Confining Green issues to the nation state is to miss the point. Credit: Carsten Koall / Getty
We have all become green during the Covid-19 lockdown, but will any more of us vote Green? Early indications suggest the reverse. Mainstream parties are back. Just when people thought that traditional politicians of centre Right and centre Left were done for, hollowed out, many of them have been rehabilitated thanks to the pandemic.
The big losers have been the populists, people who came to power on the basis of easy slogans, half-truths or untruths, and divisive pitches: Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Bombast and bluster only get you so far when tackling a virus. Contrast them with steady, sturdy Angela Merkel. Written off as past her sell-by date only a couple of months ago, the German Chancellor has seen her once-beleaguered Christian Democrats surging ahead.
The keyword is competence, and that gives rise to the question: does competence equal centrism? According to this theory, voters around the world flirted with democracy disrupters, but when confronted with a global crisis, they appear to be retreating to the comfort of the familiar.
The evidence points in this direction, but it is not conclusive. Germany is the clearest case. One recent poll suggests that Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, have climbed back up to a combined 40%, its highest for many years. If they maintain those kinds of numbers, they would romp home at the next election, due by September 2021, and dominate the next coalition.
For Merkel, whether or not she stands down as she has promised, that would mark an extraordinary turnaround and a vindication of her style of leadership. The far-right AfD is falling back sharply. The far-left Die Linke too.
What is most fascinating is the fate of the Greens. At the start of 2020 the Greens were being mooted as shoo-ins for the next government, possibly even leading it. Their two co-leaders, Robert Habeck and Annaleena Baerbock, were being mooted as the possible next chancellor. A job share, even? Habeck was eulogised in Foreign Policy magazine as Germany’s answer to Emmanuel Macron. Now this seems a fanciful notion — not because either has done anything wrong. Indeed, one might assume that the tide would be turning in their favour.
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SubscribeWhen ‘green’ is mentioned my thoughts are that it is the wealthy westerners who have all of the needs met that are the most radical and ideological about this, in reality you have to have all of your basic needs and wants fully met before you can consider the ‘luxury’ thoughts of the world, the climate and the impact of humanity. When you have worked for many years with families who struggle to put food on the table, keep themselves warm and struggle to have sufficient gas and electricity available to wash and dry their clothes then you have a vague idea why green thoughts are a luxury. When you come into contact with those from devastated countries that are fleeing war and famine then to me green thoughts are an insult to them
It seems that ideally the greens want us to reduce our standards of living back to the stone age.
I’m just always surprised that green movements rely on scaremongering and massive threats that are either too huge for most to get to grips with -‘the end of the world’ -or where the science is too complex and nebulous for most people to grasp.
I’m fully in favour of green projects which actually have a tangible benefit -who doesn’t want fresher air, flora (and perhaps fauna) on their street scenes, less noise pollution, cleaner waterways, lots of nicely appointed parks, less landfill, and as a matter of taste, I prefer my vegetables organic when I can afford it, and I don’t like things coated in unnecessary plastic. I don’t particularly enjoy the idea of animals suffering unnecessarily in the production of food either. These things I consider perfectly manageable, (with the exception perhaps of mass food production) and who knows what they may trigger.
The ‘organic’ vegetables you eat are treated with ‘organic’ pesticides which are more toxic than their conventional counterparts.
If we all went organic then the world would very rapidly run out of food as the area required to produce organic food is far larger than that for conventional production.
Organic is simply a Utopian dream that would see much of the developing world in a worse state than it’s already in, and a substantially higher proportion of western income devoted to just feeding ourselves.
Which is exactly why I wrote: “with the exception perhaps of mass food production”.
And as I wrote also -I prefer the taste of organically grown vegetables.
I’m not advocating it as any sort of environmental or global food supply solution.
Anyway, stop peeing on my (organic and utopian dream) chips!
Seems fair. I wasn’t having a go, and I entirely agree with your first paragraph.
The fact is, greens must make extraordinarily apocalyptic claims, because when you drill down into what they propose, it’s mostly hot air.
Yes -I was intending good humor in the response and not coruscation! And your point is quite correct.
I totally agree with this – but the narrative that’s being thrust upon the public by these groups as well as the impartial media is the wrong one. Everyone is now obsessed with the high level. Global matters peddled by institutions with an agenda. But in reality if every individual focused on their local matters (keeping streets clean, walking to school, consuming ethically) then the impact would be far greater.
And yet it is the world’s poor, followed by the poor of rich countries, who stand to be most acutely affected by anthropogenic climate change.
