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December 31, 2006
Why the greening of politics is a non- issue
Blogger, NEO editor and director at the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce Nicklas Lundblad (and acquientance of mine) writes about the greening of politics and how it will open up a new area for policy where the answers are not given.
The problem is that this is not a political issue today, and I will have to be more negative than him.
This is because of the phenomenon that economist Bruce Yandle called "Baptists and bootleggers", back in 1983. Yandle refers to the alliance inevitably struck between those who oppose some consensual activity for moralistic reasons and those who oppose it out of economic interest. Thus both the baptists and the bootleggers favored Prohibition- the Baptists because drinking is sinful and the bootleggers because legal booze cut into their profits.
This alliance is very much at hand in the environmental and climate change debates, the environmentalist movement gains momentum as its pessimism, support of central planning and anti-consumerism speak to both politicians and the literati class who keenly feels that many of its privilegies are being lost in the progress of the third internet revolution levelling the societal discourse's playing field, the substance of style described by Virginia Postrel is reducing the appeal of their conspicuous consumption. The moral support is hard entrenched, and taken as being the very definition of what constitutes green politics.
The greening industry sees subsidies from governments and the last chance to increase the costs of business of its international competitors, now not only in production but also in intellectual content (mass- unemployed of academics has often been discussed in conjunction to this). As environmental reporters often feel that "wow, now we finally got the establishment on our side", they will not report about greenwash and pork barrel spending. The net financial gains are hard entrenched.
Is there a way to even start the debate about the environment? Possibly, but there you need to even more work out the discussion about how academic ecology's new view of nature as a process works in conjunction with spontaneous order- like Kevin Kelly described in Out of Control. This will need a change in how the debate is made in most political circles, we see some signs, but in a political climate dominated by punk rock politics we still have a way to go. Then, the debate regarding the evironment Nicklas Lundblad calls for might start up and be successful.
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Posted by Waldemar at December 31, 2006 02:54 PM