"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today..." The Green Skeptic at 20

Today, twenty years ago, I typed out my first blog post with a mix of uncertainty and conviction. “Why Blog? and Why The Green Skeptic?” the title asked—questions that would shape my next decade and a half of writing about environmental pragmatism, clean energy, and social innovation.

As The Green Skeptic, I carved out a unique space between environmental advocacy and market-based pragmatism. Working at The Nature Conservancy then, I saw firsthand the need for voices that could bridge ideology with practical solutions. One of my most effective early posts, “Caring, or A New Conservation Ethic,” first posted in 2005, challenged traditional environmental messaging and advocated for a more inclusive approach to conservation that acknowledged economic realities and people’s concerns. 

A 2008 post, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Protecting and Saving,” argued that everything we thought about saving or protecting ecosystems and habitats was wrong and we needed to unleash human creativity to find new technological solutions as well as new ways of living with nature.

The blog evolved to tackle emerging challenges and opportunities. My piece, “The Coming Disruption—Lead It or Follow It,” from 2011, argued that partisan ideology on both sides was getting in the way of facing the systemic problems of our way of life. (Still true today!) Another 2011 post, “A Tale of Two Cleantech Companies” offered a critical analysis of what worked—and what didn’t—in the emerging green economy, a deep dive I explored in a case study format at the IMPACT investor conference that year. Exploring the intersection of faith and environmentalism in a two-part post on “The Evangelical Environmental Movement” sparked important conversations about building broader coalitions for climate action.

Some of my proudest moments came from highlighting changemakers like Kalyan Paul and his work with Grassroots International, showing how social entrepreneurship could drive sustainable development. The post “What Keeps You Up at Night?” resonated deeply with readers, examining the personal stakes of environmental challenges. My analysis of “Philanthropy & Environmental Change” pushed for more effective deployment of charitable resources to support environmental causes. (It also led to my being introduced to the woman who is now my wife.)

As clean technology and social entrepreneurship emerged as critical areas of interest for me—I moved from the Conservancy to the social venture capital organization Ashoka, and then into my own consulting practice, VerdeStrategy, before landing with EY’s cleantech and power and utilities practices—expanding the blog’s focus into these areas. This evolution led to unexpected opportunities, including a three-year run as a commentator on Fox Business with Varney & Co., where I brought these nuanced perspectives to a broader audience.

The Green Skeptic on Fox Business in 2010

For ten years, I maintained a steady dialogue with readers about everything from microfinance innovation to personal environmental choices, as captured in posts like “Falling Up, Or The Choices We Make May Be Our Own,” part of which led me to write a short memoir called Falling Up, several years later. The blog became a space not just for commentary, but for imagining better futures, exemplified in pieces like “IMAGINE The Man Who Cared,” my reflection on John Lennon’s inspiring legacy of activism. Another post explored the impact of one of my boyhood heroes, Roberto Clemente, who died tragically trying to deliver aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. 

While The Green Skeptic’s final post came in September 2019, its spirit of questioning assumptions and seeking practical solutions lives on in my current writing—from regional features and profiles in Berkshire Magazine to exploring new frontiers in psychedelic-assisted therapy for Terrain.org and Lucid News. I still have another, occasional blog, Scott Edward Anderson’s Poetry Blog, where I post mostly about poetry, and my essays are regularly published in various publications.

The media landscape has transformed dramatically since 2004, with Substack and Medium newsletters replacing individual blogs. But that early blogging experience taught me something invaluable: the power of putting thoughtful perspectives into the world without perfectionism getting in the way.

Twenty years later, we need independent voices willing to challenge assumptions and bridge divides more than ever. So, here’s to The Green Skeptic—not just for what it was, but for how it helped shape the conversations we’re still having today about building a more sustainable future.

10 Favs; 10 Years: The Evangelical Environmental Awakening, Part 1

I've long been concerned by the exclusiveness of the environmental movement and was especially struck by the suspicions aroused in the deep greens when the Christian right started getting interested in climate change and the environment, as if the environment was an exclusive club of left-leaning liberals. It's one of the reasons I agreed to go on Fox Business when they asked me. I didn't want to preach to the converted. I wanted to open the tent and let all the human family in.