“anthropogenic climate change”
No one, in the course of human history has demonstrated by empirical, repeatable, scientific means that atmospheric CO2 causes the world to warm.
The last to attempt it, with $m’s in funding was Berkeley Earth and they failed.
It’s also becoming clear that the global shutdown has had no effect whatsoever on rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
I think I’ll take the word of the bulk of the world’s climatologists over that of some random punter on the Internet, ta.
Hopefully the science of the Climate Emergency will now receive the same sort of critical analysis as that for Covid19 seeing that not a single forecast has turned out remotely correct.
Relevant take on this point – http://coyoteblog.com/coyot…
Perhaps in part because as you move to the left and right thinking becomes more ideological. Part of competence is an ability to face the facts as one finds them and act accordingly. Strong ideological commitments lead to confirmation bias, distortion, cherry picking and even outright lies. Another way of looking at it is perhaps that more rigid minds naturally find their home at the extremes.
‘Centrism’ has its own set of ideological positions, to which adherents can be just as dogmatically devoted.
The dichotomy of the enlightened, objective, rational, pragmatic centrist versus the ideological, dogmatic, hopelessly biased extremist is totally bogus. It’s a self-serving myth, conjured up by pompous, conceited, sanctimonious, supercilious egotists who are unshakably convinced that they are oh so much more mature and oh so much smarter than everyone else, which is a surefire sign that they’re anything but.
“Local, in this case, does mean global. Confining Green issues to the nation state is to miss the point. International collaboration is the only sensible means of tackling the climate emergency ” just as a failure to coordinate the global response to Covid-19 exacerbated the problems the world is facing.”
There was a great quote a few weeks ago: “We may be in the same storm but we’re not in the same boat”
Worry and concern about the climate or a pandemic may transcend borders but taxes don’t.
The means to create tax, the responsibility to pay it and the decisions on how to spend it are all nationalistic – not global.
The economic destruction created by Covid has required the massive mortgaging of future taxes just to keep the lights on.
Recovery will certainly mean tax increases to claw some of that back and governments shouldn’t have too much of a problem selling the taxpayers on the need to do that but not if they’re also engaging in green vanity projects or massive third world wealth transfers.
I couldn’t get past your expression “the climate emergency”.
Climate is a concept used to teach schoolchildren about the varying weather patterns across continents.
There is no such thing as a single ‘climate’. It simplistically suggests that if humankind knocks every aeroplane out the sky, somehow that has an equal and even affect across planet earth.
If one simply considers the non linear, chaotic nature of the varying climates systems across the planet, for more than a nanosecond, it becomes obvious the concept borders on the certifiably insane.
And why on earth would you imagine that Tax increases would solve anything following Coronavirus?
Are you suggesting that we suppress every opportunity for growth by suppressing growth itself.
When all the left have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail to be taxed. It is their ‘solution’ to everything.
“climate emergency” wasn’t mine.
I copied and pasted that para from the article – hence the quotation marks.
Also – I’m not claiming that tax increases will solve anything.
I’m claiming that governments are way way overdrawn at the bank.
It seems obvious to me they will have to jack taxes to avoid the debt abyss.
Not saying I’m happy about it.
My point was they will likely be able to sell tax increases as a reasonable albeit unwelcome necessity because most people understand that mega-bucks have been handed out to avoid total economic collapse.
However, I’m betting that most people will not want to see those tax increases used for green dreams and follies.
And I was just explaining that there is no such thing as a global climate.
The National Debt is a financial instrument, every country has it (with the possible exception of N. Korea which considers starvation a financial commodity) so it’s almost inconsequential.
It may seem obvious to you that taxes must be “jacked”, but that only has the effect of slowing investment, reducing consumer spending (nor do I mean luxuries, but even the basics) and stifling growth.
The middle class (You? – and me) in the UK are already paying nearly 50% of their income in taxes. Even the moral implications of that are questionable, never mind hiking them up even more.
Personally, I think if it was presented in the right way to the public, the vast majority would understand how reducing tax, not just for big business but for the consumer, would stimulate growth and increase overall tax receipts to the Treasury.
The left would, of course, be apoplectic, for the very reasons I stated.
