A long, long article by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus looking at where the green movement went wrong.
Yet today, environmental efforts to address climate change and build a green economy lie in ruins. The United States Congress this summer once again rejected climate legislation that even had it succeeded would have had virtually no impact upon U.S. carbon emissions over the coming decade. The magnitude and consequence of this defeat are poorly understood outside of Washington. Greens had the best opportunity in a generation -- a Democratic White House and large Democratic majorities in Congress. But they banked everything on a single bill and walked away with nothing -- or rather worse than nothing, since today environmental credibility with lawmakers of both parties is today at an all-time low.
Meanwhile, green stimulus investments ended up creating very few jobs. Those that it did create were low-wage and temporary custodial jobs -- not the high-wage manufacturing jobs that created the black middle-class after World War II. And today, the clean tech sector-- the darling of high tech VC's at the height of the green bubble-- is in a state of collapse as stimulus funds expire, large public deficits threaten clean energy subsidies both here and abroad, and Wall Street firms short clean tech stocks.