An Austrian economist, Leopold Kohr, used to end his lectures with an analogy. Suppose we are on the progress train, powered by growth and resource use and moving forward fast, with the neoliberal economists cheering us on. What would be the appropriate reaction if we were to learn that there was a massive gulf lying a few miles ahead on the track?

The economists would urge us to go onwards, pile up a head of steam, hoping to hurdle the gap. Others suggest that the brake may be in order. Kirkpatrick Sale, relaying this anecdote, writes that progress “is the myth that assures us that full-speed-ahead is never wrong. Ecology is the discipline that teaches us that it is disaster.”

Alex Gourevitch would have been one of the kids cutting class during Kohr’s lectures. As he writes, he is “skeptical of environmentalism.” Why? Environmentalists are misanthropes: they “tend to see the development of industry, and the wider attempt to dominate nature, as wrong, perverse, and the source of man’s domination over man.” They are also card-carrying members of the small-is-beautiful cult, waving around copies of Desert Solitaire, muttering about “civilization,” and generally being useless.