Environmental Politics
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Utopianism and Environmentalism
David Pepper
To cite this article: David Pepper (2005) Utopianism and Environmentalism, Environmental
Politics, 14:1, 3-22, DOI: 10.1080/0964401042000310150
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Date: 11 July 2016, At: 19:14
Environmental Politics,
Vol. 14, No. 1, 3 – 22, February 2005
Utopianism and Environmentalism
DAVID PEPPER
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Department of Geography, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
ABSTRACT This paper examines the ways in which utopianism permeates both radical
and reformist environmentalism. Utopianism has created ‘ecotopia’, the radical
environmentalist’s utopia which has evolved from writing and action over the past half
century. Ecotopianism’s ‘transgressive’ potential in assisting change towards an ecological
society is examined, and judged to be limited by idealism and unrealistic assessments of
existing socio-economic dynamics. Reformist environmentalism is also considered; it is
argued that this, too, can rest on unrealistic premises, reflecting liberal-capitalist utopian
fantasies.
Introduction
Greens versus space invaders! These are the two leading contemporary utopian
ideals, according to John Carey (1999). In the former utopia, all people
disappear and the planet takes over (presumably this would represent a
dystopia1 to all but those Gaianists who see humans as a blemish on the
planet). In the latter utopia, humans spread through the galaxy to people the
universe. In his extensive compendium of fictional utopias, Carey (p.xxiv)
observes that this discourse ‘promises to be one of the formative antagonisms
of the 21st century. . .’.
In this paper, I intend to show how utopianism in various aspects permeates
contemporary environmental discourses, and to make some assessment of the
potential of ecotopianism to assist social change – that is, its ‘transgressiveness’. As well as the more radical ecotopianism, I will consider reformist2
environmentalism’s utopia of ‘ecological modernisation’ (EM).
Liberal reformists who champion EM might suggest that it is ‘utopian’ (i.e.
‘idealistic’ or ‘unrealistic’) to contemplate any society radically different from
our own, as ecotopians do. And without doubt there is plenty of unrealistic
utopianism in ecotopia. Elements of deep ecology and New Ageism, for
instance, recall Mannheim’s (1936) ‘chiliast’ utopian mentality, which is less
concerned with social processes than with sudden breakthrough into a
dreamed-of paradise through quasi-mystical thinking and ecstatic experiences
(see Ferguson, 1981 and Russell, 1991). But reformist environmentalism’s
Correspondence Address: Department of Geography, Oxford Brookes University, Headington,
Oxford OX3 0BP. E-mail: [email protected]
ISSN 0964-4016 Print/1744-8934 Online # 2005 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0964401042000310150
4
D. Pepper
penchant for either free market or ‘third way’ myths can suggest implicit
idealisations of nature-society relationships that are equally fantastic –
recalling for example, the myths of ‘Cockaygne’ or the ‘perfect moral
commonwealth’.
Utopia and Ecotopia
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Utopianism involves
Critical and creative thinking projecting alternative social worlds that
would realise the best possible way of being, based on rational and moral
principles, accounts of human nature and history, or imagined
technological prospects. Utopian thinking invariably contains criticism
of the status quo (Honderich, 1995, pp.892–3.)
Utopianism thus requires ‘vivid imagination’ of the norms, institutions and
individual relationships of a qualitatively better (or worse, in the case of
dystopian speculation) society than that in which the utopianist lives
(Hansot, 1974). A critical division is commonly made between utopianism in
the most constructive sense, which identifies the existing potential for major
social change (the eu-topos or good place), and the mere building of fantasy
worlds that don’t and could not exist (u-topos or no place) (Best, 2000).
Hence many commentators follow Bloch’s (1986) distinction between
abstract utopias – dreams and fantasies – and concrete ones that are
derived from critical social theory, based on an understanding of current
social processes and achievable by development from those processes. Here,
Bloch draws on Marx and Engels, who criticised utopian socialism for
failing to diagnose accurately the causes of the social evils their utopias
aimed to eliminate, leading to strategies doomed to end up as counterrevolutionary.3
‘Utopianism’, from this particular socialist perspective, thus has pejorative
connotations. However, many contemporary socialists do see utopianism as
positive, and as a vital ‘expression of the desire to make history, and not to
accept the present as given’ (Coleman, 2000). And if socialists nowadays need
what Harvey (2000) calls an ‘optimism of the intellect’, so too do radical
environmentalists need it.
Some consider utopia’s function as to test and clarify ideas by stimulating
fairy tales and fantasies (Alexander, 1984). However, as Mannheim (1936)
points out, the danger in not attempting to go beyond that point is that such a
utopianism can be counter-revolutionary: indulging in escapist daydreams
merely assists us to tolerate the existing society’s imperfections. Constructive
utopianism must therefore sharpen our critique of existing society, and create
‘free spaces’ (Sargisson, 2000a and 2000b) in which we can carry out thought
and practical experiments, working out the effects of enacting our utopian
principles (Stillman, 2000). As such, utopias might catalyse social change, and
Utopianism and environmentalism
5
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thus be transgressive across the boundaries delimiting ‘here’ and ‘there’: they
might assist ‘‘. . .recognition that everything inside our heads and much outside,
are human constructs and can be changed’’ (Carey, 1999, p.xi).
Thus conceived, there can be little doubt about utopianism’s potential
benefits to environmentalism. And all of the different utopian forms – as
described by Levitas (1990), for instance – occur in modern environmentalism.
As well as the myth form (e.g. the Age of Aquarius, Gaia), utopianism occurs
as radical green lifestyle experiments that often follow the communitarian
tradition. It is also present in ecologically-inspired political programmes such as
‘Blueprint for survival’ (Goldsmith, 1972). And it occurs as literary fiction,
including ecotopias and eco-dystopias.