Here's Part 1 of my post on The Evangelical Environmental Awakening from 2005:

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Several years ago I attended a conference hosted by one of the country's progressive environmental and cultural institutions.

Invited were writers and artists, environmental activists, conservation practitioners, and a host of others.

The event was held on the beautiful campus of the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia, a venue which exists because a forward-thinking Republican from that state marshaled the resources necessary to bring it to reality.

I arrived on that first evening with a sense of excitement; we were in for a few days of intense dialogue, debate, and communion among the conservation concerned. After checking into my room and making a quick tour of the grounds, I walked up to the first evening's festivities, an invocation and series of readings by some of the nation's best and most influential "nature" writers.

After the reading, we all ambled up to a high point on the property for what was described as a "Summer Solstice Celebration." A bonfire was lit, a circle of the tribe gathered, and there was song and words of inspiration shared by the mostly white, mostly male participants, decked out in what ranged from outdoors uniforms to neo-hippy chic. This was the Birkenstock and granola crowd.

Bonfire

As the celebration continued it spiraled into what I can only describe as pagan ritual, with a few diatribes against those who were not in attendance – the despoilers of the land.

I had a sinking feeling that I didn't belong and started to move away from the crowd. This was despite the fact that I am both a writer who draws inspiration from the natural world and a professional conservation practitioner.

Why did I feel like an alien in my own land, among what should have been my tribe? As I observed the group from down the hill, its music and dancing seemed to take on a decidedly Gaia-worshipping tone, as participants gyrated and "grocked" to their own brand of eco-spiritual convergence.

The discomfort I felt at that celebration was that of a stranger in a strange land. I felt like an outsider, an interloper, like I didn't belong there. I almost left that evening, but the promise of four days of learning and connecting kept me from the road.

My feelings were compounded by questions that began to form in my head: What if I was an outsider, observing this ritual from another, differently held worldview? How would it appear to me?

"I see the pagans are at it again," said a voice off to my left.

I was a good hundred yards or more from the site and hadn't noticed anyone else around me. I didn't catch this fellow's name, but there he stood shaking his head between drags on a cigarette. He looked like a federal employee; at least, he was dressed like a park ranger.

"Why does every one of these gatherings have to kick off with rituals like this?" I asked.

"Because we think prayer circles are for psycho-Christians," my neighbor quipped. "Imagine if we tried to start a conference like this with a prayer circle, we'd be ridiculed – or stoned."

And, yet, I thought, we're comfortable with these types of displays, as if they are desirable because they are so patently other than more traditional, western religious practices.

In fact, anything but rituals adopted from Judeo-Christian traditions seemed to be completely acceptable, a matter of tribal integrity. What were the religious groups in attendance thinking? And where were they?

My companion for that brief, revelatory moment had disappeared, as if he were a visiting alien or a prophet in modern clothes.

His words stuck with me; in fact, his words came back to me a few days later when I listened to William J. Wade, the former president of ARCO, address the group in a plenary session.

He was talking about the impact of reading Barry Lopez’ Arctic Dreams as he prepared to take ARCO's top job in Alaska in the mid-eighties. Later, he got to meet Lopez and fly over the state's many natural wonders. He was a committed conservationist and was talking to us as one who had converted to the cause, like Saul on the road to Damascus, and was doing what he could to care for nature.

The audience reaction to having such an alien in our midst was tepid and suspicious. How could an industry representative – one of "them" – deign to speak to "us" about appreciation for the natural world? We were the keepers of nature not the despoilers. And yet, Mr. Wade's experience was among the most genuine and authentic of the entire conference.

The session was followed by the next speaker, Peter Matthiessen, who fired rude salvos at Mr. Wade, the oil industry, and all conservatives who wanted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. It was an embarrassing moment, but one cheered by the majority of the crowd.

Peter Matthiessen, Ed Betz/AP

I felt sick. Mr. Wade was a brave fellow who had wandered into "enemy territory" without even realizing it. How could we treat another human being this way? Where was our ethical integrity and respect for other human beings?

Had we welcomed Mr. Wade to the conference only to belittle his worldview, attack his politics, and make him a whipping-boy for our gripes against industry? Where was fairness and liberal morals? Clearly these were checked at the door.

