SOURCE: "The Mountain Hedonist," in New York Review of Books, Vol. 38, No. 7, April 11, 1991, pp. 29-31, 34.

In the following review of The Practice of the Wild, McKibben argues that Snyder believes as environmentalists we must bridge our estrangement from nature.

We talk in a lazy shorthand when we speak about "the environment" and "the environmental movement" as if there were a single, obvious program for the planet's protection. But the environmental movement is far broader and more diverse than any of the "progressive" campaigns that preceded it, since no single policy can deal with problems as diverse in scale and scope as the greenhouse effect and the extinction of the spotted owl, the pollution along Louisiana's Cancer Alley and the destruction of the tropical rain forests. No one expects economists to put together programs, or even philosophies, that simultaneously increase the market share of Remington razors and redress the...