Defining and Contextualising Ecotopia
Utopian theorists may differ in their view of the extent and importance of
fictional ecotopianism. Kumar (1991) points out that the ecotopian form was
only recently named (by Ernest Callenbach), and maintains that utopian social
theory (Roszak, Schumacher, Illich, Gorz and Bahro, for example) is the most
powerful expression of ecological ideas. His view (Kumar, 1987, p.408) that
there are ‘‘few fictional ecotopias’’ contrasts markedly with the impression
generated by writers such as Wall (1994) or de Geus (1999), who claim to
identify green ideas and ecologically inspired utopian fiction stretching back to
the Ancient Greeks. Hence utopians from More to Morris, Kropotkin to
Howard, Thoreau to Skinner, are held to have written what were essentially
‘ecotopias’, containing evocative images of a sustainable society. De Geus
argues that such writers were ‘ecologically inspired’ political utopians.
It is true, as Carey’s survey confirms, that many past fictional utopias,
particularly from the nineteenth century, contain eco(dys)topian themes and
sentiments. These range from envisioning biologically egalitarian societies
achieving harmony with nature to registering fears about population-resource
problems – indeed, Harry Harrison’s (1966) eco-dystopian New York of
2010AD, with its starving millions committing voluntary suicide to the
accompaniment of nature films and pastoral music, seems to owe something to
nineteenth-century works by Anthony Trollope (1882) and Ignatius Donnelly
(1891).
However, it does not necessarily follow that such past utopias or dystopias
can be described as ‘ecotopian’. Few of their authors started from the point of
view that we now call ‘ecologism’ (Dobson, 2000). Ecological concerns in their
work may have been marginal to their social concerns, and are unlikely to have
arisen primarily from what we now regard as ‘green’ or ecocentric motivations.
It is particularly tempting to see utopian socialists as ‘proto-greens’, and
there is undoubtedly much common ground between ecotopia and the utopian
scenarios of, for instance, Charles Fourier (Roelofs, 1993, p.70) or William
Morris (Wall, 1994). But whereas utopian socialists believed in social
perfectibility and claimed that their approach to history was ‘scientific’
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D. Pepper
(Taylor, 1982), the empathies of today’s radical environmentalists are
frequently somewhat different, quite often resonating with postmodern
scepticism about such matters.
Given such difficulties in categorising together utopias born of very different
reactions to very different societies, I will limit this discussion of ‘eco(dys)topianism’ largely to writing, thinking and action in which environmental
problems and themes are central rather than incidental, and which largely
reflect the concerns of society in the half-century since the worldwide
environmental movement began.
The key fictional example is Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), which appears to
draw heavily on Huxley’s Island (1962). Dauncey (1999) and Boyle (2000) offer
more recent versions of ecotopianism and eco-dystopianism respectively; it
seems that the latter has been more conspicuous in futuristic writing since the
rise of modern environmentalism. Examples include Ballard’s (1962, 1966)
apocalyptic and surreal dystopias, which often unfold in the shadow of
ecological doom; Cooper’s (1973), Elton’s (1989) and Robinson’s (1996)
visions of interplanetary escape from a dying Earth; Wright’s (1997) revisiting
of the Time Machine in the context of global warming; the population
dystopias of Brunner (1969, 1974), Harrison (1966) and Mitchison (1975), the
genetic engineering dystopia of Silver (1998) and the social engineering utopia
(or dystopia?) of Skinner’s Walden II (second edition 1976). Taken together,
ecotopianism and eco-dystopianism represent ecologism’s ‘good cop/bad cop’
approach to admonishing us for our ecological transgressions: they are
opposite sides of the same coin.
Eco(dys)topianism arises in the context of post-1950s utopian thought,
where some, like Marcuse, sought utopia through radical movements based on
socialism, anarchism and situationalism, and a synthesis of Marx and Freud.
Others, however, perceiving a new age of consciousness, followed Aldous
Huxley towards ‘eupsychia’ – a utopia of the mind free from the corporeal.
Huxley’s Island might well fit into Manuel and Manuel’s (1979) category
‘‘specialist utopias of 1960s and ‘70s counterculture’’: writings that responded
pessimistically to post-industrial apocalyptic visions of overpopulation, nuclear
disaster or biological technology gone wrong. At that time, the material
informing eco-dystopian visions typically came from Ehrlich’s (1970) The
Population Bomb, the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972)
and, later on, studies on global warming and genetic engineering. This current
of technological and social pessimism has continued into the late twentieth
century. Films like Threads, the Truman Show, Pleasantville, Dark City, the
Matrix etc. mix millennialism and survivalism, reflecting contemporary fears of
the panoptican and of risk society, including Frankenstein technology (Levitas,
2000).
This pessimism might be an aspect of a broader postmodern end-of-history
mood, which Levitas (p.30) suggests may have produced an anti-utopianism:
an ‘Active denial of the merits of imagining alternative ways of living,
particularly if they constitute a serious attempt to argue that the world might
Utopianism and environmentalism
7
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or should be otherwise’. Postmodernism is said to produce the view that
‘utopia’ is now everywhere, and is fragmented and polarised. It is seen in
ubiquitous computer games, in cults and communities, and in lifestyle
magazines. We all create and enjoy alternative realities by means of cyberspace,
TV fantasy, tourist travel, alternative lifestyles and subcultures (Crook, 2000).
