[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwIW6LmEDAU&hl=en]
I really wanted to name this post as ‘The Death of Environmentalism = Birth of an Industrial Policy = Win!’ …but naming it just ‘The Death of Environmentalism’ is just so much more polemic.
It’s a long watch, but worth every 85.38 minutes of it. It touches on many very good points about the current debate on Global Warming and Environmentalism in large.
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger argue for decoupling energy consumption from the emissions and that the Environmentalism mind set is actually counter productive as it frames the issue too narrowly. They contemplate that environmental policy itself should not be thought as environmental policy at all, but a full blown industrial policy to have a big enough impact. Similarly they argue that the environmentalists are defining the whole situation with the nature too narrowly, thus painting themselves in a corner to have enough of an impact to change the way we all think and act.
They have a good point on how we tend to frame our relationship with the nature and how we see it as a zero sum game. So one could almost argue that it’s a philosophical issue. The cure for this, according to them, is to move out of the ‘complaint politics’ and start seeing the Environmental project as a new Apollo project which will ultimately spread globally as a new Marshall Plan. Wild!
Additionally, they have a great point about Martin Luther King’s I have a nightmare speech (Yes, the lesser known of his speeches) and on leading by giving hope instead of by spreading fear, when trying to achieve our goals and framing issues so that others will follow us. The video is not only a great lesson on environmental politics and marketing fundamentals, but also a valid reminder of the window of opportunity we have for a large strategic investment on green technology to develop sustainable energy sources, not least here in Finland: There exists a huge(!) opportunity that would result in a lot of new jobs, growth, innovation and creation of a huge market for a new startup ecosystem given our superb technical knowledge that we already have in our universities. An opportunity with a scale that would make Nokia look like just another subcontractor.
A big thank you to Henri for founding this fascinating piece.
