This withering indictment of the environmental establishment by an award-winning science writer and environmentalist charges that it ignores basic principles of science, economics, and human nature.

While many environmentalists talk the language of science, Wallace Kaufman argues, they really adopt a view of nature and society that is deeply unscientific. Saving the world by recycling, reducing consumption, gardening organically, and living more simply is so much wishful thinking - and leaves our real environmental problems unsolved.

No Turning Back is the story of how the environmental movement displaced a conservation movement's century of success with a crisis strategy to change not only government policy but also American culture. Kaufman finds the movement's conception in the revolt of European and English romantics against both the rational mind of science and the Industrial Revolution.

He traces the sparks of that movement to America, where it was nourished by Henry David Thoreau, still the writer most widely quoted by environmentalists. While Thoreau declared that "in Wildness is the preservation of the world," this book demonstrates the exact opposite: in civilization is the preservation of wildness.

1. Kaufman depicts an environmental movement crippled by its own fantasies and outlines a plan for building on the strengths of Western technology and culture to save the planet. To suggest that human beings can survive and thrive by rejecting precisely what makes them unique - namely, reason, planning, and inventiveness - is a recipe for disaster, Kaufman writes.

The world's commitment to hands-on management of nature is now irreversible. How well we do it will depend on whether people in power continue to try to turn away from the future and make ideas more important than people. Debunking well-known environmental experts, including Bill McKibben, Paul Erlich, and Lester Brown, as well as Vice President Albert Gore, No Turning Back is sure to be a hotly debated book.