After the conference, I wrote Mr. Wade a letter of apology and sent it to him care of ARCO. I'm not sure he ever received it.*

I was embarrassed by my own, some of whom I considered colleagues and even friends. If an environmentalist were to be invited to speak to a conservative group or association and was attacked like this, we would most assuredly cry "foul" and decry the manners of the group at large. And yet, we were not "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Perhaps we should have started with a prayer circle instead of a pagan rite; perhaps then we would have remembered the manners we learned in childhood.

I write this now because the environmental movement is confronted with a new "alien in our midst" - Evangelical Christians. Many environmentalists are suspicious and wary of this group's motivations and, indeed, some have questioned their sincerity in articles and the electronic print media.

This is wrong. We need to apply the same sort of tolerance and respect for diversity that we espouse in our daily lives and work. We need to adapt our liberal moral tendencies to be accepting of this group as a partner. They may not join our organizations and certainly will not put aside their moral visions or worldviews to fit ours, but they have an important voice and perspective on the work ahead of us.

We could learn a lot from their way of knowing this earth, despite what knee-jerk environmentalists might assume. We have not cornered the market on stewardship and care of the earth, regardless of whether you believe the earth as we know it exists through divine creation or evolutionary adaptation.

The diversity of human experience of the earth can be as diverse as the fabric of life itself. We must take heed of this still, small voice in the wilderness and nurture it, welcome it into the good fight.

___________________________________________
*Seven years after this was originally posted, I heard from Mr. Wade, who had found my post. It was nice to be in touch with him and to apologize again.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Protecting and Saving

This post originally appeared on The Green Skeptic in March 2008, when I was about to speak at the Aspen Environment Forum. It's reprinted here as I am on hiatus from writing the blog. I promise to be back at it soon. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this piece. --Scott

##


Everything we think about saving or protecting ecosystems and habitats is wrong.

This week, I'm at the Aspen Environment Forum, where tomorrow morning I'll be on a Panel called "Nature's Place: Saving Ecosystems and Habitats."

For the better part of 15 years I worked with The Nature Conservancy to save some of the world's "Last Great Places" around the world (I left in August; see my posts reflecting on my career at TNC
and here.

I consider myself a conservationist, not an environmentalist. What I mean by that is a conservative and prudent approach to our use of resources that requires us to manage them for the long-term -- for the benefit of people today and for future generations.

The Green Skeptic grew out of an increasing concern about our relationship to the natural world and how we protect it. I am a skeptic in the sense that I believe we need to constantly challenge the assumptions we have about "saving ecosystems and habitats."

In my view, we operate under four basic assumptions:

1. We can continue to "save" or "protect" ecosystems and habitats from harm in perpetuity;
2. We can ignore basic human needs and treat poverty alleviation as a separate issue from the environment;
3. We can entrust protection to governments and corporate NGOs;
4. We can't trust human ingenuity and community to manage its own resources.

First, I need to step back and look at the words we use. (I am a poet, so words matter to me.) Specifically, "protecting" and "saving."

Both imply we need to keep ecosystems and habitats from something. The American Heritage Dictionary defines protecting as "To keep from being damaged, attacked, stolen, or injured; guard." When we use the word protecting in terms of ecosystems and habitats, we are guarding nature from something or someone, presumably humans.

Saving is a little less problematic, as it implies a conservative approach to the future (as in saving seed corn for next year's sowing). Still, the AHD's first definition is "To rescue from harm, danger, or loss." It's not until definition number three that we get to the conservative impulse: "To avoid spending (e.g. money) so as to keep or accumulate it."

The question is not about what we should save, but how and for what purpose.

Is it hubris to assume we have protected or saved anything? We promote the fact that percentages of ecosystems or habitats are protected, but they continue to be encroached upon -- see the Amazon Rainforest for example.

What have we really saved if massive changes from climate change or the drive for much-needed economic development will have significant impact on the future status and makeup of places, habitats, and ecosystems?

Climate change will disrupt many ecosystems that exist today -- much as the Internet disrupted print media, the travel industry, TV, bookstores, you name it. It will change everything.

So the question is what are we really protecting when we talk about protecting ecosystems and habitat? Will the places we select for protection today be the same 10-20 years from now? Probably not.

