Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled Season fourteen. Obstruction. In
Speaker 1: our Carbon Brose season, we talked about one way that
Speaker 1: climate obstruction intersects with the far right, the rigid enforcement
Speaker 1: of gender norms and the feminizing of a politics of care,
Speaker 1: care for the environment and for each other. Today we're
Speaker 1: digging into the history of far right approaches to the
Speaker 1: environment in general and how that history informs how right
Speaker 1: wing campaigners in the US and beyond approach climate issues.
Speaker 1: Today I'm joined in the first half of the show
Speaker 1: by Jesse Bryant, a researcher at Yale University who studies
Speaker 1: far right conceptions of nature, and in the second half
Speaker 1: by Dieter Plowe, a lecturer at University Kessel in Germany
Speaker 1: who studies the intersection of far right politics and environmental
Speaker 1: issues in Europe. I found both conversations absolutely fascinating and
Speaker 1: really helpful for understanding the content we're dealing with in
Speaker 1: many parts of the world at the moment. I hope
Speaker 1: you find them helpful to Here we go.
Speaker 2: My name is Jesse Callahan Bryant. I am a doctoral
Speaker 2: candidate at the Yale School of the Environment.
Speaker 1: One of the first questions I wanted to ask is
Speaker 1: to have you explain the difference between conservatism and far
Speaker 1: right culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can try my best, you know, I will
Speaker 2: say that this is like a distinction that even in
Speaker 2: the broader literature, I think is a tough distinction to make.
Speaker 2: I think, you know. The way that I think about it, though,
Speaker 2: first is that both categories need to be situated geographically
Speaker 2: and historically. The conservatism and the far right I think
Speaker 2: are useful categories, but they mean really different things in
Speaker 2: the United States, as they do in Europe, as they
Speaker 2: do in China, as they do in India, and so
Speaker 2: I think the first thing is when we're talking about
Speaker 2: these categories is to be pretty culturally specific, because what
Speaker 2: matters to I think conservatism is a commitment to the
Speaker 2: status quo in many ways. In the United States context,
Speaker 2: I think there are many ways in which the center left,
Speaker 2: mainstream Democrats even quite conservative. Actually, if you sort of
Speaker 2: step back and let our partisan identifications and identities dissolve
Speaker 2: a little bit, you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: ways in which Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton especially
Speaker 2: are were deeply conservative figures and are sort of oriented
Speaker 2: towards upholding, you know, whatever social order exists now. So
Speaker 2: that's how I sort of think about conservatism. You know,
Speaker 2: there are touchstones in this sort of ideological canon. Edmund
Speaker 2: Burke is often pointed to as a figure. It's important
Speaker 2: to conservatism, a sort of sincere conservatism, that's you know, slow,
Speaker 2: slow change tradition, sort of humble politics. And I think
Speaker 2: when you think about the far right or radical right
Speaker 2: or extreme right, I think the first thing that comes
Speaker 2: to mind in contrast to conservatism, which is the politics
Speaker 2: of stasis, is just the politics of change. And when
Speaker 2: we think about something like the second Trump administration, well
Speaker 2: the first as well, but what the MAGA movement has become.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is a politics of change. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of things that they would like to change.
Speaker 2: And the question, you know, in distinguishing between conservative and
Speaker 2: far right is is just like, okay, are these people
Speaker 2: looking to switch the social order in some way? If so,
Speaker 2: then they might be far right. And then the question
Speaker 2: is are they on the right? And it's sort of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they seem to be on the right. So I think
Speaker 2: it's totally fair to call the current MAGA coalition a
Speaker 2: far right movement. And another good example I think is,
Speaker 2: you know what I think people often refer to as
Speaker 2: fascism in early twentieth century Europe. Nazism is different. But
Speaker 2: like Nazism itself was a very in some ways progressive
Speaker 2: movement at the time. It was towards It was change oriented.
Speaker 2: It was about a new vision for the social order,
Speaker 2: as was Mussolini's fascism in Italy. And so if you're
Speaker 2: dealing with the politics of change, for me, at least,
Speaker 2: I will say, people will disagree with this. You're not
Speaker 2: dealing with conservatism. You're dealing with something else. That something
Speaker 2: else could be a lot of things. It could be
Speaker 2: far right, it could be far left, it could be
Speaker 2: some other thing. Right rightis versus change. That's so helpful.
