A little over 18 months ago I updated my slogan about modern Environmentalism.
- Old Version: Screw the poor, so the rich can feel good about themselves, while accomplishing nothing.
- Updated Version: Screw the poor, so the rich can feel good about themselves, while destabilizing the world.
Related, and landing somewhere in between the two – Andrew Stuttaford on the “greenlash” in the recent EU elections:
When the Left talks of “culture wars” (by the Right), that talk is not infrequently designed to trivialize them, at least intellectually. Thus the battle over ESG is often dismissed by its supporters as part of the culture wars (an argument in which, as I have noted before, ESG’s critics don’t help themselves by referring to “woke capital”), when the real issue is legal and economic — what does being a shareholder mean?
To be fair, though, Stevis-Gridneff then (sort of) undermines the notion that a part of the EU’s right was fighting a culture war over climate policy with this:
In many places, the nationalist agendas of far-right parties have been augmented by populist appeals to economically strained citizens. The right surged among voters by targeting the Greens specifically, painting them as unfit to protect poorer working people in rapidly changing societies.
For many voters, Green parties failed to show that their proposals were not just expensive, anti-growth policies that would hurt the poorest the most. And some view them as elitist urbanites who brush aside the costs of the transition to a less climate-harming way of life.
Objecting to the (pointless) hit to the economy induced by the race to net zero is hardly fighting a culture war. And it should not be forgotten that an element within the climatist coalition sees slower (or, in some cases, no) growth as a virtue.
As for objecting (reasonably) to the position taken by “elitist urbanites,” that’s a manifestation, not of “culture war,” but clashing class interests. Many such “urbanites” see climate policy as a means to achieve political and social ends that they would want whatever the climate is doing. It is also, for them, a source of jobs, and, yes, a useful form of virtue-signaling, which, importantly, they can afford. Some, of course, may be pursuing quasi-religious aims in which they genuinely believe and which psychologists or students of religious history could explain. If climate policy is, in any respects, a culture war, it is one where the aggressors are these comfortable Gutmenschen, not those complaining about the assault on their living standards and, say, a forced transition to electric vehicles.
The moon in daylight 