Ecosystems are constantly changing, either from "external" (human) or "internal" (natural) forces. Change is inevitable and could, in the face of global warming, be dramatic.

Shouldn't we be preparing for the changes and begin to think about how we adapt to some of the most likely changes, those brought on by climate change or economic development or basic human needs, such as for food and energy?

Demand for energy and food will drive economic development for years to come and we can't continue to ignore these drivers to "save" the natural, non-human world.

This leads me to assumption two, which is about ignoring basic human needs. It's irrational for us to think that people in developing countries, many of whose basic human needs are not being met, will care deeply about the non-human natural world.

Yet, we continue to have blind faith in our cause and ignore the needs of real people.

I recently returned from India where the extreme poverty is evident almost everywhere you look. Also evident is a growing middle class that strives for the kind of lifestyle we have here in the west, specifically the US, with its inherent accelerated pace and impacts.

Who are we to say that people in developing countries have no right to the kind of lifestyle we have exported for decades? We can not convince, persuade or cajole or even pay people -- Americans as much as people in developing nations -- to "come around to our way of thinking," and yet this is what I hear whenever I talk to environmentalists.

And we can't ask poor people around the world to forgo the comforts of the lifestyle we have been living, and which they wish to copy, "for the sake of the planet" or to set aside their habitats and ecosystems for the sake of humanity. No country wants to become an ecological reserve for the world, especially if it means it cannot pursue economic prosperity.

Try floating this idea with people who go hungry every night for lack of food or money to buy food and see what kind of reaction you get.

In the end, poor people matter. And the governments of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and African countries must be concerned first and foremost with the well-being of their people. I'm not saying that human well-being isn't tied to ecosystem health; I'm a strong believer that economic growth is tied to those resources.

I believe we can no longer separate the issue of economic development and poverty alleviation from ecosystem health. We also can't expect that governments whose people aren't meeting basic needs to protect their habitats over the economic well-being of their people.

Which leads me to assumption three: increasingly, we are entrusting protection of habitats and ecosystems with the wrong people. Governments have a mandate to improve the economic health of their country and people.

Yet we continue to have faith that these governments will "do the right thing" and enforce laws protecting their forests or other ecosystems in the face of seemingly insurmountable economic obstacles.

Why do we think that is a good strategy? What indicators do we have that tell us this strategy will succeed where it hasn't in the past? Why do we think that the World Bank program to pay countries to "avoid deforestation" will be any more successful than their previous grand plans?

The same goes for NGOs. NGOs are basically corporations that serve a set of shareholders (donors in this case) who subscribe to a specific idea of Nature and a specific set of outcomes, outcomes that may not necessarily be shared by all stakeholders.

This idea of Nature has for a long time discounted the needs of people both today and in the future. To illustrate this, one only need look at the environmental community's approach to government debt.

Conservation groups (my old employers among them) have promoted using a country's debt as leverage to gain conservation protection. The debt-for-nature swap was an innovation of the past couple of decades and a noble one. But it was also painfully ignorant of the true nature of that debt -- in many cases "dictator debt" incurred by regimes that did not have its people's best interests in mind.

Now that we have a more clear understanding of how that debt was derived, and can no longer ignore its immoral origins, we need to give up or adjust the debt-for-nature swap concept and join the call for debt forgiveness. That will free some countries from having to exploit their natural resources to pay down that debt.

Yet, many in the environmental community continue to push the debt-for-nature strategy, because they can't let go of a good thing that advances their agenda.

How is this different from any corporation -- a sector many environmentalists attack -- that advances its agenda at the expense of people here and abroad? Can we really trust ecosystems and habitats to big government or big international non-governmental corporations?

In the end, wouldn't a better approach be to put our trust in the people and the communities where these ecosystems and habitats are found? They have the most at stake in managing these resources, as their needs and livelihoods are most closely tied to the lands and waters.

I believe human beings are basically good. I also believe that, given the opportunity, communities will manage their common interests and keep each other in check. This is the open-source community approach one finds in social networks and in business models such as eBay.

I also believe that human beings are the most creative and adaptable species on the planet -- just look at the variety of habitats, climates, and conditions we inhabit. Our resilience as a species is astounding. I argue that we need to embrace this resourcefulness and apply it to overcoming ecological shifts, climate change, and loss of ecosystems and habitats.

