Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene

The Breakthrough Institute has a mission that is half genius and half madness: fixing the environmental movement. In this volume, Shellenberger and Nordhaus introduce a group of deep thinkers on the anthropocene; the geological era when human activity composes a primary part of planetary cycles. The core theme is that we cannot retreat from technology, and that to survive in the 21st century, we must embrace our monsters, and become good stewards of the Earth.

I buy this, but I wonder how effective “Love Your Monsters” is at reaching those who haven’t drunk the Breakthrough kool-aid. Shellenberger and Nordhaus are ex-Berkeley hippies, and their critiques of the Left’s post-material culture, which is intrinsically elitist and self-contradictory, are spot on, but how influential are Greens, and how many are going to be converted by hippie punching? It’s fun, but I want to see Breakthrough reach out to the pro-fossil fuel conservatives who are standing in the way of transforming the energy system, and the vast unengaged middle that has no idea what’s going on, politically or technologically.

((Disclosure: I served as a Breakthrough Generation Fellow in the summer of 2011))