Review: 'The End Of Environmentalism'

Joel Makower reviews the paper "The Death of Environmentalism" by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus.

1 minute read

November 9, 2004, 10:00 AM PST

By Abhijeet Chavan @http://twitter.com/legalaidtech


"The Death of Environmentalism [by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus] is a compelling indictment of the modern environmental movement...The paper was published a few weeks before the election, but subsequent events have made its call to action more timely than ever.

In their treatise, they argue that "modern environmentalism is no longer capable of dealing with the world's most serious ecological crisis." The reasons are many and varied, and their readable 35-page paper lays them out well. In short, the problem is that today's environmental leaders are addressing tomorrow's problems with yesterday's tools: regulatory and policy fixes. And because serious global problems like climate change and the looming water crisis have been narrowly defined as "environmental," their equally narrow solutions are easy to marginalize and dismiss by conservatives, cynics, and other nonbelievers.

Thanks to Abhijeet Chavan

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