In 2004, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger released their provocative and much-discussed essay, “The Death of Environmentalism,” in which they criticized the environmental movements lack of progress towards global warming solutions and argued that a fundamental shift in philosophy, messaging and tactics was necessary to capture the American public’s interest and build a successful movement for climate solutions.
Now, the two “bad boys of environmentalism” are back with a new book, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility and they’re making waves again with their provocative and arguably inflammatory style.
In my opinion, “The Death of Environmentalism” presented a crucially important and valid critique of the environmental movement’s (failing) tactics and messaging, although it tended to present this critique with an essentialist view of environmentalism as a failed and impossible to change ideology.
While I believe that environmentalism is neither dead, nor incapable of evolution (in fact, I’d argue it has evolved considerably since N&S’s essay made it’s debut), I strongly agree with Nordhaus and Shellenberger that the movement must reexamine it’s tactics, strategy, and messaging as it attempts to build a broad, powerful and successful movement to rise to the greatest challenge and seize the greatest opportunity facing us today: the climate crisis.
I’ve yet to read Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s new book, but I’ve been following the sometimes quite turbulent wake it’s made across the blogosphere this past week with much interest. For example, both the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope and Step it UP’s Bill McKibben reviewed Break Through for GristMill and Nordhaus and Shellenberger responded today with a “rebuttal” piece.
The funny thing is, despite all the “debate” that Break Through has kicked up, I’m struggling to see what all the arguments are about!
Nordhaus and Shellenberger speak of “the environmental community’s regulation-only agenda” and critique the regulatory “tool-of-choice,” a cap-and-trade system, flat out asserting that “it won’t work.” They present their essay at GristMill as a rebuttal to environmentalist, the next chapter in some ongoing debate.
On the other side, Bill McKibben describes Nordhaus and Shellenberger as displaying “antipathy” towards cap-and-trade regulations and touting “an investment-centric agenda” as the solution to the climate crisis.
The funny thing is, beneath the aggressive and down-right adversarial tone of Nordhaus and Shellenberger and the understandably defensive tone of folks like McKibben and Pope, there’s not much the two supposedly warring sides disagree on!
So here’s a question for Nordhaus and Shellenberger: who are you arguing with?!
Nordhaus and Shellenberger and their Breakthrough Institute cohorts keep taking a stridently adversarial tone towards the very people who should be their allies – environmentalists and clean energy/global warming activists (who may or may not consider themselves the same people).
Largely due to this combative manner, I would argue that Nordhaus and Shellenberger have manufactured an argument that doesn’t truly exist, a supposed conflict between regulation-centric and investment-centric camps, with “ideologically dead environmentalists” on one side and “courageous new thinkers” like Nordhaus and Shellenberger on the other.
And where is this supposed argument getting us?!
In their essay on GristMill, Nordhaus and Shellenberger get defensive when McKibben characterizes the pair as being opposed to carbon regulation, writing:
“Our proposal, to state it once again, is that Congress pass legislation that either auctions permits or taxes carbon enough to a) establish a price for carbon sufficient to result in inexpensive emissions reductions, b) generate at least $30 billion a year for clean energy investments, and c) creating market conditions for the widespread adoption of these new technologies.”
So when you boil it down, the two authors merely consider regulation an incomplete piece of the full puzzle, and the funny thing is, I don’t think Nordhaus and Shellenberger will get any argument from those they are supposedly trying to argue with (the “establishment” environmentalists, clean energy advocates, and global warming activists); they’ll certainly get no argument from this environmentalist! And I would argue that it’s understandable that folks like McKibben consider Nordhaus and Shellenberger “anti-regulation” when you have to wade past “five reasons why setting a price on carbon dioxide, either through a cap and trade approach or an outright tax, cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions anywhere close to what is needed” to get to their more nuanced position: that pricing carbon can’t work on it’s own.
On the other side, Nordhaus and Shellenberger write about “the environmental community’s regulation-only agenda,” but where does such an agenda really exist?
