Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility [Hardcover]

This book draws on themes invoked by such thought leaders as architect/designer William McDonough, journalist Thomas Friedman and venture capitalist John Doerr about inspiring human creativity and finding hope in human aspirations and nature's abundance -- and points us to a strategic vision for the next decades.

I'm the founder of The California Cars Initiative -- CalCars.org -- promoting plug-in hybrids. See a full review I posted to CalCars-News at http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/863.html .

WAYS THIS BOOK HELPED CHANGE MY THINKING
* I've been mystified about people who didn't want to see "An Inconvenient Truth." Even as I agreed with many others that this powerful and effective movie came up short in offering solutions, I still felt frustrated by those who stayed away because they couldn't face the "doom and gloom" message. By drawing on their academic backgrounds, the authors convincingly show how ear and anxiety can de-motivate and disempower many people. Break Through starts off with a contrasting story -- about Martin Luther King's 1963 Lincoln Memorial speech, which began as "I have a nightmare" -- then moved to "I have a dream."
* Until provoked to think more deeply, I felt those whose response to climate crisis was to conclude that instead of solutions we need adaptation as missing the point. Talk about "preparedness" seemed like a capitulation -- or an impulse to find a way to make money from misery. Now I see that including these people, who want to get involved rather than deny the problem, at least puts them on a continuum of action.
* The authors say that to reduce CO2 globally, you have to reduce global per capita CO2 -- that makes sense. But then they take the mental leap to say that will require working to equalize living standards globally. That's an inconceivably large challenge -- but thinking about it this way could irrevocably transform our global strategies.
* I'm also grateful for a few more catchy phrases: we've long heard "the iron age didn't end because we ran out of iron." To that we can now add: "We did not invent the Internet by taxing telegraphs nor the personal computer by limiting typewriters."

LEST YOU THINK I'M ONE-SIDED
* The book has an entire section that's highly abstract and philosophical ... some will appreciate it, some will skip over it!
* The authors' case may at times be overstated: national environmental organizations are evolving their approaches and presenting positive visions.
* The phrase "Break Through" may be problematic. The authors use it as a two-word verb: to get beyond existing social, political and technical limitations. More commonly, as a one-word noun, it implies a need to find and develop entirely new technologies and energy sources. Yet our untapped opportunities in efficiency and conservation say otherwise. Cost-effective solutions are within sight -- for instance, see http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/860.html about how Sunpower's solar photovoltaics and Ausra's solar thermal power generation could soon be cost-competitive with new natural gas and coal plants. From those who talk about breakthroughs, we hear less about the third D in RD&D -- Research, Development and Deployment. PHEVs and today's low- and zero-carbon energy technologies need a level playing field for incentives, volume production and commercialization. We're inclined to reserve the term breakthrough for developing feasible carbon capture and sequestration or the way-out "geoengineering" schemes that advocates hope could help save us if we are unable to make a rapid transition to low-carbon sustainable technologies.
* What we most appreciate about the book and the website http://www.thebreakthrough.org is that they are leading to an expanded dialogue and very healthy debates.

"Break Through" by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger is a stirring manifesto for the postenvironmentalist movement. With remarkable erudition, maturity and precision, the two veteran environmentalists condemn the failed politics of limits to the dustbin of history but go on to sketch out a bold new politics of possibility. Brilliantly conceived and passionately written, this inspiring work helps us visualize how humanity might yet achieve greatness on earth.

Mr. Nordhaus and Mr. Shellenberger remind us that post war prosperity created the postmaterialist conditions that allowed the social and environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s to flourish. However, the authors fault the narrowly-focused, complaint-based liberalism of today for its inability to reverse the deteriorating economic conditions that are the root cause for a host of environmental ills. The authors do not shy from taking aim at some of the environmental movement's most esteemed spokespeople including Robert Bullard, Al Gore and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and fault them for deploying unproductive disaster discourses to promote a largely uninspiring and outmoded pollution control agenda.

Pointing to the success of mega churches in creating community out of social and economic anxiety, the authors contend that a postenvironmentalist movement that empowers individuals to imagine and create change is required to tackle the enormous problem of global warming; in fact, they believe that only a dramatic program on the scale of the Apollo project can inspire America's increasingly individualistic and creative citizens to participate in developing a new, renewable-energy based economy and thereby reshape the world. Rewriting an exceedingly dull speech by Tony Blair on the topic of global warming in the style of Winston Churchill, the authors demonstrate how postenvironmentalists might rouse the public to face down despair and accept the challenge to do great things in service to themselves and future generations.

I highly recommend this exceptional book to everyone.

Edit 2010707: I just noticed a soon to be available book which may be complementary to my critique of S&N. If this review of 'Break Through' was useful to you, you might check out Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won't Save Us Or the Environment. Hopefully it will be a good read.

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I gave the authors the benefit of the doubt when I borrowed this book because their initial essay "The Death of Environmentalism", which I read a couple of years back, generated responses from significant people. While this book wasn't a total waste of time for me to read (love it or hate it, it is a part of the literature), neither did it actually provide a useful way forward, in my opinion. For those folks who don't consider themselves environmentally informed, it's likely a waste of time and will leave you with a wrong impression of the contributions and writings of others. Too much of this book is spent trying to show off their own ideas by belittling others. Nonetheless, the authors do go out of their way to show how learned they are by quoting from everyone with a high-sounding name.

The general tone of the book reminds me of Elmer Fudd. Like the arch-nemesis of talking bunnies the world over, the authors have trouble seeing straight at times while tending to shoot first and aim second. Occasionally they hit a useful target but too often miss wildly, sometimes working feverishly to cover their tracks by misrepresenting the work of others. Examples are found below. The arguments are poorly presented and sometimes you gotta wonder if you too can get some of whatever it is that they're smoking!