Worth a read – https://www.taxpayersallian…
More Virtue Signalling rubbish!.Everyone who disagrees with vulture Capitalists & Left &Right Globalists are @@Deniers” or ”Populists” Absolute @@@@@
The reason ‘Greens’ have declined & have 1 mp courtesy of Limp-dems(in UK) is because People have seen through the Hysteria. In 2008 The Greens in EU ‘Parliament” Agreed to Compete with USa on Ethanol,which is Usually made from sugar Cane,Sugar beet,Sorghum prompted Starvation especially in Africa and South America 2009 Food riots..the ”Greens” in UK cities & EU were saying Diesel was cleaner than petrol,it turns out,More Nitrous oxide is Produced!.by Diesel”
Derv”..The reason donald Trump is liable to be rel-elected are BLm riots & 3 deaths of people of colour,and biden’s ”Racism” You ain’t black if you vote Republican (Forgetting US greatest president Lincoln Was Republican, it was the Southern Democrats which wanted to keep @Slavery”..Michael Crichton ,the best selling Science Author ,wrote about Climate fraud in 2004 ”State of Fear” an excellent book, recently Left leaning documentaries &writings have Poured Scorn of ”The Green racket” Piers Corbyn & Michael Moore,who’s film ”Planet of the humans” is banned by Youtube!!
Very disappointed:
Populists – “easy slogans, half-truths or untruths,” – what is Boris Johnson supposed to have said ?
I hope Unherd doesn’t make a habit of such trash
I’m no more ‘green’ than I was before. I’ve recycled as much as I can for over 30 years. We don’t fly anywhere (as we can’t afford to go on holiday!) I shop local as much as possible – although I’ve had to buy more things from ‘that’ website out of necessity. I don’t even eat meat. However, I’d never in a billion years vote Green. They want to make everyones lives worse than they were.
Currently the strength of Unherd is that both mainstream and alternative views are available.
Alternative is fine
But rubbish like this article is not alternative
Well said.
‘When you have worked for many years with families who struggle to put
food on the table, keep themselves warm and struggle to have sufficient
gas and electricity available to wash and dry their clothes then you
have a vague idea why green thoughts are a luxury.’
This is a popular arguement. Except that the levels of poverty these people are living in would have been considered unimaginable luxury compared with the living conditions of their great grandparents and earlier. Their homes, the clothes they are wearing, the quantty of food they eat, even how their homes are heated, however they struggle to pay the bills. All these improvements have come to them from the exercise of the very processes that cause climate change. Clothing and food is cheaper, expectations of what is acceptable housing are all fuelled, quite literally, by industrial processes that consume hydrocarbons and raise the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
I am not expecting those on tight incomes to be buying organic food, or install heat pumps. But if, for example if they simply recycled their household waste meticulously. they are making a contribution.
It concerns me that so many of those who claim to help those who are poor and disadvantaged, seem to act in a way that ensures their client group stays hopeless and helpless. Life is hard enough for those struggling with poverty without finding that everyone who can help them is busy telling them how everything is stacked against them and suggesting thet they might as well give up now, because they will always be in poverty. Yes, the odds are stacked against them, but the way forward is to show them how they can circumvent problems and offer them some kind of hope. Learning, for example that they can play a part in a wider society by bunging glass containers in a bottle bank, is at least a start.
And you are a prime example of a blind ideologue.
Why do you imagine the Amazon rain forest is being chopped down?
From the mouth of a UN Senior Forester, my late Father in Law; because people are using the timber as fuel to heat their homes and cook their food because they are not allowed to mine for or use fossil fuels.
And after the loggers go in and clear the land, farmers follow and burn the cleared land before seeding crops or grazing cattle. But the soil is so nutrient deprived and thin that it has a useful life of around three years. Why only 3 years? Because they have little access to fertilisers and pesticides because these are produced largely from the efficient, clean burning of fossil fuels.
So, the more you people rail against the burning of fossil fuels, the faster the destruction of rain forest’s proceed.
“Thick acrid smoke rising from stoves and fires inside homes is associated with around 1.6 million deaths per year in developing countries ““ that’s one life lost every 20 seconds to the killer in the kitchen.” WHO – https://www.who.int/mediace…
A Western, suburban green Utopia is literally killing a person every 20 seconds because you won’t allow these people access to electricity produced from efficient, clean, CCGT processes.
But your concept of ‘Green’ is limited to a nice western city where we can all trot along to a bottle bank to ‘help the planet’.
What utter guff, these people don’t have bottles far less bottle banks!
The reality here is whether you believe in a market economy. If you do, internalising external costs (notably environmental impacts) in prices is fundamental to an efficient global economy. This is widely accepted across the political spectrum but not by radical greens, who want to destroy the market economy, nor the extreme right, who want a version of capitalism that denies the overwhelming evidence of modern science. The science was settled decades ago it is only the economics – and the politics behind it – that lags behind, driven by this extraordinary alliance of mutually incompatible political movements.
The settled science – Hah!
I’ll repeat what I posted above for your benefit.
