Do the philosophical roots of the New Left hamper the enactment of environmental policy?

[hamandcheese]

I completely agree with you, Osmium. While what we were talking about certainly is under the postmoderm umbrella I don't at all think that it defines postmodern thought, especially when "postmodern philosophy" has contributed a lot to my own thinking. To be more specific, it would be part of the post-structuralist vein, that, though potentially useful, is ironically too easily molded to any conclusion -- including tree ethics, if not plain nihilism.

But not all of the postmodern influence is nihlisitic. I didn't mention Eco-Feminism, for example. An eco-feminist would assert something like: "The capitalist dominion over nature is a form of chauvinism. Its trenchedness is the result of a historically male dominated culture and its political institutions. Mans rape of the environment is no less Man's rape of the environment." Etc. Etc. Invariably they also incorporate Freud or Lacan and start calling smoke stacks an unconcious case of phallo-centricism. Really.

The Freudian influence on the new left is also postmodern, and is a direct result of the work of Herbert Marcuse, particularly his "Eros and Civilization". In it Marcuse ammended Freuds argument that Civilization is inherently and necessarily repressive to say that, not civilization, but Capitalism and it's legion are the repressors. This was in fact the intellectual foundation of the counterculture, and the ancestor to the later arguments against "mass produced society" and the technocracy.

So your quite right about postmodernism coming in very many kinds. But I defend my use of the term on the grounds that the postmodern influence on environmentalism has really been from every corner of postmodernity.