Treat the Disease, Not the Symptoms

the 'lazy environmentalist books' like our current medical practice of treating the symptoms instead of treating the disease, or better yet, focusing on prevention

In short: I agree completely.

The Extended Edition: Maniates gets at the heart of the problem with the environmental movement. Few leaders have emerged in the environmental movement over the past couple decades. This, coupled with the poor efforts of environmental elites to frame the issue in the way that it must - as a matter of utmost importance. I recognize that environmental issues took the last seat on the bus during the Bush administration, but the environmental elites did not respond maturely. They felt defeated and let their defeatist attitudes handicap them more than the Bush administration ever could have. Perhaps they thought that framing the issue as one which can be solved by the aggregate effects of each and every individual doing their part (as professor Nicholson has noted, this for Cameron Diaz means simply turning off the water in the shower when she shaves). Put simply, this will not work. Even if everyone does their parts (and this is a BIG 'if'), the results would come nowhere near to solving global warming or restoring the world's fisheries. The books Maniates offers as evidence of the faults of the environmental elite, ""It's Easy Being Green," "The Lazy Environmentalist," or even "The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time."", are for the environmental movement what the modern practice of treating the symptoms but not the disease are for medicine. Such books do have some value; they get people to think about their impact on the planet. But, these books go terribly wrong when they convince people that they can save the world simply by turning off the water when they shave. Environmental problems are much, much bigger than that, and these books delude people into thinking that they are saving the planet, when in reality they are still killing it by driving their big-ass suburbans hours every day to and from work and by flying in private jets. This strategy played right into the hands of the engine that fuels the destruction environmentalists should be fighting against. Chevron has "gone green" in its new greenwashing campaign, where they spit out the exact same lines that environmentalists have been about the green lifestyle: "Iwill unplug stuff more", "I will think about buying a hybrid", etc...It took them surprisingly long, but they realized that they can embrace this new, wimpy environmentalism without actually changing any of their practices and get great positive PR. The environmental elite went wrong when they stopped focusing on the disease and just tried to alleviate the symptoms. Such a practice does not cure, it deludes. New leaders are emerging with real power to redirect the focus of the environmental movement. They would do good to treat the disease instead of the symptoms. They would do even better to prevent new ones from taking hold at the same time they work on the old ones.