Here's a riddle to keep you up at night: How come, at a time when the environmental movement is stronger and richer than ever, our most pressing ecological problems just get worse? It's as though the planet has hit a Humpty-Dumpty moment in which unprecedented amounts of manpower and money are unable to put the world back together again. "Why are we losing so many battles?" wonders Gus Speth, dean of Yale's School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Of course, the issues are complicated and could require decades and trillions of dollars to resolve. But part of the problem is that...