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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled Season fourteen. Obstruction. In

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Speaker 1: our Carbon Brose season, we talked about one way that

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Speaker 1: climate obstruction intersects with the far right, the rigid enforcement

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Speaker 1: of gender norms and the feminizing of a politics of care,

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Speaker 1: care for the environment and for each other. Today we're

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Speaker 1: digging into the history of far right approaches to the

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Speaker 1: environment in general and how that history informs how right

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Speaker 1: wing campaigners in the US and beyond approach climate issues.

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Speaker 1: Today I'm joined in the first half of the show

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Speaker 1: by Jesse Bryant, a researcher at Yale University who studies

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Speaker 1: far right conceptions of nature, and in the second half

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Speaker 1: by Dieter Plowe, a lecturer at University Kessel in Germany

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Speaker 1: who studies the intersection of far right politics and environmental

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Speaker 1: issues in Europe. I found both conversations absolutely fascinating and

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Speaker 1: really helpful for understanding the content we're dealing with in

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Speaker 1: many parts of the world at the moment. I hope

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Speaker 1: you find them helpful to Here we go.

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Speaker 2: My name is Jesse Callahan Bryant. I am a doctoral

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Speaker 2: candidate at the Yale School of the Environment.

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Speaker 1: One of the first questions I wanted to ask is

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Speaker 1: to have you explain the difference between conservatism and far

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Speaker 1: right culture.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I can try my best, you know, I will

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Speaker 2: say that this is like a distinction that even in

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Speaker 2: the broader literature, I think is a tough distinction to make.

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Speaker 2: I think, you know. The way that I think about it, though,

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Speaker 2: first is that both categories need to be situated geographically

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Speaker 2: and historically. The conservatism and the far right I think

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Speaker 2: are useful categories, but they mean really different things in

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Speaker 2: the United States, as they do in Europe, as they

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Speaker 2: do in China, as they do in India, and so

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Speaker 2: I think the first thing is when we're talking about

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Speaker 2: these categories is to be pretty culturally specific, because what

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Speaker 2: matters to I think conservatism is a commitment to the

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Speaker 2: status quo in many ways. In the United States context,

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Speaker 2: I think there are many ways in which the center left,

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Speaker 2: mainstream Democrats even quite conservative. Actually, if you sort of

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Speaker 2: step back and let our partisan identifications and identities dissolve

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Speaker 2: a little bit, you know, there are a lot of

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Speaker 2: ways in which Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton especially

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Speaker 2: are were deeply conservative figures and are sort of oriented

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Speaker 2: towards upholding, you know, whatever social order exists now. So

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Speaker 2: that's how I sort of think about conservatism. You know,

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Speaker 2: there are touchstones in this sort of ideological canon. Edmund

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Speaker 2: Burke is often pointed to as a figure. It's important

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Speaker 2: to conservatism, a sort of sincere conservatism, that's you know, slow,

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Speaker 2: slow change tradition, sort of humble politics. And I think

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Speaker 2: when you think about the far right or radical right

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Speaker 2: or extreme right, I think the first thing that comes

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Speaker 2: to mind in contrast to conservatism, which is the politics

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Speaker 2: of stasis, is just the politics of change. And when

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Speaker 2: we think about something like the second Trump administration, well

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Speaker 2: the first as well, but what the MAGA movement has become.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it is a politics of change. There are

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Speaker 2: a lot of things that they would like to change.

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Speaker 2: And the question, you know, in distinguishing between conservative and

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Speaker 2: far right is is just like, okay, are these people

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Speaker 2: looking to switch the social order in some way? If so,

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Speaker 2: then they might be far right. And then the question

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Speaker 2: is are they on the right? And it's sort of like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: they seem to be on the right. So I think

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Speaker 2: it's totally fair to call the current MAGA coalition a

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Speaker 2: far right movement. And another good example I think is,

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Speaker 2: you know what I think people often refer to as

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Speaker 2: fascism in early twentieth century Europe. Nazism is different. But

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Speaker 2: like Nazism itself was a very in some ways progressive

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Speaker 2: movement at the time. It was towards It was change oriented.

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Speaker 2: It was about a new vision for the social order,

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Speaker 2: as was Mussolini's fascism in Italy. And so if you're

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Speaker 2: dealing with the politics of change, for me, at least,

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Speaker 2: I will say, people will disagree with this. You're not

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Speaker 2: dealing with conservatism. You're dealing with something else. That something

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Speaker 2: else could be a lot of things. It could be

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Speaker 2: far right, it could be far left, it could be

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Speaker 2: some other thing. Right rightis versus change. That's so helpful.

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Speaker 2: This is infinitely fascinating for me, and also complicated because

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Speaker 2: because right now, if you look at the Maga Coalition,

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Speaker 2: you can say, yeah, it is a politics of change,

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Speaker 2: for sure, But when you think about the kinds of

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Speaker 2: change at play for me, there are two really distinct,

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Speaker 2: almost like imaginaries at play. There's, on one hand, an

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Speaker 2: imaginary that is much more related to a Nazi imaginary,

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Speaker 2: which is this nostalgic, a sort of conservative nostalgic revolution.

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Speaker 2: So there's a part of the MAGA Coalition I think

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Speaker 2: imagines this sort of like you know, the American chestnut

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Speaker 2: will return, and like the nuclear family will return. And

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Speaker 2: then of course there is the totally unrelated winds of

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Speaker 2: change that are extremely future oriented, in the form of

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Speaker 2: Elon Musk wanting to build a new society on Mars

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Speaker 2: and Peter Teel and the rest of the tech bros

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Speaker 2: trying to imagine you know, new forms of technologically driven

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Speaker 2: futuristic societies. Both of those are far right in right

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Speaker 2: sense that they are pro change and in my estimation

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Speaker 2: super pro hierarchy, super pro inequality. But they are different.

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Speaker 2: Once driven by nostalgia, it's a change of nostalgia, and

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Speaker 2: the other is driven by a change of sort of futurism.

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Speaker 2: And so within even sort of you know, there's conservatism,

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Speaker 2: which is sort of stasis. Within the far right, there

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Speaker 2: is a politics of change. But within that politics of

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Speaker 2: the far right, there is this really important cleavage right

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Speaker 2: now between the sort of politics of nostalgia and this

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Speaker 2: politics of futurism. And I think we see that play

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Speaker 2: out in the United States like literally every day.

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Speaker 1: Totally you know, related to the climate stuff too. I

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Speaker 1: was thinking about the Peter Teel kind of end of

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Speaker 1: the spectrum, this cyber libertarianism. And there's this group called

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Speaker 1: the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. I'm sure you've heard of them.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. There's so many of these groups, but

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Speaker 1: this one was like started a couple of years ago.

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Speaker 1: Jordan Peterson is nominally in charge of it, but it's

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Speaker 1: like funded by the people who funded Brexit, and it

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Speaker 1: includes like a bunch of right wing politicians from the US,

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Speaker 1: Canada and Australia, and then a ton of anti trans

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Speaker 1: people and then also climate skeptics. It's a really interesting crowd,

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Speaker 1: and a bunch of nationalists as well. The guy who

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Speaker 1: like used to be in Momford and Sons and then

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Speaker 1: left because he's like a far right guy. Now he's

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Speaker 1: in there.

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Speaker 2: He's not Marcus Mumford. Wait, what the hell?

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Speaker 1: It's so wild. I'm obsessed with this group because it's

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Speaker 1: such a random mix of people. And they made their

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Speaker 1: annual conference available for a streaming past this year, so

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Speaker 1: I bought one so I could tape all of it.

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Speaker 1: There's this guy, Eric Weinstein, who was the head of

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Speaker 1: Peter Thiel's venture capital firm for years and then they

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Speaker 1: had sort of a like falling out, but mostly because

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Speaker 1: Peter Teel's so weirdly sensitive about his public perception, even

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Speaker 1: though it's like everyone thinks you're a giant weirdo dude, Like.

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Speaker 2: He's so weird.

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Speaker 1: Jeanie's not going back in the bottle on that one. Litally, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but he's really sensitive about it. And some of the

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Speaker 1: sort of rowe podcast universe started to turn on Eric

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Speaker 1: Weinstein because he had a bizarre appearance on the Joe

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Speaker 1: Rogan podcast. Anyway, this guy Eric Weinstein gave this talk

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Speaker 1: at the ARC conference and it was so unhinged, but

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Speaker 1: it totally made sense in the world of these guys,

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Speaker 1: where he was just like, we can't share an atmosphere

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Speaker 1: with these people anymore.

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Speaker 3: You think you've been through the culture wars, which is

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Speaker 3: some sort of cute Internet conflict that seems really draining, exhausting. No, No,

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Speaker 3: this is actually something that has recently been termed hybrid war.

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Speaker 3: It's a two thousand and seven concept from Frank Hoffman,

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Speaker 3: and it says that in the current situation, non shooting

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Speaker 3: wars have no border and no end. Anything that can

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Speaker 3: come through the Internet means that there is no frontier.

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Speaker 2: We are all.

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Speaker 3: Combatants to the people who practice hybrid warfare. We can

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Speaker 3: all be manipulated from abroad, Tokyo roses, everywhere, cyber attacks, diplomacy,

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Speaker 3: psychological attacks, information warfare. The new culture war hypothesis is

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Speaker 3: that the culture war is domestic hybrid war. I've called

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Speaker 3: it the no Name Revolution since twenty seventeen.

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Speaker 2: Right now, where we.

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Speaker 3: Are is four light years from the nearest star. There

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Speaker 3: is no way to get to the speed of light

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Speaker 3: or even close. We are marooned in our solar system

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Speaker 3: with only two habitable rocks that aren't the Earth, and

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Speaker 3: that's with a lot of work. We cannot stay with

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Speaker 3: all of us on one planet, with one atmosphere, with

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Speaker 3: people this crazy and tools this powerful.

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Speaker 1: The thing that I find interesting about them from a

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Speaker 1: climate perspective is that they have almost the opposite opinion

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Speaker 1: as all the client deniers, where like they very much

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Speaker 1: believe that climate change is happening and they're freaked out

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Speaker 1: about it, and it's part of the drive to leave

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Speaker 1: the planet. Build bunkers, invest heavily in like AI twenty

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Speaker 1: four hour surveillance so they can deal with the uprisings

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Speaker 1: that are coming.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. I mean, it's it's for sure of

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Speaker 2: politics of escapism, and it's for sure a lifeboat politics,

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Speaker 2: and it's for sure never waste a good crisis sort

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Speaker 2: of situation for those guys I think, I mean, right, yeah, right,

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Speaker 2: Like Elon Musk, he's most famous for like renewable energy technologies,

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Speaker 2: you know, like what are we doing? Yeah, But the

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Speaker 2: way that they're reacting to that, of course, is that

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Speaker 2: they really just do believe themselves, like categorically in terms

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Speaker 2: of even onto logically just as a separate species of

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Speaker 2: human from the rest of us. I guess totally, yeah, totally, yeah,

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Speaker 2: they are totally fine generally with lee everybody behind. And

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Speaker 2: I'm not sure what else is the goal?

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: If if not that, like I don't understand why, for instance,

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Speaker 2: like if that is not true, Elon Musk isn't using

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Speaker 2: his fucking huge brain to create a really good healthcare

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Speaker 2: system or something else, because like it, I mean, to me,

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Speaker 2: it is just a rebirth of the turn of the

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Speaker 2: century super conservative and fucked up progressive politics from like

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Speaker 2: the late eighteen hundreds of this sort of like the

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Speaker 2: elite should rule everybody. We're going to like have a

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Speaker 2: sort of eugenics program and sterilize that dumb people and

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Speaker 2: then like the species will have a higher level of fitness.

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Speaker 2: And we're obsessed with IQ and like that's it, and

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Speaker 2: it's just that's what it is. The idea that there

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Speaker 2: is some there's some virtue attached to this dimension of

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Speaker 2: this of the fuck current far right movement or mega

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Speaker 2: coalition in the US is like absurd to me. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: I was just writing a paper. I'd say that I'm

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Speaker 2: writing a fucking blog post about this, but about a

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Speaker 2: transition in societies that has happened since the beginning of

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Speaker 2: Western civilization. I mean Aristotle was writing about exactly this,

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Speaker 2: you know, two thousand years ago, of the transition of

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Speaker 2: in any society, when the selection of elites shifts from

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Speaker 2: the virtuous to the wealthy. That is a degeneration that

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Speaker 2: happens in every society and it leads to the downfalls

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Speaker 2: of societies. And these people aren't virtuous, They just like

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Speaker 2: believe themselves to be better than everybody else. And it's

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Speaker 2: a function of wealth. And there's a lot I would

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Speaker 2: say logics within American culture, going back to social Darwinism

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Speaker 2: that sort of translate wealth into virtue and it's very sensible.

