Politics and Policy

The Breakthrough Institute's, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, recently revised their 2004 essay "Death of Environmentalism" with the more uplifting "The Long Death of Environmentalism". I do not necessarily agree with their essay, but the authors raise some uncomfortable issues that need to be discussed.

"Let’s face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar."

"Time to ruggedize: We should talk more about preparing for climate change" is the title of a recent Grist article (www.grist.org) by David Roberts who found both inspiration and hope in a presentation by Cara Pike of the Social Capital Project.

Meg Bostrom, co-founder of the Topos Partnership, explains in her Washington Post editorial of November 14th why we should stop debating 'if' global warming is happening and focus on the many energy related bipartisan initiatives already on the table.