The Market: Means, Not Ends

Debate on Lieberman-Warner—the “Climate Security Act” which emphasizes curbing carbon emissions using cap and trade but pours pitifully small amounts of money into clean energy—began this week on the floor of the Senate. Even if it does nothing else, the legislation draws attention to the unequivocal connection between our free market and our carbon emissions. It is worth understanding the connection to bring us to an understanding of how to overcome ecological crisis.

It’s high time we examine our assumptions about the politics of and surrounding market capitalism and how it affects climate change action. The typical liberal view is pretty much one of market-dirtiness—the market is a naturally greed-oriented, self-oriented and corrupting institution. In the minds of these leftists, the public sector exists to help the public, and the private sector exists to help themselves. Liberals then take this view to one of two places: the first is a socialist tendency to want to control as much of the market as possible, expanding the public sector and shrinking the private. The other place liberals go is to ignore the market, wash their hands of its dirtiness and condemn it as irredeemable.

From the Meat to the Message: The Importance of Translating Complex Theories into Simple Messages to Create Big Movements

As Breakthrough Fellows, we are here to learn the details and finer points of the philosophy of the Breakthrough Generation. Give us two hundred pages to read for tomorrow, and it’s done; ask us to write a couple hundred words about the subject matter, and it’ll be (basically) complete by mid-day. However, Breakthrough is meant to galvanize an entire generation of youth, regardless of how deeply immersed in the issues each person is. We do not have the luxury of sending out readers to each person whom we would like to sign on to our mission. Even if we could, to paraphrase Break Through, people aren’t looking to subscribe to data or science or even facts; people sign on to ideology, to the story that we are telling.

It is important for us to keep in mind that if we want our message to spread, it must be one that is inclusive and inspiring, yet grounded and relatable. When Kennedy said, famously, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” he created a message that the entire country could sign on to. There was no specific promise, no detailed explanation of a plan; there was simply an ideal, an entire system of thoughts and beliefs condensed into a short sentence. It is this type of message that will help us tell our story at Breakthrough.