Death of Environmentalism; Limitations of Blogging; Implications for the Sound

A paper called "The Death of Environmentalism" received some attention on the enviro blogs not long ago. I stayed out of it because, given the realities of life, I was unlikely to read a 12,000-word thesis, and because none of the blogs that talked about it presented a good enough summary for me to feel like I knew what the paper was about.

The Times has a story about it today, and provides some much-needed context. Bloggers like to complain about the limitations of newspapers, but this story points up the limitations of blogging -- too many blogs present information in takes that are too short to give a new reader any idea of what you're talking about. I include myself and Sphere in this criticism: anyone coming here and reading a recent post about Broadwater, for example, would have to do a fair amount of clicking around to figure out what my arch, wise-ass remarks mean; too much of it is inside talk for insiders.

As for the "Death of Environmentalism," I still have no particular opinion, except that I've remarked in the past that the constituency for Long Island Sound consists largely of people who came to the issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and have grow well into or beyond middle age.

I know Terry Backer and Dave Miller and Nancy Seligson are still very much involved in the Sound, but they've been at it for 15 or 20 years. Are their replacements waiting in the wings?