No one, in the course of human history has demonstrated by empirical, repeatable, scientific means that atmospheric CO2 causes the world to warm.
The last to attempt it, with $m’s in funding was Berkeley Earth and they failed.
It’s also becoming clear that the global shutdown has had no effect whatsoever on rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
Have a look at Bungling Boris’s policies and the BLM demos and then just throw your article in the bin
Whilst many might agree with the broad aims of the Green party in terms of their environmental policies, no one should kid themselves that the Greens are anything but a fringe, protest vote. In the UK, the Greens barely qualify as a pressure group, let alone a credible political party.
The closer a party gets to being credible the more they have to actually consider what their policies might cost or what the consequences might be if they were enacted.
Ms Lucas knows she doesn’t stand a vegan’s chance at an arm-wrestling contest of ever getting into any kind of power and so is free to spout a load of righteous-sounding , though essentially meaningless, slogans and rhetoric that she will never actually have to deliver on. Her support for the XR carnival of self-indulgence perfectly fits in that bracket.
The Green’s record in Brighton – the one place where they’ve had a sniff of control -has been a disaster. All gimmick and no substance ““ why? – because they never think through a policy beyond imagining it will sound good to a group of like-minded vegangelists at one of their interminable meetings.
Thus in Brighton the Greens introduced ‘meat-free Monday’ throughout the council’s eateries, but had to back down when the bin men demanded bacon butties or wouldn’t work.
Gender-neutral lavatories went the same way when regular folk refused to pander to such nonsense.
They tried to run a local referendum to see if residents would be prepared to accept a nearly 5% tax increase. Again the idea was shelved once it was pointed out – by rather more practical souls ““ that A) of course the people would vote No, and B) that the cost of running the referendum, at £900,000, was almost as much as they were hoping to raise from the tax hike anyway.
As ever, it is all rhetoric and slogan with them. They were proud to announce several years ago that Brighton residents could face a £50,000 fine if they failed to sort out their recycling and put a rogue piece of plastic in the wrong bin. Strong stuff. But it was so overblown that most residents stuck two fingers up and completely ignored the threat.
Brighton ““ the “Greenest” city in the UK was ranked 302nd out of 326 councils for its recycling record.
A few years ago the Green’s total mismanagement of the rubbish collection ““ a central plank in their policy platform ““ got so bad that bin men went on strike. The collections were being changed so often that neither residents nor collectors knew what was happening. As a result no one recycled and the rubbish piled up in the streets. Benefitting only the seagulls, who became a menace.
Given the number of unreconstructed Trots who are attracted to Green Party politics, (which seem frankly Soviet in nature once you peel back the eco fig-leaf) many of their own people went out on strike in support of the bin men and against their own policy positions.
They are a joke.
Brighton used to be a solidly Conservative voting city but since the influx of a particular sub-set of fashionable ex-Londoners it has become Hoxton on Sea. With some Green activists taking a leaf out of the Momentum handbook of party unity.
If these people actually cared about the environment ““ rather than simply virtue signalling – then they’d join forces with Starmer’s Labour and work towards a Zero Corbyn future.
“The pandemic is not as some say ‘nature’s reset’.Such thinking easily slips into the misanthropy that can lead environmentalists to see people themselves as the problem.”
I don’t think one has to be a misanthropist to think that humans are the problem i.e. too many of us, especially too many of us in developed economies that consume as if we have the resources of many planets. As people in developing countries aspire to consume as we do we humans are likely to become more of a problem.
The Michael Moore film has been widely criticised as pushing extremely selective and largely out-dated information and footage, while implying that it is current and relevant to 2020. e.g. much of the solar/wind stuff on there was taken from the late 00’s to around 2012, when the technology was very different to what it is today both in its cost of production (financially and environmentally) and in it’s efficiency (financially and in terms of the energy produced by the technology vs the energy needed to make the technology). I haven’t seen much critique of the biomass segments so can’t speak for those, but the solar/wind focus of that documentary should not form the basis of any argument against the use of such technology today.
The fact that Monbiot and his bunch of loony green cronies have forced Moore’s movie underground says everything.
Were the movie reliant on outdated concepts, then why do the greens imagine Al Gore’s comedy of errors is still relevant?
Because it fits their biased narrative. The same reason anyone stays rooted to an argument, in spite of its flaws, when they aren’t interested in changing their mind or admitting that they might be wrong.
My criticism was with the outdated information as it pertained to solar/wind energy. I’m with you on the Al Gore stuff from what I’ve seen.