Which environmental groups are really putting all their eggs in the regulation basket? Which enviro groups wouldn’t support massive investments in a clean energy future?
The reality is, they’d be hard to find.
McKibben himself writes, “The need for new technology is obviously urgent … The question is how best to mobilize that investment.”
Pope writes, “Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that greatness requires progressives to embrace such investment strategies. I agree.”
In fact, the Sierra Club’s “Smart Energy Solutions” website prominently displays this message:
“Now is the time for a bold shift to a safer, cleaner energy future built on clean power and energy-saving technology. The Sierra Club believes that we can save our planet while preserving our way of life, that instead of falling into despair, we should look to this challenge as an opportunity.”
So here’s a few more questions for Nordhaus and Shellenberger:
What Nordhaus and Shellenberger seem to miss is that environmentalists and global warming activists aren’t fighting them on this!
Status-quo-loving industry interests are. “Government-is-the-problem” conservatives are.
Yet the two authors present their arguments in such an aggressive manner that they make it out as if they were in some kind of controversial fight with enviros. The problem is, they’re not!
The bigger problem is that, while it might be a great way to get attention for their book and ideas, it’s a terrible way to build alliances with the kind of folks who Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s “new progressive, solutions-oriented movement” should be building alliances with, the kind of folks who are in actuality already on their side!
Nordhaus and Shellenberger are probably correct that we as a movement need to strategically emphasize the public investment part (and it’s benefits) over the regulation part (we do!). This is a very valid strategic critique and one that I’m grateful the pair have elevated to the fore of discussions.
But what we should be seizing on is not a supposed schism in the movement, but the fact that we all seem to be in agreement that neither regulation nor investment will work on its own, and the two – cap-and-auction and public investment – are mutually supportive and necessary components of a true solution to the climate crisis.
Playing one off against the other seems like a really counter-productive way to advance climate solutions, as does hyping up supposed rifts within the movement that don’t really exist in the way Nordhaus and Shellenberger seem to want to call attention to.
For example, I doubt you’d find too many environmentalists who’d argue with the following, nor would Nordhaus and Shellenberger seem to be opposed to any of this basic point:
Putting a price on carbon is necessary to send the correct market signals and to spur private sector innovation. But this innovation can and must be accelerated by public-sector research and investment, as it should be. We’ve got to make the transition to a carbon neutral, prosperous America as quickly as possible, and that requires public as well as private investment in our common future. Auctioning emissions allowances or taxing emissions can not only send the right market signals to the private sector, but can also raise the necessary billions in funding for massive public investment to drive down the cost of clean energy technologies, a down-payment on a carbon-neutral, prosperous America.
It breaks down like this, in my opinion:
1) We need to put a price on carbon emissions to harness the innovation and power of markets to find solutions to the climate crisis and ensure we reduce global warming pollution to a safe level.
2) The atmosphere is a common good, owned by all Americans, not just polluters. We should therefore force polluters to pay for the privilege to emit global warming pollution, raising billions of dollars in the process.
3) Putting a price on carbon is necessary as is forcing polluters to pay for their mess, but doing so will raise energy prices. The good news is, it will also raise a lot of money that can be pumped into making sure average Americans end up better off than before. We can do this in two ways:
a) we can pump much of that money into accelerating the transformation of our energy economy to a sustainable, low-carbon system. We can provide incentives to lower the costs of clean energy technologies, provide R&D and fund public-private partnerships to accelerate the deployment of the next generation of clean energy technologies and support the innovation fueled by the carbon regulation itself, all the while building a new energy economy and millions of “green collar” jobs.
b) we can use some of the money to reform our tax structure so that it is more progressive and leaves more money in the pockets of average Americans. These reforms will more than offset the increases (if any) in your energy bill (remember that increased efficiency can offset the effects of increased energy prices too) so in the end, the average American will be better off under a cap-and-auction system than her or she was before.
