Falter

Falter Plot Summary

Introduction

In 1977, a senior scientist stood before Exxon's top executives in their Manhattan headquarters and delivered a stark warning: carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels was warming the planet, potentially catastrophically. The company's response would set in motion one of history's most consequential cover-ups. Rather than alerting the public, Exxon and other fossil fuel giants chose to manufacture doubt about the very science their own researchers had confirmed. This pivotal moment represents the ultimate leverage point in our climate story - a juncture where different choices might have altered humanity's trajectory. This tale of power, ideology, and technological risk reveals how a small group of actors shaped our climate future through strategic leverage. From the fossil fuel executives who buried climate science to the libertarian billionaires who funded climate denial, from Silicon Valley techno-utopians to grassroots climate justice movements, we witness an epic struggle over humanity's relationship with the planet. By understanding these leverage points - where concentrated power has disproportionate impact - we gain insight not just into how we arrived at our climate crisis, but how we might still navigate toward a livable future. For anyone seeking to understand why climate action has been so difficult despite decades of warnings, this exploration of the ideological forces behind our climate predicament offers essential perspective.

Chapter 1: The Scientific Awakening: Early Climate Warnings (1959-1988)

The story of climate science begins not with ignorance but with remarkable foresight. As early as 1959, physicist Edward Teller warned the American Petroleum Institute that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels could melt polar ice caps and submerge coastal cities. This wasn't speculative science - it built on principles established by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius in 1896, who first calculated how carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, climate understanding advanced rapidly. Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography established continuous monitoring of atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, creating what would become the famous "Keeling Curve" showing steadily rising CO₂ levels. Meanwhile, computer models grew increasingly sophisticated. In 1967, Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald published the first comprehensive climate model predicting that doubling atmospheric CO₂ would raise global temperatures by about 2°C - a figure remarkably consistent with today's most advanced models. Government awareness grew alongside scientific understanding. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson's Science Advisory Committee warned that fossil fuels were altering the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale. By 1977, the National Academy of Sciences concluded there was "incontrovertible evidence" that atmospheric carbon dioxide was increasing due to fossil fuel combustion and would likely lead to significant warming. Even the oil industry conducted its own research, with Exxon scientists developing sophisticated climate models that accurately predicted the warming we're experiencing today. The scientific consensus culminated in 1988 with NASA scientist James Hansen's landmark testimony before Congress. "The greenhouse effect has been detected," Hansen declared, "and it is changing our climate now." His testimony, delivered during a sweltering Washington summer, captured media attention and catapulted climate change into public consciousness. That same year, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments. This early period represents a crucial missed opportunity. Scientists had identified the problem and its solution decades before climate impacts became severe. If serious emissions reductions had begun in the 1980s, the transition could have been gradual and economically manageable. As environmental writer Bill McKibben later noted, "Had we begun cutting emissions in 1990, we would have needed to reduce them at just 2% per year to stay below dangerous warming thresholds. By 2022, the required cut had risen to 8% annually - more than four times as difficult." The scientific awakening of 1959-1988 demonstrates that our climate crisis stems not from lack of knowledge but from failure to act on knowledge we've long possessed. The warnings were clear, specific, and remarkably accurate. The tragedy is that these warnings went unheeded during the critical window when gradual action could have prevented the crisis we now face. The question is: why? The answer lies in what happened next - a deliberate campaign to undermine the very science that might have saved us.

