Saturday, October 26, 2019

Today's Radical Green Movement Demands Submission To An Elite Governing Class

Draconian climate austerity does not threaten the jobs of the so-called "Clean rich," who may benefit as investors in solar and wind energy, the trading of carbon offsets, and other activities of the "Climate industrial complex." Some old-style leftists, like British Marxist historian James Heartfield, see the emergence of "Green capitalism" as a new ruse for the upper classes to suppress the lower by creating artificial scarcity in everything from energy to housing and food.

For most families, the policies of climate radicals promise only a degraded quality of life, including calls for restrictions on having children due to their "Carbon legacy," a proposal endorsed by climate researchers at Lund University in Sweden and Oregon State University.

Climate scientist Roger Pielke's 2010 notion of "The iron law of climate policy"-that support for reducing greenhouse emissions is limited by the amount of sacrifice demanded-determines people's willingness to cut back on their carbon output.

"People will pay some amount for climate goals," he suggests "But only so much." At a cost of $80 a year per household, he suggested, most people, polls found, would support climate measures-but raise it to $770 annually, and support drops below 10 percent.

Social Democrat Wolfgang Thierse, former president of the German Bundestag, recently told Die Welt that green militants display an "Anti-democratic affection." A German television reporter covering climate protesters described a movement dismissive of "Our understanding of freedom and responsibility" that "Borders on a collective psychosis, paired with wild fear and demands. Ever shriller, ever louder, ever faster."

Today's aggressive green policies have little chance of making an impact on the climate.

Even if the U.S. adopted the Green New Deal, the impact on climate, note some recent studies, would be almost infinitesimal.

https://www.city-journal.org/radical-green-movement

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