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The Green Insurgents

Explore the controversial claim about the death of environmentalism and its challenge to the U.S. environmental movement's status quo.

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A few years back, these two guys audaciously pronounced the death of environmentalism. That didn't go over too well with established greens. Since then, they've published a sequel and opened up a storefront to sell a new brand of environmentalism. All this has triggered an odd turf war, including drive-by blasts from the likes of this crotchety knuckle-breaker. I've been alternately bemused and confounded by this passion play. As a progressive movement, environmentalism in principle should welcome multiple viewpoints, even those that suggest cutting off the head of a lumbering green giant that has grown fat and dull from a moldy diet of outdated credos. But give the Bad Boys from the Breakthrough Institute some credit, because they keep trying to kill the corpse that won't die. Their latest effort appears in the new issue of The New Republic, entitled, "The Green Bubble: Why Environmentalism keeps imploding." No sooner was the piece posted than this comment from sociologist Robert Brulle appeared:

This is the most ridiculous and non-factual analysis I have ever seen of the U.S. environmental movement. This interpretation completely ignores the refereed literature on this topic. Why is the New Republic allowing this sort of drivel to appear? Don't you have any fact checkers?

Yeah, that's hitting them where they hurt. Hey, Dr. Brulle, how about actually engaging the article?

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