For over two decades FREE has sought to constructively work with responsible environmentalists, e.g., folks with Environmental Defense and the National Wildlife Federation. Our conference last week featured Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. They joined us (and a dozen others), seeking engagement with their arguments on how best to reduce CO2 emissions.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger deserve great credit for offering both a challenge and an alternative to the environmental status quo. Crossing tribal boundaries requires courage—a trait both the authors possess. Break Through makes real progress on a number of fronts. Here’s a sample.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger argue convincingly that, across time and cultures, technological advances and economic growth have proved the only sure path to a cleaner, safer environment. They understand that energy is a primary ingredient of human prosperity. It drives the equipment that frees us from drudgery, cleans our water, powers medical equipment, and fuels the jet turbines and diesel engines that make global trade possible. In sum, it allows us to fulfill the most basic of our aspirations, i.e., improving the wellbeing of our loved ones. Only after people can provide the basics for their families do they focus on environmental quality.

Misanthropy is a poor prescription for policy reform, even for a problem as serious as climate change may be. Even governments that signed onto the Kyoto Accord are failing to meet their targets. And it is simply inconceivable that China and India will dramatically reduce their carbon emissions if this means slowing economic growth.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger believe Kyoto has failed not only because it has failed to slow global warming, but also because it has closed off discussion of alternative approaches. They understand a key policy goal is to increase energy consumption so the world’s poorest people can continue their climb out of poverty. The challenge, and it’s daunting, is to do it in a way that moves us toward more secure, and cleaner, sources of energy.

A poll taken last October in San Francisco found 69 percent of respondents were willing to pay an additional 10-cent gasoline tax to “fight global warming.” Last month, with gas in the Bay Area over $4 a gallon, that number fell to 37 percent. There seems to be little public or political support for policies that increase the costs of energy to a price high enough to make an ecological difference.

Consider that today’s solar panels are one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Only the very wealthy can afford them without subsidies. Nordhaus and Shellenberger propose to drive down the real cost of clean energy through a massive government funded investment program. For starters, they suggest spending $15-$30 billion. If solar panels became cheaper than fossil fuels, switching will become a realistic option rather than a statement.

When proposing a massive new government program, a key challenge is avoiding the influence of special interest groups that divert human and financial capital into politically favored projects that often dead end.

The search for our post fossil fuel energy future is fundamentally a discovery process. Affordable solutions emerge out of the decentralized work of many individuals. Perhaps it will be space-based solar power; or maybe nuclear with reprocessed fuel; or microbes genetically engineered to produce carbon-free biofuels; or things not yet imagined.

Though NASA put a man on the moon and we beat the Nazi’s in the race for an atomic bomb, we’ll be well advised to be wary of efforts, due to politics, to put the Department of Energy in charge. The Apollo and Manhattan projects were one-dimensional engineering challenges. Picking one solution and devoting massive amounts of resources to it overcame them. In contrast, transforming our energy future requires multiple technological breakthroughs.

Solutions emerge through trial and error, and it may take decades. Nordhaus and Shellenberger understand this and perhaps their next Break Through will help offer advice on overcoming this challenge.