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Speaker 2: Like people love Elon Musk in the US. You know,

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Speaker 2: he's an extremely successful, popular celebrity. And if it were

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Speaker 2: true that in American culture we didn't think that wealth

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Speaker 2: meant to virtue, that he would not be popular because

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Speaker 2: there's nothing appealing about this person, right, Yeah, virtuous in

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Speaker 2: any sense of the term, even if he believes himself

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Speaker 2: to be part of like Western civilization in some meaningful way,

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Speaker 2: no figure of virtue in whatever you think of Western

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Speaker 2: civilization in the past. I would look at this guy

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Speaker 2: and be like, this is a virtuous person. He's just

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Speaker 2: a wealthy guy, yeah, who, like you know, to his credit,

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Speaker 2: does believe in climate change, does think it's a big thing,

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Speaker 2: but is using this crisis in order to escape his

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Speaker 2: responsibility along with the rest of sort of the right

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Speaker 2: wing elite I think today.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So I wanted to ask about the arguments

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Speaker 1: against climate action being made by religious and particularly Catholic

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Speaker 1: groups in the US. I don't know if that's something

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Speaker 1: that you can speak to.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think the question in the

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Speaker 2: US right now of Catholicism, I think is like super

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Speaker 2: under addressed currently. Yeah, Like in the US, you know,

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Speaker 2: a prototypically Protestant, individualistic, rugged individualism, bootstrapsy sort of country

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Speaker 2: that literally, like one hundred years ago was targeting Catholics

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Speaker 2: with terrorist groups like the KKK. And the first American

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Speaker 2: president who was Catholic, JFK, was assassinated, you know, and

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Speaker 2: Biden was the second Catholic president. And you know, we

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Speaker 2: have JD. Vance now who's very outward about his Catholicism.

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Speaker 1: He and Leonard Leo like in the background.

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Speaker 2: CEO huge amounts of dark money. Yeah, huge amounts of

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Speaker 2: dark money. And it's sort of unthinkable one hundred years

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Speaker 2: ago in the United States, and yet here we are

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Speaker 2: with Catholic power increasing in the United States. The first

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Speaker 2: American pope in Rome is like a massive deal in

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Speaker 2: the religious history of the United States. And so I'm

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Speaker 2: of two minds with the sort of Catholic orientation towards

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Speaker 2: climate change, in part because the last pope, I think

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Speaker 2: with led out to c and hosted huge climate conferences

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Speaker 2: at the Vatican, had a lot to say about climate change.

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Speaker 2: And I think right now it's not entirely clear what

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Speaker 2: direction that will go in. As power is changing in

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Speaker 2: Rome and conservative Catholic power is ascendant in the United States.

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Speaker 2: And you know, I actually spent the past like living

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Speaker 2: in Spain. I've become semi obsessed with Catholicism. Yeah, because isn't.

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Speaker 1: That really the origin of Opus day is from Spain?

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Speaker 1: Right Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh my god, Yeah totally. And there's a book

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Speaker 2: that was written kind of recently about the collapse of

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Speaker 2: Opista in Spain and the ascent of Opustay in the

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Speaker 2: United States. Right the recent sort of like dark money

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Speaker 2: Leonard Leo Catholic Information Center in DC sort of vibe.

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Speaker 2: The president of the Heritage Foundation right now is a

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Speaker 2: former president of Wyoming Catholic College. There's a lot there

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Speaker 2: that I think is actually pretty under addressed. I think

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Speaker 2: when it comes to climate change, I think the questions

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Speaker 2: become weirder or something because on the one hand, my

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Speaker 2: understanding especially the United States, but I think more globally,

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Speaker 2: alongside this rise of this concept of national conservatism, this

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Speaker 2: sort of drive towards national sovereignty and against global sovereignty.

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Speaker 2: But you know, that translates into everything from cynicism around

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Speaker 2: the UN to international aid, as we see with the

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Speaker 2: destruction of USAID. What's interesting about that is that from

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Speaker 2: like a more Protestant perspective that is fundamentally skeptical towards

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Speaker 2: massive structures of global power. You know. That was the

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Speaker 2: whole point of Protestantism, was the protest right, the global

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Speaker 2: over of the Catholic Church. Yeah, so like that makes

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Speaker 2: sense to me, this sort of isolationist, paleo conservative we

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Speaker 2: don't want to meddle in other people's shit, and we

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Speaker 2: don't want them to meddle in ours. That feels more

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Speaker 2: aligned with this traditional climate skepticism, which is just like,

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Speaker 2: screw the UN, screw cop Why are we paying for

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Speaker 2: on one hand climate adaptation in Peru and on the

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Speaker 2: other hand funding wars wherever? But now with the sort

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Speaker 2: of ascendant power of Catholicism in the US, which Catholicism

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Speaker 2: is a global concept. It is imperial, it does have

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Speaker 2: a global imagination. It is not against anything in particular,

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Speaker 2: you know, So it almost complicates the picture and makes

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Speaker 2: I think, especially in the United States, this is not

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Speaker 2: true in European countries. But like the rise of Catholicism

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Speaker 2: and isolationism in the US simultaneously, and how that manifests

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Speaker 2: both in politics in general but climate change in particular,

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Speaker 2: feels like a new turn, I guess, and one that

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Speaker 2: feels to me less coherent than the you know, more Protestant. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: screw the Catholic Church, screw any global solidarity. We're just

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Speaker 2: doing our own thing. I have my own relationship to God,

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Speaker 2: like I have my church. We believe whatever, you know.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, in general, I feel like the Protestant

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Speaker 1: focus on an individual relationship with God is sort of

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Speaker 1: a huge underpinning of hyperindividualism in the US in general,

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Speaker 1: which seems like such a huge problem amidst all the things. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: such an underpinning of so much of this stuff is

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Speaker 1: this idea that all that matters is like me and

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Speaker 1: my family in our direct relationship with God.

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Speaker 2: You know, and that maps on what's weird right now,

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Speaker 2: is that that maps onto our politics, you know, pretty well,

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Speaker 2: like Protestantism. Protestanism is the majority Christian religion in most

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Speaker 2: of Red America, and it's just the opposite in most

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Speaker 2: of Blue America. Catholicism is the majority form of Christianity

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Speaker 2: in the Northeast and the Midwest and parts of California,

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Speaker 2: and so alignment with certain kinds of power, certain imaginations

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Speaker 2: of global solidarity and capitalism, it sort of makes sense.

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Speaker 2: But to understand exactly how certain figures thread that needle,

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Speaker 2: like JD. Van So, I find absolutely fascinating. I think

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Speaker 2: if you read too much into the way that he

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Speaker 2: threads that needle, like a lot of people in the

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Speaker 2: sort of Trump orbit, like the logical falls apart, right,

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Speaker 2: it's not coherent.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, kind of relatedly, certainly, not unrelatedly. I wanted

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Speaker 1: to ask you about how and why climate got pulled

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Speaker 1: into great replacement theory. Oh yeah, what happened there?

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Speaker 2: I have a lot of thoughts, for sure. One of

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Speaker 2: my papers right now that I'm writing is about intra

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Speaker 2: Republican polarization on climate change, not between the parties but

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Speaker 2: within the parties over the past thirty years. And what

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Speaker 2: you see when you look at the right over the

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Speaker 2: past since climate change became a thing that was important

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Speaker 2: to people and controversial, is that from the beginning it's

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Speaker 2: a question of sovereignty. It's not a question of the science.

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Speaker 2: For the main distinction within the right, you know, not

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Speaker 2: between the right and left. You know that does have

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Speaker 2: these sort of anti science denial sort of things. But

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Speaker 2: the really salient, durable aspect of the climate question at

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Speaker 2: least in the United States and in Europe also increasingly

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Speaker 2: is a question of sovereignty. National sovereignty. It projects so

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Speaker 2: cleanly onto questions of the global versus the national in

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Speaker 2: ways that other things do not, and a lot of

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Speaker 2: those What I see in my research is that a

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Speaker 2: lot of those same policy frames, sort of like public

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Speaker 2: projections of the question that was really underlying a lot

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Speaker 2: of the right wing versus conservative discontent about climate change

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Speaker 2: for about twenty years, really translated itself into the immigration

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Speaker 2: question now in mega politics, which is to me, the

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Speaker 2: main policy problem in the imagination of the American right today.

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Speaker 2: It's really the thing that holds the whole coalition together.

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Speaker 2: If there was not an invasion on the southern border,

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Speaker 2: there would be no maga politics, do you know what

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Speaker 2: I mean? Like it's not there isn't any other policy imagination.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: So the way that I think about this is that

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Speaker 2: the question of national sovereignty is very important to right

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Speaker 2: wing politics globally and took American right wing politics today,

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Speaker 2: although it wasn't literally twenty years ago. Climate change sort

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Speaker 2: of like I think, was an almost laboratory for these

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Speaker 2: policy framings, sort of like how do you tie sovereignty

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Speaker 2: to policy questions. Throughout the nineties, this was true of

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Speaker 2: the paleocons, the paleo conservatives in the United States. It

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Speaker 2: kind of disappeared during Bush when we all did our

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Speaker 2: sort of flag waving nine to eleven stuff for a while,

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Speaker 2: emerged again with the Tea Party and really sort of

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Speaker 2: gain power in MAGA. And the role of the Great

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Speaker 2: Replacement theory in that politics is to suggest that there

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Speaker 2: is some elite cabal, vaguely Jewish but global, that is

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Speaker 2: causing this or is exerting agency in driving this loss

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Speaker 2: of national sovereignty, this poisoning at the southern border, this

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Speaker 2: dilution of whatever wasp Protestant thing that people imagine the

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Speaker 2: United States. It's to have been or to be, which is,

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Speaker 2: you know, only half true at any point in history.

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Speaker 2: But it's a way to translate the realities of a

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Speaker 2: global capitalist economy which necessarily just looks for cheap labor

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Speaker 2: and moves people around and tries to like, you know,

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Speaker 2: get the most for the cheapest possible thing, and that

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Speaker 2: means like importing a ton of cheap labor from wherever

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Speaker 2: the hell you want to. It translates that into a

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Speaker 2: more legible story for the average person to understand that

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Speaker 2: there is some person or people or cabal that is

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Speaker 2: intentionally doing this kind of thing as opposed to the

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Speaker 2: rights for me more true, which is just the sort

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Speaker 2: of diffuse agency of actors within a giant system of

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Speaker 2: capitalism that like, of course like brings you know, cheap

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Speaker 2: quasi enslaved brown people into the United States to do

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Speaker 2: cheap as whole point. So it makes a better story

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Speaker 2: out of a reality that's too complex really to tell

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Speaker 2: to a general public. And it's really powerful. It works

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Speaker 2: like it works everywhere. That's whether we like it or not.

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Speaker 2: It's a story that has salience and explains something that

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Speaker 2: I think is real, which a lot of us, you know,

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Speaker 2: whatever academics might not want to address, is real into

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Speaker 2: a legible story for the average person.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like that's a lot of the explanation.

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Speaker 4: Behind the backlash to trans people to just like this,

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Speaker 4: looking for someone to pin the.

