Michael Shellenberger’s Posts

• The death of environmentalism: Global warming politics in a post-environmental world 1

  Posted 4 years, 9 months ago

  This essay by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus was released at an October 2004 meeting of the Environmental Grantmakers Association, and it's been ruffling feathers ever since. Get the backstory here.

  Foreword

  By Peter Teague, Environment Program Director, Nathan Cummings Foundation

  As I write this, the fourth in a series of violent hurricanes has just bombarded the Caribbean and Florida. In Florida, more than 30 are dead and thousands are homeless. More than 2,000 Haitians are dead. And ninety percent of the homes in Grenada are destroyed.

  

  On the essay cover is… Read More

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Michael Shellenberger’s Recent Comments

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  Who Killed Cap and Trade?

  Who killed cap and trade? Dogmatists on both left and right.

  One would have thought that with oil at $138 a barrel, and voter anxiety over rising prices, environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers might have considered an alternative approach, one focused on making clean energy cheap rather than making dirty energy expensive. But they couldn't get out of the pollution-price paradigm and cap and trade suffered yet another defeat. The most significant event was the letter from the Technology Ten in the Senate. The lesson? The new political center on climate will be defined around cost-containment and technology investment.

  My full post is here:

  http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/06/who_killed_cap_an ...On Post-post mortem on Boxer-Lieberman-Warner debate posted 1 year, 5 months ago 14 Responses

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  If price is so powerful...

  If price is so powerful, what explains why CO2 costs $41 a ton in Europe and there's still a coal-building boom there?

  http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/05/will_the_climate_ ...On How not to inform readers about cap-and-trade posted 1 year, 5 months ago 4 Responses

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  This is what happens when you cede the cost debate

  This is what happens when you dismiss the debate over costs as mere right-wing propaganda.

  For years, conservatives have been saying that it will be too expensive to do much about climate change. Environmentalists have either responded that it won't be very expensive or that the cost doesn't matter, given what's at stake.

  Whether you want to deal with global warming primarily through pricing carbon or investing in new technology, we have to justify the program's cost and not avoid the subject.

  This is our analysis of what the Climate Security Act (Boxer Amendment of Lieberman-Warner) would cost:

  http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/05/how_much_will_it_ ...On Club for Growth starts campaign to derail Lieberman-Warner posted 1 year, 5 months ago 4 Responses

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  What Explains the Difference?

  Tony,

  Thanks for this post.

  What explains the difference between the MIT, EPA, and EIA models?

  Also, would you please link to the MIT study? I can't find it using Google.

  MichaelOn Time to kick the oil habit posted 1 year, 5 months ago 1 Response

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  Climate Security Act Calls the Technology Bluff

  From Breakthrough's analysis:

  Cost containment proposals raise the question of how much low carbon technologies really cost. If, as many environmental leaders assert, cutting carbon emissions deeply will not cost as much as it now appears, and if low carbon energy technologies will soon be cost competitive with conventional energy sources, then environmental leaders should not object to cost containment provisions in legislation like the CSA.

  But that is not what is happening.

  Environmental leaders are attacking the cost control mechanisms and asserting that the legislation would do little to reduce emissions. These actions speak louder than all the rhetoric of recent years about solar, wind, and other alternatives being cost competitive with current energy sources. The reality is that alternative energy technologies, in real deployed terms, remain vastly more expensive than conventional energy sources. This is the reason that environmental organizations oppose cost containment and why even environmental supporters of the legislation see it as an incremental step that will need to be amended (namely removing cost containment) in order to achieve deep reductions in U.S. carbon emissions.

  Full analysis here:

  http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/05/will_the_climate_ ...On Probably no U.S. CO2 emissions cuts from new Lieberman-Warner bill until after 2025 posted 1 year, 5 months ago 3 Responses