This is the heterotopia: a utopia of otherness, relinquishing the ideal of synoptic
perfection in a grand unifying theory and instead understanding the world as
the overlapping spaces of a multiplicity of differences. Heterotopia encourages
us to make our own individual ideal places, investing them with meanings that
vary in spatial and social position (Jacques, 2002). Heterotopia constitutes the
utopia of liberal individualism (Nozick, 1974).
Transgressiveness
In as much as it is ‘‘. . .thoroughly detrimental to the political process’’ (Levitas,
1984, p.20), such escapist fantasy could be regarded as reactionary rather than
transgressive. It does not encourage crossing the boundaries around the
enclosed territory of ideas and social relationships in which we are situated,
and entering heuristic spaces in which we would be encouraged to think in new
paradigms. One defining characteristic of transgressive ecotopianism is that it
would ‘‘ – as literary or physical spaces – represent an opportunity for thinking
differently about something we might otherwise take for granted’’ (Sargisson,
2000b, p.104).
A second characteristic of transgressive ecotopianism would be to avoid
seeing utopias as blueprints to which all should conform – a dangerous view
that contains the seeds of repression. Transgressive ecotopianism therefore
shuns naturalistic representations of the form of the ‘good society’: it says less
about what will be in the ideal world, and more about the communicative
process by which it may be negotiated. This, according to Sargisson, is
Moylan’s (1986) critical utopia, which privileges the process of social change
over a fixed, finite utopia of perfection. Levitas (1990, 2000) argues that the
postmodern turn has led utopianism in this direction over the past 30 years: to
become more about what we are against than what we are for. Contemporary
utopian texts, she says, are ‘‘provisional, incomplete, flexible and reflexive’’,
displaying potentially dystopian as well as utopian features, with a fragmented
narrative structure in which plot and character are foregrounded while social
structure is decentralised, differentiated and in the background. She cites the
imperfect feminist utopias of Le Guin (1975) and Piercy (1979) in this respect.
Harvey (2000) advances similar views. The transgressive potential of his own
utopia lies less in its detailed lineaments (which are consonant with ecotopia,
even looking to bioregionalism and self-sufficiency), and more in imperfections
that reflect its grounding in present reality. Other contemporary socialists and
anarchists who have incorporated substantial ecological concerns into their
more traditional ones (e.g. Gorz, 1982; Fotopoulos, 1998b; O’Connor, 1998)
also tend to root their utopian visions in the ‘concrete’ material contradictions
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D. Pepper
of existing states of affairs, and this is an important third characteristic of
transgressiveness. This approach, rooted in the Marxist critique of utopian
socialism, insists that transgressive ecotopianism should relate to the dynamics
of the existing capitalist world, but then draw people towards what Cornelius
Castoriadis calls the ‘radical imaginary’ (Clark, 2002). This is a realisation that
it is we who create society, and can therefore change it into a postrevolutionary one that explicitly and continuously institutes itself by reclaiming
creative activity. This is a utopia of process rather than form; of continuous
self-transformation rather than static blueprint. In drawing on Bloch’s concept
of abstract and concrete utopias, it derives from Marx’s formulation of
immanent critique, i.e. clarification of that towards which the world is already
striving: not the actual, but the objectively possible (Hayward, 1994).
Thus, according to transgressive ecotopianism, the alternative to capitalism
needs to arise from the dynamics now making it fail. New processes may arise
from this failure which are likely to be more resonant with an ecologically
benign society. In Harvey’s (2000) utopia, the catalyst for the painful transition
(via global unrest and military theocracies) is global warming – an element in
what O’Connor (1998) more generally terms the ‘second’ or ecological
contradiction of capitalism, which today threatens to undermine the system.
Sargisson argues strongly that radical ‘deep green’ thinking is transgressive
in all of these important ways, and in going on to review ecotopianism I will
consider this proposition.
Written ecotopias: provisional and concrete or abstract fantasy?
On provisionality and the avoidance of static blueprinting it has to be said,
contra Levitas, that Callenbach’s Ecotopia itself presents a strong metanarrative founded on the imperatives of (ecological) science. These underwrite an
exhaustively detailed account of form – of what will be in a ‘deep green’ society.
Social structure is foregrounded, while it is plot and characterisation which
remain secondary and superficial. And other ecotopians, sometimes writing
from diverse positions, have much in common with Callenbach in describing
what should be in this imagined land of strong sustainability. Relatively little is
provisional or tentative about features consistently found in ecotopian fiction
and non-fiction. They are widely known and do not need elaboration here.
Their underpinning principles were laid out in The Ecologist’s radical essay4
‘Blueprint for survival’ (Goldsmith, 1972):
.
.
.
.
minimal disruption of ecological processes;
maximum conservation of energy and materials;
population recruitment must equal and not exceed loss;
a social system in which people will accept the first three principles.
The early ecotopian political programme described in ‘Blueprint’ thus flagged a
vital connection between ecological outcomes and the societal corollaries
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Utopianism and environmentalism
9
following from a green theory of value (Goodin, 1992): inclusive and
associative democracy, decentralisation, local production for local need, etc.
Subsequent ecotopias have tended to repeat this catechism – thus offering a
consensual utopia of universals, not a fragmented or pluralist one. Though one
of these universals is respect for otherness and the importance of diversity,
ecotopianism does not strongly suggest a postmodern world with huge scope
for the coexistence of radically differing beliefs and practices. ‘‘Of course the
entire moral structure of an ecologically conscious society would rest on Gaian
principles,’’ says Sale (1985, p.120), asserting that here it would be a ‘crime’ to
be ignorant of the phrases ‘carrying capacity’ and ‘biotic community’. And
‘Blueprint’, noting that its envisaged changes would be unacceptable to people
in their present mindset, concludes that they would have to be ‘restrained’
during the changes. As Prugh, Constanza and Daley (2000) observe, since ‘‘a
lifelong global celery diet’’ is not nice to live on, perhaps the imagined
sustainable world of radical environmentalists has ultimately to be based on
restriction, prohibition, regulation and sacrifice.
