I support raising the gas tax, introducing a plastic tax, and challenging China’s destruction of Earth’s oceans. But I share in conservative skepticism that climate change activists often have ulterior motives in seeking carbon emission reductions.
These activists actually see carbon emission reductions as a means to greater goal, which isn’t really about the environment. They want to dismantle capitalism and replace it with socialism. We gained new evidence for that skepticism on Wednesday.
BBC News reported on an exciting new effort to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As the BBC notes, “British Columbia-based Carbon Engineering has shown that it can extract CO2 in a cost-effective way. It has now been boosted by $68 million in new investment from Chevron, Occidental and coal giant BHP.”
Good news, right?
Whatever our views on the role and impact of man-made climate change, surely we can all get behind an effort to remove carbon from our atmosphere in a efficient manner that doesn’t damage the economy?
Not so for some climate change activists. The BBC notes that climate activists aren’t very happy about the new carbon reduction system. Enter Tzeporah Berman of the Stand.earth organization. She says the new system is “a huge concern,” because “we need to be working together to figure out how we move away completely from fossil fuel — that’s our moral and economic challenge …”
Seconding Berman is climate change activist Shakti Ramkumar, who describes “a real danger that people will see this technology as a magic bullet and not cut back their carbon … we have a moral responsibility to reduce our consumption on a large scale. We need to reflect deeply on how we live our lives and whether everyone can have access to the things we have, and fairness, so we can all live a good life.”
Think on those words: “moral and economic challenge,” “reflect deeply how we live,” “fairness.”
These are the language markers of the socialist agenda. An agenda built on the idea that economic prosperity is evil unless subordinated to the state. And it must be noted here that this socialist-environmentalism does not spring forth from the ether. It sits in a broader intellectual framework that ranges from explicit calls for economic de-growth to calls to constrain our pursuit of happiness. It’s an agenda of harm: in the policy action of climate change activism in the U.S., the impact has been felt most painfully by those least able to bear it.
Climate change activists need to face up to this.
They need to recognize that conservatives and independents aren’t going to put up with an effort to destroy capitalism. You know, that most moral socio-economic system in human history. But the activists also need some humility. Because it’s not just that their motivations are too often misguided. It’s that their actions are hypocritical. Consider, for example, how the European Union’s carbon reduction rhetoric diverges from reality. Or how Russia manipulates environmentalists to its agenda.
This is not a course that environmentalists should continue upon. It is costing them us, the conservative allies they need.