Chapter 2: Corporate Deception: Fossil Fuel's Calculated Denial (1970s-2000s)

As scientific consensus on climate change solidified, the fossil fuel industry faced an existential choice: adapt their business model or fight the science. Internal documents reveal they chose the latter, launching what would become the most consequential disinformation campaign in history. Exxon, which had built a state-of-the-art climate research program in the 1970s, began systematically undermining climate science in the 1980s, even as their own scientists warned executives about the "potentially catastrophic events" that would result from continued fossil fuel use. The industry's strategy borrowed directly from the tobacco playbook. In 1991, the Information Council for the Environment, funded by coal companies, explicitly planned to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact." Their internal documents identified their target audience as "older, less-educated males" and "younger, lower-income women," whom they considered most vulnerable to their messaging. The campaign deployed scientists like Robert Jastrow and Patrick Michaels as spokespeople, despite their limited climate expertise, to create the impression of scientific debate where little actually existed. This deception escalated with the formation of the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) in 1989, which included major oil, gas, coal, auto, and chemical companies. The GCC's internal scientific advisory committee actually confirmed the reality of human-caused warming, writing in a 1995 internal report: "The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied." Yet publicly, the coalition continued to emphasize uncertainty and oppose climate policies. The fossil fuel industry's influence extended deep into politics. When the Kyoto Protocol emerged as the first serious international climate agreement in 1997, the American Petroleum Institute developed a multimillion-dollar plan to ensure it would "not be implemented." Their strategy included recruiting scientists who would highlight uncertainties, producing educational materials for schools, and training spokespeople to question climate science in media appearances. ExxonMobil alone spent at least $37 million funding climate denial groups between 1998 and 2017. This campaign succeeded in transforming climate change from a scientific issue into a partisan political one. As historian Naomi Oreskes documented, while scientific consensus on climate change strengthened throughout the 1990s and 2000s, public perception of that consensus actually declined. The percentage of Americans who believed global warming was occurring fell from 80% in 2008 to 57% in 2010, despite mounting scientific evidence. This wasn't accidental confusion - it was manufactured doubt. The consequences of this deception have been catastrophic. As environmental writer Alex Steffen notes, "Had we begun cutting emissions in 1990, we could have done so at about 2% per year. We've now reached a point where we need cuts of 10% or more per year to avoid dangerous warming - a rate that has no historical precedent." The fossil fuel industry's disinformation campaign didn't just delay action by a few years; it squandered the critical decades when gradual, economically manageable transitions were still possible. This represents perhaps the most consequential use of leverage in human history - a small group of executives and lobbyists who, to protect quarterly profits, steered civilization toward climate catastrophe.

Chapter 3: Libertarian Leverage: Koch Network and Anti-Regulation Politics

While fossil fuel companies worked to undermine climate science, a parallel effort was underway to block any government response to the crisis. At the center of this campaign stood Charles and David Koch, whose vast fortune derived largely from oil refining and petrochemicals. The Koch brothers weren't merely wealthy industrialists protecting their investments; they were ideological libertarians who saw climate regulation as part of a broader threat to their vision of unfettered capitalism. The Kochs' political awakening came in the 1970s, when Charles Koch became enamored with libertarian economics and the writings of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. He embraced their vision of minimal government and unregulated markets with religious fervor. As David Koch later explained, "I have a theory that climate change is mostly natural and not much caused by human beings." This wasn't a scientific conclusion but an ideological necessity - acknowledging climate change would require accepting government intervention in markets, anathema to libertarian principles. Beginning in the 1980s, the Kochs built what political scientists Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez call a "integrated political machine" spanning education, policy development, and electoral politics. They funded academic positions at universities to develop libertarian economic theories. They established think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heartland Institute to translate these theories into policy proposals. And they created advocacy groups like Americans for Prosperity to mobilize voters around these policies. By 2010, the Koch network's political budget rivaled that of the Republican Party itself. Climate change became a central focus of this network. The Kochs funded conferences bringing together climate-denying scientists, economists emphasizing the costs of climate action, and politicians willing to block environmental regulations. When Congress considered cap-and-trade legislation in 2009-2010, Americans for Prosperity launched a massive campaign against what they called "cap and tax," threatening to primary any Republican who supported it. The bill died in the Senate, marking the end of comprehensive climate legislation attempts for a decade. The Koch network's influence extended beyond Washington to state capitals across America. Through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), they promoted model legislation blocking renewable energy mandates and preventing states from implementing climate policies. In Florida, Koch-funded groups successfully fought efforts to expand solar power. In Arizona, they helped elect utility commissioners who scaled back net metering programs that compensated homeowners for solar electricity. This state-level strategy effectively blocked climate progress even when federal action stalled. The libertarian leverage point proved devastatingly effective because it aligned ideological and economic interests. For the Kochs and their allies, fighting climate action wasn't just about protecting fossil fuel investments; it was about defending a worldview that rejected collective action and government regulation in principle. As historian Nancy MacLean argues in "Democracy in Chains," this represented a fundamental challenge to democratic governance itself - the idea that some problems are too big for individuals or markets to solve alone. By the 2010s, this libertarian vision had become so dominant in Republican politics that acknowledging climate change became nearly impossible for conservative politicians, regardless of the scientific evidence.