Possibly in order to head off charges of abstract utopianism, not rooted in
the present, ‘Blueprint’ itself presented a detailed timetable outlining the stages
of a transitional programme from 1972 to a 21st-century ecotopia, while
Callenbach (1981) devoted a whole novel to the transition. In Ecotopia
Emerging, the internal contradictions of existing North American capitalism
do feature strongly in creating the impetus for change. However, little account
is offered of how such dynamics would surely also ensure stubborn resistance
to such change (nuclear blackmail notwithstanding) – in this emerging
ecotopia, big business’s capitulation to idealists seems abject and fairly
complete.
Other ecotopias often treat the crucial issue of transition by pointing to
already-existing ‘alternative’ social institutions and networks that seem to
prefigure the desired society (see below). In a few cases, these may well
constitute physical spaces providing opportunities (as Sargisson says) to act as
well as think outside prevailing paradigms.
But in order to fully appraise this aspect of ecotopian transgressive potential,
we also need to take into account how far the overall distance is from ‘here’ to
‘there’ for most people in contemporary society. This distance can be
considerable; and indeed, for many the direction of envisaged change appears
to constitute a retreat from modernity rather than a development upon it –
what Merchant (1992) calls a ‘future primitivism’ that does not relate readily to
present processes and conditions. The anarchism that strongly permeates
ecotopianism can be ‘Luddite’ in character (e.g. Hunt, 1997; Smith, 2001).
Future primitivism is evident in Norberg-Hodge’s (1999) proposition that
the Ladakh society can be seen as an ecotopian model, since this refers to
Ladakhan life and traditions as they were before the 1970s, ‘untainted’ by
Western development. Goldsmith’s (1996) ecotopianism also looks back to
when pre-industrial extended families and communities produced for
themselves. It rests on self-sufficiency and daily local participation in a
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D. Pepper
Jeffersonian town democracy. And Sale (1985, 1996) sees nature worship,
small communities and non-hierarchical co-operation as innate, ‘natural’
behaviour for humans (see also Hunt, 1997). He admits that his ecotopian
programme returns to premodernity – but insists (1985, p.478) that age-old
cultures such as the Native American ‘know the way of nature best’. On
similar lines, McGinnis (1999b) pleads for a bioregionalism to rekindle primal
memories of an ‘earth existence’. Such sentiments are rooted less in present
societies than in environmentalist myths about pre-Columbian America as
Eden.
Again, while Ron Wright’s (1997) fictional time traveller picks amongst the
future ruins of industrial modernity in a humanist dystopia, to deep-ecological
Gaianists this is a utopia. For although destructiveness and greed have returned
society to a primitive state, nature continues and thrives. Future primitivist
ecotopians also inhabit Kim Stanley Robinson’s (1996) interplanetary utopian
fiction, as the reactionary ‘Reds’ inhabiting the unterraformed Mars: a rockworshipping, preservationist sect wanting to live in caves and keep the planet in
its original state. Robinson appears to see some hope in such groups, who ‘live
lightly off the earth’ (see also his Antarctica, 1998).
Future primitivism relates to ecotopianism’s (somewhat selective) mistrust of
aspects of modernity. In 1962, while Rachel Carson challenged conventional
faith in agricultural science, Huxley ranted in Island against heavy industry and
called TV ‘‘bad and thin and boring’’ (1962, p.80). Roszak’s diatribe (1972)
against the scientific worldview and urban industrialism also strongly
influenced radical environmentalism. Thus the underlying ‘deep ecology’
philosophy of Boyle’s contemporary ecodystopia (2000) is riddled with a
palpable hatred of development and modernity, which are blamed for the
anticipated global ecological collapse in 2025.
Bioregionalists also tend to bemoan global modernisation – not least for
destroying the uniqueness of place, on the grounds that it is largely through
identification with place that we come to know and understand nature’s laws,
and that a politically empowered community is possible only when people stay
in the same place for an extended period of time (Berg and Dasmann, 1990;
Snyder, 1990). Thus a central bioregional task is to understand and reinhabit
place, coming to know the land and its ‘lore’.
A key related issue is scale. Following Schumacher (1973), who was
influenced by Kohr (1957), ecotopianism sees beauty in smallness, and sees
bigness as being socially harmful in itself. So whereas big corporation
capitalism and economic development are offensive to bioregionalists
(McGinnis, 1999b), small-scale capitalism is accepted because it is closer to
communities (Mollison, 1990). Such sentiments, however, appear to ignore the
expansionary imperative in capitalist dynamics and the inherent tendency
towards the consolidation of small firms into larger ones. They could also be
seen as reactionary in that they oppose the seemingly inexorable contemporary
process of globalisation, instead favouring an ultimately oppressive autarchy
(Frankel, 1987).