That’s the recipe for a carbon-neutral, prosperous America in my mind, and it doesn’t seem like I’d get much argument from environmentalists or from Nordhaus and Shellenberger on that point.
This is the platform that we should all be rallying behind, rather than fighting over which is better, regulation or investment. The answer is that neither will solve the climate crisis without the other – and we all seem to be in agreement there too!
So in closing, where’s all the controversy, folks?
Maybe it’s time to call a cease-fire!
>> I doubt you’d find too many environmentalists who’d argue with the following, nor would
>> Nordhaus and Schellenberger seem to be opposed to any of this basic point:
>> Putting a price on carbon is necessary to send the correct market signals and to spur private
>> sector innovation.
Sorry Jessie, but you are quite wrong about this…and I’m a bit surprised to hear you suggest it
since numerous other contributors to this site have written articles rejected carbon trading!
So also has the many members of the Durban Group for Climate Justice, (http://www.carbontradewatch.org/durban/), an alliance which, amongst other things, firmly rejects cap-and-trade.
Even many Friends of the Earth chapters from both Northern (see http://www.foe.org.au/media-releases/2006-media-releases/mr_16_08_06.htm) and Southern countries have also rejected cap-and-trade.
Here’s just one reason (amongst many!) why:
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL24396947
As I’ve said several times before on this site, if you haven’t read the definitive text critiquing Carbon Trading, Carbon Trading A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power, please don’t go around advocating for it – you may not know what you are speaking of!
It’s available in it’s entirety here: http://www.dhf.uu.se/pdffiler/DD2006_48_carbon_trading/carbon_trading_web.pdf
Dear Jesse,
Thanks for jumping in on this important topic. I hope you will continue to sink your teeth into this one — the upcoming global warming legislation is crucial to America’s future. We have to be as clear-eyed about what it will do and what it won’t do as we are about the science of global warming.
First let me acknowledge points of agreement. We all agree that carbon should be priced. The question is how much can a carbon price in the U.S. do to reduce emissions?
Our analysis shows that even a relatively low carbon price will do very important work in moving from coal to natural gas, increasing efficiency, and motivating conservation — in the United States. If executed perfectly well, it could reduce emissions roughly 20 percent over the next couple of decades (emissions reduction calculations are very, very tricky, and I am thus happy to go over these calculations in a future post for anyone who is interested).
There are some who say the great thing about a price on carbon is that it avoids “picking winners and losers.” That’s a disingenuous claim. Setting a particular price on carbon very clearly does pick winners and losers. The winners are efficiency, conservation, and some kinds of sequestration (e.g., burning methane off of landfills).
What a modest price on carbon (~$10 – 20/ton of Co2) won’t do is quickly bring down the price of clean energy technologies, for reasons we explained our in our recent post, “Environmentalism’s Existential Moment.”
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/27/12312/0380
Why does that matter? Because if we do not bring down the real price of clean energy technologies as quickly as possible, China and the rest of the world (us included) will bring on-line a whole new coal-based infrastructure that threatens to swamp any amount of action in the U.S.
China is not going to set a price for carbon, and thus raise its energy costs, without a good economic reason to do so. It won’t blindly follow the U.S., as many environmentalists allege. And even if China establishes a modest carbon price in the future, it won’t establish one nearly high enough to quickly move to solar and other clean energy technologies, including carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities for its coal plants (few to none of which are CCS ready).
One scenario we support is simply buying down the price of solar. How could this be done? In the same way we brought down the price of microchips in the 60s. Microchips used to be expensive, now they’re cheap.
The DoD could purchase 10 – 20 billion dollars worth of PV — through a competitive, transparent bidding process — each year for 10 – 20 years. One calculation shows that it would cost $50 – 212 billion to make solar as cheap as conventional energy sources. Again, these are tricky calculations, but solar is a great case study because its price declines ~20 percent for every doubling of capacity.
