The first half of
Break Through is a criticism of the green "politics of limits". The book begins with the birth of environmentalism. Nordhaus and Shellenberger argue that environmentalism in the U.S. emerged from post-war affluence, which they argue is a clue to understanding how ecological movements might emerge in places like China and India. Progressive social reforms, from the
Civil Rights Act to the
Clean Water Act, tend to occur during times of prosperity and rising expectations—not immiseration and declining expectations. Both the
environmental movement and the
civil rights movement emerged as a consequence of rising prosperity. It was the middle-class, young, and educated black Americans who were on the forefront of the civil rights movement. Poor blacks were active, but the movement was overwhelmingly led by educated, middle-class intellectuals and community leaders (preachers prominent among them). This was also the case with the white supporters of the civil rights movement, who tended to be more highly educated and more affluent than the general American population. In short, the civil rights movement no more emerged because African Americans were suddenly denied their freedom than the environmental movement emerged because America suddenly started polluting. Chapter two criticizes conservation efforts in Brazil, suggesting that nature protection cannot save the
Amazon unless environmentalists provide an alternative way for the country to prosper. The authors criticize the
environmental justice movement as focusing on low-priority pollution concerns in communities of color, narrowing the movement's focus instead of expanding it to include job creation and
public health. They also fault climate activists for seeing climate change as a pollution problem like
acid rain and the
ozone hole instead of as an
economic development and technological innovation challenge. The authors draw on science philosopher
Thomas Kuhn to argue that environmentalists are stuck in a "pollution
paradigm" when it comes to
global warming. One of Kuhn's most famous examples was of the revolution led first by
Copernicus and later by
Galileo to overthrow the Earth-centered view of the solar system and replace it with our current sun-centered one. But in other instances, new paradigms leave part of the old paradigms intact, such as Einstein's
theory of relativity, which left Newton's
theory of gravity on Earth intact even as it revolutionized our understanding of mass and energy in the rest of the universe. Such may be the case with environmentalism. In many situations the pollution paradigm may still be a good way of understanding and dealing with air and water pollution. Our contention is not that the pollution paradigm is no longer useful for dealing with acid rain or rivers aflame but that it is profoundly inadequate for understanding and dealing with global warming and other ecological crises. Part II of
Break Through, "the politics of possibility", is an argument for environmentalism to die and become reborn as a new progressive politics, one capable of winning a new
social contract for Americans, so that they are financially secure enough to be able to care about ecological challenges, and a $500 billion public–private investment in clean energy. The last half of the book makes the case for a new social contract for the post-industrial age, one capable of helping Americans overcome "insecure affluence", whereby voters are both more materially wealthy but also more financially insecure than ever before. Nordhaus and Shellenberger say environmentalism should evolve from being a religion into being a church, and they see evangelical churches, with their capacity for providing belonging and fulfilment to their middle-class members, as models for a new "pre-political" institution for secular progressives. The authors argue for concrete policies such as "Global Warming Preparedness", and a global clean energy investment strategy modeled on the creation of the
European Union after World War II. In the final chapter of the book, "Greatness", the authors argue that global warming will reshape national and international politics: Climate change and the political response to it is already defining a new fault line in the culture. On one side of that line will be a global
NIMBYism that sees the planet as too fragile to support the hopes and dreams of seven billion humans. It will seek to establish and enforce the equivalent of an international
caste system in which the poor of the developing world are consigned to
energy poverty in perpetuity. This politics of limits will be anti-immigration, anti-globalization, and anti-growth. It will be zero-sum, fiscally conservative, and deficit-oriented. It will combine
Malthusian environmentalism with
Hobbesian conservatism. On the other side will be those who believe that there is room enough for all of us to live secure and free lives. It will be pro-growth, progressive, and internationalist. It will drive global development by creating new markets. It will see in institutions like the
WTO, the
World Bank, and the
International Monetary Fund not a corporate conspiracy to keep people poor and destroy the environment, but an opportunity to drive a kind of development that is both sustainable and equitable. It will embrace technology without being
technocratic. It will seek adaptation proactively, not fatalistically. It will establish social and economic security as preconditions for ecological action. It will be large and transformative, but not
millenarian. ==Critical reception==