“Function dictates form” is a belief that the on-the-ground, real and specific changes that any group or person advocates for are a reflection and an embodiment of the new reality that this person or group would create. In other words, the “function” of the group—the policies it advocates for, the actual reforms it pushes—exemplify the “form” of the change the group is promoting. The function of large scale government investment dictates a form for society that is new, forward-oriented, and empowering.

We here at Breakthrough (Generation) are often accused of wanting to techno-fix our way clear of any serious social or cultural change. In other words, a will to create clean energy so that we can maintain our overly consumerist, overly isolationist, and overly self-involved American lifestyles is often projected onto BTI and BTGen. This is far from the case. Instead, we are believers in what I call the “function dictates form” model of social change. A discussion about function versus form might benefit all of us who wish to bring change to the world, be it to solve climate crisis, lift billions out of poverty, redefine the American city, or achieve energy independence from foreign oil.

“Function dictates form” is a belief that the on-the-ground, real and specific changes that any group or person advocates for are a reflection and an embodiment of the new reality that this person or group would create. In other words, the “function” of the group—the policies it advocates for, the actual reforms it pushes—exemplify the “form” of the change the group is promoting. This is even true when a group’s stated functions do not match its ideal or intended forms. In fact, no matter how grand, or universal, or wonderful a group’s vision is, the form that follows from its function is the real “vision” that the group is promoting.

Function dictating form is no little thing. I firmly believe that the on the ground answers and actually policy solutions that a group advocates reflect the direction it would take the world, perhaps not intentionally, but nonetheless naturally—which is why I do not understand why serious climate activists promote things like cap and trade or tax and dividend or the like as ways to create serious social change. Sure, it is (fictionally) a way to curb carbon emissions, but the function of cap (or tax) and ______ only serves to perpetuate the current social trends in this country and around the world. Time and again, I have seen people on sites like itsgettinghotinhere bemoaning the “capitalization” of our society, where everything from our minutes to our muscles to our ideas has a worth and a price in dollars and cents. And yet, the function of cap (or tax) and _____ is to commoditize and price carbon, which contributes to a form of society where every aspect of life is commoditized and its worth or success is measured in dollars. This is the form that the function of carbon commoditization like cap and trade or tax and dividend dictate.

Now, I’ll admit that Breakthrough and BTGen hasn’t YET offered the nitty gritty specifics of its policy positions (believe me when I tell you its coming, and the man hours going into that research will probably rise above 350 very quickly), but the policy solutions of our organization are clearly set out as large scale government investment that private investment will inevitably mirror—investment which will make clean energy cheap, accessible, spread through the nation and eventually the world. And the function of this kind of investment dictates a form for society that is a serious break from the past and encourages some necessary changes:

• A country whose government is actively invested in the future of its people

• A country leading the way for developing nations to lift themselves out of poverty and give its citizens a secure life of well-being without harming the climate

• A society of people who know that their taxes are being invested in providing long term national security

• A society where the most important and noble jobs—providing clean, sustainable and ample power to a local community will never be outsourced

• A society that sees the market as a means for creating great change through bold initiatives, and not as a pure force that should remain outside of human control, a God sending us signals as to when it is time to introduce the solutions we all know we should be working for NOW

• A culture of adherence to fact, in which recognizing and reacting to the true conditions of reality with boldness and anticipation is the norm

• A culture of creative problem solving, embracing ingenuity, and looking for creative and progress-oriented solutions to national problems and world challenges

The function of large scale government investment dictates a form for society that is new, forward-oriented, and empowering. This is the society that I am working towards, that Breakthrough and Breakthrough Generation are working towards, and it is one that I want to be a part of.

——–

*Note: The picture is of some European “form dictated by function” silverware I found  here, so it was kind of relevant, in a way.

But the fact remains that when we put our money into technological innovation in this country, we are able to achieve at a pretty rapid pace…If the money and the motivation were there, I don’t think it’s wrong or ignorant of me to say that we could be taking potentially massive strides in clean energy technology.

I am going to apologize up front if this is too self-referential for some people’s tastes.