There is no silver energy bullet, and this can’t happen through regulation alone. Even in California, which passed the Million Solar Home law, I was told by a solar industry executive in July that because of red tape, only 20 homes are being installed with solar systems each day, when that number needs to be 200 per day to be on track. Andy Revkin at the Times pointed out that in order for solar to constitute one-seventh of the emissions reductions we need, there will need to be a whopping 200 million solar homes. And that isn’t going to happen as long as solar is 5 – 10 times more expensive than coal and natural gas.
You’ve suggested that we’ve exaggerated the difference between our investment-centered approach and the environmental lobby’s regulation-centered approach. But anyone who looks at the policy agenda of the leading environmental groups who determine global warming strategy in Washington will find that there is no strategy to buy down the price of solar. Nor is there any major investment strategy whatsoever. Don’t confuse green rhetoric with policy reality — you have to look at the legislation being pushed in Congress.
That said, there is today an exciting political opening. Senator Lieberman has indicated he wants to auction permits. What will the money raised go to? It’s not yet clear. We estimate that what’s needed is at least $30 billion in pork-free public investment capital to buy down the price of clean energy (and invest in other areas, like new transmission lines to transport wind power from rural areas to cities).
Could the Lieberman-Warner legislation do this? Absolutely. Is the environmental lobby united behind a strategy to make it happen? Unfortunately not.
At least not yet. The good news is that there’s still time. The trouble that Democrats are having building support for global warming legislation in Congress might be overcome if there were a big and bold strategy for creating jobs and establishing American economic leadership in the fastest growing markets in the world.
The truth is, it’s up to the (largely post-boomer) generation of environmentalists and non-environmentalists to lobby environmental leaders, lobby Congress, and blog about the necessity of a large clean energy investment.
The best part about it all is that you don’t really have to care all that much about global warming to support a big investment strategy for clean energy. Maybe you just care about energy independence. Maybe you just care about economic competitiveness. The large percentages of Americans who say they support cap and trade on global warming declines dramatically when voters learn that setting a price on carbon means raising the price of coal and oil. The solution is to put investment, jobs, and economic possibility at the center.
If global warming legislation passes that does not raise and allocate at least $30 billion/year for clean energy investment, then we’ll have to find some way to get that money from somewhere else. That public investment capital to bring down the real price of clean energy is more urgent, in our view, than a price on carbon.
In any event, it’s great to have the conversation, and we’ll look forward to your posts on our book, Break Through.
Best regards,
Michael
Jesse-
It’s not so much that many climate activists “oppose” public investments and technological innovation efforts (except for carbon capture and storage and nuclear), they just don’t prioritize it enough even though clean energy technology is arguably the most important (and politically/economically pragmatic) solution to the climate problem. We’re all for a Sky-Trust approach (and many of our friends are working on Sky-Trust), but we’re concerned that A) any money generated will be subject to the pork-barrel, special interest politics of DC and leaves us in a precarious situation with investment (especially when what’s needed is around $30 billion annually); and B) Sky-Trust is dependent on raising energy prices, which may be much less politically feasible than an outright public investment-innovation approach and may result in all the funds being redistributed for compensation.
Teryn –
The exception (i.e., opposition to carbon capture and nuclear) eliminates over 70% of US electric capacity. For those who are not direct climate activists, this sounds like trying to solve the problem with the proverbial hand tied behind the back. As I recall the Princeton Wedges and the IPCC reports, a wide range of actions (even soil and animal husbandry changes) are part of the solution.
I perceive a divide between the activist community and the general public who are concerned about climate change, but not interested in a social or economic revolutions.
Brian,
As I understand it, the critiques of cap-and-trade focus on the trading part and (possible) use of emissions offsets from overseas, not on the concept of putting a price on carbon. And the folks that typically argue against cap and trade argue in favor of a carbon tax as a replacement. In my mind, a cap-and-auction and a carbon tax both accomplish the task of establishing a price on carbon emissions (through regulation I might add), and my discussion in this post was meant to be policy neutral between the two.
