“Environmental progress should produce benefits people can recognize in their businesses, households, and communities. It should make economic sense. And it should respect the energy systems that make modern life possible, even as we work to improve them.”
In 2002 when I was a vice president of Orion Energy Systems, I was questioned by a Wisconsin senator at an energy event. That encounter became the starting point for what I then called practical environmentalism to describe Orion’s Energy Efficiency efforts: an approach that sought to put good energy policy, economic development, and environmental improvement on the same side of the ledger.
The phrase expressed a conviction that has stayed with me. Environmental progress should produce benefits people can recognize in their businesses, households, and communities. It should make economic sense. And it should respect the energy systems that make modern life possible, even as we work to improve them.
Climate Pragmatism
Years later, I recognized a close relative of energy humanism, a building block, in the term climate pragmatism. The 2017 book, The Rightful Place of Science: Climate Pragmatism, by Ted Nordhaus, Jason Lloyd, Daniel Sarewitz, and Alex Trembath, (edited by G. Pascal Zachary) placed human dignity, innovation, and economic prosperity at the center of its approach. Its priorities included energy access, energy innovation, and climate adaptation. [1]
Here was a familiar idea expressed through a different vocabulary. To my mind, practical environmentalism and climate pragmatism are twins: early expressions of what I now understand as energy humanism. That is a philosophical connection, rather than a claim that one expression descended from the other. Climate pragmatism already had a published formulation in a 2011 report emphasizing innovation, resilience, and practical pollution reduction. [2] My own route began in Wisconsin, through my experience working in the energy-efficiency business for industrial lighting. The routes differed. The destination looks remarkably similar.
Human Betterment
Both approaches begin with people. That sounds obvious until one examines how easily people disappear inside environmental policy. A factory becomes an emissions source. A household becomes a consumption profile. A developing country becomes a future carbon trajectory. Each description captures something real, but none captures the whole human enterprise.
The factory also provides livelihoods. The household needs dependable heat. The developing country needs electricity for hospitals, sanitation, refrigeration, and productive work. Any policy that overlooks those purposes has misunderstood the assignment.
Energy humanism restores those purposes to the center of the discussion. My experience at Orion helped make this concrete. Energy efficiency offered a practical way to connect business performance with environmental improvement. When an investment delivers the required service using less electricity in a measurable, verified way, the customer has reason to consider it the fastest, cheapest, and cleanest form of new electricity.
The crucial word is delivers. An efficiency project deserves scrutiny of its installation costs, operating savings, maintenance requirements, and useful life. The environmental claim should follow the measured and verified performance. A favorable label cannot substitute for a favorable result. That discipline should apply across energy policy.
What does the proposal cost? What does it accomplish? Who pays? Who benefits? Does it preserve reliability? Is there a less expensive way to achieve the same improvement? What happens if the assumptions prove wrong? These questions belong at the beginning of environmental deliberations. Too often, they arrive after political commitments have hardened and the bill is coming due.
Climate pragmatism brings a similar discipline to the same arena. People can disagree on the preferred balance of climate policies while finding common ground in improved technology, stronger infrastructure, and protection against dangerous weather. Cooperation becomes possible around specific benefits, without requiring agreement on every element of a political program.
Sustainable Public Policy
That is an important advantage. A durable policy needs a constituency that can explain why it is useful, why it passes the rigor of financial accounting. A community can support better flood protection by protecting homes and businesses. A manufacturer can support an energy upgrade because it improves production expenses. A country can pursue a more dependable electricity system because development requires one. Climate benefits can strengthen those cases without carrying the negatives of their entire political weight. Practical environmentalism follows the same logic. Build support through results that matter in ordinary life.
Neither approach excuses careless development. A project that wastes resources, damages water supplies, or imposes substantial costs on its neighbors deserves a thorough examination. Economic analysis should include those consequences. Calling something practical imposes an obligation to count costs honestly, including costs that do not appear on the developer’s balance sheet.
The same obligation applies to policies promoted as green. A technology should earn its place through performance under actual conditions. Its price, reliability, land requirements, materials, supporting infrastructure, and environmental consequences all belong in the assessment. The appropriate combination will vary by location and purpose. Energy humanism gives us a standard for judging those choices: how well they improve human welfare while mitigating environmental harm.
It also requires humility about forecasts. Long-lived investments depend on assumptions about demand, fuel prices, technological progress, and public finances. Those assumptions deserve testing. Policies should allow correction when experience exposes a mistake.
Conclusion
There is nothing humane about forcing families or businesses to absorb avoidable costs merely to prevent an official promise from being revised. For me, the connection between these ideas is especially compelling because it joins experience with principle. Practical environmentalism grew out of the world of customers, equipment, investment, and measurable savings. Climate pragmatism articulated a broader commitment to innovation, resilience, and human dignity. Energy humanism supplies a name for the moral purpose they share.
This purpose would and should guide a more useful conversation about the environment. Start with the needs of people. Examine the available options. Measure the results. Recognize trade-offs. Keep improving.
The Wisconsin encounter in 2002 and the book published in 2017 belong to different settings. Yet I hear the same essential message in both: environmental progress becomes stronger when it advances human prosperity. Practical environmentalism and climate pragmatism are twins in that sense. Energy humanism is the family resemblance.
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Sources and editorial note:
1. Arizona State University Library, The Rightful Place of Science: Climate Pragmatism, June 2017. https://lib.asu.edu/shelf-life/rightful-place-science-climate-pragmatism
2. The Breakthrough Institute, Climate Pragmatism: Innovation, Resilience and No Regrets, July 2011. https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/climate-pragmatism-innovation