and confrontation. The essay concludes that environmentalism must lead with its utopian aspirations rather than its willingness to compromise. The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation� —Bertrand Russell I was not always unreasonable, and I am sorry for that� —David Brower Introduction There are good reasons to hope that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in the public perception of environmental crises� 1 Anthropogenic climate change, once a hotly debated hypothesis, is now generally accepted as a reality demanding immediate attention thanks to the persistence of good scientists and their public spokespersons (Bill McKibben, Al Gore and others) There is growing awareness of and concern about peak oil, thanks to a brief encounter with ive dollar per gallon gasoline in the United States, oil wars in the Middle 1� The author would like to thank Dr� Gitty Amini, as well as two very helpful anony- mous reviewers, whose comments on an earlier draft of this essay improved it im- mensely