Death Of Environmentalism

Páginas: 61 (15005 palabras) Publicado: 19 de junio de 2012
The Death of Environmentalism
Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World
By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World

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On the cover is the Chinese ideogram for “crisis,” which is comprised of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.”

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The Death of Environmentalism

The Death of Environmentalism
GlobalWarming Politics in a Post-Environmental World
By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

Contents
Foreword .......................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgements .......................................................................... 5 Introduction ..................................................................................... 6 PARTI ...................................................................................................... 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 Efficiency................................................. 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 theOffensive .......................................................... 29 A Path for the Crossing .................................................................... 32

Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World

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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 theCaribbean 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 thatstronger 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 butrather must focus its gaze on technical solutions, like hybrid cars and fluorescent 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’ssmall-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 calledChicken 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. The environmental community can claim a great deal of credit for what are significant advances over a relatively short period – advances won against well-financed campaigns of...
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