The Breakthrough Institute - The McKibben Doctrine - How Deep Green Politics Undermine Climate Action

The Breakthrough Institute - The McKibben Doctrine

...I wonder how many of the people turning out to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, working on behalf of divestment, or following along on Twitter and Facebook are aware of McKibben’s long standing vision of societal change first detailed in The End of Nature and most recently in Deep Economy and Eaarth. In this pastoral future free of consumerism or material ambition, Americans would rarely travel, experiencing the world instead via the Internet, grow much of their own food, power their communities through solar and wind, and divert their wealth to developing countries.   [How much of that stuff is McKibben personally doing right now?] Only under these transformational conditions, argues McKibben, would we be able to set a moral example for countries like China to change course, all in the hope that these countries will accept a “grand bargain” towards a cleaner energy path.
...McKibben’s line-in-the-sand organizing strategies may in fact be only deepening polarization and making it that much more difficult for President Obama to broker support for policy even among members of his own political party.