The Green Book

Although we’re not particularly well known for it, we at Foreign Affairs care a great deal about the state of the physical world and all its inhabitants, and have run a substantial number of articles about environmental, conservation, and climate issues. So we decided this spring that it was time to pull together some of the highlights of our coverage in this special collection. The articles presented span a range of topics and perspectives, from Steven M. Wise on animal rights to Bjorn Lomborg on environmental alarmism, Elizabeth Economy on China’s pollution problem, and Fred Krupp on fracking. Reading them over, it is hard not to be shaken by the scale of the damage being wrought on the planet and its non-human inhabitants by rapid, unregulated growth around the globe. But it is also hard not to recognize how much sensible public policy could do to address the problem. We hope this is a useful guide in those efforts.