“Get Angry” failed for the Climatistas. Will they now try a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing approach called “Going Right”?
The Economist comments in “Getting angry and going right“,
And although American environmentalists are regrouping after a series of setbacks, they’re hardly going to abandon the issue of climate change. Reinforced data may help as they retool their strategies.
What will those strategies be? Over at Duck of Minerva, Josh Busby, a political scientist at the University of Texas, looks at two alternatives: “Get Angry” or “Go Right”. The first would involve a more voluble environmental movement as a counterweight to the fractious climate sceptics (who are, keep in mind, the minority)—a sort of “Green Tea Party” organised around such issues as the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The second strategy would involve building the coalition by reaching out to Republicans, by focusing on the potential economic benefits of a shift to clean power, for example, or the national-security implications of dependence on oil imports…
“Going right” on climate change is a worthwhile idea. As I’ve written before, with regard to criminal-justice reform, if the “opposite” party signs on to your programme, there’s your proof of concept. And if climate change is a bridge too far, you can tweak the strategy to “go right” on subsidiary issues, like developing renewable energy.
This sort of strategy has already been tried by T. Boone Pickens (see below), ironically, someone who is already on the right. But “green” and “clean” are just bad ideas, no matter who the salesmen are.
Read the Busby article, “Get Angry or Go Right: What’s the Best Strategy on Global Warming?”
Click for JunkScience.com’s T. Boone Pickens series:
Way too late, we are on to the Green Jobs scam, and how cosmically stupid it is to oppose the pipeline.
Too late. The ‘Right’ has already seen the alleged economic benefits of subsidizing non-viable ‘green’ companies and economically penalizing traditional cost-effective CO2-spewing companies.: higher prices, job loss, shortages, system vulnerabilities, higher-tech pollution, etc.
Wait a minute. I find the concept of “Going Right” incongruous in light of the history of the Environmental movement. Decades ago (my memory does go back that far) the Environmentalists elected to cast their lot with the political Left, and made a bit of a fuss about it at the time. They seemed to feel that in the 70’s (or about then) the Left was in the majority, so their alignment with the Left was a political move, and a cynical one at that. In making this alignment, they publicly rejected the political Right to such a degree that anyone professing conservative or Right wing attitudes was specifically prohibited from being part of the Environmental movement. If you were a Republican, you were by definition not an Environmentalist. This attitude continues today.
By creating this political divide, and by stigmatizing all on the Right as being “against” any Environmental position, the Environmentalists alienated a large number, perhaps a majority, of the electorate, who otherwise would have been supporters. Perhaps it is coming as a surprise to the Environmentalists that most of the USA is more Centrist than Leftist. A majority of the Country view themselves as rejected by the Environmental movement, and thus in opposition to many Environmental principles.
I believe this action by the Environmentalists is a serious breach of good practice, and has deeply harmed the Environmental movement. We would all be miles ahead if they had embraced everyone, instead of taking an extreme political position all those years ago.
George CPG
Another academic that suffers from the Dunning–Kruger effect. There are no “economic benefits” to the unreliable “clean power”.
The law of unintended consequences, you would think people (environmentalists) would learn.
Partly because of the never ending quest, at any cost, for ever lower levels of pollutants, the west has transferred much of our manufacturing to China.
Since China’s energy comes mostly from dirty coal plants, the unintended consequence is much lower energy efficiency, and much more CO2 and pollution, not to mention massive loss of jobs in the west.
In other words, we transferred the problem to someone else and thereby made it considerably worse on a global perspective.
If the Keystone XL pipeline is not built in the US, the Canadian company will simply simply build one using Chinese money and sell the oil to them instead. The end result is to simply make the US more dependent on foreign oil.
I’ll agree to any new industry that can productively and efficiently make a new or existing product in an environmentally friendly manner. If the improvement is significant, I might even be willing to consider paying a premium for such a product.
This can work both ways, my friend.