This review will take specific examples from the text and comment on them.

The primary point I took away is that S&N believe that, without actually stating whether or not they believe that such limits exist, nature advocacy should get away from any notion of limits.

"Few things have hampered environmentalism more than its longstanding position that limits to growth are the remedy for ecological crises [sic]. We argue for an explicitly pro-growth agenda that defines the kind of prosperity we believe is necessary to improve the quality of human life and to overcome ecological crises." p.15.

First, even if the phrase made sense, I don't recall anyone stating that "limits to growth are the remedy for ecological crises". If there are limits to growth they simply mean that there is a limit to the biophysical capacity of the planet to (re)generate natural capital that humanity (and other species) can consume or a limit to the waste products that can be assimilated. They are not a remedy for, or a cause of, anything; they just are (and as soon as one acknowledges there is a limited amount of anything on the planet -- fish, water, sunshine, arrogant authors -- then you acknowledge that such limits exist. Perhaps there is a case to be made for the existence of unlimited arrogance).

They further state, in a delightful example of their periodic immodest assertions, that:

"Many environmentalists and environmental justice advocates argue that economic growth and development are not inconsistent with sustainability and environmental health, and in this they are correct." p.88

The authors don't provide a list of 100, 20 or even 1 of these advocates and I would argue that there are brighter minds than theirs working on the (in)capacity of the planet for unlimited economic growth (e.g. Daly, Rees) so to state that "they are correct" without evidence, is rather self-important and without factual basis. There are some others (McDonough and Braungart, Cradle to Cradle) who also profess a similar growth-forever mantra made "sustainable" by eliminating the concept of waste and closing the loop on the production/waste cycle (though even M&B don't acknowledge that the closed loop in an ever-increasing economy -- i.e. more and more consumer goods -- will require ever more resources to be added).

S&N show us their philosophical side as well, quoting de Tocqueville and, elsewhere, philosophizing on pollution:

"...the overreliance of environmentalists on visual evidence of humans' degradation of nature is a consequence of the environmentalists interpretive framework; principally, the idea of pollution. Consider that the meaning of the word pollution depends on the concept of nature as pure, harmonious, and separate from humans. Pollution is this kind of contamination, or violation,, of nature, by humans. Similarly, human development is an encroachment upon nature. These are not simply analytical categories but moral ones as well. Nature has been unjustly violated by mankind." p.25

"Interpretive framework"? If we just interpreted things differently there would be no "pollution"? Maybe you get a different meaning to their comments. It seems clear to me that artificial chemicals in nature, for example, are pollutants which destroy entire ecosystems, large and small. I write this off to the authors just trying to sound important. Every species that I know of generates waste products; the thing is, over the course of billions of years of evolution nature has found ways to turn that waste into food for another process or organism. Humans, however, are both generating "known" waste products (e.g. CO2) in amounts greatly exceeding the planet's assimilative capacity, as well as creating new compounds that nature has never before had to evolve to make use of, so who knows what nature will do with these compounds, toxic and otherwise.

Then there is this gem:

"Just as prosperity tends to bring out the best of human nature, poverty and collapse tend to bring out the worst." p.35

Timely, given that that the banking crisis happened so recently, certainly an example of prosperity bringing out the best of human nature. A mind-boggling over-simplification indicative of the level of intellectual rigor throughout.

I'll close with a glaring misrepresentation (it can't have been accidental) from about the mid-point in the book, where S&N quote from Jared Diamond's book, Collapse. In the referenced section of "Collapse" Diamond discusses the likelihood of the planet's ability to support a western lifestyle of mass consumption for everyone globally:

"Diamond's tragic narrative leads him to some disturbing political conclusions.
[quoting Diamond]
People in the third world aspire to First World living standards...Third World citizens are encouraged to that aspiration bu First World and United Nations development agencies, which hold oput to them the prospect of achieving their dream if they will only adopt the right policies, like balancing their budgets, investing in education and infrastructure, and so on. But no one at the U.N. or in the First World governments is willing to acknowledge the dream's impossibility: the sustainability of a world in which the Third World's large population were to reach and maintian current First World living standards.
[end quote Diamond]
"Diamond believes he is being courageous in delivering this alleged truth. But how courageous is it for Diamond to insist that the poorest people on earth should not aspire to the same standard that he himself enjoys?" p.148

Well, let's pull back the camera a little for a little more context.

In fact, Diamond states, a couple of lines later (which S&N "conveniently" DON'T include and which belies the intent they attribute to Diamond of denying to others what he himself has):

[myself quoting from Collapse] "What will happen when it finally dawns on all these people in the Third World that First World standards are unreachable for them and that the First World refuses to abandon those standards for itself?"
[end quote]

It is that last phrase that illuminates as fraud S&N's stated conclusion. Rather than the advocating the continuation of some sort of colonial serfdom for the Third World as S&N dishonestly insinuate, Diamond is arguing for an equitable sharing of planetary resources, recognizing that the resource stash is, yes, limited.

A final comment on the limits "thang."

The authors advocate a magical motivational transformation amongst the world's populace. They assert an elixir which will serve two purposes. First, it must convince the populace that there is a problem... um... no problem...

Why would anyone think to change their lifestyles in response to climate change, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, exaltations from S&N, or simply because it's Saturday and you have nothing better to do unless they saw two things: first, there must be personal reasons (financial, moral, imperilment of self or loved one, etc.) for not continuing progress down the current path. Second, there has to be a "better" alternative.

The first implies that people must realize that something is out of whack and needs fixing. The second implies a comparison; "better" is not an absolute, it is a judgement (i.e. values-based; normative) based on a comparison between alternatives. It seems to me one has to acknowledge the elephant before one can strategize on how to make it go away or why it is even a concern let alone provide any visions of a future "Utopia".