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Utopianism and environmentalism
11
However, ecotopia is not that simple, and Mollison’s visions of how local
communities (population 7–40k) would federate into global associations and
multicultural alliances typify the ‘act locally, think globally’ approach by which
radical environmentalists seek to remain internationalist while also embracing
localism. In this way, bioregionalists might claim that their anti-globalism is a
progressive reaction to contemporary social forces, localism here being an
appropriate response to the risks created by globalisation. Equally, though,
strong localism might reflect an older tradition that is conspicuous in North
America: of mistrust of bigness in most forms, particularly the ‘oppression’ of
citizens by federal government or big corporations. This libertarian anarchism
reacts against political constraints on the freedom of the individual and of
small communities. Callenbach (1999), whose ecotopia has a central
government, nonetheless fulminates against federal government, unfettered
markets, free trade and globalisation, big corporations and ‘obscene’ wealth
inequality, displaying an ideological mix of American right-wing and liberal
sentiments. This can become almost a persecution mentality against ‘them’ –
for example, one of Dauncey’s (1999) characters, inhabiting a fictional ecotopia
that has said ‘Farewell to toxics’, breaks down emotionally on learning that all
toxic chemicals have been withdrawn from the market and exclaims: ‘We’re
safe at last for all generations, at least until they dream up something else’.
A further tendency towards reactionary, rather than revolutionary and
transgressive, ecotopianism lies in its frequent rejection of anthropocentrism for
an ecocentrism whereby, following Leopoldian ethics, humans participate in
but do not dominate the biotic community. Conservation, stability, selfsufficiency and co-operation would be the founding principles of economy and
society, for which nature would serve as the metaphor. Such overarching
environmental determinism comes out specifically in the bioregionalist principle
of defining political units on the basis of ‘natural’ regions and boundaries. Some
bioregionalists recognise the reactionary dangers here – for instance, Dodge
(1990) proposes not biocentrism but ‘anthropocentric bioregionalism’, which
would acknowledge that the ‘natural’ self around which bioregionalism revolves
is culturally mediated and constructed. Similarly, Flores (1999) argues for the
continuing relevance of ‘possibilism’ in bioregionalism.
These arguments suggest that ecotopianism sometimes lacks a grounding in
actual material socio-ecological conditions, and that this limitation detracts
from its transgressive potential. In fact, ecotopia has a long-standing leaning
towards idealist rather than materialist approaches, owing much to thinkers
such as Teilhard de Chardin (1947). He proposed that a new stage of ‘psychosocial’ evolution was approaching whereby humans would constitute the
earth’s consciousness, controlling matter through their minds. De Chardin’s
‘noosphere’ is a universal belt of psycho-social forces, consisting partly of a
dense network of human communications. It is a realm of psychic energy, of
pure consciousness, to be developed through the power of love. Eventually, at
‘‘point Omega’’, evolution will leave us with only consciousness, dominated by
reason.
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D. Pepper
Manuel and Manuel (1979) call this utopia the ‘‘dream of reason’’. It
pervades Huxley’s Island, where he proclaims that all of society’s problems
would disappear if only reasonable and intelligent people controlled things.
More generally, it underpins ecotopianism’s ‘New Age’ tendency (Russell,
1991). In one of Dauncey’s (1999) short stories, ‘Song of Syntropy’, which
covers the transition to ectotopia between 2005 and 2050, consciousness is
taken to be a fundamental force that pre-exists energy and matter. It is changes
in consciousness, causing changes in practice, that bring about Dauncey’s
ecotopia.
All of this meshes with the explanations frequently offered in ecotopianism
for ecological destruction. It is held to be the consequence of inappropriate
attitudes and ideas, held individually and collectively. Thus Wright’s
ecodystopian vision of the aftermath of war, characterised by biodiversity
loss, overpopulation, global warming and pollution, portrays these outcomes
as being caused by human attitudes and values: envy, gluttony, anger, lust and
sloth.
Such explanations may be imprecise and superficial, but this is often the
nature of literary eco(dys)topias: the processes are not always thought through.
Thus Norberg-Hodge (1999) tells us that the ecological future will be a matter
of ‘‘slowing down. . . being really happy. . . being sad. . . gathering in circles to
sing. . . dancing beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
silhouetted by the sea. . .’’. The ‘spaces’ created in this kind of post-materialist
vision do not seem designed for occupation by many of the groups
(dispossessed peasants, victims of pollution or global warming) obviously
alienated in the present ‘risk society’. Indeed, ecotopia does have exclusionary
tendencies, symbolised in Spencer’s (1999) story about an ecotopian Oregon in
2023, which has closed borders with the US and maintains a border defence
militia to keep out environmental refugees following a near-apocalypse in the
rest of the world. Yet accessible spaces are surely what is necessary for a
transgressive utopia (Moos and Brownstein, 1977).
Ecotopian practice
If written ecotopianism’s transgressive potential is questionable, what of
practical experiments to establish elements of ecotopia in the here and now?
Bioregionalist practice began in 1973 with the Planet Drum Foundation, located
in the ‘Shasta Bioregion’ (parts of Oregon and North California, scene of
Callenbach’s fictional utopia), and spreading through America and into Europe.
Bioregional activists identify and map bioregional boundaries and natural
corridors linking them. They form ‘watershed groups’, propagating knowledge
of Native American culture, and take out lawsuits to defend environmental
standards and endangered species (Sale, 1985; Andruss et al, 1990). The
‘Ecotopia Project’, in the Pacific Northwest ‘Cascadia’ bioregion, facilitates
sustainability projects devised by people living in target communities. It forms a
clearing house for ecological resources useful to urban neighbourhoods, and sets
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Utopianism and environmentalism
13
up indicators by which to gauge a community’s ecological well-being. Citizens
are encouraged to articulate their needs and desires by utopianising or ‘laying
out their dreams’, ignoring economic and political constraints.