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Speaker 1: Pains of lead stage capitalism on other than the capital

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Speaker 1: is I guess, you know, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: I feel like that issue. It's funny that I mean,

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Speaker 2: it's not funny, but the climate and trans issues have

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Speaker 2: become increasingly entangled. I think it's a really interesting and

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Speaker 2: telling reality for sure.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, what is accelerationism? Why has it been embraced

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Speaker 1: by some far right actors?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, explain so. I often get these these terms mixed

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Speaker 2: up in sort of the sociology of religion. But you know,

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Speaker 2: there is an idea within a lot of evangelical for

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Speaker 2: it has been you know, since since the past one hundred,

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Speaker 2: two hundred, three hundred years, that this idea of the

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Speaker 2: second Coming of Jesus is upon us, that the apocalypse

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Speaker 2: is coming, it's around the corner. This pre millenarian thought

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Speaker 2: that this here, this tangible world that US Protestant evangelicals

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Speaker 2: can feel and since is not the real thing, and

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Speaker 2: that soon this will all burn and I knew sort

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Speaker 2: of heavenly world will be upon us. And that's a

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Speaker 2: sort of a politics that's fueled American evangelical thought for

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Speaker 2: hundreds of years. And the way that it projects out

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Speaker 2: of climate politics is just like, okay, here's all these

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Speaker 2: leftist libs who are like trying to stop the apocalypse,

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Speaker 2: which is you know, climate change or some nuclear thing happening,

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Speaker 2: and we actually believe that it is moral and ethical

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Speaker 2: and just to accelerate that process, to accelerate the sort

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Speaker 2: of destruction of the of the immoral wasteland of late

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Speaker 2: stage capitalism in order to bring about more quickly the

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Speaker 2: Golden Age. The odd thing about accelerationism is it has

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Speaker 2: Protestant backing in the sort of pre millinary and thought,

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Speaker 2: but it also resonates with a lot of thoughts and

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Speaker 2: sort of mythic structures within like Hindu thought and South

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Speaker 2: Asian and Eastern ideas of cyclicality. And the way that

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Speaker 2: you'll see this manifest in pop culture is, you know,

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Speaker 2: it doesn't register as important to many people, but you'll

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Speaker 2: hear Joe Rogan talk about the Cali Yuga and these

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Speaker 2: sort of ideas of like Hindu cyclicality, the Caliyuga being

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Speaker 2: the age we're in, the dark age that can only

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Speaker 2: be we can only get to the Golden Age completing

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Speaker 2: the cycle through complete destruction of civilization. Wow and both,

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Speaker 2: I mean so it manifests both in these sort of

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Speaker 2: Hindu logics, it manifests in Protestant pre millenarian logics, and

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00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:37,159
Speaker 2: it's the sort of worshiping of the apocalypse and the

433
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:41,359
Speaker 2: idea that we can't actually get ourselves out of this

434
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:45,720
Speaker 2: that there are bigger forces, whether they're you know, wich

435
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 2: gods are in control of that, I'm not entirely sure.

436
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:50,199
Speaker 2: And this was a structure of Greek thought too, but

437
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 2: it's very common, but that we don't have we human

438
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:54,760
Speaker 2: son of control over this, so all we can do

439
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:58,879
Speaker 2: is sort of accelerate the cycle, get the apocalypse to

440
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:02,440
Speaker 2: come faster, and as a result reinstate you know, an

441
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 2: ordered golden age. But that's like the charitable interpretation of accelerationism.

442
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:13,440
Speaker 2: It manifests obviously in like dumb ass ways too, where

443
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,359
Speaker 2: there's just like far right lunatics on their computers who

444
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 2: are like, I'm just gonna go kill a ton of

445
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:21,879
Speaker 2: people or shut down a server warehouse, which you know,

446
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:24,399
Speaker 2: say what you will, Like, I would rather people be

447
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 2: shutting down server warehouses than shooting school children. So yeah, yeah,

448
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 2: more power to them. But yeah, the idea of acceleration

449
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 2: is generally just to accelerate the destruction of society, whether

450
00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 2: that be cyclical in the Hindu sense or linear in

451
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 2: the Christian sense.

452
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:51,680
Speaker 1: Okay, I this is such an uplifting conversation. I know,

453
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:55,200
Speaker 1: I know, it's really it's just interesting to me because

454
00:28:55,240 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, everyone is is pinpointing the same set

455
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: of things that are wrong, but like the causes and

456
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:06,280
Speaker 1: solutions are so wildly divergent.

457
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 2: It's very interesting. Hey, I've got to say, I mean

458
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:11,040
Speaker 2: that gives me hope though in a weird way. Yeah,

459
00:29:11,120 --> 00:29:13,560
Speaker 2: it's like to know that these people, I think in

460
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 2: the most charitable version, are like identifying late stage capitalism

461
00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 2: and trying to make sense of it. Yeah, I'm like

462
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 2: sympathetic that, you know.

463
00:29:22,200 --> 00:29:22,880
Speaker 1: Yeah.

464
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you said, the visions are just the visions

465
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 2: for after are so divergent. Yeah.

466
00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, there's like all those memes that are

467
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 1: like men will do blah blah blah to avoid going

468
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: to therapy. I feel like, yeah, it's like capitalists will

469
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 1: do anything to avoid just like reducing consumption. It's really

470
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: not that bad, guys, Yeah.

471
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:46,880
Speaker 2: I know, totally totally. Yeah.

472
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, like we've said, how much money on

473
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 1: figuring out how to terriform mars instead of just reducing

474
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:56,680
Speaker 1: a tiny you know what I mean?

475
00:29:56,840 --> 00:30:01,280
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, for sure. I mean yeah, technological progress, man,

476
00:30:01,320 --> 00:30:05,680
Speaker 2: that's that's the only real ideology. So it's the thing

477
00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 2: we all agree on.

478
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:13,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, to turn that ship. Yeah, it's really yeah,

479
00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: it's interesting.

480
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 2: Okay, so I should say really quick, this is something

481
00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 2: I just doesn't aside in the I think that is

482
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 2: very true in the US, like being in Spain and

483
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 2: living there, I'm sure this might be true in Coastrika too,

484
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 2: Like yeah, like people don't worship technological progress in the

485
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 2: same way even in Western Europe that they do in

486
00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:33,960
Speaker 2: the US. It's like a really American thing.

487
00:30:34,480 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 1: Or like the accumulation of stuff anywhere near as much

488
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: at all. It's very just like actually, yeah, here it's

489
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:45,920
Speaker 1: much more like and I got this vibe in Spain

490
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 1: as well. It's like the whole point is to have

491
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 1: like time to hang out with people, time to hang

492
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 1: out with people you enjoy. That's the goal of life.

493
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:05,200
Speaker 1: It's not yeah, making money or coming up with the

494
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:09,320
Speaker 1: coolest new technological innovation or whatever. And like I'm not

495
00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:12,320
Speaker 1: saying that there's no good that's ever come of like

496
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:15,920
Speaker 1: that drive in the US, because there definitely has been.

497
00:31:16,120 --> 00:31:21,000
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just a very different goal than a

498
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 1: lot of the rest of the world has.

499
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:26,720
Speaker 2: Dude, I have such double consciousness around this living in

500
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 2: Spain because I'm like, I like intellectually understand like I'm

501
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:34,719
Speaker 2: a lunatic American who works too hard and like I

502
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 2: should be better at enjoying free time. And then I

503
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:44,280
Speaker 2: like live my life and I'm like, why the hell

504
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:49,560
Speaker 2: are all these people just hanging out all day? I

505
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:51,920
Speaker 2: like walk through this town I live, and I'm like,

506
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 2: what the fuck are all these people even doing? And

507
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 2: like I'm watching myself like be a dumbass, you know,

508
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 2: and I'm like, actually, actually get out of this. It's great.

509
00:32:00,600 --> 00:32:03,400
Speaker 1: I have the same thing because like in Costa Rica,

510
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: it's just like it's Costrinka's did a very good job

511
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: of like putting a very bougie coat of paint on

512
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:16,480
Speaker 1: being a Central American country. But like the reality is

513
00:32:16,520 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 1: like you are not. There is no multitasking. You are

514
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: getting one test done a day, ma'am. And that is

515
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 1: it's like so hard for me to accept that. Okay,

516
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:31,400
Speaker 1: I just have one more question for you, and that

517
00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:35,240
Speaker 1: is around. I have been seeing this very persistent idea

518
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:39,080
Speaker 1: amongst a lot of climate people that goes roughly, oh,

519
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:43,800
Speaker 1: the more people experience climate disasters, the more they will

520
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:47,960
Speaker 1: get behind acting on climate. And then I say, oh, you,

521
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:53,479
Speaker 1: sweet summer child, because really, like most of the evidence

522
00:32:53,520 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: we have points in exactly the opposite direction that like, actually,

523
00:32:56,840 --> 00:33:00,400
Speaker 1: you know, people, people are not their best selves when

524
00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 1: they are facing multiple directions on those to their lives,

525
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 1: and like, in fact, it tends to drive people towards

526
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 1: the far right or authoritarianism or things like that. So yeah,

527
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 1: I just kind of wanted to get your take on that,

528
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:21,000
Speaker 1: like what the research actually shows in terms of how

529
00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 1: climate impacts fuel extremism.

530
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,320
Speaker 2: My understanding of where that research is at is it's

531
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:31,560
Speaker 2: just really mixed and pretty context dependent. There's wars all

532
00:33:31,600 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 2: over the world now, and there's climate dimensions to that.

533
00:33:36,480 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 2: But I think there's this within this research, within this

534
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:43,720
Speaker 2: conversation about like, well there will be more extreme weather

535
00:33:43,760 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 2: and everyone will like get on board with what the

536
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 2: UN says. I think is to misunderstand how human nature works,

537
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 2: or at least how I understand human nature to work,

538
00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:57,720
Speaker 2: which is that I'm not entirely sold that in moments

539
00:33:57,720 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 2: of crisis, like a global imaginary will just appear. I

540
00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:10,799
Speaker 2: think that's a thing that sort of Western developmental ideas

541
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:14,239
Speaker 2: like to assume is true. But in crisis, people turn

542
00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:16,040
Speaker 2: inward a lot of the time. I mean, there is

543
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:20,759
Speaker 2: obviously evidence to the contrary. And my understanding is that

544
00:34:20,880 --> 00:34:27,640
Speaker 2: in crisis, people are very sympathetic and issues of identity disappear.

545
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:30,760
Speaker 2: There's all these interviews, this beautiful study by these professors

546
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 2: at Columbia about people's opinions immediately following the nine eleven attacks,

547
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:38,720
Speaker 2: and you would think that people would be quite angry

548
00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:40,920
Speaker 2: towards like Middle Eastern and Arab people, but it was

549
00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:46,320
Speaker 2: actually just the opposite happened. New Yorkers were immediately after

550
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 2: the attacks super like, yeah, really sympathetic and hoping that

551
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 2: this didn't lead to some bigger conflict, and it actually

552
00:34:55,080 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 2: sparked sympathies across these identity boundaries that were ostensibly at

553
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:00,360
Speaker 2: play totally.

554
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 1: There was actually so much like warm and fuzzy community building.

555
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, for sure at some time. Yeah yeah, So

556
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:09,040
Speaker 2: immediately in the wake of those sorts of things. I mean,

557
00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:10,960
Speaker 2: you see this with natural disasters all the time. But

558
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:13,680
Speaker 2: what natural disasters do not in the short run, I mean,

559
00:35:13,680 --> 00:35:15,160
Speaker 2: in the short run that is true. In the long run,

560
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:17,319
Speaker 2: what natural disasters do is they just like fuck up

561
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:22,080
Speaker 2: communities so like, and when people are struggling just to survive,

562
00:35:22,280 --> 00:35:25,280
Speaker 2: they turn inward like it's not like there's the immediate

563
00:35:25,640 --> 00:35:28,880
Speaker 2: crisis situation with any of these, you know, climate driven

564
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:31,480
Speaker 2: natural disasters, whether it be a hurricane or tornado or

565
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 2: lightning storm like whatever. But like the destruction of community

566
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 2: is hard, whether it's war or natural disaster, and it's

567
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:41,560
Speaker 2: hard to recover in a lot of times. You know,

568
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:46,920
Speaker 2: if if we don't have sort of systems to support communities, FEMA,

569
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 2: for instance, is getting gutted. Like we're not doing USAID anymore.

570
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:52,799
Speaker 2: In the long term, when people are hurting, they really

571
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:54,760
Speaker 2: have to turn inward and survive. And I'm not entirely

572
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:58,439
Speaker 2: sure when the human animal is in survival mode. There's

573
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 2: a whole lot of evidence to suggest that, like we're

574
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:04,880
Speaker 2: our best selves. I mean, when I don't eat lunch,

575
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 2: I turn into an asshole and so like right exactly.

576
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 1: Like we have a word for being hungry and angry

577
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:13,560
Speaker 1: at the same time.

