The Death of Environmentalism

Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World
By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

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Contents
Foreword ……………………………………………………………………………… 4
Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………….. 5
Introduction …………………………………………………………………………. 6
PART I ………………………………………………………………………………………… 8
Environmentalism as a Special Interest …………………………………… 8
Environmental Group Think …………………………………………………… 11
What We Worry About When We Worry About Global Warming .. 14
Everybody Loses on Fuel Effififi ciency …………………………………………. 17
Winning While Losing vs. Losing While Losing ………………………… 22
Environmentalism as though Politics Didn’t Matter ………………….. 24
PART II ………………………………………………………………………………………. 26
Going Beyond Special Interests and Single Issues …………………….. 26
Getting Back on the Offensive …………………………………………………. 29
A Path for the Crossing ………………………………………………………….. 32
4 The Death of Environmentalism
Foreword
By Peter Teague, Environment Program Director, Nathan Cummings Foundation
As I write this, the fourth in a series of violent hurricanes has just bombarded the Caribbean and
Florida. In Florida, more than 30 are dead and thousands are homeless. More than 2,000 Haitians
are dead. And ninety percent of the homes in Grenada are destroyed.
As Jon Stewart deadpanned on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” “God, you’ve made your point.
You’re all-powerful.”
Yet it isn’t God we need to be addressing our concerns to — it’s us.
Scientists have long said that stronger and more frequent hurricanes would be a result of global
warming. It’s an effect of warmer oceans.
Yet no prominent national leader — environmental or otherwise — has come out publicly to suggest
that the recent spate of hurricanes was the result of global warming. That’s in part due to the fact that
the conventional wisdom among environmentalists is that we mustn’t frighten the public but rather
must focus its gaze on technical solutions, like hybrid cars and fl uorescent light bulbs.
In this remarkable report on how environmentalism became a special interest, Michael Shellenberger
and Ted Nordhaus suggest that it’s time to reexamine everything we think we know about global
warming and environmental politics, from what does and doesn’t get counted as “environmental” to
the movement’s small-bore approach to policymaking.
I suggest we also question the conventional wisdom that we can’t talk about disasters like the
unprecedented hurricanes that devastated Florida and the Caribbean. The insurance industry says
that, at $20 billion, the hurricanes will surpass the costliest disaster in US history — Hurricane
Andrew. At what point have we become Pollyanna fearing that we’ll be called Chicken Little?
I have spent most of my career working in the environmental movement, as have Nordhaus and
Shellenberger. They care deeply about environmentalism. It is for that reason that their critique cuts
so deeply.

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