Reading Judith Layzer's new book I kept thinking of the old expression, "Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story." It is not because Layzer plays fast-and-loose with her account of the rise of the conservative critique of environmentalism and environmental policy; her book is nothing if not a careful study of American environmental politics. Rather, it's because that line seems to capture an essential truth about the power of political narratives, particularly how a compelling storyline can come to possess for some its own truth, a motivating significance independent of empirical assessments of, for example, environmental quality, species decline, and rising global temperatures.
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