578
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:19,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so the idea of like instability, and I

579
00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:23,319
Speaker 2: think we're seeing this is that what global instability and

580
00:36:23,360 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 2: insecurity does is it turns pre existing organisms, whether they

581
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:31,040
Speaker 2: be biological or social, inward, and I think we're seeing

582
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 2: that in the form of national conservatism and the sort

583
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:40,799
Speaker 2: of resurgence of national counterintuitive national nationalism in a moment

584
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:43,400
Speaker 2: when our national systems are also being destroyed in some ways,

585
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 2: which doesn't make a whole of sense, you know. Yeah,

586
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:53,440
Speaker 2: and so I just don't totally get why. I don't

587
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 2: know on how, especially the way the climate change has

588
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:58,800
Speaker 2: been pitched to the general public over the past thirty years,

589
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 2: that in any way, in moments of insecurity, people would

590
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 2: be more willing to extend sympathies towards global organizations like

591
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:14,600
Speaker 2: the UN or sort of international agreements between countries based

592
00:37:14,640 --> 00:37:19,200
Speaker 2: on good faith to set aside resources in order to

593
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:22,080
Speaker 2: support the collective good. I wish that was the case.

594
00:37:22,160 --> 00:37:24,120
Speaker 2: I guess I just might have a little bit more

595
00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:31,400
Speaker 2: of a pessimistic view towards the human animal than some people.

596
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:36,280
Speaker 2: I mean, if people want to do big climate change

597
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:39,320
Speaker 2: work at an international level in a moment of crisis,

598
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 2: it's just going to take a lot of authoritarianism. So

599
00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:46,360
Speaker 2: that's the trade off. You can either have dout intervention

600
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:51,560
Speaker 2: that mandates things of people in crisis, but to assume

601
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:56,760
Speaker 2: that people are going to become more sympathetic towards climate

602
00:37:57,600 --> 00:38:02,280
Speaker 2: efforts instituted by people they don't know from a disadvantage

603
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 2: in a moment of crisis, I think doesn't make a

604
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:08,360
Speaker 2: whole lot of I would say common sense to me.

605
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 2: And there's also obviously the problem of like hurricane is

606
00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 2: a hurricane, Like is it did climate change affect it? Yeah? Probably,

607
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 2: but like it fu So it's not like, oh, here's

608
00:38:19,640 --> 00:38:21,960
Speaker 2: a climate narrative coming at you. It's like, no, Like

609
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:24,200
Speaker 2: my house is underwater, so.

610
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:30,399
Speaker 1: Right, right. I've also seen some stuff around right when

611
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:35,000
Speaker 1: groups kind of seizing on those moments to have boots

612
00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:37,319
Speaker 1: on the ground and be like helping people out and

613
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 1: kind of endearing themselves to people and seizing local power

614
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 1: in those moments too. Yeah, But like, I guess there's

615
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:49,200
Speaker 1: an opportunity there for climate people as well. Malcolm Harris

616
00:38:49,239 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 1: wrote this book that came out I think earlier this year,

617
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:55,359
Speaker 1: and one of the things that he talked about being

618
00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:59,840
Speaker 1: a possible, you know, action item for climate people was

619
00:38:59,880 --> 00:39:05,800
Speaker 1: to create like community disaster councils that basically like mutual

620
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:08,840
Speaker 1: aid networks that activate in times of disaster.

621
00:39:09,200 --> 00:39:11,560
Speaker 2: I think that's incredible. I just like, to be honest

622
00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:13,160
Speaker 2: with that kind of stuff. I have no idea what

623
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:15,440
Speaker 2: it has anything to do with climate change, Like, I

624
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:19,719
Speaker 2: just don't It's like it appears to me similar to

625
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:24,279
Speaker 2: like missionary work when people from a church go down

626
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:26,799
Speaker 2: to like Costa Rica after hurt me.

627
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:30,720
Speaker 1: And yes, it's sort of like help people. Yeah.

628
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:34,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sort of like sympathetic to that because like

629
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:37,400
Speaker 2: they're helping people even though they're like maybe evangelizing a

630
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:40,000
Speaker 2: little bit. But that feels like what that climate thing

631
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:43,799
Speaker 2: would be if people, if climate researchers were to do

632
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:47,319
Speaker 2: like mutual aid work. That's just basically to me missionary work.

633
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:50,319
Speaker 1: It's missionary work, it is, yeah, exactly, But I think

634
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 1: that was I think actually like I'm kind of into that, Yeah,

635
00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 1: do that because otherwise the people that are going to

636
00:39:56,160 --> 00:40:01,640
Speaker 1: do it are either evangelicals or right wing militia exactly.

637
00:40:03,560 --> 00:40:08,000
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I think maybe like missionaries, you might

638
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 2: like the people who are doing that just might need

639
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 2: to distance themselves a little bit from their evangelical goals,

640
00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:18,400
Speaker 2: you know, and just sort of like often.

641
00:40:18,320 --> 00:40:26,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, just help again. That was Jesse Bryant at Yale University.

642
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 1: He contributed to a chapter in a new book from

643
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:32,800
Speaker 1: the folks at the Climate Social Science Network called Climate

644
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 1: Obstruction a Global Survey. I highly recommend this book for

645
00:40:36,800 --> 00:40:39,359
Speaker 1: folks who are looking to get a handle on all

646
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:44,479
Speaker 1: the various forces working to obstruct climate action today. Coming

647
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:47,480
Speaker 1: up after the break, what far right climate obstruction looks

648
00:40:47,560 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 1: like elsewhere in the world, particularly in the UK and Europe.

649
00:40:51,280 --> 00:41:02,759
Speaker 1: Stay with us and we're back. Joining me now is

650
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 1: Dieter Ploe, researcher and lecturer at University Cassel in Germany.

651
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:10,400
Speaker 1: Dieter and I had spoken before, back when I was

652
00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:13,440
Speaker 1: working on a story about the Atlas Network, a global

653
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:16,280
Speaker 1: network of right wing think tanks that Dieter has spent

654
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 1: a lot of time researching. We touched on that research

655
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:25,880
Speaker 1: here as well, and a whole lot more. Okay, so

656
00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:29,439
Speaker 1: tell me about the wise use concept. Can you kind

657
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 1: of define what that is and tell me what the

658
00:41:31,520 --> 00:41:33,400
Speaker 1: wise use movement is?

659
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:35,560
Speaker 2: Sure?

660
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 5: Basically, when we looked at the history of the climate

661
00:41:40,719 --> 00:41:45,440
Speaker 5: opposition opposition to environment movement, we were struck by the

662
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:49,880
Speaker 5: fact that already in the nineteen seventies eighties, the corporate

663
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:56,400
Speaker 5: opposition and the conservative opposition to environmental activism had started

664
00:41:56,440 --> 00:42:01,239
Speaker 5: to come up with counter narratives, counter concepts.

665
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:05,759
Speaker 6: To the need to upgrade environmental regulation and against the

666
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:11,800
Speaker 6: regulatory activism of the federal government. In the United States,

667
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:16,840
Speaker 6: starting basically with the founding of EPA and the early

668
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:22,440
Speaker 6: legislation in the nineteen seventies, the conservative movement basically responded

669
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:26,680
Speaker 6: that this is all intrusion from the federal government and

670
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:31,400
Speaker 6: that the local people know much better how to deal

671
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 6: with the environment and perfectly capable of making wise use

672
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 6: of the environmental resources, basically protect the environment in accordance

673
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:46,880
Speaker 6: to the ways in which they interact with nature, use nature,

674
00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:51,440
Speaker 6: and so the wise use concept was a deliberate concept

675
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 6: to place local wisdom and knowledge against what was regarded

676
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 6: as unnecessary and intrusive regulation from the federal government.

677
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:08,640
Speaker 1: It seems very prevalent right now as well. So I

678
00:43:08,719 --> 00:43:12,480
Speaker 1: wonder you're seeing it have a resurgence or if it

679
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:15,640
Speaker 1: just never went away, if the same groups are pushing

680
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:17,799
Speaker 1: it still. What's happening with that?

681
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:21,319
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I think it's a key trope in the

682
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 6: kind of opposition to federal government or central government intervention.

683
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:32,280
Speaker 6: And basically, you know, we came across this reading Andrew

684
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:36,200
Speaker 6: Rohlds book The Green Backlash, which is from nineteen ninety six,

685
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:40,720
Speaker 6: so quite a while ago, and it was in fact

686
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:46,760
Speaker 6: striking how much of the present climate obstruction. Climate opposition

687
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:52,760
Speaker 6: discourse is preceded by the controversies and the mobilization against

688
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 6: the environmental policy making in the nineteen seventies eighties, and

689
00:43:57,080 --> 00:44:01,120
Speaker 6: how many of the themes that are very very important

690
00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:07,040
Speaker 6: in the present constellation have been basically developed against the

691
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 6: establishment of the very first generation of environmental regulatory politics.

692
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:16,360
Speaker 6: And it's all framed sort of like local versus central government.

693
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:21,560
Speaker 6: And there's presently a stronger revival of such sentiments now

694
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:26,920
Speaker 6: basically framed as opposition to global governance. So the national

695
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:30,440
Speaker 6: government has held to be better prepared to deal with

696
00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 6: these challenges than any sort of like of global governance.

697
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 6: So in a way, yes, continuity and certain forms of

698
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 6: mutations we can see.

699
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:46,359
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the Atlas Network and their role

700
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 1: in climate obstruction, because as I'm sure you know, they've

701
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:54,040
Speaker 1: really been trying to claim that they have done no

702
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: such thing.

703
00:44:54,920 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's basically since the takeover of a response ability

704
00:45:00,600 --> 00:45:05,360
Speaker 6: at the central headquarters at the Atlas Network by Bratt Lipps,

705
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:11,560
Speaker 6: after the period in which Alejandro Chamwen, the Argentinian who

706
00:45:11,600 --> 00:45:17,240
Speaker 6: headed the Atlas Network after the founders Anthony Fisher's death

707
00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:21,960
Speaker 6: in nineteen eighty nine roughly until the global financial crisis,

708
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 6: and then I mean stayed basically a part of the leadership,

709
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:28,360
Speaker 6: but Brett Lips took over, and I think that Lips

710
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 6: in a way was moving ATLAS network, the central headquarters,

711
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:36,799
Speaker 6: was moving it away from climate politics because Shamwuen was

712
00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:40,200
Speaker 6: quite a bit involved and quite a bit more supportive

713
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:44,839
Speaker 6: of the climate obstruction climate denial efforts of Artland and

714
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:50,279
Speaker 6: the international conferences. ATLAS was co sponsoring the Heartland Conferences

715
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:54,680
Speaker 6: a few times, and there's very clear indications that ATLAS

716
00:45:54,760 --> 00:45:59,800
Speaker 6: were closely involved in climate politics also the headquarters itself.

717
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 6: Of course, it is not like a major organization compared

718
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:07,560
Speaker 6: to some of its members' partners like Calo Institute or

719
00:46:07,640 --> 00:46:10,880
Speaker 6: Heartland Institute or the Heritage Foundation or other partners in

720
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:16,080
Speaker 6: Europe South Africa. So basically the move of Red Lips

721
00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 6: to Declear strong distance, we're not involved, we're not funded

722
00:46:20,680 --> 00:46:24,480
Speaker 6: by oil companies. It all relates to the backlash the

723
00:46:24,560 --> 00:46:28,600
Speaker 6: New Liberals and the firms, corporations and business associations that

724
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:33,400
Speaker 6: funded and were involved in outright climate denial with heart Land.

725
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 2: Conferences and so on.