There really is nothing outdated in the claims around wind or solar power in Moore’s documentary. The fact is, wind is an extraordinarily low yield medium.
Wind turbines have almost reached their theoretical maximum output and operate at between 30% and 50% of their nameplate rating. So when you see a claim for xGigawats of wind power being installed, you can immediately use a third of that number as a real contribution to the grid because the owners/BBC etc. routinely use nameplate output.
As for the rest, I’ll refer you to two Arithmetically derived conclusions on the value of renewables in general.
https://www.ted.com/talks/d…
and
http://www.rationaloptimist…
As I mentioned in the comment above to T Hopp, I’m not advocating for the complete reliance of wind/solar and for the abolition of fossil fuels etc. If wind/solar results in net clean energy and fossil fuels are net dirty, surely increasing the former so that the latter can be reduced somewhat is the right way to go?
That is basically the premise I’m working from for my stance on the subject. The documentary showed wind, solar (and biomass) to be net dirty disguised as 100% clean. As far as I’m concerned, that was disingenuous and misleading since it based much of its arguments on footage and information from 8+ years ago. Although wind/solar are probably not the unicorns (i.e. by no means 100% clean) that activists hold them up as being, I still think they are net clean rather than net dirty so surely that’s an avenue worth pursuing and developing?
Assuming you actually read Ridley’s article, the Arithmetic is fairly straightforward. Wind may appear ‘clean’ until one considers the vast use of materials required to construct and site them.
But the argument is always that they produce ‘free’ energy for 25 years. Well, no they don’t. And I’ll refer you back to my earlier comment for details.
Dong was recently forced to decommission a North Sea wind farm after only 12 years of use. So the argument continues, that new turbines are better and will last 25 years, but that’s what Dong told everyone 12 years ago.
One of the most vulnerable parts of turbines are the bearings. They are constantly operating on the margins of failure. To beef them up sees a substantial increase in friction and a dramatic efficiency loss. Expect to see many more failures in the coming years. They just won’t be reported by the MSM nor mentioned by governments or owners.
Meanwhile, no one in the course of human history has demonstrated by empirical, repeatable, scientific means that atmospheric CO2 causes the planet to warm. The last to try was Berkeley Earth in 2015, and they also failed.
To answer your questions in the first paragraph in order: 1) Yes. 2) Solar/wind is different now from what was shown in the doc, yes. 3) No. 4) No.
And yes, I’ve seen the doc.
The deception was stunning. The hypocrisy with biomass in particular was alarming. My criticism of your original comment was that you pointed to the doc as evidence of “falsehoods with “green” technology”. Your highlighting of the word “green” suggested to me that you believe that the technology is not, in fact, green. While I don’t disagree with you in reference to biomass as well as the production of solar/wind as it was 8+ years ago, I was saying that this is no longer the case and that the doc has been widely criticised for implying that it is by using out-dated information/footage to fit its narrative. I agree that deception or the practices of money-hungry people are a corrupting factor (for many things) and that they should be highlighted and stopped where needed. I disagree that the doc is reason to dismiss solar/wind as you appear to have done. My argument is purely for the technology, not for the deception and greed that might come along with it. You can argue for one while standing against the other.
I had no intention of bullying (or convincing) you to change your mind about this article so I apologise if that’s how it came across. That’s not how it was intended. I can’t tell you the motives or intention behind the author of the article so we can leave that to the imagination. My argument was purely focused on countering your reference of the documentary as a source of evidence against the viability/reliability of wind and solar. I’m not an activist of any sort and don’t really have a dog in this fight. I watched the doc and, like you, was horrified to learn the levels of corruption and deception that appeared to be behind the cheery planet-saving message pushed alongside renewable energy. I then came across some of the criticisms of the doc, some of which I’ve outlined in these comments, which made me re-consider some things. As I said, the information pertaining to wind/solar in the doc is outdated. That’s not to say that I therefore advocate the abolition of any other energy source than wind/solar and that we then should (or could) switch completely to wind/solar. I don’t. I don’t know enough to make a claim like that. However, I think they certainly have their place and are a technology that should not be forgotten, because they are net cleaner than what we currently use, and if that allows us to cut down the use of those net “dirty” (for lack of a better word) alternatives, then surely that’s a good thing.
I’m no expert on the subject and don’t have reams of the science at my fingertips (and don’t have the will or the time to spend digging it out). The following link is to a good read that counters the documentary, written by someone with more knowledge than me in the field of renewables. That’s not to say that it’s all accurate or free from its own bias but it lays out some counter arguments to the doc along with references to back up the points. https://ketanjoshi.co/2020/…