Kerry’s Book Full of Fire But Not Policy

When a Democrat who lost a presidential election to George W. Bush writes a book about the environment, and his name doesn’t end in “Gore,” we all have the right to be suspicious.

But fears that “This Moment on Earth,” the new book by Senator John Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, will be a carbon copy of “An Inconvenient Truth” and its ilk prove to be unfounded. The book is quite different from that famed multimedia presentation of Al Gore ’69, albeit far less authoritative. It features an excellent outline of myriad environmental challenges while making a scatter-shot attempt at solutions that relies more on isolated case examples than rigorous policy proposals.

While Gore’s eco-wonkishness has been well-known for decades—former President George H. W. Bush derisively called him “Ozone Man” during the 1992 presidential campaign—Kerry has never been far behind. In fact, the two Kerrys met when the senator and Teresa’s first husband, the late Senator John Heinz, a leading liberal Republican, were keynoting at an Earth Day rally in 1990.

The authors begin with some decent, if unspectacular, examples of environmental destruction. They detail the work of pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson, and use her experiences as a springboard to discuss the challenges posed by toxic pollution and how environmental contamination contributes to cancer. The solutions they provide in the first chapters are sound—highlighting environmentally-conscious manufacturing and sustainable urban planning, among other things. Still, these first two chapters struggle to be relevant, and the book goes on far too long before more timely concerns are taken up.

The authors start to hit their stride as they enter the middle four chapters, addressing air pollution, water pollution, climate change, and energy generation, respectively. When considering air pollution, the Kerrys write eloquently about environmental injustice—the prevalence of health-risking pollution, in poor, minority neighborhoods.

On water pollution, they show an ability to dig into unglamorous, but highly relevant, issues, such as the pollution caused by factory farms. And in their chapter on climate change, the authors provide a Cliff’s Notes of Gore’s documentary before lambasting the Bush administration for its willful ignorance of the science behind climate change.

But when the Kerrys take up solutions in their final chapter, it’s a big let-down.

The authors are inexplicably anecdote-happy, pointing either to individuals and companies who are doing good for the environment, or to random, albeit promising, statistics on cutting-edge green technologies. While some readers may enjoy this approach—heavy on examples and bereft of any overarching framework—it lacks both the rigor and the punch of their discussion of environmental threats.

Above all, these vignettes are weighted far too heavily toward Teresa’s comparative advantage and away from John’s. Teresa Kerry has long been noted for her commitment to environmental philanthropy, particularly for her funding of these causes in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania. Undoubtedly, many of the individuals discussed in “This Moment on Earth” are ones she has supported through her numerous foundations.

In contrast, the Senator, who has spent 22 years in Washington, provides virtually none of the insights he has gained or the sorts of policy proposals he and his colleagues are considering.

Where is the nuanced discussion of climate change regulatory schemes, such whether carbon taxes are better than cap-and-trade systems and fuel economy standards? Where do the Kerrys stand on whether the federal government should use its power to alter personal behavior, either through taxing carbon fuels or subsidizing small-scale renewable energy systems?

And what about global environmental agreements—such as how an ideal Kyoto Protocol should be structured—and the sorts of environmental protections should be written into free trade deals? These final questions should be second-nature to Kerry, a long-time member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Like advertised, the Kerrys’ book is a fine complement to the work of Gore: it provides a broader discussion of environmental issues and makes a stab at solutions, albeit a weak one.

Had the Kerrys done as systematic, intellectually rigorous a job on solutions as they did on problems, they would have created a book with a serious roadmap for where the U.S., and the world, need to go. And that, unlike the book they produced, would have been a real contribution to both public policy and the future.

—Reviewer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.