Is Environmentalism Dead?
A controversial 2004 speech at the Commonwealth Club of California where I argued that the environmental movement was not moving fast enough on climate change and needed to engage the mainstream, not just preach to the converted.
By late 2004, I had grown frustrated with the distance between the scale of climate change and the solutions the environmental movement was putting forward.
Too much of the conversation was still organized around modest regulatory fixes and individual sacrifice. Meanwhile the problem kept getting bigger. The movement was speaking mostly to people who already agreed with it.
At the Commonwealth Club of California, I gave a speech called 'Is Environmentalism Dead?' that argued the movement needed a different strategy. It had to engage the mainstream values that actually drive behavior in America: convenience, identity, aspiration, prosperity. If sustainable choices were easier and more attractive, more people would make them.