The environmental movement, mired in bad analyses and even worse prescriptions, is in turmoil.

. . . a funny thing has happened over the last several years, as opinion about the reality and urgency of the climate crisis has "tipped." The consensus that would allegedly result once broad public acceptance of anthropogenic climate change was achieved has fractured. . .

. . . a variety of scientific and economic analysis has come out, not from opponents of action to address climate change but from supporters, suggesting that the policy framework developed by environmentalists in the early 1990's to address climate change will not be capable of achieving its objectives. . .

. . . the IPCC may have vastly underestimated the likely growth of carbon emissions over the next century, and thus underestimated the scale of the technology challenge necessary to stabilize carbon levels in the atmosphere, and a raft of studies and other analysis suggesting that carbon caps, regulations, and pricing, the primary policy mechanisms proposed by the environmental movement to address climate change, will not drive rapid and large scale transition from conventional energy sources to zero and low carbon energy sources.

. . . the response to these developments from some environmentalists has been to attempt to tar those who have challenged the efficacy of the dominant environmental policy framework to address climate change. . .

It's a movement. . . just politics. It's silly to expect anything useful to come from a political movement. It's all spin, hustle and grift by slimebags. But the author, Ted Nordhaus, knows that since he's a grifter too, but he has different politics.

We strongly support carbon regulation that establishes a modest, sustainable, and consistent price for carbon. We support increasing energy efficiency standards and the establishment of renewable portfolio standards at the national level. But without immediate and exponential increases in direct public investment in the development, demonstration, and deployment of new, nascent, and mature clean energy technologies alike, pricing and regulatory policies alone will have negligible impacts upon the trajectory of global carbon emissions.

The biofuel debacle is a good example of the result of "direct public investment". It's the public's money, but the investments are political. The purpose of political spending of public funds is to enhance politicians, not govern well.

The lesson we can draw from the serial bumbling of the environmental movement is that movements are bad for the environment as well as society in general. Useful analyses of threats and prescriptions for improvement aren't the stuff of political movements.