Environmentalism and the Left

(Readers: sorry for the absence - jury duty and paper-writing got in the way)

Climate-Resistance has a nice post on the difference between the left and environmentalism, or at least, on why criticism of environmentalism is not inherently conservative. (Shameless self-promotion, they also quote an article I wrote.) The question of whether environmentalism is conservative or radical is I think one of the most important questions for us to think about these days. Environmentalism is the dominant ideology on the left, but it crosses political boundaries with ease, and draws as much of its thinking from the status quo as from any challenge to it. It's not just that mainstream institutions like the Nobel Prize committee and the United Nations have celebrated its ideas. It is also the embrace of its ideas by downright conservative politicians, like John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in the United States. Both the rapidity with which environmentalism was accepted by the mainstream (essentially one generation), and the ease with which it crosses traditional divides, contrasts strongly with left wing thinking of the past. Socialists, for instance, had to struggle for decades even to win small victories and to spread their ideas; and they were never accepted on the right. A thorough-going critique of environmental ideas from the standpoint of left political thinking is still wanting, but Climate-Resistance is right to emphasize the point that "the Left is not characterised by opposition to economic growth; its goal has been to distribute its riches more rationally amongst those who actually generate capital, rather than just those who simply own it."