Green Utopias: Beyond Apocalypse, Progress, and Pastoral

Abstract

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY the threat of ecological breakdown is deeply embedded in our social consciousness. Although the intensity of announcements of the "environmental crisis" in the 1970s has faded and even been absorbed and normalised by the institutions of capitalist modernity, through the lens of environmentalism the future can seem an unthinkable or utterly miserable prospect. However, in the last 30 years ecological philosophy has been equally concerned with recouping a better future from these unpromising materials, insisting not only that the earth can be saved but that the environmental crisis can prompt a reconceptualisation of the good life for human societies.