Break Through (book)

Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, first published in October 2007, is a book written by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, both long-time environmental strategists. Break Through is an argument for a positive, "post-environmental" politics that abandons the traditional environmentalist focus on nature protection for a focus on creating a new sustainable economy.

The book is based on a controversial October 2004 essay by the same authors, "The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World." The essay argues that environmentalism is conceptually and institutionally incapable of dealing with climate change and should "die" so that a new politics can be born. The essay was widely discussed among liberals and greens at Salon,Grist, and The New York Times.

After the failure of climate legislation in the U.S. Senate for the third time in June 2008, Time Magazine named Nordhaus and Shellenberger "Heroes of the Environment," calling Break Through "prescient" for its prediction that climate policy should focus not on making fossil fuels expensive through regulation but rather on making clean energy cheap. The book's authors reiterated this argument in a September 2008 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, arguing for $30–$50bn in annual research subsidies for clean energy.

In early 2008 Break Through won the Center for Science Writing's Green Book Award, which comes with a $5000 prize for the author(s).

The first half of Break Through is a criticism of the green "politics of limits." The book begins with the birth of environmentalism. Nordhaus and Shellenberger argue that environmentalism in the U.S. emerged from post-war affluence, which they argue is a clue to understanding how ecological movements might emerge in places like China and India.

Progressive social reforms, from the Civil Rights Act to the Clean Water Act, tend to occur during times of prosperity and rising expectations—not immiseration and declining expectations. Both the environmental movement and the civil rights movement emerged as a consequence of rising prosperity. It was the middle-class, young, and educated black Americans who were on the forefront of the civil rights movement. Poor blacks were active, but the movement was overwhelmingly led by educated, middle-class intellectuals and community leaders (preachers prominent among them). This was also the case with the white supporters of the civil rights movement, who tended to be more highly educated and more affluent than the general American population. In short, the civil rights movement no more emerged because African Americans were suddenly denied their freedom than the environmental movement emerged because America suddenly started polluting.

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