Right now, I am two parts confused, one part troubled and (I’ll admit it) one part amused regarding the flak we at Breakthrough Generation have been drawing the past few days on ItsGettingHotInHere and the conversations it has sparked and mood it has set in the office. I don’t think any of us are any less determined to advance a mission we see as essential, but how we do so and what that means has been the cause of some serious discussion.

The smart and passionate people I work with are working through some serious inner turmoil over the direction the movement represented on IGHIH is headed. I have come to question whether this movement is even capable of seriously advancing an agenda of clean energy, global prosperity and just and equitable social change. My new friend and BTG summer fellow Helen Aki posted a serious, thoughtful and questioning post on IGHIH hoping to explain where we are coming from, and where we would like a place on the quilted mosaic of the youth climate/energy movement, and thus far she has been met largely with bitterness and a refusal to recognize even the goodness of our intentions. Yes, we have been criticized for our style, but also for content and beliefs that are projected upon us and that we do not hold.

I can’t get over the following contradiction: the fact that cap and trade or any attempt to commoditize carbon is just about the most market purist, market fundamental, approach to solving carbon change there is and being called a neo-liberal market enthusiast when calling for aggressive public investment in clean and less carbon intensive technologies. I feel this all the more so when I posted last week about how we should all be looking at the market as a means and not as an ends of history.

We here at the Breakthrough Generation have been accused of believing “some future ‘Breakthrough’ technology will magically solve the climate crisis”. I don’t think any one of us holds that belief, and neither does anyone at Breakthrough. But the fact remains that when we put our money into technological innovation in this country, we are able to achieve at a pretty rapid pace. IPods haven’t exactly been getting bigger over the years. If the money and the motivation were there, I don’t think it’s wrong or ignorant of me to say that we could be taking potentially massive strides in clean energy technology.

There is an American story to be told about our most unique and dependable characteristic– our ability to get shit done when the will exists. When presented with a crisis or threatening event, we have in this nation been able to look ourselves in the mirror, breathe deep, acknowledge any fear we might have and get shit done. Our behavior and actions during World War II even while carrying the black mark of internment are an example of this. Roosevelt told us to acknowledge our fear and then used that American characteristic of “can and will do” spirit, and suddenly our factories were on the war regimen, kids were enlisting in droves, and fighting fascism was the top American priority.

An even better example comes to mind. Sputnik, the first Russian satellite launched in 1957. Suddenly America was scared of attacks from above, mechanical spies in the air, and Russian controlled skies. Yet, within twelve years, and due John F Kennedy’s motivational appeal to the same American values and “can and will do” spirit, we had put a man on the moon. Possibly even more incredible is the fact that Americans went from achieving human flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 to landing on the moon in less than 70 years. In America, it really is true that where there is a will, there is a way.

History has shown that given the opportunity, America will cowboy up and rise to the occasion. Let’s make it happen and unleash the creative, determined spirit.

I have said before that I don’t consider myself an environmentalist. You might be saying, “What is this kid doing at a think tank which is so clearly ecologically concerned if he doesn’t think he is an environmentalist? Wham-bam thank you ma’am, you ARE an environmentalist.” Well, let me explain what I mean. Some of my friends went to Powershift, and I stayed on campus to pursue other interests. I started going to Student for Environmental Action (SEA) meetings on my campus to increase my social connections. It was at SEA that a friend lent me Break Through, which made it clear that climate change is an existential crisis. If it is not stopped, climate change poses a direct threat to our country, our society, our world, and our ability to help everyone on this earth—by improving the lives of those in this country, by creating the conditions for modernization abroad, by helping governments discover their ability and responsibility to lift their citizens out of poverty, by empowering people everywhere.

I see that our civilization’s great strides towards global prosperity are taking a toll on our planet—but it doesn’t have to be this way. In the end, I see that these two problems—the ability to give every person the right to life, quality of life and life choices, and the ability to treat our Earth responsibly are linked. This link is energy: how we use it, where we get it from, how we think about it. The existential crisis of climate change is so exhilarating and momentous because, in solving this crisis, we have the opportunity to create a society that both treats the planet responsibly and allows for universal well-being for all people.

