An over-the-top denigration of the environmental movement

Pascal Bruckner is a French philosopher who came of age in 1968 but who subsequently became a bête noir of the left for his questioning of multiculturalism and the “tyranny of guilt” that he sees dominating the West’s relationship with the rest of the world.

In this book he turns his attention to the ecology movement which he describes as the sole truly original force of the past half-century. One that has won the battle of ideas after the failure of its predecessors Marxism and ‘Third-world-ism’. One that is triumphant, by capillary action, at the UN, in governments and in our schools.

He recognises that in caring for our environment, we are contributing to our own fulfilment. That saving nature is also a way of saving ourselves. But this book is a relentless tirade against the environmental movement which he sees as offering nothing but predictions of catastrophe and which wallows in self hatred about the human world.