‘New Environmentalism’ Moves Beyond Pollution and Climate Change

Gus Speth is a longtime Washington policy insider—he served as an environmental advisor to the Carter and Clinton administrations and co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute. But “big environmentalism” doesn’t work anymore, he says, because focusing on biodiversity, pollution, and climate change only treats the symptoms rather than the root problems. Instead, he says, it’s time to consider consumerism, economic instability, and a functional democracy as core environmental issues, too—part of what he calls a “new environmentalism.” (Read an excerpt from Speth’s most recent book, Angels by the River.)