Environmental Philosophy

Roger Scruton offers a fresh approach to tackling the most important political problem of our time. He contends that the environmental movement is philosophically confused and has unrealistic agendas. Its sights are directed at large-scale events and the confrontation between international politics and multinational business. But Scruton argues that no large-scale environmental project, however well intentioned, will succeed if it is not rooted in small-scale practical reasoning.

When most Americans think of environmentalism, they think of the political left, of vegans dressed in organic-hemp fabric, lofting protest signs. In reality, writes Jacob Darwin Hamblin, the movement - and its dire predictions - owe more to the Pentagon than the counterculture.