I've been mocking greens for years for their idiotic beliefs that were so ludicrous and ineffective that they were bad for the environment. The more genuine your concern for the environment the more that you should oppose greens, but even if you don't much care about the environment greens are ridiculous. It may be that these fashion victims are now being more broadly criticized as the public twigs to them.

When the creator of “Beavis and Butt-head” comes out with a cartoon comedy series mocking environmentalists (”The Goode Family,” which premieres tonight on ABC), you could be forgiven for wondering if the culture has reached an inflection point green-wise.

The environmentalist-contrarians Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger already think it has. Writing in the New Republic (and provoking a lot of debate there), they declare that the “green bubble” has burst in terms of public support. . .

. . . the left’s alienation in the Bush years helped inflate a bubble of unrealistic “green anti-modernism,” epitomized by Al Gore. It illustrates, the writers say, that “while utopianism has a bright side–it is a way of imagining a better world–it also has a dark side characterized by escapism and a disengagement from reality that marks all bubbles, green or financial.”

Time will tell if fashions have changed yet. They will at some point, even if it isn't now. But that won't be the end of it. Recall that the worst among them were reds pretending to be greens pretending to be reds. Some were street thugs of the 60s who flit from transgressive cause to transgressive cause as times change. They'll reinvent themselves again as green becomes as yesterday as red.

So long as the absurd idea that "utopianism has a bright side–it is a way of imagining a better world" is mouthed by shallow thinkers there will be yet another fashion crime. Those with better minds and characters note that utopianism is not about better worlds, it's about indulging fantasies come what may. Better worlds come from careful thinking, not self indulgence.