Join The Argument for a live event on Oct. 15 in Washington, D.C.!
I will be interviewing bestselling author and Revisionist History host Malcolm Gladwell about his new book, The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic.
The United States has far more homicides per capita than any other wealthy country. Gladwell asks how the richest nation on earth ended up with a violence problem usually found in the world’s poorest countries, and why we’ve had such a hard time fixing it.
The doors open at 6 p.m. at the Lincoln Theatre (1215 U St. NW). I hope to see you there! Get your tickets here.
At a high level, a country could take three paths to reduce carbon emissions: It could build out a lot of clean energy and related infrastructure, it could make life worse for everyone by wrecking its economy, or it could try to reduce the human population. Naturally, most green organizations have come to prefer the first approach, and in recent years, they’ve grown increasingly alarmed at how difficult it is to build solar, wind, nuclear, and other carbon-free power sources.
Last week, they might have gotten a solution: the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, co-authored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., arguably the chamber’s most climate-obsessed senator. The 400-plus-page bill streamlines the federal permitting process to make it easier to build all types of energy, the transmission needed to transport that energy, and basically any type of federal infrastructure project.
Not all the green groups were happy. The day after the text was released, roughly 90 environmental advocates gathered on a call to discuss it. One of the most prominent voices in the proceedings was Brett Hartl, the government affairs director at an Arizona-based nonprofit called the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).
“This is an effort to stop this bill not to make it better,” he said, according to a transcript published by Punchbowl News. “If your organization is not opposing [the bill], I think you should step off.”
The senior director for government relations at The Wilderness Society chimed in: “This makes sense to me.”
No one on the call openly objected to Hartl’s scorched-earth stance (though, given that the transcript was leaked, we can surmise that not everyone was in total agreement). And it was hardly the first time CBD had taken on this role: When Congress tried to pass a permitting reform bill in 2022, the organization led a coalition of more than 650 groups opposing it. It later touted its role in killing the bill in an end-of-year recap.
The problem, in the view of CBD, is that any permitting reform effort limits the litigation potential of several environmental statutes, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. “Essentially what this bill does is it hamstrings our ability to go after projects,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich of the Western Environmental Law Center during the call.
The ability to delay a project in court is a seductive tool that many environmental groups have used for good and for ill, but while other environmental organizations have begun slowly to accept the need for some kind of permitting reform, it is CBD that remains one of the bulwarks against reason. But the organization’s fringe opposition to human population growth, dubious claims to mass membership, and a record of obstructing projects that would reduce pollution do not set it as far apart from the broader environmental movement as one would hope. If it did, CBD wouldn’t be in a position to rally many of America’s major environmental organizations.
Environmentalism isn’t just one thing. Like all successful movements, it has absorbed people with different goals, backgrounds, and perspectives — and like all unsuccessful movements, it is sometimes paralyzed by internal contradiction. Some environmentalists are motivated by a monomaniacal focus on reducing climate emissions; others care more about building parks in suburban neighborhoods; and others still love to hunt, fish, or ski in relatively undisturbed wilderness.
What does the Center for Biological Diversity want? Instead of seeing humans as one of many species to nurture and protect — the “biological diversity” contained in its name — CBD is against building anything to make it possible for humans to flourish. Indeed, its actions and public statements suggest that its leaders think there should be many fewer people living altogether.
These are the people trying to steer federal climate policy. These are the people who every major green group in the country got on the phone with to plan their next strategy.
Who does CBD represent?
Antisocial politics breeds antisocial behavior.