When I first realized this, and when I first realized that the climate crisis and the push for a clean energy economy had the potential to create responsible global prosperity, I turned to the environmental movement. At the time, the environmental movement seemed ready to advocate for sustainable global energy equity. But if I am wrong, then I am wrong. Traction has not picked up, and the environmental movement has made a messiah out of pricing carbon when this has been shown time and again to not be the solution.

If the environmental movement is not ready to advocate for large scale public and private investment into a clean energy economy, I see no reason for myself, and many others out there, to affiliate with the movement. We might identify with aspects of their thought and cause, but we are fundamentally fighting a new and more complex fight. I see the environmental movement, like any movement, as a means to achieving goals and not an end in itself. If the environmental movement wants to continue advocating for clean air, less pesticides, more land conservation, then I think those are all good things, but they are not why I had thrown my lot in with the environmental movement, and I suspect a growing number of my peers would agree.

So maybe it’s time we divorce ourselves from the environmental movement. Maybe it’s time to say we are part of an energy movement, not an environmental movement. For me, the idea of an “energy movement” captures a lot more of what I believe:

• Because physics tells us that energy is one of the fundamental building blocks of everything (energy is matter, matter is energy), it connotes knowledge of the physical world and ecological awareness

• Because the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink are all part of the vast energy system that is the human body, “energy movement” manages to encapsulate a concern for people’s well being and livelihood

• Because the correlation between energy use and standard of living has been measured time and again, energy equity also means that an energy movement would care intrinsically about sustainably lifting every person in the world to a secure standard of living

So come join the new energy movement, because it is charged with pushing for large scale investment into clean energy technology and implementation so that we can all live lives of security and well being on a secure and well cared for earth. Come join the new energy movement, because it is dedicated to a clean energy society that allows for sustainable global prosperity. Come join the new energy movement, because it is dedicated to worldwide energy equity in which all people are entitled to life, quality of life, and life choices. Come join the energy movement, because it is time to get things done.

____________

Photo from www.bam.gov

It is time for a new approach to clearing this great and long-lasting hurdle of poverty. Few things are of as much importance to me as ending the dehumanizing language and thought associated with those in our society who don’t have the means to make ends meet. We must change the language in which we discuss, and the ways in which we think about, overcoming this momentous challenge. This will help us clear the hurdle.

Thinking in terms of upper, middle, and lower class perpetuates injustice. This paradigm sets a frame in which some people MUST be at the bottom—how can there be an upper and a middle if there is no lower. We need to begin to see these issues in a more honest and open light: there are those who are materially affluent, those who are materially secure, and those who are materially struggling for survival. Thinking in terms of affluent, secure and struggling does not put in mind a system where there must be people swimming at the bottom of the tank.

In addition, we should think about what applying the term “class” to this gradient of material well-being implies. Class has the double meaning right now of place on the socio-economic ladder, and also a sort of code word for a quality of taste, discretion and manners. To imply that those who have more materially also have more “class” in this sense is more than an underhanded insult—it is nothing short of perpetuating culture-wide stereotype. I am not suggesting that we stop quantifying and gathering statistics or start ignoring the facts in order to make ourselves feel better. I am simply suggesting that our language needs to take on a more honest and encompassing tone, reflecting a more honest and encompassing vision.

I also witness the relapse of some of America’s oldest cities (Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc.), and shake my head—not out of lament for the inevitable regression of modern urban centers, but in exasperation that no one has stood up to stop the backsliding of these luminous pillars of our nation in their ability to offer a viable mode of life to the majority of their residents. The opportunities sit right in front of us! Expansive social policy derived from in depth local and national research, public investment in urban planning, and a renewed dedication to large-scale public transit are all called for. With dedication, these historically American cities, long viewed as embodying “the times” through the generations, could embody a new American vision of sustainable development, security, integration and accessibility for all inhabitants.

