Transiting recently across the Florida-Georgia border, I came across a wholesale bookstore which advertised "no book over $3." Of course I couldn't resist. Imagine my dismay when I discovered it was a Christian bookstore with aisles overflowing almost entirely with bibles, notebooks and calendars, as well as such inspirational bestsellers as "The Christian's Guide to Eating Healthy" and the "The Divine Spirit's Home Repair Kit."
The clerk, however, did point out a small section, basically one table, for "secular" books. And it was there I discovered the "Nordhaus thesis" (a solemn hush comes over the room). Unless you are an environmental policy wonk, you might have missed out on this guy's essay a few years ago called "The Death of Environmentalism." I did.
The book I picked out of the pile, "Breakthrough," or, "From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possbility" is a worthwhile read. The hardcover copy, jettisoned from the Harford County library (Maryland?) cost all of ninety-nine cents. The authors, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, give you bang for the buck, bringing an erudite, and no doubt controversial, analysis to the whole global warming and climate crisis debate.
The book is ostensibly about global warming and the need for a vigorous global energy economy capable of handling it. But where it differs from other books on the subject is in its aim squarely at liberal interest-group environmentalism: its "small-bore" or techo-fix approach born of the sixties that fails today to summon ordinary people's energies and stimulate their imagination for thinking BIG.
Written at the time of the Democratic takeover of Congress, the book is not optimistic that the party of Franklin Roosevelt can transcend liberal, interest-group politics and promote a postindustrial, postmaterial agenda equipped to both grow the economy and slow climate change. Filing lawsuits against corporations is just so late twentieth century.
They bring many contemporary heavy-hitters to bear, including Thomas Kuhn ("The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"), Daniel Bell, and Francis Fukuyama. They invoke memories of old school favorites Nietzsche and Hegel.
Several passages are delicious, particularly the treatment of Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s obvious hypocrisy over the Cape Wind project, an elite case of NIMBY if ever there was one.
And the chapter devoted to Brazil should shame anybody who supports doing something about development in the Amazon forest without mentioning in the same breath the need for action reducing poverty in Rio's favelas. That the two problems are opposite sides of the same coin now seems too obvious.
One of their enduring ideas with me is that environmentalism will have to re-invent itself along the lines of Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. Don't laugh. They make a convincing case that a mass movement that translates into anything meaningful politically will probably need to be spiritual and ingrained in people's everyday lives. Their term for such necessary groundwork is "pre-political."
If you doubt that what they say is true, look around you. How many people are talking with passion about what can be done positively with the climate crisis? Al Gore is the poster boy of environmental "eco-apocalypse"--great for laying out the science, but equally adept at scaring the shit out of young children.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger are the same guys who propose getting us accustomed to the idea of adapting to a hotter world. What's wrong with that? Cope with it we must, no matter how much or quickly we reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
It's clear to me that what they say is true about the untapped potential for change: people are hungry for an inspiring narrative. Both political parties and mainstream environmentalism don't offer one. Until they do, and until a massive Apollo-like green energy program is launched, harnessing the great talents, energies, and aspirations of Americans, we will be left with buying compact fluorescent bulbs and trying to feel good about it.
P.S. Ted Nordhaus is not to be confused with his uncle, Yale economist William Nordhaus, who writes extensively about the economics of climate change.
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