A Dark Ecologist Warns Against Hope

For years, Paul Kingsnorth was one of the most visible members of the green movement. Then he walked away from it. Now he wants us to walk away from everything else. For Kingsnorth, the Industrial Revolution marked the point of no return, the moment when we decided to play gods and turn our backs on the Earth. In 2014, Paul Kingsnorth was sunk in doubt. He was forty-one and had been on the green movement's front lines since the nineteen-nineties--working for Greenpeace and EarthAction, chaining himself to a bridge, getting tear-gassed outside a G-8 summit.