It’s time to start talking about regulation to price carbon (be it cap and auction or carbon tax) and public investment in a clean energy future as two sides of the same coin – they are mutually supportive, not mutually exclusive, indeed, the regulation provides the funding source for the public investment dollars while sending market signals that encourage private investment to step up to the plate as well. Neither approach will work on their own, at least not fast enough to solve the climate crisis and build a carbon neutral prosperous America.
Jesse
Jessie,
There are many, many reasons to be skeptical of any effort to “harness the power of the market” to stop climate change: there is a good reason that Enron lobbied heavily for Kyoto and said that Kyoto would “do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative.”
Clearly, as Enron illustrated, markets are susceptible to control and manipulation, are chaotic, and don’t always play out the way economists (let alone environmentalists!) predict: do you really think we want to “harness” that kind of force to solve the climate crisis, especially as the primary force?
There’s much, much, much more I could say here, but without wanting to get into an essay on the topic right here, I would suggest that people check out my previous article on this blog on the topic “World Betting the Farm on Carbon Trading?” (http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2007/09/04/world-to-bet-the-farm-on-carbon-trading/) and especially the links for further reading on there.
While I don’t agree with (nor care too much for the style, background, and philosophy of) the authors of the Death of Environmentalism on much, I do agree that we should make the primary focus getting positive ideas out there that reject the status quo rather than focusing on getting the government to create a market-based system that privatizes and auction off (or give away….) our Earth’s capacity to cycle carbon to the highest bidder, as all of the bills in congress on the topic currently do.
[btw, In the ideas category I definitely DO NOT support the authors' sick military-industrial-solar complex they propose! I would say -- and probably many of the people living under the boot of the US empire would agree -- that we might as well just stick with the global warming...]
I’ll sure I’ll post something more on the topic at some point in the not to far future, that’s all for now!
Jessie,
There are many, many reasons to be skeptical of any effort to “harness the power of the market” to stop climate change: there is a good reason that Enron lobbied heavily for Kyoto and said that Kyoto would “do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative.”
Clearly, as Enron illustrated, markets are susceptible to control and manipulation, are chaotic, and don’t always play out the way economists (let alone environmentalists!) predict: do you really think we want to “harness” that kind of force to solve the climate crisis, especially as the primary force?
There’s much, much, much more I could say here, but without wanting to get into an essay on the topic right here, I would suggest that people check out my previous article on this blog on the topic “World Betting the Farm on Carbon Trading?” (http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2007/09/04/world-to-bet-the-farm-on-carbon-trading/) and especially the links for further reading on there.
While I don’t agree with (nor care too much for the style, background, and philosophy of) the authors of the Death of Environmentalism on much, I do agree that we should make the primary focus getting positive ideas out there that reject the status quo rather than focusing on getting the government to create a market-based system that privatizes and auction off (or give away….) our Earth’s capacity to cycle carbon to the highest bidder, as all of the bills in congress on the topic currently do.
[btw, In the ideas category I definitely DO NOT support the authors' sick military-industrial-solar complex they propose! I would say -- and probably many of the people living under the boot of the US empire would agree -- that we might as well just stick with the global warming...]
I’ll sure I’ll post a longer article on this topic on the blog at some point in the not to far future…that’s all for now!
Cascadia Brian, thank you for the reference to Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power, which you described as the definitive critique.
Unfortunately, given that it is 350+pages, I think it’s a good bet that most people – even here – are not going to read it.
Would you be open to posting a very brief list of the main 3 or 4 points it makes against carbon trading? I think it would be helpful. Note that I am not suggesting a precis or summary – just a few sentences.
Cheers,
Dave
Hiya Dave, not to derail this blog post, but I do want to respond to your question.
Check out carbontradewatch.org for lots of general background on the problems of carbon trading.
