Although many individual behaviours have changed and a plethora of collective pro-environmental actions are taking place worldwide, environmental problems continue grow. From a framework of environmental adult education, I believe that by continuing to concentrate on behaviour modification and awareness-raising, we ignore the strengths, knowledge and power of people on the streets, as well as the larger structural and ideological problems at the root or environmental destruction. It is crucial that adult educators, those working with the 'public', acknowledge the serious and sometimes fatal risks of taking political action while encouraging the potential of people to make change through critically-focused educational-activist work.