NYT Stunner: Is Environmentalism The Politics of Fear?

Wednesday, Sewell Chan posted a rather lengthy piece at the New York Times City Room blog concerning an exceptionally provocative discussion about environmental politics that occurred Tuesday evening at the New York Public Library.
Frankly, readers are going to be shocked by some of the article's contents, especially the astounding opening paragraph (emphasis added throughout):

"Is the environmental movement, like the war on terror, premised on a "politics of fear"? In other words, does it try to unify people by scaring them with threats to their basic survival?
Let's say it: Environmentalism is a politics of fear. It is not a progressive politics. When I say it is a politics of fear, I don't mean that it just deploys hysterical rhetoric or that it exaggerates threats, which I think it does. I mean it in a much deeper sense.
[...]
Environmentalism is not just some politics. It's a political project, a full-bodied ideology, and one that presents itself in terms of progress and aspiration. But when you look at what this ideology is built on, it's built on the idea that a collective threat that makes security the basic principle of politics and makes the struggle for survival the basic and central aim of our social and political life. This, to me, is not a progressive politics at all.
What is it that moves us? It's not actually ideals. We're not stirred to action by ideals. We're compelled by the force of circumstances. It's the sheer spur of necessity that drives us forward. What's more, this ostensible politics is really an antipolitics, because the idea is that we should put to one side the conflicts of interest and ideals that are the real cut and thrust of politics."