5 Reasons Why the Environmental Movement is Failing

After two decades of experience in the environmental movement, my assessment is that it’s failing. These are the five main reasons why. All of them can be solved.

#1: Downstream Thinking

The global environmental movement is like a guy bailing water from a sinking boat without patching the hole. As earnest as his efforts may be, it’s not going to work.

I’m not entirely innocent of this charge. I’ve spent almost 20 years trying to protect and restore the most endangered rainforest on earth. For a good chunk of that time, I was primarily treating the symptoms. A failed conversation I had with a billionaire is what finally woke me up.

Up until that point, the NGO I co-founded had successfully built a rainforest preserve that protects thousands of acres. We had reforested large swaths of cattle pasture. We were working hand-in-hand with several of the communities that live in the area. We were duly winning the battle we had chosen to fight, but we were losing the war. Deforestation continued throughout much of the rest of the region.

This is a microcosm of the entire environmental movement, which is comprised of thousands of different groups of people across the world that are mostly reacting to symptoms rather than trying to fix the root cause.