A good counterpoint to the Don Shelby worldview discussed below is this book review by David Roberts in The American Prospect. Mr. Roberts reviews David G. Victor's book Global Warming Gridlock: Creating More Effective Strategies for Protecting the Planet.
Writes Roberts,
"After 20 years, it may be time to admit that the climate movement's fundamental strategy, not a deficit of personal courage or heroic striving, is behind the lack of progress. If the movement is to rise to its historic challenge, it will have to do so by working with nation-states as they actually exist."
Roberts' review makes clear that it's the top-down approach of the international process that is to blame,
"This top-down strategy is seductive, which is why it's been central to international climate negotiations since the signing of the Rio Declaration in 1992. But as a practical matter, it's not working."
The problem is not that politicians, Republican or otherwise, are too stupid. The problem is not a lack of will power. The problem has been, all along, that we are attacking the problem from the wrong end.
Roberts also makes a good point about climate adaptation (which touches on the resiliance/black swan theme I have been developing),
"The economic and institutional reforms that yield development and resilience tend to arise from inside a country, not outside."
(Via Planet Gore and Grist)
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