Chapter 4: Silicon Valley's Gamble: Technology Risks Beyond Climate

While fossil fuel executives and libertarian billionaires fought climate action, another power center emerged with its own approach to planetary challenges: Silicon Valley. Tech leaders positioned themselves as climate allies, with companies like Google and Apple investing heavily in renewable energy. Yet beneath this green veneer lay a technological optimism that created its own risks - risks that paralleled and sometimes compounded the climate crisis. Silicon Valley's ethos combines contradictory elements: progressive social values alongside libertarian economic views. Tech leaders overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates and embrace causes like LGBTQ rights. Yet they share with the Kochs a deep skepticism of government regulation and a belief that technological innovation, not political action, solves problems. As venture capitalist Marc Andreessen famously wrote, "Software is eating the world" - a vision where technology disrupts and eventually replaces traditional institutions, including government. This techno-optimism manifests in approaches to climate change that prioritize breakthrough technologies over policy changes. Elon Musk exemplifies this approach, building electric cars and solar panels while dismissing carbon taxes as unnecessary. "If you have a great product at a great price, people will buy it," he argues. Bill Gates has invested billions in clean energy innovation while downplaying the importance of existing renewable technologies. This focus on future breakthroughs often comes at the expense of deploying available solutions now - what climate scientist Michael Mann calls "techno-optimism as climate inaction." Beyond climate, Silicon Valley has accelerated two technologies with unprecedented leverage: artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. AI development has proceeded with minimal oversight, despite warnings from researchers about potential risks. In 2015, thousands of AI researchers signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence could pose "risks that might be as serious as those posed by climate change or nuclear weapons." Yet development continued at breakneck pace, driven by commercial competition and with minimal regulatory guardrails. Similarly, genetic engineering technologies like CRISPR have advanced rapidly with limited governance. The 2018 announcement of the first genetically modified human babies in China shocked the scientific community not because the technology was unavailable elsewhere, but because ethical restraints had been ignored. As Jennifer Doudna, CRISPR pioneer, warned: "For the first time in the history of life on earth, we have the power to direct the evolution of our own species" - yet we lack frameworks to govern this power responsibly. The parallel to climate change is striking. In both cases, technologies with unprecedented leverage developed faster than our capacity to govern them. Both involved systemic risks that markets alone couldn't address. And both challenged the libertarian assumption that individual choices naturally produce optimal outcomes for society. As with climate change, addressing these technological risks would require precisely the kind of collective action and precautionary regulation that Silicon Valley's libertarian streak resisted. This technological acceleration created a dangerous paradox: the same innovation culture that might produce climate solutions was simultaneously generating new risks that could compound our planetary challenges. As historian Yuval Noah Harari observed, "For the first time in history, we face real existential threats of our own making" - not just climate change, but also technologies that could fundamentally alter human existence before we've developed the wisdom to guide them.