We need to unleash the power of human creativity to find new ways to "save" those places for future use by both human and non-human species.

Unleashing this human capacity will require suspending our assumptions. We will need to focus more on community-based or "commons-based" management (as Jonathan Rowe of the West Marin Commons in California calls it in a recent essay in The State of the World 2008).

We need a people-centered conservation that addresses the real needs of real people, and to empower individual entrepreneurs and communities to manage their resources cooperatively rather than impose grand plans from Washington.

We need to clearly draw the lines connecting economic prosperity with ecological health and human well-being.

And, finally, we need to unleash human creativity to find new technological solutions as well as new ways of living with nature.

This may, in the end, be our only hope to really save habitat and ecosystems – and, ultimately, to save ourselves.

A Sheep in Hawk's Clothing? Why "Climate Hawk" Doesn't Soar.

We need less hawking, more doing.

My post last week about Climate Skeptics garnered some interesting responses, including this one from my friend David Connell of The Nature Conservancy on Planet Change.

I agree with Dave that it's time for a big tent.  I also agree that environmentalists are guilty of, as he says, being "suspicious of groups that agree with us on climate change but who disagree with us on other social and political issues." 

I've pointed this out before, specifically in the spring of 2005, when Evangelicals caught hell from Environmentalists for weighing in on climate change.  (See my posts here and here.)

On the face of it, the "climate hawk" movement purports to set up a bigger tent, be more inclusive, and not be about environmentalism with a capital "E."

Yet, I'm not sure one can hide standard issue environmentalism behind a "turn of phrase that is all at once American, forward leaning, tough and – because it borrows from a Republican foreign-policy stance – non-partisan," Dave says, and as was suggested by the term's coiner, David Roberts of Grist.org. 

To me, "climate hawks" feels a bit disingenuous.  It feels – and perhaps this is why they're not seeing the term gain traction beyond the already converted – like the old liberal agenda dressed up in misappropriated Republican clothes. 

(I found myself wondering what Frank Luntz would say about it.  I reached out to him for comment late last week, but as of this posting have not heard back.)

Even the logo is a sheep in hawk's clothing. 

As its designer Joe Immen explained to Co.Design.com, "I also wanted it to stand out and be visible from a distance, so I used bold colors inspired by the Obama campaign.  This whole notion of 'hawkish' references the military and patriotism, which are concepts that have become disassociated from the idea of taking climate change seriously."

Immen concludes, "So the hawk is about making environmentalism seem like it has some toughness behind it, that it’s grounded in reality."  No starry eyed dreamer this hope hawk!

(I'm not even going to comment on some of what Immen says here; it wouldn't be fair. Suffice it to say it is unclear to me how using the colors of the Obama campaign is meant to make those on the right want to be part of it.) 

Alas, as Dave Connell points out, the "few people who do use the term are the same people who have been talking about climate change all along."

So, I'm left with a few questions:

What if more we spent more energy on building the economic arguments for a reasonable, more inclusive approach to energy development? 

What if we focused on the economic arguments for a competitive economic future?

What if we focused on the positive benefits to health care costs of doing something about pollution? 

What if we focused on the positive benefits of the next energy transition -- to society, the economy, and people everywhere?

What if we stopped debating climate change and started to do something?

In other words, less hawking, more doing.  

Are Enviros Ditching Dems?: Green Skeptic on FOX Business

I was on FOX Business this morning with Stuart Varney and Governor Christine Todd Whitman talking about why environmentalists are disappointed by the Democrats.

Along with a plea for a moderate, practical approach to the environment and reclaim it as an issue from the extreme.

Here is the video:


And for those whose browser doesn't support this format, here is a link: GS on FOXBiz

Review: Billion Dollar Green by Tobin Smith

"You've got to have shitloads of M-O-N-E-Y, money," Liz Phair growled, back when she knew how to growl. It's true.

Readers of this blog know I believe the only way we shift to a new green economy and address global environmental issues is by turning greed to green.

When it's clear money can be made, folks will turn to greener pastures. From the number of green investing books I've seen over the past year, people are starting to think maybe the time has come.