I have written before, and I believe to my very core, that every person on our planet is deserving of life, quality of life, and life choices. For us, in our prosperous and bountiful nation, to ignore those spurned by a system that largely does good is to discount the American Dream for all those who have achieved it. We must provide more opportunities for people to dream—this does not mean putting people on welfare or in a job which does not allow for making ends meet. And I feel that, until we change some of our thinking and our language, it will be increasingly hard to for us to help people out of this cycle of poverty. This, as much as any other crisis, is the call of our generation.

Look next week for a post that will delve further into policy relating to poverty.

Despite what my you may have derived from my previous posts, I think that the environmental movement is a good movement. It has done good work cleaning up smog, fixing the ozone, and cleaning up lakes and rivers. The results, like the movement, have been pretty good. But the time for good is over. The time for the environmental movement to become great has arrived, and we must grab this opportunity by its horns before it passes us by.

I spent a good chunk of my Sunday afternoon reading sections of Good to Great, by Jim Collins. The book studies businesses that made a lasting, sustained transition from a “good” company to a “great” company. Collins wrote about corporations, but what he said can be applied to any organization of people, including environmental NGO’s or the movement itself. Collins dug up articles and conducted interviews with executives from these companies, including businesses like Walgreens and Circuit City, to learn what these companies had done in common during the point of their transition from good to great. He identified a few different practices and factors, including the presence of adversity, honesty about the brutal facts, and identifying what each company had the capacity and potential to become the best at. It’s critical that we similarly apply these to our movement in order for us to be great:

Adversity

Adversity, according to Collins, helps facilitate the transition from good to great. This is not due to adversity in itself, but the opportunity it presents to reconstitute an organization’s mode of operations and frame of thought on all levels. Adversity also acts as a great motivator, leading to increased dedication to the fundamental mission of the organization. Adversity can come in the form of a new opponent, a new paradigm to operate in or a struggle from the organization internally.

The challenge of climate change marks something qualitatively and quantitatively different than anything the environmental movement has taken on before. Carbon dioxide emissions are not chlorofluorocarbons—dangerous, ozone hole causing chemicals which were emitted by relatively few companies that had a viable alternative within cost-effective reach. They are a result of almost every activity that we engage in, linked to our infrastructure and our economy. This is not about stopping a single pollutant in a single industry. In fact, its not about stopping anything at all. It is building something entirely new: a clean energy economy, a clean energy infrastructure, and a clean energy society.

If we recognize the adversity we face, and acknowledge it, we will be ready. Overcoming climate change could be the challenge that transitions the environmental movement from good to great.

Confronting the Brutal Truth

In order to transition from a good movement to a great movement, environmentalists must face the facts. We need to be more honest about the state of things:

• The scale of the technology challenge is huge, simply staggering. We must tackle this head-on and aggressively invest in clean energy solutions across the board—this could mean making compromises from our current energy policy preferences. For example, maybe we do need carbon capture and storage as part of our investment portfolio. Maybe the mitigation challenge is too great for cap-and-trade alone to regulate away.
• Time is short and the challenge is urgent. We are quickly approaching 450 ppm of carbon – often considered the climate ‘redline’ beyond which we do NOT want to cross. Given the urgency of the challenge, we must begin working with the technology we have now in addition to investing heavily in the technology breakthroughs we know can come.
• China. It exists and continues to grow at an explosive rate. We’d better deal with that fact and willful ignorance of the international context of climate change will get us nowhere. We need solutions that will spur the deployment of clean energy technology across the globe, fueling a new era of clean economic development that can lift billions of out of poverty without cooking the climate.
• Traditional environmentalism has failed to galvanize the country (and the world) because its messages and tactics don’t run parallel to (and often run against) most people’s values. The environmental movement has also demonstrated an astounding ability to cling to old ways of thinking, even when faced with new and different problems. Let’s be clear: just because Al Gore won an Oscar doesn’t mean we are reaching and convincing people in droves.

We need to recognize these truths, and others. It is not until we have recognized these truths that we will be able to move forward with firm footing.

I am not saying that we must give up due to insurmountable facts; I am simply saying the time has come to stop sugar-coating the pills that we must swallow. Collins identifies something he calls the Stockdale Paradox: maintaining faith that we will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, while at the same time confronting the most brutal facts of our current reality.

