Video - Naomi Klein on the climate change deniers.
Something very different is going on on the right, and I think we need to understand what that is. Why is climate change seen as such a threat? I don't believe it's an unreasonable fear. It's unreasonable to believe that scientists are making up the science. They're not. It's not a hoax. But actually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. So, in fact, if you really wrestle with the implications of the science and what real climate action would mean, here's just a few examples what it would mean.
Upending the whole free trade agenda. Because we will have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. This has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade and it will have to be reversed.
Dealing with inequality. Because this is a crisis that was created in the North but whose effects are being felt in the South. "You broke it, you bought it," policies in which the polluter pay involve a global redistribution of wealth, which is in stark opposition to rightwing conservative parasitism and greed.
Regulating corporations. Any serious climate action will necessitate economic interventions. Carbon tax and subsidies for renewable energy are in stark contradistinction to the rightwing conservative parasitic corporatist way of life.
A strong United Nations. Individual countries can't do this alone. A new and strengthened international architecture of governance is vigorously opposed by the parasitic rightwing conservative.
Climate science challenges everything that the parasitic rightwing conservative believes in. So they pretend to disbelieve it, because it's easier to deny the science than to say, "OK, I accept that my whole worldview is going to fall apart," that we have to have massive investments in public infrastructure, that we have to reverse free trade deals, that we have to have huge transfers of wealth from the North to the South. Imagine actually contending with that?
It's a lot easier to deny it and to demonize it. The Big Lie is well established. Medieval.
Klein goes on to say that a lot of the major green groups are in a "kind of denial" as well; in that they don't want to confront the fact that this is not simply a technical issue, but is instead a deeply political and economic issue.
Upending the whole free trade agenda. Because we will have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. This has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade and it will have to be reversed.
Dealing with inequality. Because this is a crisis that was created in the North but whose effects are being felt in the South. "You broke it, you bought it," policies in which the polluter pay involve a global redistribution of wealth, which is in stark opposition to rightwing conservative parasitism and greed.
Regulating corporations. Any serious climate action will necessitate economic interventions. Carbon tax and subsidies for renewable energy are in stark contradistinction to the rightwing conservative parasitic corporatist way of life.
A strong United Nations. Individual countries can't do this alone. A new and strengthened international architecture of governance is vigorously opposed by the parasitic rightwing conservative.
Climate science challenges everything that the parasitic rightwing conservative believes in. So they pretend to disbelieve it, because it's easier to deny the science than to say, "OK, I accept that my whole worldview is going to fall apart," that we have to have massive investments in public infrastructure, that we have to reverse free trade deals, that we have to have huge transfers of wealth from the North to the South. Imagine actually contending with that?
It's a lot easier to deny it and to demonize it. The Big Lie is well established. Medieval.
Klein goes on to say that a lot of the major green groups are in a "kind of denial" as well; in that they don't want to confront the fact that this is not simply a technical issue, but is instead a deeply political and economic issue.
