Turn Around and Step Forward

First, studies done by the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies indicate that, while people are remarkably unified in their concern with environmental degradation, they are uncertain as to who they should trust when it comes to competing claims about the environment, suspecting radical “spin” of the truth from all sides, including environmentalists.  Second, studies have found that while many people have a sense that we are on the verge of an environmental disaster and many have a vague sense of or tenuous commitment to the notion that “something should be done,” over forty percent of the general public thinks “environmentalist” is synonymous with “radical” and “irrational.”  Finally, a brief personal anecdote: when I make arguments for the virtues of simplicity—emotional, spiritual, economic, or environmental—my brothers think of Ted Kaczynski, not Henry David Thoreau.

From Brian Treanor's Turn Around and Step Forward: Ideology and Utopia in the Environmental Movement http://ephilosophy.uoregon.edu/Treanor_EP7.1.pdf