At what are we The Best?

Collins points out that to become a great organization, you must recognize what it is you have the potential to be the best in the world at. It might not be what you are engaged in right now, and it might not be what you have done before. But to be great, to achieve great results, you have to identify what it is you will be the best at.

Perhaps the old guard is best at conservation, clean up and preservation. But we are a new generation of advocates and activists, and what we can be best at is ours to own. We, the youth arm of the environmental movement, need to recognize what we can be the best at. It might not be what movements of the past have done.

At this moment in time, the youth engaged in climate action have met the preconditions to be best in the world at advocating for and achieving global, sustainable, just and prosperous energy equity. We are a movement that cares about energy use, we are a movement that considers global consequence, we are a movement that wants to reduce our carbon emissions. These concerns are the preconditions for our greatness; we can take these concerns, couple them with a care for lifting billions out of poverty, couple them with a dream of making the earth one that can sustainably and prosperously accommodate nine billion human beings, and couple them with a knowledge that a clean energy civilization is the best avenue to achieve our ends. We can take all this, and know it, and own it, and work towards it, and then we could be great.

Lieberman-Warner

As studies have shown time and again, Americans are highly motivated and show broad support for achieving energy independence, and are incredibly receptive of and confident in large scale investment in accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy and infrastructure. This is partially because of America’s priorities in terms of tackling problems that face the country, and also because a solution like investment in energy independence lines up with where Americans feel our strengths as a nation lie. Investment in new areas of research and implementation relies on American ingenuity, a quality that many Americans believe is our best means of overcoming any crisis facing our country. For reasons of national and economic security, energy independence is widely supported issue amongst the American people. In addition, Energy independence has proven to be much more important to the American people than global warming action.

Last week the Copenhagen Consensus, a meeting of nine highly regarded market economists released a report of their findings. The goal was to get a consensus over the cost-effectiveness of thirty proposals which each addressed in some form what the panel had identified as ten global challenges facing us today. Global warming was one of these issues, and three different proposals were submitted—R&D into clean and low carbon energy technology, mitigation such as cap and trade, and a mixture of mitigation and R&D. R&D, pure and simple, was found to be the fourteenth most effective proposal on the list, but still fared better than mitigation coupled with R&D and just mitigation, which finished 29^th and 30^th respectively on a list of thirty proposals. Now, understanding that this was a cost-benefit analysis, it makes sense that the solution which created the most new technology and led to more growth while wasting the least money on regulation was seen as the most effective. However, with the global population heading towards nine billion, and places like China and India doing the best they can to lift their billions out of poverty, isn’t that what we need—more bang for our buck?

I firmly believe in a clean energy society and its ability to create global energy equity at a prosperous level for all people. It seems that many Americans believe in clean energy as a means of energy independence that will increase security and bring more opportunity to our country. Many traditional environmentalists do not, and are remiss to shift the debate from one about helping fix and care for our planet to one about energy independence and energy equity, but maybe it’s time to meet the people where they are at. It seems to me that even if energy independence for security or economic reasons isn’t what some as environmentalists may stand for, it is still support for a clean energy society, and it would be better for environmentalists to garner this already extensive support by speaking to the people about these issues.

We all have our high ideals and our grand visions about where to take the country, where to take the world. But, as a firm believer in using pragmatic means to achieve lofty ends, I believe it’s important for us to look for and foster support where it lies, if not instead of, than at least in addition to trying to create support from the ground up. Isn’t it better to have lots of people who support a good attainable solution for differing reasons than to have few people support a good, unattainable solution for the same reasons?

Growing up in the Washington D.C. area, political talk is all talk—shop talk, dinner party conversation, idle chatter, pre-preview movie theater whispers—all anyone talks about is politics. I entered my first year of college in the Boston area last September, and the election and political talk, while not as pervasive, was definitely in the air. This didn’t strike me as all that odd until a friend who grew up outside Boston told me that this level of talk about the political process, in fact any level, was completely new to her. Upon further reflection, I was surprised and encouraged by the level of political conversation that had sprouted up, not just on my campus, but apparently across the country. The candidates were strong willed, and Obama especially seemed to galvanize supporters in a way that had not been seen for a while. Obama clearly reaches and brings to the fore an active, politically interested aspect to many Americans.