That such projects do positively affect specific communities is clear – for
instance, from Imhoff’s (1996) description of US community agriculture
schemes supplying as many as 80,000 people with food, or Bernard and
Young’s (1997) account of sustainability experiments in various parts of the
US. The latter’s agenda includes neighbourhood regeneration, land use zoning
to restrict development, voluntary restraints by fishing communities on season
length and catch, urban tree planting, cycle ways and so forth. Much of it,
however, appears reformist, leaning on the EM proposition that environmental
protection and profitability are mutually compatible, and thereby failing to
stimulate fully the ‘radical imaginary’ – despite Bernard and Young’s insistance
that practical bioregionalism is founded on radical deep ecological principles.
Indeed, McGinnis’ Bioregionalism (1999a) has been criticised for lacking a
‘systematic casting of bioregionalism within ecophilosophy’, and for frequently
using ‘‘technocratic language that seems anathema to the philosophy in
question’’ (Laferrière, 2000).
All too often, bioregional strategies and programmes differ little from those
in the mainstream. Berg’s (1990) ‘green city’ programme for San Francisco
Bay, for instance, is mainly concerned to establish recycling, integrated coastal
zone management, local food markets and the like. Of fundamental economic
changes we hear little beyond a desire for small-scale, ‘responsible’ capitalism,
funding non-profit activities for the wider community and ecology (Mollison
1990) where the owners of small stores ‘have found a way to integrate their
spirit with their merchandise, where you know. . . you are in a special place
beyond commercialism’ (Dauncey, 1999, p.96). Such hoped-for scenarios,
fashionable as they are today, do not adequately problematise the ultimate
priority of the financial ‘bottom line’ over social and ecological concerns in
capitalism, thus echoing the mistakes of utopian socialism.
Some ostensibly ecotopian ways to register protest also seem set within an
established, rather than a new, paradigmatic space – for example, Callenbach’s
(1999) advocacy of letter-writing, peaceful demonstrations, ‘speaking to power’
(e.g. Congress members), organising green parties, and helping each other to
‘be joyful and live well’. An exception here is the ecotage advocated in fiction
by Abbey (1975) and Boyle (2000), and translated into action by the American
Earth First! movement.
However, there are some more radical quasi-ecotopian practices and
institutions that, because they actually exist, appear to have the transgressive
potential associated with concrete utopianism. Examples are local currencies,
micro-credit and saving, local food distribution schemes, community-owned
businesses, agricultural and energy co-operatives and intentional communities
(Douthwaite, 1996). They satisfy ecotopianism’s anarchistic requirement that
social change must come through people, practices and institutions prefiguring
the desired society – that is, constituting elements of ecotopia in the here and now.
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D. Pepper
This runs us into some very old arguments about transition that utopian
socialists and anarchists have had with Marxist socialists for years. In essence,
the first two see these practices and institutions as genuine transgressive spaces,
occupying niches provided by capitalism’s contradictions and tensions; they
argue that through the practice afforded in this way, people will become
progressively radicalised (in the manner of Martin Buber’s continuous revolution) towards further utopian solutions. As Gare (2000) puts it, capitalism is
undermined by those able to develop new socio-economic forms within the
environment it has created. Sargisson (2000b) views intentional communes that
she has visited much in this light: as spaces for transgressive shifts in consciousness, spiritual awakening and alternative property and work arrangements.
However, some (perhaps unreconstructed) Marxists might argue that this is
a form of false consciousness, since ‘alternative’ practices and institutions will
inevitably be assimilated back into the mainstream society and economy (for
instance, some LETS schemes have arrangements with Inland Revenue for
paying tax on their transactions – see Fitzpatrick and Caldwell, 2001). People
with this perspective are more likely to note how intentional communes tend
to de-radicalise with time, and to follow attitudes and practices that mirror
changes and fashions in the world outside (Pepper, 1991).
The long-standing debate continues, for instance between Trainer (1998) and
Fotopoulos (1998a). The former champions a ‘‘global ecovillage movement’’
comprising intentional communities, co-operatives, local currencies etc.,
boasting of being ‘theoryless and apolitical’, and allowing room for small
private businesses and market forces. Fotopoulos, however, counters with
Marxist-style criticisms of utopian projects based on idealism which, like the
heterogeneous anti-globalisation protestors, do not belong to a programmatic
movement with clear anti-systemic goals (see also Callinicos, 2003).
However, idealism clouds the transgressive potential of not only ecotopianism:
reformist environmentalism also incorporates utopian dreaming.
Reformist environmentalism and utopianism
It is a central contention of this paper that utopianism of one form or another,
in the positive or the pejorative sense, permeates all environmentalism, whether
radical and ecotopian or reformist. Reformist environmentalism abandons
capitalism’s once-hoped-for unlimited expansion of ‘‘pseudorational’’ mastery
over nature and humans (Clark, 2002). Instead it seeks ecological sustainability
via major changes in liberal-capitalist attitudes and institutions, but not their
replacement by something else. In the EM discourse that underlies sustainable
development strategies at all levels in the West, environmental conservation
and economic growth are held to be compatible, whereas radical environmentalists usually insist that they are incompatible.
Thus the EU’s Sixth Environmental Action Programme (2001–2010) seeks a
market that will encourage green technological and management innovations,
Utopianism and environmentalism
15
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in theory enabling growth, competitiveness, profitability and job creation to be
‘de-coupled’ from adverse environmental effects. This market would use such
instruments as energy taxes and emissions trading, alongside voluntary
efficiency agreements made with industry (e.g. on aviation-produced greenhouse gases), to achieve a 20–40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020.
From a radical perspective, this kind of agenda is underpinned by premises
which are ‘utopian’ in the pejorative, abstract, non-transgressive sense (Lukes,
1984). Realism is lost because these premises tend to ignore the dynamics of
capitalist economics and the constraints of the forces of production within
which they are set. The premises include:
.
.
.
.
.
.
