We can still cap carbon, but that needn't be at the top of the agenda that we communicate to voters.
Ted NordhausWe know that things like energy independence, getting off oil, getting out of the Middle East, and creating jobs and economic development in the new clean energy industries of the future are much higher priorities for most voters than capping carbon emissions or taxing dirty energy sources. So why not redefine our agenda as the solution to those problems?
Ted NordhausAs social values shifted through the '80s and '90s, as modern conservatism rose to power, and as the electorate became a good deal more skeptical of both government and environmentalists, these strategies, and the institutions that were created to prosecute them, foundered.
Ted NordhausEnvironmentalists needed to stop imagining that they were representing a thing called Nature or the Environment, separate from us (e.g. humans) in politics.
Ted Nordhaus