Page 32 - Annales EH 1998-2018

Breaking Through to EcoHumanism

Daniel Clark

Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of
Possibility, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Houghton Mifflin,
2007.

Break Through is many things. It's another book about global warming. It's a
liberal critique of environmentalism, and of today's liberalism in general. It's
a proposal for new forms of environmentalism and liberalism. It's a
philosophical treatise on Nature and the Self. And it's a rallying cry for a
certain class of Americans to recognize their existence as a class, and to
band together in a new force for the future evolution of humanity. The goal
is ambitious: to create a political movement that grows out of a community
with shared values. The values Nordhaus and Shellenberger espouse
might be summed up as ecohumanism.
Humanism is many things, too, varying according the intent of the one
professing it. But its most widely accepted position is that morality is
inherent in each human, and does not need to be received from a
transcendent source. A corollary is humanism's respect for reason as the
proper avenue for approaching the truth. Humanists are rationalists.
Prominent humanists have included Protagoras, Albert Schweitzer, Albert
Einstein, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Peter Singer, and Gloria Steinem.

EcoHumanism is a term that's been used by a few scholars lately.
Protagoras declared that "man is the measure of all things," and ecologists
have suspected humanists of being anthropocentric - a major
transgression. To tailor their convictions to fit the cosmocentrism of the
age, some humanists have pronounced themselves ecohumanists.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger don't use the term. Nor do they refer to
humanism itself. They consider themselves to be pragmatists. But when
they wax philosophical, they are also ecohumanists.
In their comments about this book, others have chosen to focus on the
authors' proposals for Federal energy policy. On the Gristmill blog and
elsewhere, long discussions have ensued on emissions trading, 30 billion
dollars, and so on.

I'm grateful that so many people so much more qualified than I are tackling
these practical issues. I'm grateful, too, because it appears the theoretical
arena is left wide open for me to play ball in.
Positive visions - affirmations of prosperity and inventiveness - abound
here. Nordhaus and Shellenberger present "an imaginative, aspirational,
and future-oriented" (p. 2) approach to topics that often evoke a "doomsday
discourse." (p. 2)
They make a convincing case for a new style of environmental politics. It is
true that so much of it up to now has been pretty glum. Scare tactics and
quasi-religious Jeremiads from atop moralistic mountains have been the
standard. The authors point out that making the public fearful tends to
achieve the wrong result. Fear of social instability and fear of death freeze
up people and prevent them from changing the way they think. A fearful
public is also susceptible to the enticements of strong-arm dictators. Thus,
we get the post-9/11 acquiescence to the actions of George W. Bush.

They argue that prosperity must precede environmental action. In their
chapter on the Brazilian situation, they make it clear that Brazil's poverty,
and their government's opening up the Amazon region for development to
deal with the poverty, caused the destruction unfolding there. Furthermore,
agencies from more wealthy countries, trying to make the Amazon their own
international project, offend the dignity of Brazilians, most of whom are far