Western affluence levels can be universalised in environmentally sustainable
ways. [In reality, this would require two to three more planets
(Wackernagel and Rees, 1996).]
Conventional economic growth and environmental protection are compatible. [Despite the actual ecological record – for example, the WWF living
planet index (a measure of the Earth’s natural wealth) fell by a third
between 1970 and 1999 (WWF, 1999).]
Firms will embrace anticipatory environmental protection technologies as
being profitable. [Whereas, in fact, many opt for the quicker profits offered
by end-of-pipe technologies (Neale, 1997).]
In growth economies, environmental degradation will be significantly
lowered by anticipatory technologies such as the catalytic converter.
[Whereas, in fact, the gains from these are often more than offset by
growing consumption (for example, the worldwide increase in annual car
miles).]
Firms will voluntarily use holistic and long-term accounting appropriate
for environmental protection. [Whereas, for example, in the EU ‘‘most
political decisions are taken with a short-term and sector-specific
perspective’’ to maximise immediate global competitiveness (Collier, 1997).]
Capitalist institutions will reform themselves to give equal weight to
economic, environmental and social justice goals. [Whereas civil politics are
increasingly subordinated to the neoliberal economic agenda, which
prioritises competitiveness and market deregulation.]
Underlying such premises – or hopes – it is not difficult to recognise persistent
Western utopian fantasies such as the myth of Cockaygne and unlimited
material abundance (Cockayne was a legendary country in medieval stories
and poems where food and drink were available for taking without the need to
work), or the perfect moral commonwealth in which self-restraint secures
harmony between society and nature in a post-industrial arcadia (Davis, 1981).
But, in the real world the proposition that sustainability objectives (social
and cultural as well as ecological) and the objectives of economic growth,
global modernisation and Western materialist culture can become mutually
reinforcing is highly problematic. A few laissez-faire cornucopians consider
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D. Pepper
that liberating market forces will best aid this desired symbiosis. Most others
advocate manipulating and restraining the free market by combining regulation
with voluntary restraints and agreements – all as part of some socialdemocratic or ‘third way’ agenda in between laissez-faire and command and
control. Whatever the emphasis, essentially the hope is for a more humane,
democratic and ecologically benign capitalism. Thus Elson (2000) wants to
embed markets in ‘egalitarian social relations’ and to democratise the economy,
while Soper (2000, p.121) argues that we will stave off ecological disaster ‘‘only
if market forces are subject to much greater and more democratic political
control’’. The Worldwide Fund for Nature similarly appeals for reform of the
World Trade Organisation to make it democratic and transparent, and to
prioritise trade liberalisation measures that would deliver direct benefits to the
environment, generating ‘‘win-win scenarios’’ (WWF, 1999).
Such appeals are founded on an ideal of even rather than uneven
development within capitalism: diffusing wealth and power throughout global
society, so that economic life is informed by bottom-up development strategies
from communities with the power to make economic decisions affecting their
lives. Sustainable development based on the popular democratic will (expressed
through local democracy and through consumer preferences) can, it is argued,
secure the prioritisation of social and ecological goals over those of profit
maximisation in an ever more competitive environment. And once certain
development and affluence levels have been achieved, ‘post-materialist’
aspirations will come to the fore globally. Human pleasures and modes of
self-expression will then be uncoupled from reliance on social and environmental exploitation. This utopian ‘erotic’ of passion, dependency and
conviviality (Soper, 2000) would reverse the nineteenth-century ‘‘great
transformation’’ of which Polanyi (1941) wrote. In the latter process, economic
markets previously constrained by the need to maintain social cohesion became
separated from such social constraints and regulations by economic liberalism’s failed endeavour to set up a self-regulating market.
The utopian in the sense of idealistic nature of this theory can be seen in its
denial of real processes in the world as it is. As Leach et al (1997) point out, for
instance, the images of consensual communities that underlie reformist moves
to diffuse power actually belong to policy discourses serving sectional interests.
In the real world, communities are usually socially differentiated and diverse,
with unequal power relations. Hence conflict, rather than consensus, often
characterises the situations that development initiatives seek to address.
Furthermore, despite the modishness of ‘bottom-up’ development initiatives,
the dominant form of power in globalisation still marginalises grassroots
communities: centres still economically subjugate peripheries.
Meanwhile, competing and footloose global corporations ensure that even in
enlightened social democracies, where in prosperous times many businesses
indeed wish to embrace sustainable development, such goals are relegated
given threatened or actual downturns in the economic cycle. At such times in
particular, environmental and social regulations, taxes on energy and employ-
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Utopianism and environmentalism
17
ment and the welfare state in general are all undermined and resisted by
business lobbies and many politicians for the sake of global competitiveness,
productivity and ‘efficiency’ (see for example Flynn, 2003; also the publications
of Corporate Europe Observer). This is essentially because the socialdemocratic utopian ideal of diffusing wealth and power via regulated market
economies contradicts capitalism’s dynamic of concentrating wealth and power
(Fotopoulos, 1998b).
These tendencies have become more overt since the 1970s, and economies
have become less regulated – so that, as George Soros (1998) reminds us, in a
world dominated by unstable financial markets there is inevitably a failure of
politics as collective decision-making towards moral standards and social
justice — these are superseded by the individualism of market fundamentalism. To fantasise that it will be otherwise under capitalism is abstract
utopianism. Indeed, John Gray (1998, p.2) maintains that attempts to produce
‘‘democratic capitalism’’ in a single global free market are oxymoronic: ‘‘this
is a utopia that can never be realised’’. But neither, he asserts, can we return
to Keynesian post-war social-democratic economic management policies.