Obama seems to me and his supporters, and even many people who supported Hillary, to be a man who favors expansive solutions, bringing people together, speaking frankly about the state of the world and where things should be taken from here, and evaluating a problem from many sides. Frankly, although the cynic in me laughs at myself, I want to be part of the America that Barack Obama brings to the table. It is this sense of wanting to join something that is bigger than me that I think Obama instills in many people across the country that is his most valuable characteristic. Obama strongly believes, and makes others feel, fundamentally, that the political process is an act of creating the America and the world that we want to live in, and that this creating is ultimately an act of self-creation. Whether we are senators or students, Democrats or Republicans, regardless of race or where we grew up, Obama instills in us a confidence in ourselves that stems from a confidence that he seems to have for us. Our self-creation will help create a better America.

Self-creation, self-actualization, is a powerful concept. Realizing one’s true potentials, and where one stands in relation to the world, is a noble quest. The process of self creations allows us to lead more active, engaged lives and develop more interest in and motivation to change the world around us. Traditional environmentalism has long been known for fostering a sort of self-creation through intentional living. Acts like showering quickly, eating less meat, and other “carbon foot-print reducing” actions have long made the mark of an environmentalist’s intentional living. “How can I have as little effect on the world as possible?,” the environmentalist As a report released by the United Nations Environmental Programme today shows, this type of thinking is far from done with. It is hard to imagine how this type of intentional living could ever catch on, how this type of self-creation could create a political or social movement. What’s worse, projecting these nano-practices onto the larger environmental movement and creating a paradigm that regards them as the solutions to our climate crisis only serves to marginalize any type of environmentalism.

Rather than focusing on limiting our negative impact, I think that a politics of possibility lends itself to a type of intentional living that can focus on expanding our positive impact. I wrote yesterday about how large scale government investment can harness the power of the free market from the top down, igniting the transition to a clean energy economy. However, as individuals, we can try to affect the same changes from the ground up. Microfinance through institutions like kiva.org is a smaller scale way of using the market as a means to bring about change. Kiva.org and microfinance in general allows impoverished people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty by making use of the market to borrow money and start entrepreneurial efforts to create new businesses. I can think of no better example of positive intentional action than being part of an effort to allow communities to meet their own survival and material needs and set them on their way to a position where they will be able to consider their own post-material needs and think ecologically.

It is these sorts of actions that can build a bridge between our personal lives and the Breakthrough ideology and mission.

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.

Typical conservatives view the market as, in Francis Fukuyama words, “the end of history.” A market economy in an open society is the end goal of all history, and as the United States has reached this point, our job is to simply keep our market lightly regulated and impose only enough taxes to maintain government efficiency and ensure a basic (read: minimal) social safety net.

Let’s turn now to climate change. We face a crisis of ecology and economy, and what has been proposed as America’s response to global warming? The unambiguously conservative answer of more market. Cap and trade, the talk of the day, is essentially a market-purity enthusiasts answer to carbon emissions reduction—put a price on carbon emissions, make it gradually more expensive over time and let the market take its course. As businesses find it increasingly more difficult and less cost-effective to pay for the CO2 they put in the air, they will turn to cleaner energy sources.

It is interesting, then, the way the chips have fallen for Senate Democrats and Republicans debating Lieberman-Warner, a bill that is decidedly right-shifted. The Democrats, seeing climate change as a pollution/environmental problem that they must solve, support most any pro-market cap and trade legislation. Republicans, seeing an opportunity to again represent themselves as the party that cares about middle American pocket books, have come out against Lieberman-Warner, citing the higher prices in energy every American will have to pay as reason enough to do nothing. Even the pro-market answer is too hands-on for Republicans.