As for the book “Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power” each of it’s chapters are actually briefly summarized here: http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/summary.shtml?x=544225
I think this passage, from the conclusion of the 3rd chapter in the book, although a bit dense best summarizes the arguments and evidence presented:
“Many people of strong environmentalist convictions and democratic spirit genuinely believe that if the earth’s carbon-cycling capacity is to be respected and preserved, it is inevitable that it be treated as a commodity. ‘Given the logic of capitalism’, says Peter Barnes, one thoughtful US environmentalist and egalitarian, treating carbon cycling capacity as a ‘scarce resource’ and an ‘asset’ to be marketed ‘is the best way to save it’.
Not, Barnes hastens to add, that the ‘sky has no value other than its exchange value… If anything we know can be called sacred, the sky is such a thing… It has incalculable intrinsic value.’ Yet, at the same time, he argues:
[W]e need to communicate with markets because markets determine how resources are used. All our preachings and sermons will be for naught if we don’t inscribe them on tablets that markets can understand… [The market] is a great system for managing scarcity… If you ask a market to determine price of a thing someone owns, it will do so quickly and efficiently. Transactions will then follow… [The price] is not the equivalent of the intrinsic value, nor an editorial comment on it. It’s merely a proxy, a useful numerical substitute. And it’s a much better proxy than the one markets currently use – namely, zero… To achieve the ends of Chief Seattle, we must use the means of Dow Chemical. The world has come to that, and it’s sad. But… selling the sky is not an end in itself. It’s a means for achieving a higher end – the preservation of our planet.
This chapter has provided concrete materials to help show that this appealing argument – which today is encountered in politics, in international development, in the UN, in think tanks, in the academy and in environmentalist circles – is both invalid and unsound. That is, it has helped show both that its conclusion does not follow from its premises, and that the premises themselves are mistaken.
The argument is invalid because even if the premise that the ‘logic of capitalism’ necessitates or encourages pollution markets were true, it would not follow that carbon trading is a sensible regime for addressing global warming. By the same token, while it is true that some ‘markets’ do partly determine how some resources are used in some circumstances, and that having a ‘zero price’ does result in the inadequate valuation of some resources in certain limited contexts, it doesn’t follow that a trading system of the type currently being set up is capable of improving the ‘scarcity management’ of the earth’s carbon dump in a way that could foster a livable climate.
Price is not a ‘useful numerical substitute’, in any context, either for the ‘intrinsic value’ of carbon-cycling capacity (whatever that might be) or its survival value. To suggest that it could be reveals fundamental misunderstandings of climate, scientific as well as social, economic and political. The purported carbon commodity is different from established commodities such as wheat or silver. For governments to take it upon themselves to make it an economically scarce good is not encouraging, but rather hampering, practices that could increase the chances of a livable climate in the future. The price assigned by carbon markets in the course of ‘managing’ that scarcity, accordingly, and the resulting incentives and ‘transactions’, are moving the world away from that goal rather than toward it. This is particularly so in view of the facts that the market ‘management’ of this scarcity involves providing extensive property rights to corporations, is biased mainly toward short-term cost reductions for industry, and involves a commodity that is an incoherent amalgam consisting both of ‘emissions’ and of credits generated by carbon projects.
The argument is also unsound in that its premises are false. In truth, ‘markets’ do not, in most circumstances around the world, ‘determine how resources are used,’ in any sense in which markets can be distinguished from, or do not depend on, commons regimes, state agencies and other social organizations that don’t revolve around the price mechanism. To put this another way, it is empirically false that no market price entails less responsible stewardship than a positive price. Only if, per impossible, commodification somehow became all-pervasive, and the price mechanism the sole and all-powerful coordinating mechanism for all transactions involving land, water, life and so forth, could this assertion even become possible to evaluate. Carbon trading, in addition, is no more congenial to anything that might be called the ‘logic of capitalism’ than a multitude of other types of regulation, taxation, planning and stewardship that private corporations themselves have always depended on – and in this case, given the increasingly obvious contradictions of carbon trading, may wind up preferring.
As in so many areas of contemporary social life, a vague ideology of market effectiveness and market inevitability is concealing a regressive, confused, contested and environmentally dangerous political and technical project. The ideology and the project both badly need to be opened to wider public criticism.”