America’s Net Zero Near Miss

America came closer to going net zero than many realize. To explain its rise, we need to consider a prophetic 1983 essay, “Risk and Culture,” by British anthropologist Mary Douglas and American political scientist Aaron Wildavsky. They argued that the risks a society deems most serious are a product of culture. “Each social arrangement elevates some risks to a high peak and depresses others below sight. This cultural bias is integral to social organization,” they wrote.

Douglas and Wildavsky observed the rise of the environmental movement as an insurgent political force, or what they termed the “border.” Led by white Boomer liberals inspired by the African Americans’ fight for civil rights, environmentalists appropriated the movement’s moral absolutism and refusal to compromise.

They predicted the border insurgency would conquer the political center thanks to generational turnover and because it would co-opt green ideology to avoid being on the losing side. Their predictions have been vindicated. Campaigning for the presidency in 1988, George H.W. Bush said he would tackle the greenhouse effect with “the White House effect.” Less than two decades later, his son George W. Bush complained of America’s addiction to oil and then signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act, requiring tougher fuel economy standards and biofuels, and the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2008, which imposed mandatory greenhouse gas reporting.

Co-option was followed by conquest. “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” Barack Obama declared in June 2008 after winning the Democratic nomination for president. Once in the White House, he met early disappointment. Obama carried forward his predecessor’s objective of agreeing to a global climate treaty that included the largest emitters from the Global South. The November 2009 Copenhagen climate conference sought to produce such a treaty, but these efforts were sabotaged by the Global South, led by China and India.