Stevens' Center for Science Writings honors environmental critics with Green Book Award, April 30

Green Book Award presented as part of Stevens' Research and Entrepreneurship Day

HOBOKEN, N.J. -- Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, whose critiques of the environmental movement have provoked widespread reconsideration of its methods and goals, have won the 2008 Green Book Award from Stevens Institute of Technology’s Center for Science Writings.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger won for their 2007 book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. An expansion of their widely discussed 2004 essay, “The Death of Environmentalism,” Break Through faults environmentalists for implying that global warming and other problems can only be addressed by limiting human progress. Instead, Nordhaus and Shellenberger argue, green activists should recognize the potential of economic development and technological innovation to help us overcome ecological crises. Nordhaus and Shellenberger co-direct the Breakthrough Institute, a thinktank based in Oakland , Calif. , and are partners in American Environics, a consulting firm.

John Horgan, Director of the Center for Science Writings, will present Nordhaus and Shellenberger with the Green Book Award at Stevens on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 , at 4 p.m., in the Lawrence T. Babbio Center. The award is being presented as part of Stevens’ Research and Entrepreneurship Day, an annual campus event designed to bring greater exposure to Stevens’ research programs, capabilities and achievements, and foster relationships with industry to offer insight and solutions to their business needs.

Research Day with will feature keynote speeches, poster sessions, panel discussions and tours of research centers on the Stevens campus.

Following the award ceremony, Nordhaus and Shellenberger will discuss their views of environmentalism in a conversation with Andrew C. Revkin, the environmental correspondent of the New York Times. This event is free and open to the public.

Break Through has garnered praise from across the political spectrum. The Wall Street Journal contends that the book “will surely do more for the environment than any U.N. report or Nobel Prize.” WIRED magazine describes it as “the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.” The environmental author Bill McKibben calls Break Through “unremittingly interesting, sharp and wide-ranging.”