Chapter 5: The Renewable Revolution: Energy Democracy and Climate Justice

Against this backdrop of corporate deception, libertarian obstruction, and technological risk, a countermovement emerged that reimagined both energy systems and power relationships. The renewable energy revolution combined technological innovation with new models of ownership and control, challenging the centralized, extractive systems that dominated the fossil fuel era. This movement wasn't just about replacing one energy source with another; it was about democratizing power in both senses of the word. The technological foundation of this revolution was the extraordinary price decline in renewable energy. Solar panel costs fell by approximately 99% between 1977 and 2020, while wind turbine costs dropped by roughly 70% between 2009 and 2019. These declines followed predictable exponential curves similar to Moore's Law in computing. By 2020, solar and wind had become the cheapest forms of new electricity generation in most of the world, undercutting even existing fossil fuel plants on cost alone. This economic transformation happened despite, not because of, policy support in many countries. Unlike fossil fuels, which are concentrated in specific locations and controlled by powerful corporations, renewable energy is available everywhere. This geographical distribution enabled new ownership models that challenged traditional utility monopolies. In Germany, the Energiewende (energy transition) saw over 800 energy cooperatives form, with citizens collectively owning nearly half of the country's renewable capacity. In the United States, community solar projects allowed apartment dwellers and low-income households to access solar benefits without owning property. Indigenous communities from Australia to North America installed renewable energy not just for climate benefits, but as expressions of sovereignty and self-determination. This democratization of energy production threatened the centralized power structures that had dominated the industry for a century. Utilities and fossil fuel companies responded aggressively, lobbying against policies that supported distributed generation. In states like Nevada and Arizona, they successfully rolled back net metering programs that compensated homeowners for solar electricity. They funded campaigns against community choice aggregation, which allows municipalities to choose their energy suppliers. And they pushed for fixed charges that disproportionately affected small-scale producers. The renewable revolution intersected with broader movements for climate justice, which recognized that climate impacts and solutions were unevenly distributed. Environmental justice organizations like WEACT in Harlem and APEN in California highlighted how fossil fuel infrastructure disproportionately harmed communities of color. The Climate Justice Alliance developed the concept of a "just transition" that would protect workers and communities dependent on fossil fuel industries. Indigenous water protectors at Standing Rock demonstrated the connection between climate action and decolonization. These movements employed a sophisticated understanding of leverage points within complex systems. Rather than simply demanding policy changes, they targeted the fossil fuel industry's social license to operate - its reputation, financing, and political support. The fossil fuel divestment movement, beginning on college campuses, spread to institutions controlling over $14 trillion in assets by 2020. Pipeline protests physically blocked infrastructure development, raising the costs of new fossil fuel projects. These approaches recognized that in a system dominated by entrenched interests, conventional political channels often proved ineffective. By the late 2010s, these twin forces - plummeting renewable costs and growing climate justice movements - had begun to shift the seemingly immovable politics of climate change. Major financial institutions started restricting fossil fuel investments. Legal challenges based on the public trust doctrine advanced through courts. Even conservative politicians began embracing clean energy for its economic benefits. The fossil fuel industry remained powerful, but its once-unquestioned dominance showed signs of cracking as alternatives gained both technical feasibility and moral legitimacy.