I was surprised by a book Wiley sent me recently, Billion Dollar Green: Profit from the Eco Revolution. Surprised, in part, because it didn't look like a "green" book.

Sure its color is green and the type is ecofriendly. But then there's the guy in the suit. He looks like a banker in his contrast-collar shirt and pinstripes or a television personality the way he's facing the camera awaiting his cue.

Enter Tobin Smith, founder and editor of ChangeWave Investing and co-star of Fox News Channel's "Bulls & Bears."

Smith, who had a bestseller with his 2000 book ChangeWave Investing: Picking the Next Monster Stocks of the New Economy, has built his reputation on identifying ways to make money from periods of change.

Only trouble is, everything changed once this book hit the shelves. Green was golden when this book was being written and when it went to press, but by December green's gold had tarnished just a bit too much for most investors.

It's not Smith's fault. He has some good insights in Billion Dollar Green. It's just that the profit may be a longer way off.

I agree with many of his green stock choices (including some of my longs) and the future market potential he sees in the smart grid, LED lighting, efficiency, and advanced batteries.

Perhaps Smith's best insight occurs in his preface:

"It was this early recognition of the secular shift in the supply and demand for fossil fuels in the new twenty-first century global economy that led us to conclude that, for the very first time, economics -- not just environmentalism or tree-hugging wannabes -- would drive the decades-plus secular transition to alternative energy technology."

That's the new green economy, baby. Driven by the economic opportunity, not altruistic idealism. Bring it on!

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Conservation: What We Talk About When We Talk About Protecting and Saving Ecosystems and Habitats

Everything we think about saving or protecting ecosystems and habitats is wrong.

This week, I'm at the Aspen Environment Forum, where tomorrow morning I'll be on a Panel called "Nature's Place: Saving Ecosystems and Habitats."

For the better part of 15 years I worked with The Nature Conservancy to save some of the world's "Last Great Places" around the world (I left in August; see my posts reflecting on my career at TNC).

I consider myself a conservationist, not an environmentalist. What I mean by that is a conservative and prudent approach to our use of resources that requires us to manage them for the long-term -- for the benefit of people today and for future generations.

The Green Skeptic grew out of an increasing concern about our relationship to the natural world and how we protect it. I am a skeptic in the sense that I believe we need to constantly challenge the assumptions we have about "saving ecosystems and habitats."

In my view, we operate under four basic assumptions:

1. We can continue to "save" or "protect" ecosystems and habitats from harm in perpetuity;
2. We can ignore basic human needs and treat poverty alleviation as a separate issue from the environment;
3. We can entrust protection to governments and corporate NGOs;
4. We can't trust human ingenuity and community to manage its own resources.

First, I need to step back and look at the words we use. (I am a poet, so words matter to me.) Specifically, "protecting" and "saving."

Both imply we need to keep ecosystems and habitats from something. The American Heritage Dictionary defines protecting as "To keep from being damaged, attacked, stolen, or injured; guard." When we use the word protecting in terms of ecosystems and habitats, we are guarding nature from something or someone, presumably humans.

Saving is a little less problematic, as it implies a conservative approach to the future (as in saving seed corn for next year's sowing). Still, the AHD's first definition is "To rescue from harm, danger, or loss." It's not until definition number three that we get to the conservative impulse: "To avoid spending (e.g. money) so as to keep or accumulate it."

The question is not about what we should save, but how and for what purpose.

Is it hubris to assume we have protected or saved anything? We promote the fact that percentages of ecosystems or habitats are protected, but they continue to be encroached upon -- see the Amazon Rainforest for example.

What have we really saved if massive changes from climate change or the drive for much-needed economic development will have significant impact on the future status and makeup of places, habitats, and ecosystems?

Climate change will disrupt many ecosystems that exist today -- much as the Internet disrupted print media, the travel industry, TV, bookstores, you name it. It will change everything.

So the question is what are we really protecting when we talk about protecting ecosystems and habitat? Will the places we select for protection today be the same 10-20 years from now? Probably not.

Ecosystems are constantly changing, either from "external" (human) or "internal" (natural) forces. Change is inevitable and could, in the face of global warming, be dramatic.

