The Ehrlichs have long demonstrated great courage in combating anti-environmentalists, but it is another thing altogether to take on one's partners in the struggle for change. Were they to have condemned environmentalists' antiscience rhetoric, they would quickly have been branded as traitors to the movement. I know from experience how unpleasant such an experience can be. Regrettably, however, the resulting lacuna prevents them from fully explaining the success of the brownlash movement. Environmentalism can persuasively be portrayed as wildly out of touch with U.S. life precisely because scores of recent books argue that science lies at the root of the global crisis, that high technology must be abandoned, that the market is inimical to nature, and that capitalism by its own immutable logic will destroy the earth.
Polls consistently show that environmentalism still commands broad support in the United States.
But if the movement is to go beyond symbolic acts and rearguard actions, it will have to reconsider the political strategies and rhetorical modes that have been its mainstays. Specifically, it must get in step with the public's race to the political center. For example, the Ehrlichs' main policy prescription is the imposition of steep carbon taxes on fossil fuels, which they must know is a nonstarter in today's political climate. Yet they never discuss how to make this strategy palatable-say by pairing it with an income tax cut, especially for the middle class. Staking out such a centrist position, which can appeal to moderate conservatives as well as traditional liberals, may strike many committed environmentalists as weak-kneed defeatism, but it offers the only real hope for enacting the deep reforms that are needed.