Best Paragraph Thing

The second road requires a wealth of reform. It would require change in terms of politics, economics, and in technology. Concerning politics, Nordhaus and Shellenberger argue that the tactics used by those seeking environmental change are severely outdated. “Our unprecedented wealth and freedom have profoundly changed what we care about, aspire to, and believe in, so it’s no wonder that the old political and moral fault lines no longer apply.”[10] By cutting their arguments so thinly and with such specific complaints, environmentalists have failed to express solutions to problems that are incapable of being put into action. The desires of environmentalists, argue Nordhaus and Shellenberger, need to be more broadly based if anything is ever going to change. “Nothing 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.”[11] A second political remedy that Nordhaus and Shellenberger propose would be the formation of a union based on shared global investment, much like the one formed in the post World War II era. If countries like the United States, China, and India could ban together and pull resources to better all involved countries, the environmental affects could be extremely positive.

By Lydia Hausle