Shouldn't we be preparing for the changes and begin to think about how we adapt to some of the most likely changes, those brought on by climate change or economic development or basic human needs, such as for food and energy?

Demand for energy and food will drive economic development for years to come and we can't continue to ignore these drivers to "save" the natural, non-human world.

This leads me to assumption two, which is about ignoring basic human needs. It's irrational for us to think that people in developing countries, many of whose basic human needs are not being met, will care deeply about the non-human natural world.

Yet, we continue to have blind faith in our cause and ignore the needs of real people.

I recently returned from India where the extreme poverty is evident almost everywhere you look. Also evident is a growing middle class that strives for the kind of lifestyle we have here in the west, specifically the US, with its inherent accelerated pace and impacts.

Who are we to say that people in developing countries have no right to the kind of lifestyle we have exported for decades? We can not convince, persuade or cajole or even pay people -- Americans as much as people in developing nations -- to "come around to our way of thinking," and yet this is what I hear whenever I talk to environmentalists.

And we can't ask poor people around the world to forgo the comforts of the lifestyle we have been living, and which they wish to copy, "for the sake of the planet" or to set aside their habitats and ecosystems for the sake of humanity. No country wants to become an ecological reserve for the world, especially if it means it cannot pursue economic prosperity.

Try floating this idea with people who go hungry every night for lack of food or money to buy food and see what kind of reaction you get.

In the end, poor people matter. And the governments of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and African countries must be concerned first and foremost with the well-being of their people. I'm not saying that human well-being isn't tied to ecosystem health; I'm a strong believer that economic growth is tied to those resources.

I believe we can no longer separate the issue of economic development and poverty alleviation from ecosystem health. We also can't expect that governments whose people aren't meeting basic needs to protect their habitats over the economic well-being of their people.

Which leads me to assumption three: increasingly, we are entrusting protection of habitats and ecosystems with the wrong people. Governments have a mandate to improve the economic health of their country and people.

Yet we continue to have faith that these governments will "do the right thing" and enforce laws protecting their forests or other ecosystems in the face of seemingly insurmountable economic obstacles.

Why do we think that is a good strategy? What indicators do we have that tell us this strategy will succeed where it hasn't in the past? Why do we think that the World Bank program to pay countries to "avoid deforestation" will be any more successful than their previous grand plans?

The same goes for NGOs. NGOs are basically corporations that serve a set of shareholders (donors in this case) who subscribe to a specific idea of Nature and a specific set of outcomes, outcomes that may not necessarily be shared by all stakeholders.

This idea of Nature has for a long time discounted the needs of people both today and in the future. To illustrate this, one only need look at the environmental community's approach to government debt.

Conservation groups (my old employers among them) have promoted using a country's debt as leverage to gain conservation protection. The debt-for-nature swap was an innovation of the past couple of decades and a noble one. But it was also painfully ignorant of the true nature of that debt -- in many cases "dictator debt" incurred by regimes that did not have its people's best interests in mind.

Now that we have a more clear understanding of how that debt was derived, and can no longer ignore its immoral origins, we need to give up or adjust the debt-for-nature swap concept and join the call for debt forgiveness. That will free some countries from having to exploit their natural resources to pay down that debt.

Yet, many in the environmental community continue to push the debt-for-nature strategy, because they can't let go of a good thing that advances their agenda.

How is this different from any corporation -- a sector many environmentalists attack -- that advances its agenda at the expense of people here and abroad? Can we really trust ecosystems and habitats to big government or big international non-governmental corporations?

In the end, wouldn't a better approach be to put our trust in the people and the communities where these ecosystems and habitats are found? They have the most at stake in managing these resources, as their needs and livelihoods are most closely tied to the lands and waters.

I believe human beings are basically good. I also believe that, given the opportunity, communities will manage their common interests and keep each other in check. This is the open-source community approach one finds in social networks and in business models such as eBay.

I also believe that human beings are the most creative and adaptable species on the planet -- just look at the variety of habitats, climates, and conditions we inhabit. Our resilience as a species is astounding. I argue that we need to embrace this resourcefulness and apply it to overcoming ecological shifts, climate change, and loss of ecosystems and habitats.

We need to unleash the power of human creativity to find new ways to "save" those places for future use by both human and non-human species.

