Every Monday, Deutschlandfunk (DLF), Germany’s national information radio station rewiews what it considers the nation’s most important political literature. On June 16, between Czech President Vaclav Havel’s autobiography, and a book by Alice Schwarzer (Germany’s most prominent feminist) Edgar Gaertner’s “Eco-nihilism” was presented and reviewed for the listeners. […]

In the 1970s and 80s, environmental policies rose to prominence as environmentalists scored many political victories. But our successes in cleaning rivers and air pollution were unfortunately followed by an environmental populism that led to an intellectual and economic downward spiral, often driven by fears of approaching ecological cataclysm. This devolution of the environmental movement is what German journalist and environment expert Edgar Gaertner has recently written about in his new book Eco-nihilism: A critique of a Political Ecology. The term nihilism was coined by French writer Albert Camus and refers to people who believe in things that do not exist. [...]