The "Whiskey Tastes Better..." Book Club

I finished this book over a month ago, but I'm finally getting around to giving my $0.02 on Breakthrough: From The Death of Environmentalism to The Politics of Possibility by Ted Norhaus and Michael Schellenberger. I first heard about this book on 89.3 The Current when Mr. Schellenberger was part of the Policy and A Pint series. I learned a little more about them when I downloaded a podcast from iTunes U that features the authors discussing the book's subject material at Berkeley. So the next logical step would be to actually read the damn book.

And I did.

I don't know where to start with this book. I guess I'll first say that these two guys sound really damn smart. Almost too smart at times. They are very thorough in making their points and use long stories to illustrate their arguments. Unfortunately, I would get too drawn in to their stories and examples and then forget what point they were trying to make.

This is why I'm having trouble trying to write about this book. There were so many bases covered, I can't really find a main point to drive here.

The part I really agree with is that in order to address important issues like global warming, you need to separate it from other "environmental" causes and pitch it as an economic issue. No matter how much press global warming gets, it's still not that important to the vast majority of Americans (and I imagine people of other nationalities don't care that much either). The book cites some polls where they gave people a list of 20 issues and asked them to rate the issues in order of importance. The issues at the top of the list were the economy, health care, national security, energy independence, and the war in Iraq. Global warming was consistently in the bottom 5. In fact, they say they polled once before the release of Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and once after it was released. Even after all of the publicity, discussion, and positive reviews that his movie generated, global warming dropped in importance in the second poll.

To get people behind global warming solutions, it needs to be tied to issues that they are concerned about. From the poll that was in the book, some obvious choices would be the economy and energy independence. My friend Becca sent me a video of Al Gore giving a speech about the future of our country's energy policy, and he said a lot more in that five minute clip than he did in the entire 90 minutes of An Inconvenient Truth. A lofty goal he sets is moving the country to 100% renewable electricity in 10 years. This would mean moving away from coal fired plants and investing heavily in wind and solar energy. This would provide a huge economic stimulus for the country as thousands of jobs would be created for people manufacturing, installing, and maintaining new equipment such as wind turbines, solar panels, and transmission lines. I would imagine a bit of backlash from members of the coal industry, however. I don't know how realistic it would be to completely phase out coal-fired energy plants within a decade, but his ambitions are in the right place.

Another guy that's been making some noise lately is T. Boone Pickens. He's an absurdly rich oil baron who's now devoting his billions of dollars to promoting a new energy plan for the country. In a brief video on his website, he breaks down where all of our electricity comes from. He shows that 22% of electricity is generated by natural gas. He advocates fulfilling that slice of the pie chart with wind energy instead. Then all of the excess natural gas not being used for electricity can be used towards fueling vehicles. He cites that this would save the US billions of dollars each year since we wouldn't have to spend that money on oil imports. This was only on his little introduction video. I haven't really researched either his or Al Gore's full plans.

This is a good sign. Both of these men are extremely powerful and wealthy. They can do some serious lobbying for change in our nation's energy policy and create thousands of jobs in the process. I really hope for the day that I see President Obama/McCain make the same speeches that Pickens and Gore have made. Then the energy revolution will explode.

I believe this is the type of solution we need to get the population to fight against such a vast and complicated issue like global warming. This is what the book means when they say "the politics of possibility." People don't want more restrictions and regulations like carbon "cap and trade" programs (what the book refers to as the "politics of limits"). Instead of simply reducing carbon emissions, it would serve us better to find solutions that give us new technologies that emit no carbon at all. They talk about JFK's "We choose to go to the moon" speech and how the Apollo project spurred a whole era of expansive technological development. This country has vast resources and can do some seriously big things in a hurry if we have the support and incentive from our government. Let's hope that comes sooner rather than later.