Who are Progressive Environmentalists?

Who are Progressive Environmentalists?

The traditional environmental movement has basic core principles, and one of them, is that there are limits to growth. This idea is embodied in several books, particularly one first published in 1972. The Limits to Growth was written by Donnella Meadows and others. Among environmentalists and policymakers, this book is highly regarded as one of its kind in the field. It used computer scenarios to predict population and economic growth in the twenty-first century, and what impact it would have on the planet. As the title states, the planet only has a finite amount of resources from which humans can utilize, and as you can imagine it, we are very near that limit according to Meadows et al. 

This notion of realistic limits to growth has been a fundamental component of environmentalists today and it is one in which many outside the field have come into realization today. However, there are individuals now dubbed Progressive Environmentalists who argue that there is no limit to growth, and if there is, we are very far from reaching it anytime soon. Among these Progressive Environmentalists are Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger who founded the Breakthrough Institute, which is dedicated to modernizing “liberal-progressive-green-politics.” 

While Nordhaus and Shellenberger are true environmentalists – since they do not reject climate change as environmental skeptics do – they have a different approach to solving today’s environmental problems. Their main argument is that capitalism at its finest – continued growth off the planet’s resources – is better than slowing growth for the purposes of alleviating the environment of its stresses. Bill Blackwater of the Monthly Review website states in summary of Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s point of view that “while energy efficiency fails to be good for the environment because it leads to economic growth, we should still pursue it because…it leads to economic growth, and this is good because it will make us richer.”  

What the Progressive Environmentalists fail to realize is that continued economic growth to the rest of the world to the point that they are at the same consumerist level of the United States will mean tremendous increases in carbon emissions, more natural disasters costing more money, and decreases in food productivity. The Limits to Growth displays our limits to all aspects of our planet, and not just a few that we can ignore in favor of continued and unsustainable economic growth as championed by the Breakthrough Institute and its members.