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I agree with, and suggest folks read, Kate's take on the "bad boys of environmentalism," Nordhaus and Shellenberger. The best way to describe their argument is that in its weak form -- we need to invest in renewable energy technologies -- it's banal, and in its strong form -- we should be so single-minded about that as to abandon efforts to limit carbon emissions -- it's really, really, wrong. Meanwhile, I suggest folks read their Salon article, where they come off as a little bit loony in their attempts to attack the environmental movement.
Environmental tales of tragedy begin with Nature in harmony and almost always end in a quasi-authoritarian politics. Eco-tragic narratives diagnose human desire, aspiration, and striving to overcome the constraints of our world as illnesses to be cured or sins to be punished. They aim to short-circuit democratic values by establishing Nature as it is understood and interpreted by scientists as the ultimate authority that human societies must obey.Come again? I don't know what's weirder: The accusations of authoritarianism or the anti-intellectualism. I would be interested in who N&S think we should be listening to on environmental policy if not scientists, and where, given that their background is a mixture of social science and statistics, they come off deriding expertise. The whole nut of the N&S view of the world is that their survey research has shown that human nature requires a lot of happy talk to muster the courage for positive reforms, and we should trust their scientific data on how humans react rather than our own intuition/political experience. So yeah, consider me unconvinced.Meanwhile, it's quite strange to hear criticisms of the environmental movement at this instant in time, given that I can't even recall a recent political movement that's been as successful at injecting their concerns and proposed solutions into the political debate as the environmentalists. Climate change has emerged onto the agenda from seemingly nowhere, and solutions like carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programs that would've seem laughably utopian mere years ago are now proudly advocated by presidential candidates. And this is the movement N&S have arrived to save. Sorry doctors, but the patient seems pretty healthy.--Ezra Klein