Chapter 6: Reclaiming Balance: Human-Scale Solutions for Planetary Survival

The convergence of climate crisis, technological disruption, and political dysfunction has sparked a fundamental reconsideration of how human societies should be organized. Across diverse fields - from economics to urban planning to energy systems - a common theme has emerged: the need to balance power through human-scale institutions and revitalized communities. This represents not a rejection of technology, but a more sophisticated understanding of how technology can serve human flourishing rather than undermine it. The concept of "appropriate scale" has gained renewed relevance. For decades, economic thinking emphasized efficiency through consolidation and globalization. But this approach created vulnerabilities exposed by climate disasters and pandemic disruptions. Communities dependent on global supply chains found themselves unable to meet basic needs during crises. In response, the "relocalization" movement has worked to rebuild local capacity in food, energy, and manufacturing - not to disconnect from global systems entirely, but to create resilience through diversity and redundancy. This shift is visible in agriculture, where industrial monocultures optimized for yield have proven vulnerable to climate extremes. Regenerative farming practices, which build soil health while sequestering carbon, often work best at smaller scales with more human attention. Urban agriculture has flourished, with cities from Detroit to Havana transforming vacant lots into productive gardens that simultaneously address food security, community cohesion, and climate adaptation. These approaches recognize that the most resilient systems combine local production with regional and global connections. In energy systems, the distributed nature of renewables enables what energy democracy advocates call "energy sovereignty" - communities controlling their own power production. Puerto Rico, after Hurricane Maria destroyed its centralized grid, saw communities build solar microgrids that continued functioning during subsequent storms. Indigenous communities from Australia to North America have installed renewable energy not just for climate benefits, but as expressions of self-determination and cultural continuity. These examples demonstrate how technological transitions can either concentrate or distribute power, depending on how they're designed and governed. Digital technologies, despite their centralizing tendencies, have also enabled new forms of community organization. Platform cooperatives - digital platforms owned by their users rather than venture capitalists - have emerged as alternatives to extractive business models. Open-source software communities demonstrate how complex systems can be developed through voluntary collaboration rather than hierarchical control. These examples challenge the libertarian assumption that only profit maximization or state coercion can coordinate human activity at scale. Perhaps most significantly, the climate crisis has revitalized the commons as a governance model. Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work on commons management, demonstrated that communities can sustainably manage shared resources without resorting to either privatization or top-down regulation. From community forests in Nepal to irrigation systems in Spain, her research documented successful commons governance across cultures and centuries. These principles are now being applied to climate challenges, with communities developing shared rules for carbon reduction, adaptation planning, and resource conservation. This return to human scale doesn't mean abandoning larger systems. Rather, it suggests a nested approach - what political scientists call "polycentricity" - where different functions are handled at appropriate levels. Local food systems connect to regional distribution networks. Community-owned renewable energy feeds into larger grids. Neighborhood governance links to municipal, national, and global frameworks. The goal is not isolation but integration across scales, with power distributed rather than concentrated.

Summary

The story of our climate future reveals a fundamental conflict between two visions of power. On one side stands the libertarian ideal of unfettered markets and technological optimism, embodied by fossil fuel executives who buried climate science and tech titans who believe innovation alone will save us. On the other emerges an ecological vision emphasizing interdependence, appropriate scale, and democratic governance. This isn't merely an ideological dispute but a practical struggle over how we organize our energy systems, economies, and technologies during an unprecedented planetary emergency. The leverage points that shaped our climate predicament offer lessons for navigating forward. First, we must recognize that concentrated power - whether in fossil fuel corporations or technology platforms - creates systemic risks that markets alone cannot address. Second, technological solutions must be paired with governance innovations that distribute rather than concentrate power. Finally, resilience requires diversity and redundancy at multiple scales, from local communities to global agreements. By reclaiming technology for truly human purposes, rebuilding community resilience, and developing governance systems appropriate to the scale of our challenges, we might yet navigate the perilous decades ahead. The path forward lies not in choosing between technology and tradition, or between individual freedom and collective responsibility, but in creating balanced systems that honor both human dignity and planetary boundaries.

About Author

Loading...

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is the author of Eaarth, The End of Nature, Deep Economy, Enough, Fight Global Warming Now, The Bill McKibben Reader, and numerous other books. He is the founder of the environmental organizations Step It Up and 350.org, and was among the first to warn of the dangers of global warming. In 2010 The Boston Globe called him "probably the nation's leading environmentalist," and Time magazine has called him "the world's best green journalist." He studied at Harvard, and started his writing career as a staff writer at The New Yorker. The End of Nature, his first book, was published in 1989 and was regarded as the first book on climate change for a general audience. He is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside. He has been awarded Guggenheim Fellowship and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in 2000. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, and their daughter.http://us.macmillan.com/author/billmc...

Read more

Related Books by Bill McKibben

Loading...

Walden

Henry David Thoreau

Life in the Woods

★★★½☆3.8