The real paradox here is that liberals and environmentalists, typically the proponents of socializing the market and expanding the public sector, have adopted the language and outlooks of market fundamentalists in their desperation to believe that cap and trade will help solve the climate crisis. How odd, that the very objectors to pure-market politics have turned to the sanctity of the free market to solve our woes.

It’s time for both a new approach to the politics of market capitalism: the market as a means of history, not an end of history. The market is a colossal institution, the focus and motivation of businesses, interest groups and lives everywhere. The market could be a massive apparatus to be employed in the pursuit of energy equity and expansive sustainable prosperity. To do this, the government needs to become more active, not in regulation, but in innovation. The government could so easily harness the market and direct our money towards bold and promising ventures.

The best thing for our country, and for the world, at this juncture in human history, is to begin the transition to a clean energy economy. This will take huge investments in clean energy technology and implementation, on the magnitude that it took to bring us to the moon in the 1960s or bring our railroads across the country from coast to coast in the 1860s, both cooperative ventures of public private business. As has been clearly documented, private capital follows public capital, and private investment follows public investment. Just as the Apollo program and the transcontinental railroad achieved their goals due to a mixture of funding from the government and private business, so can the transition to a clean energy economy. If our government turns its eye to and opens its checkbook for clean energy, so will the private sector. I think the past has shown that together, they can achieve at the highest levels of our goals.

There is so much potential, and yet our debate is still stuck discussing which type of mitigation will best suit business interests at little cost to the public. All this, when just last week the New York Times reported about the Copenhagen Consensus, the coming together of nine leading market economists who did a cost-benefit analysis of 30 proposals that would help confront ten global challenges facing humanity today. R&D in low carbon energy technology came in halfway down the list, but was still found to be more cost-beneficial than R&D coupled with mitigation (any attempt to curb carbon emissions) or solely mitigation, the two proposals that finished dead last.

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.

How do we well this story? We need similarly powerful words; ways of turning heady and complex thoughts into relevant, significant messages. What is it about modernization that informs Breakthrough’s mission and that we can turn into a positive and affirming message?

Ronald Inglehart’s Modernization, Culture Change, and Democracy is a substantial re-evaluation of how social values develop and change in communities, and how this development in turn affects and is affected by modernization and democratization. Overall, he claims that “socioeconomic development brings cultural changes that make individual autonomy… increasingly likely, giving rise to a new type of society that promotes human emancipation on many fronts” (2). Modernization, democratization and a new focus on “self-expression” values have lead to what Inglehart calls “[t]he broadening of human choice” (3).

There is a bit of Maslow to this study, an explanation that as survival needs are met, material needs come into focus, such as the need for belonging and fulfillment, and as these needs our eventually met, new needs surface. Inglehart is focused on how values change after these first two sets of needs are met. Post material needs represent the expanding of individual human autonomy, which is reflected in new social values of self-expression. These self-expression values, in turn, lend themselves to more democratic institutions.

Concisely put, and if asked to promote Inglehart’s views at a rally or in conversation, I would say that human development is the story of a search for life, quality of life, and life choices.

This is a simple, evocative and memorable phrase with a few different layers: firstly, life, quality of life and life choices each correspond to a different level of Maslow’s hierarchy—life being survival needs, quality of life being material needs, and life choices being post-material and self-creation needs. Secondly, there is the connection that we can draw between life, quality of life, and life choices and the idea of our founding fathers, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

A message like “life, quality of life, and life choices” provides Breakthrough’s ideology a positive and constructive frame with which to promote itself. “Life, quality of life, and life choices,” frames the Breakthrough mission as one that is welcoming of modernization—as it should be: modernization has lead, as Gregg Easterbrook documents, to “almost everything about American and European life is getting better for almost everyone” (35). Beyond laying the groundwork of Breakthrough’s ideology as one that is pro-modernization, “life, quality of life, and life choices” is also an expansive and progress-oriented phrase that verbalizes the human existence that Breakthrough is striving for each member of our earth to live. Equitable distribution of energy that provides for a high standard of living at little or no cost to our planet, self creation and the ability to create the social landscape each of us wants in our lives, and a new social contract for post industrial America—these will all set us on the path towards life, quality of life and life choices for all. This phrase might not serve as our marching orders, but certainly it could be an effective call to arms.

