Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul

A firsthand, trench-view story of the failure of the modern environmental movement--and an inspiring prescription for change.Something's gone badly awry with environmentalism. We faithfully separate our waste into different streams, but wonder whether it really makes a difference. Global companies announce their commitment to carbon negativity while simultaneously sponsoring oil conferences. American businesses, communities, and individuals assiduously measure their carbon footprints, then implement voluntary emissions-reduction programs, all while trumpeting their do-gooderism.The problem is, none of this--whether individual efforts or corporate sustainability tactics--will make a dent in solving the civilizational threat of climate change. We only pretend it will, at our peril.As sustainability veteran Auden Schendler argues in this provocative, powerful book, we're living a big green lie. The hard truth is that much of the modern environmental road map could have been written by the