726
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 6: So of course there was a lot of backlash against

727
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:40,280
Speaker 6: Exonmobile in particular, and I think that was basically considered

728
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 6: a tricky thing from the perspective also of the think

729
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:47,400
Speaker 6: tanks that were involved, that they much like the corporations,

730
00:46:48,160 --> 00:46:51,040
Speaker 6: right to distance a little bit the general purpose of

731
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:54,880
Speaker 6: the free market movement from the specific politics of climate

732
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 6: denial and climate obstruction. So they changed the name also

733
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 6: to from Atlasic Research Foundation to a network. So now

734
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 6: we have an organization, the Umbrella Organization, which is Adlas Network,

735
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:09,720
Speaker 6: and Brett Libs will say, we're not getting any funding

736
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:12,880
Speaker 6: from the oil company, and that sounds like the Atlas

737
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:16,200
Speaker 6: Network as a whole, which has like five hundred organizations,

738
00:47:16,200 --> 00:47:18,879
Speaker 6: doesn't get any funding from the oil company. The one

739
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:22,560
Speaker 6: thing may be right, Atlas Network as the Umbrella organization,

740
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:26,759
Speaker 6: may not get money from Excell Mobile, but many of

741
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:29,920
Speaker 6: these think things for sure get money from oil and

742
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:32,840
Speaker 6: fossil sources. And so it's a kind of a nice

743
00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:36,239
Speaker 6: play they have there where they can legitimately maybe say

744
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:39,919
Speaker 6: we don't as Alas Network the Umbrella organization, and then

745
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:42,000
Speaker 6: it sounds like it's the network as a whole, which

746
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:45,320
Speaker 6: is obviously not true. But even Alas Network the Umbrella

747
00:47:45,440 --> 00:47:49,280
Speaker 6: Organization would have to declare openly where it's funding comes

748
00:47:49,320 --> 00:47:52,120
Speaker 6: from and how much money they get from donors trust,

749
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 6: which is actually of course then covering up money that

750
00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:58,800
Speaker 6: comes from possibly oil companies other fossil groups.

751
00:47:58,800 --> 00:47:59,920
Speaker 2: So I mean, even.

752
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 6: Strong claim we are not getting money from fossil sources

753
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 6: is basically impossible to verify or falsify as long as

754
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:10,960
Speaker 6: they don't clarify the funding sources from these dark money machines.

755
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 6: But of course, the Atlas Network as a whole, with

756
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 6: its large membership, has been home to many think tanks

757
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 6: in many countries that were absolutely part and parcel of

758
00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:27,000
Speaker 6: the climate denial and climate obstruction movement. US organizations like

759
00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:31,480
Speaker 6: Cato Institute, like the Heartland Institute, like the Independent Institute,

760
00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 6: Heritage Foundation, they're all very involved in spreading a climate

761
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 6: denial and other misinformation. Canadians Phrase Institute, the Frontiers and

762
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:47,880
Speaker 6: European organizations like the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Global

763
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 6: Warning Foundation, the Adam Smith Institute, the Austrian Economic Center

764
00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:57,320
Speaker 6: in Austria, in Africa, in South Africa, the Freedom Foundation

765
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:01,800
Speaker 6: and so on. So forcing Yeah, So basically we found

766
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:07,400
Speaker 6: in our research that about half of the ADDAS Network

767
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:13,520
Speaker 6: partner organizations do publish content on climate and a small

768
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:16,800
Speaker 6: number of thing tanks, maybe no more than twelve to

769
00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 6: fifteen think tanks are basically publishing a lot of material,

770
00:49:21,640 --> 00:49:24,720
Speaker 6: and many of them were closely involved in the climate

771
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:28,640
Speaker 6: denial movement, which has morphed into a broader range of

772
00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:31,560
Speaker 6: climate denial and other obstruction messages.

773
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 1: Actually, one of the things that I found really interesting

774
00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:37,080
Speaker 1: last time I was there that I had not realized

775
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:41,400
Speaker 1: that Atlas was involved in setting up the Donors Trust

776
00:49:43,040 --> 00:49:46,480
Speaker 1: for the Cooke Guys.

777
00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:49,960
Speaker 6: Well Red Lips, the head of the Address Network the

778
00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:52,920
Speaker 6: Umbrella Organization is on the board of the Donors Trust,

779
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:56,200
Speaker 6: and not exactly sure how the arrangements are. But there's

780
00:49:56,640 --> 00:50:00,000
Speaker 6: one of the interesting findings with regard to finance where

781
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:02,960
Speaker 6: where most of the information we have is from the

782
00:50:03,080 --> 00:50:07,279
Speaker 6: United States, unfortunately, because most of the other countries are

783
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:11,160
Speaker 6: way less open with regard to source material that can

784
00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 6: be studied and for the US, therefore, we know quite

785
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:18,680
Speaker 6: a bit about the philanthropic funding of think tanks and

786
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:22,479
Speaker 6: the inter relationships between think tanks and foundations. And it's

787
00:50:22,640 --> 00:50:27,279
Speaker 6: quite interesting indeed that big funders of ATLAS network, I

788
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:30,279
Speaker 6: mean the Templeton Foundation, which is the biggest funder of

789
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:35,040
Speaker 6: the Umbrella organization. Atlas Network is also heavily funding another

790
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:38,520
Speaker 6: ady Think tanks of the Atlas Network, both in the

791
00:50:38,600 --> 00:50:42,880
Speaker 6: US and abroad, so they have an open access database

792
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:45,719
Speaker 6: where you can actually trace the funding. So we know

793
00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:48,960
Speaker 6: that they fund six organizations that are part of the

794
00:50:49,000 --> 00:50:53,239
Speaker 6: Atlas Network in Europe, indeed part of the European Epicenter network,

795
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:57,120
Speaker 6: like the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Institute of Bruno

796
00:50:57,200 --> 00:51:00,840
Speaker 6: Leoni in Italy, which is sort of like the Expert

797
00:51:01,080 --> 00:51:05,120
Speaker 6: organization in Europe, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute, which is

798
00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:08,879
Speaker 6: a very successful big thing tank in the Baltics, and

799
00:51:09,120 --> 00:51:13,399
Speaker 6: the German Brometoise Institute and CPUs in Denmark. So it's

800
00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:17,840
Speaker 6: very interesting that Templeton not only is the largest funder

801
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:21,280
Speaker 6: by far of the Umbrella Organization, but also a funder

802
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:26,240
Speaker 6: of quite a large number of Atlas Network members in Europe,

803
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 6: in Latin America and elsewhere. And other big foundations are

804
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:33,279
Speaker 6: more focused on the US but also have interlockx with

805
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:36,760
Speaker 6: European I think thanks like the Bradley Foundation as people

806
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:39,200
Speaker 6: sitting on the board of the Institute of Economic Affairs,

807
00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:44,719
Speaker 6: and they also mobilize some of the funding there. So yeah,

808
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:49,160
Speaker 6: no surprise that the arrangements to cover up some of

809
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:52,959
Speaker 6: the funding sources from corporations. We see that has been

810
00:51:52,960 --> 00:51:56,600
Speaker 6: manufactured with the help of the experts the Atlas network

811
00:51:56,640 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 6: because they know what they need and they can help

812
00:51:59,640 --> 00:52:02,120
Speaker 6: the com needs to basically cover their traces.

813
00:52:04,160 --> 00:52:07,840
Speaker 1: Okay. Relatedly, let's talk about the mont Pelerin Society for

814
00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:11,240
Speaker 1: a mine. Can I have you define what that is

815
00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 1: and explain its role in incubating or bringing a lot

816
00:52:16,120 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 1: of these think tank guys together.

817
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:19,400
Speaker 2: Sure.

818
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:23,600
Speaker 6: Well, it's quite important to know that the origins really

819
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:26,399
Speaker 6: of the think tank strategy of the so called free

820
00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:31,360
Speaker 6: market movement, which basically is the neoliberal movement, which was

821
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:34,880
Speaker 6: founded post World War two by Fritish August van Hayek

822
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:39,120
Speaker 6: the likes of Germany Is Rutger and Americans from the

823
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:43,280
Speaker 6: Chicago School and from other places, was founded in nineteen

824
00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:47,320
Speaker 6: forty seven in Switzerland in Montpelura, which is a small

825
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:48,440
Speaker 6: location on top.

826
00:52:48,320 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 2: Of the Lake of Geneva.

827
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:54,080
Speaker 6: And basically when Anthony Fisher, the founder of the Institute

828
00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:58,640
Speaker 6: of Economic Affairs as entrepreneur friend of British Augustphon Hiak,

829
00:52:58,680 --> 00:53:00,840
Speaker 6: when he asked Hyak for it twice. He wanted to

830
00:53:00,880 --> 00:53:03,040
Speaker 6: go into politics, and Hike advised him not to go

831
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:08,640
Speaker 6: into politics and to instead invest in intellectual resources. In fact,

832
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:12,280
Speaker 6: the founding of a think tank than Fisher actually started

833
00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:15,440
Speaker 6: the Institute of Economic Affairs, and together with business friends

834
00:53:15,480 --> 00:53:18,759
Speaker 6: in many countries, he was closely involved in starting this

835
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:23,120
Speaker 6: new liberal think tank movement up the Phraser Institute in Canada,

836
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:29,440
Speaker 6: Peru's Institute for Democracy, by this of De Soto in Australia.

837
00:53:29,560 --> 00:53:33,040
Speaker 6: He was very very global immediately, and then in nineteen

838
00:53:33,080 --> 00:53:38,600
Speaker 6: eighty one Fisher was organizing the Atlas Network to have

839
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 6: more help in coordinating and growing the network. So the

840
00:53:43,600 --> 00:53:47,480
Speaker 6: inspiration to go for the think tank strategy came from

841
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 6: Haiek based on his reading of the political conflicts in

842
00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:53,840
Speaker 6: society and the need to have a long, long range

843
00:53:53,880 --> 00:53:59,319
Speaker 6: strategy and intellectual warfare, so to speak. And since then

844
00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:02,880
Speaker 6: every leader of the Other's network has been a member

845
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:06,080
Speaker 6: of the more Pera society. So this network of academics,

846
00:54:06,680 --> 00:54:11,960
Speaker 6: business people, media people, some politicians and think tank professionals,

847
00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:14,719
Speaker 6: that's really the core membership of the more Pera society

848
00:54:15,040 --> 00:54:20,560
Speaker 6: that meets globally and coordinates and learns globally, discusses the

849
00:54:20,680 --> 00:54:26,040
Speaker 6: challenges that neoliberalism faces and develops strategies, and they don't

850
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:29,720
Speaker 6: become active themselves as the more pera society. It's basically

851
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:33,200
Speaker 6: a self image of an academic society more than of

852
00:54:33,239 --> 00:54:38,759
Speaker 6: ant organization. And they basically lean on think tanks, many

853
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:41,320
Speaker 6: of which have been founded by more per society member

854
00:54:41,480 --> 00:54:44,719
Speaker 6: or see more perent society members helping to run them

855
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:47,880
Speaker 6: on their boards. So the think tank are basically, in

856
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:52,920
Speaker 6: a way the organizational capacity where more para society people

857
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:58,239
Speaker 6: intervene in media, in political consulting, in all kinds of

858
00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:01,759
Speaker 6: policy errors, including, of course what they perceive as a

859
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:07,359
Speaker 6: challenge for less regulated markets, the intense regulation coming from

860
00:55:07,480 --> 00:55:11,280
Speaker 6: environmental regulatory politics and climate politics.

861
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:14,959
Speaker 1: Now, have you walked me through some of the key

862
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:19,680
Speaker 1: discourses of delay that these think tanks use and kind

863
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:20,640
Speaker 1: of spread around.

864
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:27,080
Speaker 6: Sure, I mean discourse of delay. Of course, complement in

865
00:55:27,160 --> 00:55:33,000
Speaker 6: the early period of climate opposition movement activities was really

866
00:55:33,000 --> 00:55:38,200
Speaker 6: climate denihilism. So basically, as as soon as the signs consolidated,

867
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 6: there was this concerted effort to undermine the scientific basis

868
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:49,520
Speaker 6: by erecting organizations like Heartland and the non Governmental Panel

869
00:55:49,600 --> 00:55:54,560
Speaker 6: on Climate Change that they organized to publish publications against

870
00:55:54,600 --> 00:55:57,040
Speaker 6: the IPCC and so on and so force. And so

871
00:55:57,120 --> 00:55:59,760
Speaker 6: we see that in the two thousands we have really

872
00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:02,680
Speaker 6: the the growth of a climate denial movement. But that

873
00:56:02,880 --> 00:56:07,520
Speaker 6: was never all that happened in these neoliberal conservative circles,

874
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:09,759
Speaker 6: because quite a large.

875
00:56:09,480 --> 00:56:11,920
Speaker 2: Part of the neoliberal universe.

