In this snide reply, Alex Gourevitch, rather than defend his article against my criticisms of it, chose to repeat his incorrect arguments, a time-honored approach to political disagreement.

However, it is useful, because it both clarifies Gourevitch’s polemical method and allows me to amplify my points.

His primary resort is deliberate misreading. Some anonymous activist somewhere was relieved at a sentimental level that children in the Gaza Strip might study by bicycle-powered electric lamp as opposed to candlelight or the generators which now and then lead to the immolation of a few families in a refugee camp? For Gourevitch, this proof of how environmentalists tend to “rationalize poverty.”