A New Shade Of Green

Photo by Ricardo Cárdenas

Monday, October 1, 2007

A New Shade Of Green

As I’ve argued before, there’s a pressing need for a new kind of environmentalism. One that sees in progress and technology not the enemy but a way to solve the challenges posed by economic growth and globalization. A movement that is not flooded with misanthropic sentiments and pessimism about the future. A group of proactive rather than reactionary people, more pragmatic than idealistic.

Well, it seems that this new shade of green is finally coming to paint the political spectrum. Break Through: From "The Death of Environmentalism" to the Politics of Possibility, is the first book from Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, two former environmentalists who enraged the green establishment a few years ago when they published an essay criticizing the movement for its failure to provide inspiring and creative solutions to the problem of global warming. The book seems not just interesting and inspiring but also quite entertaining as it takes aim at some of the environmental movement's highest priests, including Kennedy and Al Gore. It also demeans the Kyoto Protocol and, at the same time, it criticizes libertarians who believe that free markets alone can solve the problem. Here’s a good review, in case you’re interested:

Two Environmentalists Anger Their Brethren

By Mark Horowitz

For angry heretics on the run, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger sure know how to enjoy themselves. Sitting in a cozy Berkeley restaurant just a few blocks from San Francisco Bay, exchanging tasting notes on the vermentino ("cold white wine is so good with fatty, fried food," Shellenberger says), they recount with perverse pleasure, in tones almost as dry as the wine, how they've been branded as infidels by fellow environmentalists. It started in 2004, when they published their first Tom Paine-style essay accusing the movement's leaders of failing to deal effectively with the global warming crisis. "We thought that someone was going to take a swing at us," Shellenberger says. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope published withering counterattacks, and the two men were dubbed "the bad boys of American environmentalism" by author Bill McKibben.

Nordhaus, 41, and Shellenberger, 36, didn't set out to infuriate their former colleagues. On the contrary, they were good Berkeley citizens — partial to black clothing, into biking (Nordhaus) and yoga (Shellenberger), fluent in pinot noir. Above all, they were passionate about the environment. For the better part of a decade, they toiled in the green movement as consultants and political strategists, each hoping to change the world. Instead, the climate crisis changed the rules: It demanded a new way of framing the debate, and the pair became disillusioned when the environmental establishment stubbornly refused to adapt. That led to their fateful essay, with the not-so-subtle title The Death of Environmentalism. Overnight, the two became pariahs. And now, with the October publication of their first book, Break Through: From "The Death of Environmentalism" to the Politics of Possibility, they are going to face the full fury of enraged environmentalists. Pope, who has read the book, predicts that the reception from the movement "will be harshly negative."

Break Through is a fascinating hybrid: part call to arms, part policy paper, part philosophical treatise. (Name another book that gives equal time to Nietzsche, cognitive therapy, and fuel-economy legislation.) It takes aim at some of the environmental movement's biggest lions, including Kennedy and Al Gore. It belittles the Kyoto Protocol; it rips into best- selling social critics like Thomas Frank and Jared Diamond. But it also dismisses free marketeers who believe that unfettered markets alone can solve our carbon-emission woes. "If this book doesn't piss off a whole lot of conservatives and a whole lot of liberals, we've failed," Nordhaus says.

The two have reimagined the underlying philosophy of environmentalism in a way that could win over many of its natural skeptics, from financially insecure Americans who view green activists as elitist snobs to the leaders of developing countries like Brazil, India, and China who think environmentalists want to stop economic growth just when they were about to get their share. Green groups may carp, but the truth is that the book could turn out to be the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

By its very nature, the environmental movement has always been antitechnology and antigrowth. Bikes are better than cars; open space is better than development; less is always more. As a result, its leaders have focused most of their antiglobal warming political energies on regulating carbon emissions and limiting domestic energy consumption. Noble aims, to be sure. There's just one problem: In dealing with global warming, these strategies haven't worked in the past and will not work any better in the future.

Full review...