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August 18, 2005
I can only note this continuation of the debate about the end of environmentalism. I have to catch a plane now to Adelaide so I will try and weave the Australian dimension of it tomorrow, if ADSL-2 has been set up whilst I've been in Canberra. My luck will be that I cannot get online.
Recall that 'the end of environmentalism' thesis meant that the basic categorical assumptions that underlie environmentalism have inhibited the movement's ability to consider opportunities outside environmental boundaries that would allow progressives to compete more effectively with conservatives and their narrative of optimism. As Werbach says:
The problem is not that environmentalism and the moral intellectual framework we call liberalism are dead. The problem is that we have been in denial about it for more than 20 years. The sooner we acknowledge these deaths, the sooner we can give birth to something more powerful and relevant.
The something "more powerful and relevant" is a an aspirational ideology as powerful as liberalism once was, and as powerful as fundamentalism is today.
Update: 20th August
I read the responses and I found them not very relevant. The core of the debate is this text. It states that environmentalism has failed to win national legislation that would reduce the threat of global warming. The environmetnal movement is not articulating a vision of the future commensurate with the magnitude of the crisis. It is promoting technical policy fixes (signing Kyoto) instead of a big vision and a core set of values.
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