ABSTRACT
All environmentalists understand that there is an urgency requiring action in the global crisis we are experiencing, but not everyone understands that if our activism is driven by idols, we can exhaust ourselves with effort while having very little effect on the crisis. Most frighteningly, it is even possible that our efforts can sustain the crisis. The problem for even the best-intentioned environmental action is that it imagines that it can confront a problem that is standing outside it. Corporate execs are perfectly comfortable with it, and corporate philanthropists give their dough to environmental organizations that speak it. Unfortunately, it also has the consequence of turning environmentalists into quislings, collaborators, and virtuous practitioners of a cost-benefit logic figured in dying penguins, whales, and polar bears. Environmentalism seems to feel that the best thing it can do for nature is make a case for it, as if it were always making a summative argument before a jury with the backing of the best science.
