Radical environmentalism is a term that calls up images of subversive maneuvers performed by those with extremist views who give no quarter to the governments and corporations that persist in polluting the earth and squandering its resources. But much of the force of the word "radical" (or even "environmentalism") is a function of the individual's perspective. Radical environmentalism has two strands that occasionally interact and are, in general terms, "those who favor the preservation of nature for nature's sake and those who wish only to maintain the environment as the necessary habitat of humankind" (Lewis 17). The first are the so-called "deep ecology" movement, or movements, whose adherents stress the principles of "biospherical egalitarianism" in a platform described by Devall and Sessions as based on the proposition that "the well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves [and] these values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes" (quoted in Cheney 295). The second strand of radical environmentalism is the reformist movement, or movements, whose followers, as Petra Kelly (a founder of the West German Green Party) put it, recognize the "structural violence" that is perpetrated against humanity on a daily basis, but believe that this only means that "we have no option but to plunge into greater democracy" (12, 11).
The assumption made by deep ecology groups is that the so-called "shallow ecologists" are guilty of a "gutless accommodationism" that excludes "all nonhumans from the realm of moral consideration" (Lewis 17, 18). But the radicalism of these two schools of thought (and their many variants) is relative. The reformists only appear to lack radicalism when they are compared with the deep ecologists whose number includes many groups that resort to so-called "revolutionary action" ranging from "blowing up electricity pylons and fishing boats...