Alex Trembath is the deputy director of the Breakthrough Institute based in Oakland, Calif. Isaiah Menning is the external affairs director at the American Conservation Coalition in Washington, D.C.

There’s a growing movement across the country to build better and faster. Since the recent publication of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book “Abundance,” where they argue for cutting red tape and increasing innovation in order to create an “abundant” supply of goods that we need, like housing and energy — leaders on the right, left, and center have championed their proposed abundance agenda. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is streamlining regulations to build more housing, and Governor Spencer Cox of Utah is leading an “energy superabundance” initiative to “unlock more reliable, secure, and affordable energy … across the West.”

But from the Sierra Club to Defenders of Wildlife, many environmentalists have taken issue with the abundance movement’s focus on cutting red tape. These groups use laws like the National Environmental Policy Act to halt or delay energy and forest management projects — and they often lose the cases they bring to court because they can’t demonstrate real violations of environmental law.

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Well-designed regulations are important, but an environmentalism that dismisses any kind of reform ends up hurting people and nature. And in fact, building more of what we need can be great for humans and wildlife alike — dense cities, more efficient agriculture, and streamlining regulations can make more space for wildlands.

Take housing, for example. We often cast development as a zero-sum game for the environment. But by allowing denser development in cities and towns, we can increase the housing supply, improve affordability, and encourage walkability. This also mitigates sprawl and preserves more habitat for wildlife and open, wild spaces for people.

Then there’s agriculture. Agricultural expansion is the leading driver of habitat loss worldwide, but innovation in the sector has the potential to drastically reduce the amount of land needed to produce the global food supply. In fact, it already has done so. Since 1961, technological advancement has spared an area the size of India and the United States combined from agricultural use, primarily by increasing crop yields on existing farmland. Embracing technology like genetic tools, vertical farming, and drip irrigation will help farmers produce more food for people and leave more resources for wildlife.

We also need regulations that allow us to manage our forests and wild lands better. The environmental movement too often defaults to protecting the natural status quo at all costs when what we actually need is to make our ecosystems resilient — and sometimes that means human intervention.

Consider wildfire mitigation. The primary driver of wildfires across the West is the uncontrolled buildup of vegetation that provides copious fuel to burn. But forest management projects are often mired in regulation and litigation, with drastic consequences for humans and wildlife. The August Complex fire in 2020 is one example. After eight years of delay and litigation around a forest management project in California, the fire burned more than a million acres, including the northern spotted owl’s old-growth forest habitat; killed one firefighter; and destroyed 935 buildings.

Preventing disasters of this kind requires modernizing the National Environmental Policy Act, something most environmentalists won’t touch for fear of changing a bedrock environmental law. But reforming forest management policy is critical to maintaining healthy forests, and thankfully, some commonsense reforms have already won bipartisan support.

Conservationists should measure their success by looking at outcomes, not by how many development or management projects they managed to stop in a given year.

An abundance agenda for housing and agriculture will also create more room for nature. To realize that future, we need an approach to nature that not only protects but builds.