The idealism, activism, and prophetic aura of environmental groups, many of which also quickly became politically powerful, with multimillion-dollar budgets, may have swayed too many journalists in the early years of the movement.

Today, however, environmental groups have seen a significant loss of membership support. Since 1990, Greenpeace has lost 40 percent of its members, the Wilderness Society has suffered a 35 percent decline, and the Sierra Club has slashed its current budget by $4 million and fired 40 members of its staff.

Some journalists have begun to seriously entertain the possibility that environmentalism may be driven by a disdain for the capitalist free-market system that underpins constitutional liberties like property rights. The writings of extremist environmentalists have always lent credence to this possibility.

For example, Michael McCloskey, chairman of the Sierra Club, wrote in 1970 in Ecotactics:

That other revolution, the industrial one, is turning sour...