Unleashing this human capacity will require suspending our assumptions. We will need to focus more on community-based or "commons-based" management (as Jonathan Rowe of the West Marin Commons in California calls it in a recent essay in The State of the World 2008).

We need a people-centered conservation that addresses the real needs of real people, and to empower individual entrepreneurs and communities to manage their resources cooperatively rather than impose grand plans from Washington.

We need to clearly draw the lines connecting economic prosperity with ecological health and human well-being.

And, finally, we need to unleash human creativity to find new technological solutions as well as new ways of living with nature.

This may, in the end, be our only hope to really save habitat and ecosystems – and, ultimately, to save ourselves.

Break Through: From Ashes of Environmentalism Comes Hope and Imagination?

Environmentalists have it all wrong.

We don't need no stinking limits, what we need is economic growth fueled by a massive investment in alternative energy that positively transforms the living standards of people around the world.

We need a new, new economy that is not based on what we can't do or shouldn't do, but on what we can do.

We need energy independence and ecological security. We need an agenda that puts investment, jobs, and economic growth front and center.

The spirit of possibility is at hand, we need only take it up -- and secure a front-loaded investment in R&D from the Department of Defense to get this thing moving.

Okay, I'll get off my soap box. Readers of The Green Skeptic are familiar enough with my thoughts on the matter.

Much of this kind of thinking runs through the pages of Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger's new book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, which I've just finished.

You remember them? They got many pairs of green knickers in a twist with their essay calling for abandoning the environmental movement (and a few cheers from some of the more skeptical among us).

They've written an important book. Flawed, but important. And a little bipolar.

One the one hand, it's a much-needed critique of the way the environmental movement thinks and speaks of its issues. This follows logically on their original essay. And it is sort of in the vein of William Easterly and John Perkins' confessionals/attacks on their former selves.

I mean, these guys were strategists for some of the doom and gloomers; now they've seen the light and the error of their ways.

In terms of making change, their basic argument is that people rate the environment and global warming low on their list of concerns, relative to other concerns like economic security, terrorism, etc. And the enviros haven't been listening; they want to convince.

For example, Americans are more concerned by rising energy prices than the prospects of global warming. Yet the prevailing environmental messaging strategy calls for raising energy prices even higher through taxes and such. Certainly a disconnect there. Ya think?

But when it comes to providing hope beyond some flowery rhetoric, Nordhaus and Shellenberger offer very little new thinking.

A little pimping for their Apollo-style energy proposal, which was introduced into Congress by Representative Jay Inslee of Washington, and the authors are off on quite a few tangents about NIMBYism and facing the fact that we are now like Gods and we'd better get used to it.

The second half of the book could have used some heavy editing and shaping by the gang at Houghton-Mifflin. You can get by with a snarky attitude if you really have something to say, believe me. In the end, however, you have to bring your whole game.

I wanted a little more pragmatism in the chapter of that name. And what was the point of that attack on Francis Fukuyama in the final chapter? At times, such as in the clever analysis of how Tony Blair lost the war on global warming on the world stage, it seemed like a clever magazine article run amok.

The authors fall short in facing some of the realities of climate change. It is happening, will affect millions of people directly, and we will have to find a way to adapt and mitigate the severity, while making investments in technologies that will help us get there. (I felt they sold short the adaptation piece in particular, in the rush to push their investment agenda.)

That said, the authors rightly point out that to succeed in turning this around, we need remember what we're great at: "imagining, experimenting, and inventing the future."

We can imagine a better future if we set our minds to it. So what are we waiting for?

Global Climate Change: Imagining a Better World

I'm reading Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. You'll remember them as the two who caused such controversy in the environmental community a few years ago.

I promise a more complete review later, but I have to quote a passage that speaks to the heart of Green Skeptic thinking about what's needed now -- a vision that is based on more rather than less. In short, a new imagining of a better world:

"Is it really so hard to imagine a world with healthy forests, a stable climate, and seven to ten billion people living in sustainable cities? How might history have turned out differently had we imagined the solution to global warming as unleashing rather than restricting human activity? What if we had conceptualized global warming not as the result of too much economic develoment but rather as the result of too little clean economic development?"

Amen, brothers.

(Apologies for no links or formatting; blogging by CrackBerry)