I think the real appeal of a message like “life, quality of life, and life choices,” is that, like Inglehart and Maslow, it recognizes that while we might all be in different stages of our progression, we are all, ultimately, on a path to the same sorts of lifestyles. While our values and upbringings might inform different life priorities and desires, and lead us to define quality of life differently and make different life choices, the expansive message of life, quality of life and life choices does not inherently deny any one person or culture their rights or desires, except where they may intrude on someone else’s life, quality of life and life choices. Life, quality of life, and life choices—it is this sort of message, culled from serious thought and reflective of complex ideas, which will bring people together.

*note: This is a reflection on Breakthrough (the book) that I was asked to write for my first day at Breakthrough (the office).

“The crises we face demand not that we wake up to reality but that we dream differently.” -Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, page 272.

I have never considered myself an environmentalist. I stumbled upon Brandeis’ Students for Environmental Action (SEA) because I knew a few of the kids in the club and was interested more in making friends than in helping the environment. I began going to weekly meetings sometime in mid November. Someone had recently read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, and recommended it to the entire group to begin reading over Thanksgiving. The first meeting back after Thanksgiving, many of my friends and fellow club members began discussing Quinn’s story of a sentient, telepathic gorilla life-tutor and his self-hating human pupil. I had no idea what this book was about at the time, but I was a little scared by the rhetoric my friends had begun to adopt.

Over coffee with a friend and SEA Board member I shared my unease with this new direction the discourse of meetings was headed. All I could make of this new direction, this hybridization of liberal and reactionary worldviews—this new (to me) revisionist view of human history—was that it induced a self-hating and guilt-ridden hypocrisy that set our mission as an environmental group as being one to minimize human impact on the environment. Not only did this seem self-refuting, but the movement to go back in time and regress through our human development to a time of tribal hunting-gathering seemed to me as just the ultimate stop-gap measure; going backward would just mean that we would deal with these problems again five or six thousand years down the road, as our civilization would surely progress again.

My friend heard what I was saying, and lent me her copy of Breakthrough. Here was a book that meant something, that mattered. After I read it, it seemed to me that Quinn’s Ishmael only had the power to appeal to those self-loathing upper-middle class liberals who were already predisposed (and, perhaps, predisposed to enjoy) feeling guilty about their mode of existence. Breakthrough, on the other hand, is a book that seeks to understand the shapes and forms of humanity’s development through history and translates this understanding into action and ideology that is motivational and anything but frivolous. As stated in the introduction, “[n]othing is more central to this book than our contention that for any politics to succeed, it must swim with, not against, the currents of changing social values.” This contention is deeply profound because Breakthrough recognizes that our social values are constantly changing and being reshaped. This speaks to a certain Breakthrough philosophy (at least one that I drew from the book) of “change-as-status-quo.” Nothing is static, and circumstances are constantly changing. With every change is an opportunity to shape events and harness them in a way that is positive and progressive.

Breakthrough is swimming with ideas and themes that appeal to me, but in conversations with my fellow SEA members at Brandeis, I found the book’s vision of progress and paradigm shift to be the answer to a “Quinnian” ideal of pre-Neolithic or agrarian living. I discovered that my friends had scared themselves to such an extent that they didn’t see how there could be any solution other than the one of retreat back to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. This attitude went hand-in-hand with the idea that any impact humanity has on the world is inherently negative, for if this is true, then how can anything but minimizing human existence and impact be a viable option. We are at a crossroads, a major junction in our history as a civilization and species, and it seems that environmentalists have decided that turning around and marching back the way we came is the only answer. Besides the fact that this seems like an idea that few people would seriously get behind, it is a dark and unhelpful way of thinking. Our story, humanity’s story, has been one that is by turns horrific and miraculous, at times intensely divisive and at times beautifully united, but always we have marched on with an eye to change the conditions on the ground to match far-reaching ideals. This is human nature, as natural and important as any in the world.