These are also delusional, since power has leaked from nations and
corporations into the hands of speculative financial markets. Faced with this,
‘‘corporations cannot willingly bear the social and environmental costs of
their activities’’ (p.75). There is now a competitive downgrading of regulatory
and welfare systems by sovereign states in order to remain cost-competitive,
and thus ‘‘Global regulation of environmental standards, though an inspiring
ideal, is a utopian prospect. It is not enforceable where it is most needed’’
(p.80).
Such sentiments echo left-inspired criticisms of ‘third way’ social-democratic
solutions. Panitch and Girdin (2000), for instance, see these as attempts to
harmonise social contradictions within the confines of existing social relations,
and thus as pure ideology. These solutions constitute abstract fantasy,
shrinking the meaning of social change to fit capital’s agenda of finding a
‘‘negotiated path to austerity’’ (Zuege, 2000, p.106).
As Gray puts it, a managed regime for the world economy ‘‘could be
established only by the world’s economic powers acting in concert, and
conflicts of interest make co-operation for anything more ambitious than crisis
management almost impossibly difficult. . .’ (p.200). Clearly this is not always
true, and some international environmental agreements are meaningful.
Nevertheless, the highly significant failure of Kyoto to gain universal assent
– on essentially economic grounds – reminds us of the potency of Gray’s
analysis.
Conclusion
Ecotopianism – the utopia of radical environmentalism – is restricted as a
fictional form, though it is pervasive in political ecology in general and may be
considered to underpin ‘green’ experiments in both individual and communal
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18
D. Pepper
living. Ecotopia’s contemporary context is frequently one of public scepticism
about science, modernity and ‘risk society’. Indeed, some claim that utopia
itself is nowadays a lost endeavour, having been replaced by a ‘heterotopia’ in
which utopias as fantasy are part of everyone’s lives and are devoid of social
change potential.
Academic and activist opinion nonetheless frequently argues that utopian
endeavour is necessary for radical environmentalism and for related movements such as feminism, anarchism and socialism. Utopianism is important
within these movements to inspire hope and provide ‘transgressive’ spaces,
conceptual and real, in which to experiment within alternative paradigms. To
be truly transgressive, rather than lapsing into reactionary fantasy, ecotopias
need to emphasise heuristic spaces and processes rather than laying down
blueprints, and must be rooted in existing social and economic relations rather
than being merely a form of abstraction unrelated to the processes and
situations operating in today’s ‘real’ world.
This paper suggests that by these criteria, the transgressiveness of
ecotopianism is ambiguous and limited. Deep ecological and bioregional
literature, for instance, can seem regressively removed from today’s world.
Anti-modernism is evident, for instance, in the form of future primitivism and
the predilection for small-scale ‘re-embedded’ societies echoing ‘traditional
cultures’. Blueprinting is also suggested by the strong metanarratives driven by
(ecological) science. There is a remarkable consensus amongst ideologically
diverse ecotopian perspectives about what should be in ecotopia, leaving
relatively little as provisional and reflexive. Additionally, idealism in the
negative sense is often rife in ecotopianism.
However, idealism pervades reformist as well as radical environmentalism,
and the principles behind ecological modernisation – the much-favoured
mainstream policy discourse about the environment – are founded on premises
that can be described as ‘utopian’ in the pejorative sense used by Marxists.
That is, they do not adequately and accurately take into account the socioeconomic dynamics of the capitalist system they are meant to reform. Thus
they fail to recognise that social-democratic and ‘third way’ attempts to realise
an environmentally sound, humane, inclusive and egalitarian capitalism are
ultimately headed for failure.
Notwithstanding these limitations of ecotopianism, given that the environmental problems featured in dystopian fiction for over a century seem
increasingly to be materialising, it may be that we will soon be clutching at
ecotopias as beacons affirming Bloch’s ‘principle of hope’ (1986).
And what of those who, despite these deepening environmental problems,
still maintain that ‘ecotopia’ is utopian fantasy in the worst sense, while
considering their reformist visions to be pragmatic and attainable? These
‘‘hard-nosed realists’, as Terry Eagleton (2000, p.33) ironically calls them,
‘‘who behave as though chocolate chip cookies and the IMF will be with us in
another 3000 years time’’, should realise that although the future may or may
not be pleasant:
Utopianism and environmentalism
19
to deny that it will be quite different in the manner of post-histoire
philosophising, is to offend against the very realism on which such
theorists usually pride themselves. To claim that human affairs might
feasibly be much improved is an eminently realistic proposition.
Acknowledgement
The author thanks the two anonymous referees, and Andrew Dobson, for their
time in reviewing an earlier version and offering useful and positive comments.
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Endnotes
1 In this paper I will regard dystopias as part of what Manuel and Manuel (1979) call ‘‘the utopian
propensity’’. For as they say (p.6), ‘‘If in the background of every utopia there is an anti-utopia,
the existing world seen through the critical eyes of the utopian composer, one might say
conversely that in the background of many a dystopia there is a secret utopia.’’
2 I take radical environmentalism to be that which advocates profound, fundamental changes in
economics, societies and individuals in order to create an environmentally sustainable future.
Reformism may also seek far-reaching social and attitudinal changes, but these would be based
on similar foundations to those of the existing (Western) liberal-capitalist society.
3 Goodwin and Taylor (1982) point out that while attacking ‘utopianism’ as conceived by the
utopian socialists, Marx and Engels were themselves utopian in ascribing an apocalyptic role to
revolution, and in their idealistic account of the ‘‘higher stages’’ of communism.
4 More reformist programmes embracing ecological modernisation principles also appear
fundamentally to be striving towards these conditions.
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