Re: maybe it's not over- climategate

[Wes Deviers <wdevie () hrcsb org>]

On Thursday 10 December 2009 07:49:59 am chris () blask org wrote:

> So, in large part you are correct: pure-partisan political roots don't elect 
major politicians, the rational center does.  But the roots do elect the 
candidates and set the tone of the debate, and I remain at least cranky about 
- if not entirely baffled by - this issue becoming politicized to the extent 
that it does.

I think it's because global warming/cooling/save the whales has two groups of 
people supporting it.  The first group are people who are genuinely worried 
about the environment and are less worried about the politics involved.  They 
can be self-righteous, and they can make huge mistakes (think the anti-
nuclear-power movement from the 70s until..well...the last few years) but they 
largely ignored politics for most of the movements' history.  These would be 
the Roosevelt (Teddy) environmentalists.  Consider the Sierra Club, the Isaac 
Walton League, WWF, and others before they mostly became PACs.  Actual grass-
roots kind of organizations.

The second half are the ones that most conservatives see as "enemies" because 
their environmentalism is viewed as disingenuous.  The conservative view 
point, if there is a common one, is that the political active environment 
groups now are the socialist and Great Society movements of the mid 1900s.  
When socialism in the US finally "failed" and the USSR fell, the mindshare and 
power of socialist movements took a huge hit.  But if you are a dedicated 
anticapitalist, you just need to revitalize your message and target a new 
audience. 

And those folks found a ready, wiling audience in "new" environmentalism.

So most conservatives, perhaps limited mostly to fiscal conservatives, see 
political environmentalism not as trying to save the earth, but as trying to 
destroy capitalism and free markets through a back door.  And it's kind of 
hard to disagree with that assessment when trash like the Kyoto Protocols are 
paraded around as the best the environmentalist movement can produce.  

New-Environmentalism is the political-environmentalist's McCarthyism.  "Have 
you ever used, or have you ever know anybody who has used, fossil fuels?"  
They indoctrinate children with it in elementary school; they create entire 
branches of government with unregulated power (such as the EPA SuperFund 
program).  Under the guises of saving the environment and repairing 
externalities, they can get cooperative support for policies that were pipe 
dreams thirty years ago: massive wealth "equalization", removal of property 
rights, and stigmatizing the politically incorrect.

That's why conservatives don't trust the Global Warming movement and many 
clamor for more data.  I don't think anybody I know, conservative or liberal, 
Repulican, Democrat, or LIbertarian, wants to overfish tuna, or dump toxic 
waste in the oceans.  I'm ready for non-fossil fuels *right now*, because it 
makes sense.  But Climate Change has become a moral movement masquerading as 
science.  The Global Warming folks have set the agenda and have convinced much 
of the world that the only way to save the earth is to repent of our 
exploitive, sinful, free-market, consumerist ways.  The attack vector may be 
new, but the ultimate goals look awfully familiar.

Wes



> -chris
>
>
>       
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