Top Ten Things Every Environmentalist Need to Learn

The latest entry in the endless "environmentalists need to change everything about environmentalism or no one will take them seriously" polemic is interesting enough, and like anyone I agree that in its way it makes a number of good points—but on a lot of things it's just saying what well-schooled environmentalists already know, and on a lot of other things it's just wrong. In particular the argument taken as a whole would seem to violate a number of its own rules. For instance, Rule #7 reads

Plans for the future should not be made on the most optimistic predictions and should consider the most pessimistic reasonable predictions.

Well, the most pessimistic reasonable predictions regarding both global warming and peak oil are absolutely cataclysmic. Against that reality, how does the requirement for a perpetually growing economy (#1) or people's supposed unwillingness to accept lifestyle changes (#4) even register?

There's more good discussion of this at MeFi.