Hard Green: Saving the Environment From the Environmentalists.

THE MOVEMENT FOR BETTER OR WORSE

Both Peter Huber's Hard Green: Saving the Environment From the Environmentalists (Basic Books, $25) and Earth Rising: American Environmentalism in the 21st Century (Island Press, $24.95) by Phillip Shabecoff begin with that icon of conservation, Teddy Roosevelt. But that may be the only thing they have in common.

Shabecoff, a former New York Times reporter, offers an insightful look at the environmental movement at the cusp of a new century. He criticizes the large green groups for sometimes losing focus, but most of all he looks forward to a looming global crisis, and the enormous task racing the somewhat disorderly movement. "The movement will have to become bigger, stronger, richer, more resourceful, more diverse and more confident," Shabecoff concludes.

Huber says the movement should just give up, because it's wrong about everything. Energy efficiency is a waste of time; pesticides and bioengineering are turning the world into an immense breadbasket; concentrated wealth helps the planet. He favors T.R.'s "hard green" preservation of visible wilderness over the "soft green" concern about the "limits of growth." Huber, a Forbes columnist, articulates a corporate-centered world view, preserving the planet by unleashing the "healing powers" of the market. He ignores, of course, the colossal mess that such thinking has already created. -- Jim Motavalli