It might seem odd that environmental regulations and related court cases have garnered so much national political attention. Federal environmental spending is just a fraction of outlays for national defense, Medicare, and other entitlement programs. And except for a handful of industries, private spending on environmental compliance pales in comparison to other costs imposed by government on business. The answer is that environmentalism is a coherent ideology that rivals Marxism in its challenge to the classical liberal view of government as protector of individual rights. It therefore aims to eviscerate common-law rights and to replace them with a legal regime that would organize transactions among individual citizens for a single public purpose, environmental protection.
Environmentalism thus pushes toward a centralized, unlimited political scheme.
To the extent that this scheme allows for 'rights' they are defined and circumscribed by public purposes. In the world of the courts, says Greve, this environmental paradigm has translated into an unprecedented erosion of property rights, a loosening of criteria for determining standing to sue, and a transformation of the courts' constitutional role. The Demise of Environmentalism in American Law is an important book in three ways. First, it succinctly restates some key philosophical premises of modern environmentalism. Second, it offers a highly readable and subtle exploration of several central tenets of American constitutional law.