876
00:56:12,120 --> 00:56:17,239
Speaker 6: Is not denying climate science nor its unthropogenic causes. It's

877
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:21,759
Speaker 6: rather taking issue with the climate policy, so like objecting

878
00:56:21,920 --> 00:56:26,120
Speaker 6: to state regulation, to all kinds of policy tools that

879
00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:30,719
Speaker 6: they regard as wrong and problematic or counter productive, and

880
00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:35,759
Speaker 6: so advocate instead market solutions. So one of the specialties

881
00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:39,000
Speaker 6: that have emerged in the context of the outless network

882
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:43,719
Speaker 6: is free market so called free market environmentalism, which basically

883
00:56:43,840 --> 00:56:47,280
Speaker 6: is a counter narrative to state regulation, very much along

884
00:56:47,320 --> 00:56:50,520
Speaker 6: the lines of the old vice use movement, basically asking

885
00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:54,879
Speaker 6: for the privatization of nature so that the owners of

886
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:58,560
Speaker 6: the forests, of the rivers of the air can basically

887
00:56:58,760 --> 00:57:01,120
Speaker 6: be in charge of taking care of it. So the

888
00:57:01,320 --> 00:57:07,560
Speaker 6: radical proposal of radical free market environmentalism means essentially everything

889
00:57:07,600 --> 00:57:10,959
Speaker 6: will be fine as soon as we really completely deregulate

890
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:16,360
Speaker 6: and privatize nature, so that the owners of the resources

891
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:19,880
Speaker 6: can be in charge. And then of course a much milder,

892
00:57:20,160 --> 00:57:23,840
Speaker 6: much more mainstream version is the pricing of nature, so

893
00:57:23,920 --> 00:57:27,760
Speaker 6: that involves of course state capacities, and that's basically the

894
00:57:27,800 --> 00:57:31,520
Speaker 6: carbon pricing mechanisms we have, the emissions trading mechanisms we

895
00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:34,800
Speaker 6: have that have been proposed by economists to be a

896
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:39,440
Speaker 6: better tool than regulations that outlaw certain emissions or regulate

897
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:44,640
Speaker 6: the quantities quantities in other ways, basically suggesting that relying

898
00:57:44,720 --> 00:57:49,800
Speaker 6: on market mechanisms will improve environmental governance, which you know,

899
00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:52,840
Speaker 6: in theory is an interesting model, but in practice in

900
00:57:52,920 --> 00:57:56,600
Speaker 6: many ways has so far failed to materialize. And in fact,

901
00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:58,760
Speaker 6: in the United States, where many of these things were

902
00:57:58,760 --> 00:58:02,000
Speaker 6: first proposed, as soon as become relevant and would mean

903
00:58:02,040 --> 00:58:06,520
Speaker 6: that corporations would actually be charged, then there was actually

904
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:09,520
Speaker 6: everywhere in the world. As soon as market mechanisms are

905
00:58:09,720 --> 00:58:13,160
Speaker 6: turning out to be somewhat effective, they're usually opposed by

906
00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:16,680
Speaker 6: the actors that are supposed to support market mechanisms. So

907
00:58:16,680 --> 00:58:20,000
Speaker 6: it's unclear to what extent the market mechanisms that are

908
00:58:20,040 --> 00:58:23,520
Speaker 6: part of the legitimate discourse of climate policy make me

909
00:58:23,640 --> 00:58:28,160
Speaker 6: very much a part of even the mainstream IPCC discourse. Basically,

910
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:31,920
Speaker 6: the shift in a policy instrument in the Paris Treaty

911
00:58:32,320 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 6: has been all moving more towards market mechanisms. But we

912
00:58:36,840 --> 00:58:41,240
Speaker 6: don't see really that this development has actually been really effective.

913
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:46,080
Speaker 6: So serious economists and serious climate policy concerned people must

914
00:58:46,160 --> 00:58:48,640
Speaker 6: ask themselves, of course, to what extent is this really

915
00:58:48,680 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 6: a reliable method and to what extent is it actually

916
00:58:52,360 --> 00:58:56,280
Speaker 6: leading us into a dead end road, Because as soon

917
00:58:56,360 --> 00:58:59,760
Speaker 6: as carbon pricing becomes very expensive, we usually get set

918
00:58:59,800 --> 00:59:03,120
Speaker 6: back because people protest the high prices because they cannot

919
00:59:03,120 --> 00:59:06,640
Speaker 6: afford it. So it's basically frequently failing to take into

920
00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:10,840
Speaker 6: account the redistribution that is then going on. And usually

921
00:59:10,880 --> 00:59:13,400
Speaker 6: under conditions of austerity, which we had most of the

922
00:59:13,440 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 6: time over the past decade, people are simply very short

923
00:59:16,720 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 6: of money, and social week classes are very quick to

924
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 6: rebel against the price increases if there's no compensation available.

925
00:59:24,360 --> 00:59:29,120
Speaker 6: So there's an interesting problematic But the whole field of

926
00:59:29,200 --> 00:59:34,240
Speaker 6: climate policy opposition basically has become fairly broad, ranging from

927
00:59:34,280 --> 00:59:39,919
Speaker 6: climate denial through policy skepticism, where basically policy instruments are

928
00:59:40,120 --> 00:59:43,960
Speaker 6: debated and policy measures are debated, and then we have

929
00:59:44,040 --> 00:59:47,720
Speaker 6: other counter proposals we don't need to do mitigation because

930
00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:51,120
Speaker 6: technology will in the future solve this problem again with

931
00:59:51,200 --> 00:59:55,320
Speaker 6: the help of economists who use the discounting methods, suggesting

932
00:59:55,360 --> 00:59:58,400
Speaker 6: that ten years from now certain measures are much cheaper,

933
00:59:58,480 --> 01:00:01,200
Speaker 6: so we should delay them because they can be much

934
01:00:01,240 --> 01:00:05,520
Speaker 6: more efficiently in an economic sense employed later. And so

935
01:00:05,720 --> 01:00:10,040
Speaker 6: many of these elements simply lead to not take decisive

936
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:15,360
Speaker 6: action with regard to climate mitigation now and are basically

937
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:19,760
Speaker 6: employed to derail processes that have been set up and

938
01:00:19,880 --> 01:00:24,640
Speaker 6: suggest they are better alternatives, although basically the argument is

939
01:00:24,680 --> 01:00:27,560
Speaker 6: more or less simply hiding the fact that one wants

940
01:00:27,600 --> 01:00:30,560
Speaker 6: to block rather than to improve climate governance.

941
01:00:30,920 --> 01:00:35,000
Speaker 1: Okay, you mentioned these three themes of philanthropic financial support

942
01:00:35,040 --> 01:00:41,400
Speaker 1: within the political economy of climate obstruction, opacity, concentration, and heterogeneity.

943
01:00:41,760 --> 01:00:44,960
Speaker 1: Can I have you explain wage of this is and

944
01:00:46,360 --> 01:00:49,880
Speaker 1: how that translates to what we're seeing kind of around

945
01:00:49,960 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 1: us right now.

946
01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:51,800
Speaker 2: Sure.

947
01:00:51,960 --> 01:00:55,160
Speaker 6: I mean, basically, the theme of philanthropy, of course, is

948
01:00:55,240 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 6: so important because we have seen the share of income

949
01:00:59,560 --> 01:01:05,560
Speaker 6: of tanks from philanthropies has been increasing over the past decades.

950
01:01:05,800 --> 01:01:09,840
Speaker 6: I think partly because the pushback against corporations and the

951
01:01:09,920 --> 01:01:13,240
Speaker 6: fear of corporations being involved in politics and getting exposed,

952
01:01:13,640 --> 01:01:17,840
Speaker 6: so basically they have relied also on philanthropies to fund

953
01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:21,880
Speaker 6: their strategies. So philanthropic funding for think tanks in climate

954
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:26,400
Speaker 6: politics is simply becoming more important. The opacity relates to

955
01:01:26,440 --> 01:01:29,960
Speaker 6: the fact that even if we have more transparency in

956
01:01:30,120 --> 01:01:34,240
Speaker 6: US data with regard to how much philanthropies fund and

957
01:01:34,280 --> 01:01:37,840
Speaker 6: about the income of think tanks, we can only account

958
01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:41,120
Speaker 6: for about a quarter to a third of the total

959
01:01:41,160 --> 01:01:43,760
Speaker 6: of the outlasting tanks we looked at. A lot of

960
01:01:43,800 --> 01:01:47,880
Speaker 6: the funding sources remain unclear, and a lot of the

961
01:01:48,000 --> 01:01:52,120
Speaker 6: funding sources and among the philanthropies Donors Trust in other

962
01:01:52,240 --> 01:01:56,760
Speaker 6: dark money machines that are basically not foundations from specific

963
01:01:56,800 --> 01:02:01,080
Speaker 6: corporations from specific owners like the co Foundation or the

964
01:02:01,160 --> 01:02:05,640
Speaker 6: Dunn Foundation or Bradley Foundation, basically Donors Trust and Dona's

965
01:02:05,680 --> 01:02:09,640
Speaker 6: Capital Fund or money collection machines that collect money from

966
01:02:09,680 --> 01:02:12,880
Speaker 6: different sources that don't have to be laid open and

967
01:02:13,000 --> 01:02:17,760
Speaker 6: redistribute to the final recipient. The Donors Trust and Dona's

968
01:02:17,800 --> 01:02:21,800
Speaker 6: Capital Fund are the largest funders of the Atlas Network

969
01:02:21,880 --> 01:02:25,800
Speaker 6: think tanks out of more than three thousand corporate foundations

970
01:02:25,840 --> 01:02:29,040
Speaker 6: in the US, and yet the opacity theme is even

971
01:02:29,400 --> 01:02:33,040
Speaker 6: much more important with regard to other world regions and countries,

972
01:02:33,120 --> 01:02:38,840
Speaker 6: because no comparable openness to foundation funding and non for

973
01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:42,760
Speaker 6: profit income is available in other countries. So we have

974
01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:46,320
Speaker 6: simply no data that compares to the US data, and

975
01:02:46,360 --> 01:02:51,320
Speaker 6: that's of course a big drawback to study the right wing,

976
01:02:51,720 --> 01:02:55,440
Speaker 6: the nearable right wing and other think tanks in Europe.

977
01:02:55,480 --> 01:02:58,200
Speaker 6: In that America, we do have on the boards of

978
01:02:58,280 --> 01:03:01,920
Speaker 6: think tanks we find corporate fundundations in Europe almost fifty

979
01:03:02,400 --> 01:03:04,600
Speaker 6: compared to more than three hundred in the US and

980
01:03:05,440 --> 01:03:08,440
Speaker 6: like a good thirty in Latin America. So we have

981
01:03:08,560 --> 01:03:12,720
Speaker 6: some clues about which foundations are involved in running and

982
01:03:12,840 --> 01:03:16,760
Speaker 6: funding thing thanks, but we just have no scientific tool

983
01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:19,920
Speaker 6: to investigate these amounts.

984
01:03:19,440 --> 01:03:20,040
Speaker 2: And these.

985
01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:27,600
Speaker 6: These channels of influence with concentration refers to the observation

986
01:03:27,800 --> 01:03:33,120
Speaker 6: that a lot of the funding for say, the ATLAS

987
01:03:33,280 --> 01:03:37,520
Speaker 6: members in the United States comes from a relatively small.

988
01:03:37,240 --> 01:03:39,120
Speaker 2: Group of foundations.

989
01:03:39,560 --> 01:03:42,240
Speaker 6: As I mentioned, in this one database, we have more

990
01:03:42,280 --> 01:03:46,800
Speaker 6: than three thousand foundations, but just a very small share

991
01:03:46,880 --> 01:03:50,200
Speaker 6: of these foundations account for like a very large share

992
01:03:50,200 --> 01:03:53,160
Speaker 6: of the funding. So yes, there are plenty of foundations,

993
01:03:53,160 --> 01:03:56,440
Speaker 6: but the real music is played by a small orchestra,

994
01:03:57,080 --> 01:04:00,640
Speaker 6: and so we can say that about fifty two hundred

995
01:04:00,800 --> 01:04:05,120
Speaker 6: corporate foundations are really the core group that is in

996
01:04:05,240 --> 01:04:09,640
Speaker 6: charge of channeling money to organizations like the Atlas Network

997
01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:15,840
Speaker 6: thing tanks. And then the third category heterogeneity that basically

998
01:04:15,920 --> 01:04:20,360
Speaker 6: I think referred to the wide range of organizations and

999
01:04:20,480 --> 01:04:26,919
Speaker 6: strategies and perspectives funded by corporate foundations. So you would

1000
01:04:26,920 --> 01:04:31,000
Speaker 6: think that the philanthropic organization that funds climate denial funds climaty,

1001
01:04:31,040 --> 01:04:34,320
Speaker 6: now know, they also can fund quite different strategies and

1002
01:04:34,400 --> 01:04:35,200
Speaker 6: other thing tanks.

