I am grateful for Max Ajl’s spirited reply to my “Two Hurricanes” piece. However, some of Ajl’s arguments are in competition with each other, which makes it difficult to respond.

In an attempt to dismiss my concern that the social pessimism of environmentalism produces apathy rather than action, Ajl asks “does any mass movement proceed by trying to mobilize the majority?” But later Ajl insists that any serious environmental politics “means mass politics.” Ajl wants mass politics without the masses.

Ajl also believes that small-scale self-sufficient production communities “would be an almost unimaginable improvement for the lives of the overwhelming majority of the world’s inhabitants” and thinks that “ecological problems are not resolvable through endless technofixes” but then wants “coast-to-coast high-speed railroad network along with arterial and capillary branches tied into municipal mass-transportation systems” and “massive government-propelled programs to build alternative energy systems.” That sounds like a massive, industrial project to create an even more integrated national economy.