Energy Writer of the Year

The piece below is an announcement to the effect that The American Energy Society has selected Nathaniel Rich as the Energy Writer of the Year for his article, “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change” (New York Times Magazine, August 1, 2018).   There are several elements here that I found interesting:

• The article conspicuously omits pointing the finger of blame on the popular bad guys, i.e., the oil companies and the GOP.

• Rich, who received great criticism for this omission, points out that the main point of the essay is that humankind has been destroying itself for the last 10,000 years.  We have always made an negative impact on the environment, and we have never cleaned up after ourselves.  The only difference now is scale: lots of people, lots of demands, lots of stuff that has horrific environmental impact.

• While I’ll admit that this is an interesting viewpoint, and that it’s a good statement of the problem, it’s anything but a solution.  Turning this around requires, like it or not, that we identify the source of the lion’s share of the cause of this destruction and make it stop.

I’m reminded of the business plans I receive that begin with a lengthy discussion of climate change and its terrible effects.  Dude, I’m pretty @#$%^ well aware of the problem.  Why don’t you stop insulting my intelligence, wasting my time, and tell me quickly and clearly what you’re going to do about it?

Here’s the body of the announcement:

The 31,000-word piece weaves together a narrative about a critical ten-year period – 1979 to 1989 – which was a time of great awakening in science, politics and industry that rising greenhouse gases posed an existential threat, and the disturbing realization that the awakening didn’t turn into action. Accompanying aerial photographs and videos by George Steinmetz offer a vivid display of disturbing images. Tucked into a prodigious amount of material is the story of the key figures who turned climate change into a major political issue. In the late 1970s, few Washington officials knew much of anything about global warming; by the end of the ‘80s, President George H.W. Bush almost signed a United Nations treaty to address it. Mr. Rich writes with gripping, novelistic detail, and he captures the tragicomedy of scientists struggling—and failing—to shape the political sphere.

According to Eric Vettel, President of American Energy Society, “The topic of energy in 2018 captured the attention of many talented writers and the AES editorial board had to consider a number of worthy candidates. What sets Mr. Rich’s work apart and makes him the clear choice for “Energy Writer of the Year, 2018” is his balanced, contextual treatment of a highly controversial issue.”

In recognizing Mr. Rich (and by extension Mr. Steinmetz), it is necessary to also address some of the criticism directed at Losing Earth. This thoughtful essay should have earned equally thoughtful criticism. Instead, tired arguments, particularly from the center-left, fixed on the absence of an identifiable antihero. For instance, The Atlantic Monthly, founded by legendary existentialists who were not afraid to look inward, piled criticism on Mr. Rich by pointing out a list of villains they think are to blame for the changing climate, apparently unaware that their own periodical was founded as a counter to such overly simplistic thinking.
Responding to the criticism, Mr. Rich has to choose his words carefully: “The story received an “enormous … [pause] … reaction. I haven’t seen anything … [pause] … the brunt of the criticism seems to be, ‘why didn’t you write about the … [pause] … cartoonish level of villany,’ … [pause] … but that wasn’t what was going on during this period. It’s a lot harder to generalize about this period than it is today – it’s important to not fall into these patterns.”

Many critics of Losing Earth miss the point of the essay entirely: the thesis is uncomfortable. There is nothing notably peculiar about human-kind destroying the environment. This sort of destructive behavior has existed from before the dawn of human history, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most developed nations. There is no people on earth that has not at some time behaved in a way that has harmed the environment. The problem is scale. Big organizations, big markets, big impact.

California’s fire season is now the worst in the state’s history

To say that Mr. Rich should have narrowed his focus on specific antagonists, or a political party, misses the point of the essay, and the overarching problem. Mr. Rich’s unique contribution is not to point out this fact, but to do so in a nuanced way that grapples with the deeply disturbing idea that we are all to blame, that humanity itself is complicit and we can’t let ourselves off the hook by blaming climate deniers, capitalism, Big Oil, the Republican party, or some other popular bugaboo.
There are many ways to summarize the problem that Mr. Rich effectively captures in his thought-provoking essay. Mr. Rich himself has noted that “the level of political will required to initiate action in a substantial way is really lacking, and I guess in that sense, political will is human will. We will have to get there eventually because of the level of devastation that is coming….”
Record rainfall caused catastrophic flooding … like in Texas last year.
“If we understand the nature of the problems and our own limitations – personal, social, political – we will then be able to grapple this in a serious way at the level required to initiate major transformation, because transformation is coming, one way or the other. The only question is how involved are we going to be.”

Perhaps it is most apt to compare the present existential crisis to Thomas Jefferson’s insight about slavery – one of humanity’s first great crimes: “as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” Mr. Rich is telling us not so much of what to let go, but that perhaps it is time to start thinking about the prospect of letting go.

About Nathaniel Rich: An alumnus of Yale University, Mr. Rich is the author of many essays for Vanity Fair, Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Slate, as well as novels such as Odds Against Tomorrow (2013) and non-fiction books like San Francisco Noir, which the San Francisco Chronicle named one of the best books of 2005.

About George Steinmetz: Born in Los Angeles, Steinmetz graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Geophysics in 1979. His current work focuses on photographing the world’s deserts while piloting a motorized paraglider. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Smithsonian, TIME, and National Geographic magazine. He is also the author of four books, including African Air, which feature portfolios of his work in the African deserts.