ARGUMENT: MISGUIDED ACTIVISTSWhat Many Progressives Misunderstand About Fighting Climate Change
We have gotten used to thinking that fighting for the environment must mean fighting against corporations. Indeed, some environmental activists openly say that the energy transition is an opportunity to remake society and usher in a new social order. Alec Stapp writes that such ideas “raise a question: What is the real goal here—stopping climate change or abolishing capitalism?” He adds: “In reality, the false solution to climate change isn’t geoengineering or nuclear energy—it’s the belief that we can decarbonize the economy only by upending our economic system, categorically rejecting certain technologies, and spurning private investment.”
We have gotten used to thinking that fighting for the environment must mean fighting against corporations. To curb pollution, activists have worked to thwart new oil drilling, coal-fired power plants, fracking for natural gas, and fuel pipelines.
Alec Stapp writes in The Atlantic that today, Americans face a climate challenge that can’t be solved by just saying no again and again. He adds:
Decarbonizing the economy will require an unprecedented amount of new energy investment. Fossil-fuel infrastructure built over centuries needs to be replaced within the next few decades by clean-energy alternatives. The United States will need to build hundreds of thousands of square miles of wind and solar farms; deploy enough battery storage to keep power flowing through the grid even on calm, cloudy days; and at least double the country’s transmission-line capacity. And the same laws that environmental groups leveraged in the past to block or delay fossil-fuel projects are now being exploited by NIMBYs in ways that, however well intended, will slow the country’s transition to clean energy. Windmills off Cape Cod, a geothermal facility in Nevada, and what could have been the largest solar farm in America have all been blocked by an endless series of environmental reviews and lawsuits.
He notes that the good news is that, with reasonable reforms, “the energy transition is fully within reach. Private investment in clean-energy technology is skyrocketing, and even Big Oil is starting to realize there is no future in fossil fuels.”
But for some environmental activists this may not be enough.
Jamie Henn, an environmental activist and the director of Fossil Free Media, recently told Rolling Stone, “Look, I want to get carbon out of the atmosphere, but this is such an opportunity to remake our society. But if we just perpetuate the same harms in a clean-energy economy, and it’s just a world of Exxons and Elon Musks—oh, man, what a nightmare.” Many progressive commentators similarly believe that countering climate change requires a fundamental reordering of the West’s political and economic systems.
Stapp concludes:
Such comments raise a question: What is the real goal here—stopping climate change or abolishing capitalism? Taking climate change seriously as a global emergency requires an all-hands-on-deck attitude and a recognition that technological solutions (yes, often built and deployed by private firms) can deliver real progress on decarbonization before the proletariat has seized the means of production. A massive infusion of private investment, made not for charity but in the anticipation of future profits, is precisely what’s needed to accelerate the clean-energy transition—which, like all revolutions, will yield unpredictable results.
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….we cannot succeed in the fight against global warming without giving many alternatives to the status quo an opportunity to evolve and prove themselves. In reality, the false solution to climate change isn’t geoengineering or nuclear energy—it’s the belief that we can decarbonize the economy only by upending our economic system, categorically rejecting certain technologies, and spurning private investment.