1003
01:04:35,320 --> 01:04:40,760
Speaker 1: Activity They're very intersectional. These guys absolutely absolutely just on

1004
01:04:40,760 --> 01:04:44,360
Speaker 1: one horse. Yeah, when everyone was talking about Project twenty

1005
01:04:44,360 --> 01:04:47,480
Speaker 1: twenty five in the US, I was working on this

1006
01:04:47,680 --> 01:04:51,520
Speaker 1: spreadsheet to look at maybe one hundred and five organizations

1007
01:04:51,560 --> 01:04:54,080
Speaker 1: involved in that, and I was looking at all of

1008
01:04:54,120 --> 01:04:58,000
Speaker 1: them and their funders, and there's so much overlap amongst

1009
01:04:58,040 --> 01:05:01,200
Speaker 1: the funders and the staff, you know, so everyone's working

1010
01:05:01,280 --> 01:05:04,200
Speaker 1: for each other's think tank or on the board or whatever.

1011
01:05:04,440 --> 01:05:06,840
Speaker 1: And one of the things that really jumped out was that,

1012
01:05:07,320 --> 01:05:12,440
Speaker 1: you know, when a lot of the anti abortion organizations

1013
01:05:12,480 --> 01:05:16,680
Speaker 1: in the US, as they started to be more successful,

1014
01:05:17,080 --> 01:05:21,360
Speaker 1: started to get into, you know, other issues because they

1015
01:05:21,400 --> 01:05:24,240
Speaker 1: needed to keep the money coming in. They were all

1016
01:05:24,280 --> 01:05:29,000
Speaker 1: of a sudden pushing anti trans stuff or even some

1017
01:05:29,120 --> 01:05:33,120
Speaker 1: of them were getting into anti climate work as well,

1018
01:05:33,160 --> 01:05:34,920
Speaker 1: and it was like, well, I guess if you have

1019
01:05:34,960 --> 01:05:38,320
Speaker 1: a twenty million dollar a year budget and your issue

1020
01:05:38,400 --> 01:05:40,560
Speaker 1: is not going to be an issue for that much longer,

1021
01:05:40,680 --> 01:05:42,800
Speaker 1: you need to find new things to work on.

1022
01:05:43,120 --> 01:05:43,600
Speaker 5: Interesting.

1023
01:05:43,720 --> 01:05:47,920
Speaker 6: Basically, it's also necessary to understand that we are not

1024
01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:49,520
Speaker 6: looking usually at.

1025
01:05:49,480 --> 01:05:51,960
Speaker 2: Single issue no alm.

1026
01:05:52,760 --> 01:05:56,280
Speaker 6: Yeah, people who were driven by a worldview that can

1027
01:05:56,360 --> 01:06:00,720
Speaker 6: be and will be applied to literally each subject matter.

1028
01:06:01,120 --> 01:06:03,480
Speaker 6: And yes, there will be a fair amount of specialization

1029
01:06:03,760 --> 01:06:08,600
Speaker 6: on environmental climate issues, maybe on public health issues, on

1030
01:06:08,800 --> 01:06:13,000
Speaker 6: criminal justice issues, on gender issues. But I mean, it's

1031
01:06:13,120 --> 01:06:16,200
Speaker 6: very interesting to see that a number of organizations co

1032
01:06:16,360 --> 01:06:20,920
Speaker 6: sponsored hard and conferences on climate politics that were actually

1033
01:06:20,920 --> 01:06:22,400
Speaker 6: not involved in climate politics.

1034
01:06:22,440 --> 01:06:26,440
Speaker 2: So we can look at this as members of a large.

1035
01:06:26,200 --> 01:06:30,080
Speaker 6: Party where some parts of the party specialize have committees

1036
01:06:30,120 --> 01:06:32,640
Speaker 6: on special issues. But at the same time, I'm very

1037
01:06:32,640 --> 01:06:35,120
Speaker 6: happy that their party friends are taking care of other

1038
01:06:35,200 --> 01:06:38,800
Speaker 6: issues now. So it's basically the same principle as a

1039
01:06:38,840 --> 01:06:42,360
Speaker 6: political apparatus, which also needs to be involved in many,

1040
01:06:42,400 --> 01:06:46,560
Speaker 6: many different policy areas and subject matters, and nobody can

1041
01:06:46,720 --> 01:06:49,680
Speaker 6: do it all. But if need be, I mean, if

1042
01:06:49,680 --> 01:06:53,160
Speaker 6: there's a special need for campaigning, you can actually mobilize

1043
01:06:53,480 --> 01:06:56,919
Speaker 6: many more people than the specialized people. I remember when

1044
01:06:57,000 --> 01:07:00,240
Speaker 6: the Free Trade for the America's conflict was on in

1045
01:07:00,560 --> 01:07:04,959
Speaker 6: North America, push trying to expand NAFTA to the whole

1046
01:07:05,000 --> 01:07:07,720
Speaker 6: of the Americas, and there was a lot of pushback

1047
01:07:07,760 --> 01:07:12,680
Speaker 6: from progressive organizations. For left wing organization Against the Americas

1048
01:07:13,080 --> 01:07:15,800
Speaker 6: raised an institute and worked on the issue for the

1049
01:07:15,840 --> 01:07:18,680
Speaker 6: time it needed until the subject was over, and then

1050
01:07:18,680 --> 01:07:21,720
Speaker 6: they closed the mechanism again. So basically, many of these

1051
01:07:22,040 --> 01:07:26,000
Speaker 6: larger think tanks certainly have the capacity to shift resources

1052
01:07:26,040 --> 01:07:29,280
Speaker 6: like from one subject matter to another. And also of

1053
01:07:29,320 --> 01:07:34,200
Speaker 6: course the large thing tanks with multimillion dollar budgets, they

1054
01:07:34,280 --> 01:07:37,360
Speaker 6: push quite a number of different themes.

1055
01:07:37,680 --> 01:07:41,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I want to ask you about how religious

1056
01:07:41,520 --> 01:07:44,360
Speaker 1: groups get in on this as well. So what are

1057
01:07:44,400 --> 01:07:47,760
Speaker 1: some of the key arguments that religious groups use against

1058
01:07:48,480 --> 01:07:49,400
Speaker 1: climate action.

1059
01:07:50,520 --> 01:07:52,800
Speaker 6: Well, there are different arguments really. On the one hand,

1060
01:07:52,840 --> 01:07:56,200
Speaker 6: it's important to note that the neoliberal movement, the conservative

1061
01:07:56,200 --> 01:08:00,360
Speaker 6: movement always had like also their religious side to it.

1062
01:08:00,440 --> 01:08:04,440
Speaker 6: Now the ACT and the think tanks that are specifically

1063
01:08:04,560 --> 01:08:08,360
Speaker 6: like the ACT and Institute are specifically Catholic neoliberal think

1064
01:08:08,400 --> 01:08:10,760
Speaker 6: tank that has been founded in the US, in Latin

1065
01:08:10,760 --> 01:08:14,160
Speaker 6: America and Europe and other thing tanks that are actually

1066
01:08:14,360 --> 01:08:19,600
Speaker 6: combining free trade and religious messages. So it's basically the

1067
01:08:19,640 --> 01:08:23,720
Speaker 6: link between a conservative social morality and the kind of

1068
01:08:24,080 --> 01:08:29,960
Speaker 6: patriarchal family ownership economic freedom model, which really is the

1069
01:08:30,000 --> 01:08:34,200
Speaker 6: economic freedom of the owner of the property. And so

1070
01:08:34,280 --> 01:08:38,599
Speaker 6: we see that many of the religious articulations with regard

1071
01:08:38,680 --> 01:08:42,080
Speaker 6: to climate policy and with regard in plicular to climate

1072
01:08:42,120 --> 01:08:46,160
Speaker 6: denials and climate obstruction are actually in this sphere of

1073
01:08:46,439 --> 01:08:51,439
Speaker 6: links between the neoliberal movement and their religious partners. The

1074
01:08:51,520 --> 01:08:55,320
Speaker 6: Cornwall Initiative sort of like is a mobilization of was

1075
01:08:55,360 --> 01:08:59,160
Speaker 6: founded by ACT and Institute people and as part of

1076
01:08:59,160 --> 01:09:02,800
Speaker 6: the Atlas network, so its co part of the hardcore

1077
01:09:02,840 --> 01:09:06,240
Speaker 6: of the free market movement, but actually tries to cater

1078
01:09:06,360 --> 01:09:11,080
Speaker 6: specifically to the Catholic world and of course reacts in

1079
01:09:11,120 --> 01:09:14,919
Speaker 6: the Catholic world to the challenges of theology of generation

1080
01:09:15,200 --> 01:09:20,640
Speaker 6: and other progressive forces that articulate themselves in the Catholic universe.

1081
01:09:20,840 --> 01:09:24,080
Speaker 6: In sort of like a socially progressive manner, and you

1082
01:09:24,120 --> 01:09:27,320
Speaker 6: have also a very strong environmentalism in the Catholic Church.

1083
01:09:27,439 --> 01:09:31,439
Speaker 6: Pope Francis last before the present Pope, he was a

1084
01:09:31,560 --> 01:09:36,439
Speaker 6: huge activist in environmental policy issues, and that basically caused

1085
01:09:36,600 --> 01:09:42,320
Speaker 6: the Catholic Right and the Catholic conservatives to mobilize very

1086
01:09:42,439 --> 01:09:48,240
Speaker 6: actively against Pop francis encyclical and climate messages and trying

1087
01:09:48,280 --> 01:09:51,000
Speaker 6: to push back against this. You know, the Church should

1088
01:09:51,240 --> 01:09:54,559
Speaker 6: keep out of these areas. Church should not be involved

1089
01:09:54,640 --> 01:10:00,840
Speaker 6: in these political issues like separating the spheres, and so

1090
01:10:00,880 --> 01:10:05,320
Speaker 6: some of the religious arguments that feed the obstruction movement

1091
01:10:05,360 --> 01:10:11,160
Speaker 6: is basically that climate science is part of the scientific world,

1092
01:10:11,360 --> 01:10:14,080
Speaker 6: which is not infallible. So they kind of turn the

1093
01:10:14,160 --> 01:10:18,240
Speaker 6: argument of religion versus science upside down in church, in

1094
01:10:18,320 --> 01:10:21,919
Speaker 6: religious belief, you have the full belief and that's where.

1095
01:10:21,720 --> 01:10:24,160
Speaker 2: You trust, even if you obviously.

1096
01:10:23,720 --> 01:10:27,600
Speaker 6: Don't know, whereas in science that's the sphere where you

1097
01:10:27,680 --> 01:10:31,360
Speaker 6: can't believe, where there is actually always needs to be debate.

1098
01:10:31,439 --> 01:10:35,000
Speaker 6: And that's an interesting argument where the religious belief is

1099
01:10:35,080 --> 01:10:38,720
Speaker 6: held to be superior to the scientific belief and is

1100
01:10:38,760 --> 01:10:42,000
Speaker 6: held to supply sort of like munition against the belief

1101
01:10:42,080 --> 01:10:44,880
Speaker 6: in climate science. Now they cannot be a believe in

1102
01:10:44,920 --> 01:10:47,920
Speaker 6: climate science because it's part of the rationalist world that

1103
01:10:48,040 --> 01:10:53,040
Speaker 6: is not infallible. And other sort of like Catholic subsidiarity thinking,

1104
01:10:53,120 --> 01:10:57,439
Speaker 6: which is a very old concept used by the Catholic

1105
01:10:57,640 --> 01:11:03,479
Speaker 6: social teaching to object against centralized intervention in family affairs.

