Environmental Activism and their Ideological Crusade
How to Kill a Good Cause
The unhinged nature of climate change protesters is a well-known, documented fact. From throwing soup at the Mona Lisa to gluing themselves to roads, environmentalists sure do know how to make headlines. It is, as Greta Thunberg says, “We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.” This justification allows climate protesters to commit unhinged acts that disrupt life for everyday citizens in the name of a climate emergency. The key question for the activists is whether their activism is effective in spreading the message and changing minds. And all available evidence tells us the opposite. In this new era of disruption, climate sympathy is experiencing a sharp divide, a divide that could see support for reasonable climate action drop.
Early environmental activism emerged as a progeny of 60s radicals and hippies. In the 1960s, being an “environmentalist” meant being a conservationist. It meant advocacy for the environment through pragmatic environmental policy. While environmentalism has always had its roots in the radical left of the 60s, its tendency to posit a non-ideological stance meant it received broad support among politicians and the populace alike. In New Zealand, the center-right National Party passed the Clean Air Act 1972 and the Marine Reserves Act 1971. In the United States, Nixon set up the Environmental Protection Agency and passed the Clean Air Act in 1970. Both these parties were center-right, but both were environmentalists and chose to act. This bipartisanship was key to the early success, which resulted in actionable policy from both the left and right. So what happened? How did this movement change from a big-tent activist movement to being a hyper-ideological one? The answer is in the panic around climate change.
In the 1970s, there was increased concern in the scientific community about the state of the Earth and global warming. While there were debates on questions of global warming and global cooling. By the 1970s, the vast majority of peer-reviewed literature saw global warming as the bigger (and more likely) problem. Here, the environmental movement latched on to this fact and began to shift gears from successful conservationist and anti-pollution efforts towards climate-change.
The phrase ‘global warming’ was popularised by the scientist Wallace Smith Broecker. In 1975, Broecker introduced the idea that global warming would likely take place in the next few decades, given that the “present cooling trend” would “give way”. Among scientific circles, Broecker’s study was seriously considered by the scientific community. However, among the now-forming climate change movement, they set alight to a moral crusade that would come to use science as a buzzword to cover for ideology.
With the advent of neoliberalism in the 80s, it became clear how climate change would slowly become a political issue. For those on the left and right, neoliberalism opened the floodgates to criticism around “corporate interests” and “profit over people” concerns with those in the environmental movement. Indeed, lobbying and profit have been a big part of why we might not see harsher measures around climate change, but this is not the full story. Capitalism has helped save the environment many times over. Through innovation and technology, capitalism has built clean energy and helped switch to cleaner products.
For example, through scarcity and innovation, capitalism has saved whales twice over! In the 1860s, whale oil was widely used as a source of fuel. This was until kerosene, a petroleum-sourced fuel, was discovered as a better and cheaper alternative. Due to the nearly extinct whale population, whales were saved by the innovation under capitalist systems, allowing them to live.
While this is true, some might say that under a profit-driven system, there would be no whaling whatsoever, but that would be to deny reality. The Soviet Union is a prime example of mass whaling. Clapham and Ivashchenko (2009) reported:
“This flagrant disregard for international agreement, and for the declining status of Antarctic whale stocks, was no renegade act of piracy by the commanders of the fleets concerned. The illegal catches of that whaling season were simply the latest in a carefully planned official strategy that had been implemented almost 20 years before… Over the years, the Soviets had reported taking 2,710 humpback whales in the waters of the Southern Hemisphere. The real total was more than 48,000.”
Whaling is a clear example of how innovation and a capitalist economic system can help in moving away from destructive environmental practices. With the 80s rhetoric switched towards the ire of “capitalism”, environmentalists have inadvertently harmed the environment they swore to protect. By ignoring the systems that solved environmental problems in the past, they have helped in stifling innovation in technology that can help us in the future.
Coming into the 90s, climate change protestors made it a question of “either/or”. Either we have a capitalist system, or we destroy the environment. This marked a radical shift for activism; no longer was it a question of “What’s good for the environment?” but instead a question of ideology. Movements like the social greens hijacked such movements by translating Marxist critical theory to environmental issues. What would follow would be an environmental activist movement that would push the moderates, leaving it with a radical sect to lead it to destruction.
Today, the climate change problem is deeply politicised and polarised. Having what began as a cause uniting people from all backgrounds for clean air, energy, and environmental protection, it eventually evolved into a movement that, in reality, did not prioritize the planet’s best interests. With the shift brought on by neoliberal capitalism, environmentalists came to believe that the market could not possibly be the solution to the environment.
But such an assertion is not true; indeed, market-based solutions are the most effective in combating climate change. One study found that “price-based instruments in well-designed policy mixes” were the most effective (Stechemesser et al., 2024). The authors found that carbon taxes, emissions trading systems, and reforms to fossil fuel subsidies are critical in climate action. Another study showed that “Introducing a carbon price has yielded immediate and substantial emission reductions… despite the low level of prices in most instances” (Döbbeling‑Hildebrandt et al., 2024). The irony of this all is sad. By rejecting capitalism as the original sin of humans to the environment, many environmentalists reject one of the key solutions that is our only way out of the problem. Not only does carbon capitalism work, but more importantly, it has brought us the innovation that will take humanity out of this mess. Capitalism, time and time again, has saved the environment. It is, as Karl Marx said, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” Today’s environmental activists are a farce.
Self-righteous soup-throwing activists have done little to help the climate change movement. While their concerns about nature and the environment are certainly issues to take seriously, climate activists have ended up harming their movement by turning it into an ideological crusade. By rejecting one of the only ways to solve their environmental problems, they leave it to “big government,” which has done nothing but harm the environment, as seen with the Soviet Union. What we should be advocating for is realism, to recognise the issue, but to also advocate for realistic solutions. When we look at “what is the most effective”, we should be willing to accept the fact that the dispersed knowledge of the market holds the answers, not the genius of our overlord politicians.
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