BEING AN environmentalist used to be simple. All you had to do was wear buttons on your tie-dyed shirt that read "Save the Earth" and "No nukes," and make herbal tea on your wood-burning stove. It used to be that if you hiked and communed with nature, you were an environmentalist. Today, that just makes you a yuppie. Instead, you must file suit against a developer and quote from environmental impact reports.
Perhaps environmentalists' change from passive tree-huggers to political combatants has been necessary to stave off a %o worldwide ecological onslaught. In some respects, it has been quite a success. But it's no fun anymore. Oh, for a Whole Earth Catalog and a pair of Earth Shoes.