1106
01:11:03,920 --> 01:11:07,519
Speaker 6: So like the smallest entity of social life, the family

1107
01:11:07,840 --> 01:11:10,280
Speaker 6: should take care of itself and only in case of

1108
01:11:10,400 --> 01:11:13,960
Speaker 6: need should sort of be supported maybe by the local church,

1109
01:11:14,160 --> 01:11:18,600
Speaker 6: and even and if there's a natural catastrophe, maybe the

1110
01:11:18,680 --> 01:11:21,360
Speaker 6: local church can ask for help by the state, and

1111
01:11:21,439 --> 01:11:23,599
Speaker 6: so on and so forth. So subsidiary is the thinking

1112
01:11:24,000 --> 01:11:27,920
Speaker 6: that the more local the self organization works as the

1113
01:11:27,960 --> 01:11:31,559
Speaker 6: better it is. And so it's basically it aligns very

1114
01:11:31,640 --> 01:11:34,960
Speaker 6: nicely with the kind of vice use concept and aligns

1115
01:11:35,040 --> 01:11:39,640
Speaker 6: very nicely with the objection against centralized government regulation and intervention.

1116
01:11:40,400 --> 01:11:41,559
Speaker 2: Even if you can also.

1117
01:11:41,439 --> 01:11:45,320
Speaker 6: Argue that in cases where the local cannot take care

1118
01:11:45,439 --> 01:11:49,439
Speaker 6: of policy issues, it's necessary that the higher levels of

1119
01:11:49,520 --> 01:11:52,400
Speaker 6: government need to be involved. So of course a policy

1120
01:11:52,439 --> 01:11:56,160
Speaker 6: issue like global warming, which is way beyond any local

1121
01:11:56,200 --> 01:11:59,080
Speaker 6: scale of politics, simply cannot be taken care of at

1122
01:11:59,080 --> 01:12:02,920
Speaker 6: the local level. So basically also these concepts like subsidiarity.

1123
01:12:03,080 --> 01:12:06,479
Speaker 6: The Catholic right will use it as an argument against

1124
01:12:06,880 --> 01:12:10,960
Speaker 6: centralizing regulation, whereas the Catholic left will sort of like

1125
01:12:11,120 --> 01:12:14,160
Speaker 6: use it as a good example of how subsidiarity can

1126
01:12:14,200 --> 01:12:18,599
Speaker 6: also not be considered an objection against centralized policy making.

1127
01:12:18,800 --> 01:12:23,439
Speaker 6: So it's an contested concept essentially. But we see that

1128
01:12:23,680 --> 01:12:29,080
Speaker 6: subsidiarity arguments are part of the mobilization against climate action

1129
01:12:29,400 --> 01:12:34,280
Speaker 6: and align perfectly well with neoliberal arguments and with conservative arguments.

1130
01:12:36,200 --> 01:12:41,400
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, So I keep seeing this belief amongst a

1131
01:12:41,400 --> 01:12:45,440
Speaker 1: lot of people in climate spaces that as people experience

1132
01:12:45,720 --> 01:12:50,000
Speaker 1: more climate impacts that they will of course get on

1133
01:12:50,040 --> 01:12:53,400
Speaker 1: board doing something about climate. But I think, especially with

1134
01:12:53,640 --> 01:12:56,320
Speaker 1: the spar right stuff. But I would say even some

1135
01:12:56,400 --> 01:12:59,120
Speaker 1: of the Applas stuff tells us is that that's definitely

1136
01:12:59,120 --> 01:13:03,360
Speaker 1: not guarantee. I'm curious what you think about the potential

1137
01:13:03,400 --> 01:13:07,519
Speaker 1: for climate impacts to actually sort of supercharge some of

1138
01:13:07,560 --> 01:13:09,800
Speaker 1: this thinking as opposed to defeating it.

1139
01:13:11,000 --> 01:13:11,320
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1140
01:13:11,400 --> 01:13:15,360
Speaker 6: Well, that's basically now, of course, our huge challenge. I mean,

1141
01:13:15,400 --> 01:13:18,759
Speaker 6: in the chapter of course, we talk about this broad

1142
01:13:18,800 --> 01:13:23,280
Speaker 6: spectrum of the right where neoliberalism as right wing liberalism

1143
01:13:23,439 --> 01:13:28,360
Speaker 6: is very closely overlapping with what Americans call conservatism, and

1144
01:13:28,600 --> 01:13:32,240
Speaker 6: can of course align with social conservatism, sometimes also with

1145
01:13:32,560 --> 01:13:35,880
Speaker 6: progressivism as with the Democratic Party and so on force

1146
01:13:35,920 --> 01:13:39,200
Speaker 6: and have an impact in the shifting the debate toward

1147
01:13:39,320 --> 01:13:45,400
Speaker 6: economic reasoning rather than the whole spectrum of policy interventions

1148
01:13:45,439 --> 01:13:49,080
Speaker 6: that we need to succeed in climate mitigation. And then,

1149
01:13:49,120 --> 01:13:51,760
Speaker 6: of course we have seen as a result of the

1150
01:13:52,160 --> 01:13:57,120
Speaker 6: multiple crises, both global warming and COVID financial crisis, we

1151
01:13:57,160 --> 01:14:00,759
Speaker 6: have seen this much more radical far right right rebellion

1152
01:14:01,320 --> 01:14:05,360
Speaker 6: expressed many times in right wing populist beliefs, where we

1153
01:14:05,400 --> 01:14:09,320
Speaker 6: get messages that go way beyond the traditional spectrum of

1154
01:14:09,400 --> 01:14:13,320
Speaker 6: free market conservatism and nearliberalism, which is in a way

1155
01:14:13,600 --> 01:14:18,280
Speaker 6: still engaged in this debate of how the world should

1156
01:14:18,320 --> 01:14:21,800
Speaker 6: be governed and what types of governance and what scales

1157
01:14:21,840 --> 01:14:25,120
Speaker 6: of governance should be employed. And in many areas the

1158
01:14:25,160 --> 01:14:28,560
Speaker 6: New Liberal movement was actually all in favor of global governance,

1159
01:14:28,640 --> 01:14:34,280
Speaker 6: for trade regulation, for property rights regulation, even for migration issues,

1160
01:14:34,439 --> 01:14:37,320
Speaker 6: because parts of the New Liberal movement are much more

1161
01:14:37,320 --> 01:14:40,120
Speaker 6: in favor of migration and so on, and so force

1162
01:14:40,479 --> 01:14:43,080
Speaker 6: remain to the stay more in favor like the Cook brothers,

1163
01:14:43,240 --> 01:14:46,559
Speaker 6: for example, compared to the Trump is But we see

1164
01:14:46,600 --> 01:14:50,840
Speaker 6: that the opposition against global governance in climate opened the

1165
01:14:50,880 --> 01:14:55,639
Speaker 6: door to actually challenge global governance altogether. And what we

1166
01:14:55,720 --> 01:14:58,320
Speaker 6: see as the far right in the form of the

1167
01:14:58,400 --> 01:15:02,839
Speaker 6: right wing populist government and political lead figures like Trump, Relay,

1168
01:15:03,560 --> 01:15:06,720
Speaker 6: many others around the world. Now they converge on a

1169
01:15:06,800 --> 01:15:11,479
Speaker 6: new ideology that is actually partly opposed to neoliberalism as

1170
01:15:11,520 --> 01:15:15,519
Speaker 6: far as neoliberalism is global you know, globalists, so to speak.

1171
01:15:15,560 --> 01:15:21,280
Speaker 6: And this new ideology is really national conservatism actually remove

1172
01:15:21,400 --> 01:15:25,400
Speaker 6: all these levels of global governance and move everything back

1173
01:15:25,640 --> 01:15:29,240
Speaker 6: in the sphere of the national nation state. Then some

1174
01:15:29,280 --> 01:15:32,519
Speaker 6: of them are more radical, the libertarians they want more

1175
01:15:32,840 --> 01:15:37,840
Speaker 6: even more decentralization, and other far right groups would also

1176
01:15:37,920 --> 01:15:41,720
Speaker 6: probably radicalize the message and try to destabilize many of

1177
01:15:41,760 --> 01:15:45,240
Speaker 6: the political entities more and move us into the territory

1178
01:15:45,400 --> 01:15:50,400
Speaker 6: of this much more complex and complicated area where we

1179
01:15:50,439 --> 01:15:53,960
Speaker 6: have seen in many places the rise of similar ideologies,

1180
01:15:54,040 --> 01:15:58,760
Speaker 6: conspiracy theories like the great Replacement theory, where basically the

1181
01:15:58,880 --> 01:16:03,160
Speaker 6: national conservatism lines in particular against foreign migration, and the

1182
01:16:03,200 --> 01:16:07,599
Speaker 6: far right has embraced the concept of ethnobluralism, so that yes,

1183
01:16:07,720 --> 01:16:11,719
Speaker 6: there are different ethnicities, but they better keep separated, each

1184
01:16:11,760 --> 01:16:15,960
Speaker 6: in their place. And so there's a very interesting movement

1185
01:16:16,560 --> 01:16:20,320
Speaker 6: where I would say the global forming challenges have led

1186
01:16:20,439 --> 01:16:25,280
Speaker 6: to an approach that was definitely global, the whole process,

1187
01:16:25,280 --> 01:16:28,640
Speaker 6: the whole real process, Kyoto Protocol Paris, and led to

1188
01:16:28,720 --> 01:16:33,000
Speaker 6: a very ambitious agenda that has been stalled in the meantime,

1189
01:16:33,400 --> 01:16:37,320
Speaker 6: and the backlash against it converges on the rejection not

1190
01:16:37,400 --> 01:16:41,160
Speaker 6: only of the concrete policy goals, but actually against the

1191
01:16:41,200 --> 01:16:45,840
Speaker 6: whole politics of climate change, the global governance aspect, and

1192
01:16:45,920 --> 01:16:51,439
Speaker 6: that's actually undermining, obviously the efforts to globally coordinate and

1193
01:16:51,960 --> 01:16:56,640
Speaker 6: negotiate solutions. And in that regard, the climate denial and

1194
01:16:56,720 --> 01:17:01,280
Speaker 6: climate obstruction movement was hugely successful, not only with the

1195
01:17:02,000 --> 01:17:04,800
Speaker 6: immediate impact they had, but now we see that the

1196
01:17:04,840 --> 01:17:09,560
Speaker 6: whole process is in danger of being derailed by the

1197
01:17:09,600 --> 01:17:13,360
Speaker 6: strength of the writing mobilization against global government.

1198
01:17:16,720 --> 01:17:19,880
Speaker 1: That's it for this time, Thanks for listening. Next week

1199
01:17:20,200 --> 01:17:25,040
Speaker 1: we're digging into the psychology of misinformation why this stuff

1200
01:17:25,200 --> 01:17:28,080
Speaker 1: works so well. Come back for that. Make sure you're

1201
01:17:28,120 --> 01:17:31,559
Speaker 1: subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can find

1202
01:17:31,600 --> 01:17:35,760
Speaker 1: more on this season, including transcripts and lots of related

1203
01:17:35,920 --> 01:17:40,280
Speaker 1: articles and background information on our website at drilled dot Media.

1204
01:17:40,920 --> 01:17:44,519
Speaker 1: You can also sign up for our newsletter there. One

1205
01:17:44,520 --> 01:17:46,160
Speaker 1: of these days, we're going to actually get it out

1206
01:17:46,200 --> 01:17:50,360
Speaker 1: every week. Until then, it's an occasional newsletter with thoughts

1207
01:17:50,400 --> 01:17:53,320
Speaker 1: from me, new stories from the site and the rest

1208
01:17:53,400 --> 01:17:56,400
Speaker 1: of the team, and updates on what we're getting up

1209
01:17:56,400 --> 01:18:00,559
Speaker 1: to next. Our producers for this season are In Saltz

1210
01:18:00,600 --> 01:18:04,560
Speaker 1: Ostwick and Peter duff. Our theme song is Bird in

1211
01:18:04,600 --> 01:18:07,960
Speaker 1: the Hand by Forknown. Our cover art is done by

1212
01:18:08,040 --> 01:18:11,479
Speaker 1: Matthew Fleming. Our First Amendment Attorney is James Wheaton with

1213
01:18:11,560 --> 01:18:16,000
Speaker 1: the First Amendment Project. The show was created, written, and

1214
01:18:16,040 --> 01:18:19,400
Speaker 1: reported by me Amy Westervelt. Thanks for listening and see

1215
01:18:19,439 --> 01:18:20,040
Speaker 1: you next time.