One criticism that can be made of Patrick Allitt is that he usually writes with the historian’s “objective” detachment, concealing his own opinions or conclusions about his subject matter. His previous histories, on religion and on American conservatism, are very well done; but at the end you have no idea whether Allitt approves of, or agrees with, any of the figures or ideas he treats.
That is not the case with this new history of postwar environmentalism in America. He explains in the preface that his editors at Penguin “wanted me not just to describe and explain the environmental debates of this era but to stake out a clear position.” This he has done. But the result is a lovely orphan of a book that deserves widespread readership and course adoption yet is likely to end up in the literary equivalent of a foster home. It is an orphan because it is critical of the established environmental orthodoxies (especially on climate change) while not fully aligning itself with the most vocal critics of environmentalism, who tend to demand unequivocal red meat. As such, A Climate of Crisis represents a commendable risk on Penguin’s part.
Such is the polarization of environmentalism these days that, from a publishing point of view, the safest path is to go all-in with one of the fortified camps, deploying the usual set-piece artillery volleys about neo-Malthusianism versus market cornucopianism. The virtue of Allitt’s history is a fresh approach to familiar themes and controversies, and from a perspective only occasionally brought to bear on the subject. Even if he has a few details wrong, or incomplete, he gets the larger story right. While he ratifies conventional sensibilities about the permanence of environmental problems—between the Malthusian pessimists and the optimists who think environmental problems are manageable—Allitt doesn’t hesitate to declare, “My own view is that the optimists have been right on most of these questions.” This conclusion, stated at the outset, is uncongenial to environmentalists and inconvenient to journalists, who tend to be environmental activists with bylines.
Environmentalism is often traced to 19th-century Romanticism or Theodore Roosevelt-era conservationism. But Allitt chooses to start his timeline with the arrival of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. The Bomb represented something new: Previous apocalyptic specters were thought to be the work of God, or chance; but with the Bomb, the prospect of a purely man-made apocalypse had come of age. Environmentalism, Allitt suggests, became a free rider to this new anthro-apocalyptic mood, as media sensationalism combined with the desire of environmental scientists to get a piece of the action. Add to this mix the “crisis entrepreneurs” (my term) of environmental activism, and the subsequent bureaucracy created around it, and you have all the pieces in place for the bitterly polarized world of today.
Allitt decries the extreme polarization over the environment while affirming the importance of environmental problems. He gives good summary accounts of the main episodes and figures of early modern environmentalism, from the deadly 1948 smog siege of Donora, Pennsylvania, to the Cuyahoga River fires of the 1950s and ’60s—along with sketches of Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, Garrett Hardin, and Barry Commoner, among others. But early on, he lays out the ground for discounting the central outlook of environmentalists without directly calling them to task for their intellectual errors.
For example, Allitt writes: “History also demonstrates that there is a vital link between industrialization, wealth, and environmentalism. Only wealthy societies practice environmental protection on a significant scale.” Moreover, the developing world has not the luxury of adhering to the whims of wealthy Western environmentalists precisely because environmentalism is a luxury good: “In the early stages, however, it is much better to have ‘dirty’ industrialization than none at all. Industrialization is the only way for societies to overcome mass poverty.”
He pours subtle scorn on Paul Ehrlich and the population bomb crowd, recalling some embarrassing statements of regret that malaria had been conquered and shocking indifference to the human rights violations that China’s one-child policy requires. He also notes the “authoritarian overtones” that accompany many environmental enthusiasms.
These and other hard-won truths have gained grudging acceptance among many environmentalists, and one of Allitt’s stronger points is his tribute to the many figures who contested the simple-minded Malthusianism of environmentalism but who also tend to be ignored or slighted in most histories. It is long past time for the more complete recognition Allitt gives to the trenchant criticisms and revisions of environmental thought from Julian Simon, Petr Beckmann, Wilfred Beckerman, Aaron Wildavsky, and Ben Wattenberg. Allitt also offers some subtle treatments of the nonconforming thoughts of figures inside the environmental establishment, such as Daniel Botkin and William Cronin.
The author can be faulted for not giving enough appreciation to the school of thought known as “free market environmentalism” and the widening circle of revisionism in environmental economics this small but potent group has initiated. Allitt hastily lumps the FME school with the “Wise Use” movement, which was a very different and more directly political phenomenon. Likewise, Allitt’s account of “deep ecology” (such as the radical Earth First! movement) downplays its significance and influence: “The radicals’ impact on national policy was negligible,” he thinks. Moreover, “the radicals were a valuable part of the era’s environmental debates.” To the contrary; the Earth First! crazies enabled so-called mainstream organizations, such as Greenpeace, to make considerable headway with equally extreme demands, which, while seldom fully successful, always abetted overregulation by the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies.
But A Climate of Crisis is a history, not a policy analysis, and while one might wish for more detail on any one of these figures or arguments, it would have made for a much longer book. And whatever transient weaknesses arise from the author’s blessed existence outside the deep weeds of this vexing subject is more than made up for in his splendid chapter on climate change. Here, Allitt bows not at all to the conventional pieties. Once again, as a historian, he does not try to wade into any of the main points of the scientific controversies. Instead, his historical perspective tells him that “predictions have always said far more about the world in which they were made than about actual future realities.” He’s even optimistic that the next generation of scientists will relish taking down the “consensus” of the present generation, because that’s how science often works.
Better still, Allitt engages in some useful thought experiments that policy wonks seldom put forward:
Why can’t more Republicans, rightly skeptical of the conventional climate agenda, state the matter like this? The real value of Allitt’s book for the political class may well be that it invites them to embrace its central disposition that “environmental problems are manageable problems.” The worst thing that can happen to environmentalism is for Americans to figure out that environmental problems are not catastrophic, but normal problems to be addressed in a routine way.
Patrick Allitt’s wide-gauge historical approach is a valuable complement to the many scientific and policy critiques that have piled up over the years. At the moment, A Climate of Crisis is not being widely reviewed or discussed because it doesn’t conform recognizably to the usual fault lines. But sometimes understatement from a fresh perspective is more effective than repeated attempts to deliver hammer blows.
Steven F. Hayward is the Ronald Reagan distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Public Policy.
