Did you ever play little league football and do some "dogpiling" -- where after the guy is down you jump on top of the heap of bodies just to feel like part of the process? I'm the last one to not think the recent critiques of the environmental movement by Shellenberger and Nordhaus, Werbach, Chapin and others are extremely valuable, justified, and important. But no sooner do you say its a healthy and potentially constructive thing to do a little self-criticism, then you get the "dogpile effect" with columnists like Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times jumping on the pile and sounding like the essays signal the end of environmentalism, rather than noting that Werbach's essay, "Is Environmentalism Dead?" ends with a question mark.
To get a clear idea of the many flaws in Kristof's editorial, read the Readers' Opinions Forum along with it in which one person after another expresses their disappointment with his editorial.