Speaker 2: This is infinitely fascinating for me, and also complicated because
Speaker 2: because right now, if you look at the Maga Coalition,
Speaker 2: you can say, yeah, it is a politics of change,
Speaker 2: for sure, But when you think about the kinds of
Speaker 2: change at play for me, there are two really distinct,
Speaker 2: almost like imaginaries at play. There's, on one hand, an
Speaker 2: imaginary that is much more related to a Nazi imaginary,
Speaker 2: which is this nostalgic, a sort of conservative nostalgic revolution.
Speaker 2: So there's a part of the MAGA Coalition I think
Speaker 2: imagines this sort of like you know, the American chestnut
Speaker 2: will return, and like the nuclear family will return. And
Speaker 2: then of course there is the totally unrelated winds of
Speaker 2: change that are extremely future oriented, in the form of
Speaker 2: Elon Musk wanting to build a new society on Mars
Speaker 2: and Peter Teel and the rest of the tech bros
Speaker 2: trying to imagine you know, new forms of technologically driven
Speaker 2: futuristic societies. Both of those are far right in right
Speaker 2: sense that they are pro change and in my estimation
Speaker 2: super pro hierarchy, super pro inequality. But they are different.
Speaker 2: Once driven by nostalgia, it's a change of nostalgia, and
Speaker 2: the other is driven by a change of sort of futurism.
Speaker 2: And so within even sort of you know, there's conservatism,
Speaker 2: which is sort of stasis. Within the far right, there
Speaker 2: is a politics of change. But within that politics of
Speaker 2: the far right, there is this really important cleavage right
Speaker 2: now between the sort of politics of nostalgia and this
Speaker 2: politics of futurism. And I think we see that play
Speaker 2: out in the United States like literally every day.
Speaker 1: Totally you know, related to the climate stuff too. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about the Peter Teel kind of end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum, this cyber libertarianism. And there's this group called
Speaker 1: the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. I'm sure you've heard of them.
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's so many of these groups, but
Speaker 1: this one was like started a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: Jordan Peterson is nominally in charge of it, but it's
Speaker 1: like funded by the people who funded Brexit, and it
Speaker 1: includes like a bunch of right wing politicians from the US,
Speaker 1: Canada and Australia, and then a ton of anti trans
Speaker 1: people and then also climate skeptics. It's a really interesting crowd,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of nationalists as well. The guy who
Speaker 1: like used to be in Momford and Sons and then
Speaker 1: left because he's like a far right guy. Now he's
Speaker 1: in there.
Speaker 2: He's not Marcus Mumford. Wait, what the hell?
Speaker 1: It's so wild. I'm obsessed with this group because it's
Speaker 1: such a random mix of people. And they made their
Speaker 1: annual conference available for a streaming past this year, so
Speaker 1: I bought one so I could tape all of it.
Speaker 1: There's this guy, Eric Weinstein, who was the head of
Speaker 1: Peter Thiel's venture capital firm for years and then they
Speaker 1: had sort of a like falling out, but mostly because
Speaker 1: Peter Teel's so weirdly sensitive about his public perception, even
Speaker 1: though it's like everyone thinks you're a giant weirdo dude, Like.
Speaker 2: He's so weird.
Speaker 1: Jeanie's not going back in the bottle on that one. Litally, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's really sensitive about it. And some of the
Speaker 1: sort of rowe podcast universe started to turn on Eric
Speaker 1: Weinstein because he had a bizarre appearance on the Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan podcast. Anyway, this guy Eric Weinstein gave this talk
Speaker 1: at the ARC conference and it was so unhinged, but
Speaker 1: it totally made sense in the world of these guys,
Speaker 1: where he was just like, we can't share an atmosphere
Speaker 1: with these people anymore.
Speaker 3: You think you've been through the culture wars, which is
Speaker 3: some sort of cute Internet conflict that seems really draining, exhausting. No, No,
Speaker 3: this is actually something that has recently been termed hybrid war.
Speaker 3: It's a two thousand and seven concept from Frank Hoffman,
Speaker 3: and it says that in the current situation, non shooting
Speaker 3: wars have no border and no end. Anything that can
Speaker 3: come through the Internet means that there is no frontier.
Speaker 2: We are all.
Speaker 3: Combatants to the people who practice hybrid warfare. We can
Speaker 3: all be manipulated from abroad, Tokyo roses, everywhere, cyber attacks, diplomacy,
Speaker 3: psychological attacks, information warfare. The new culture war hypothesis is
Speaker 3: that the culture war is domestic hybrid war. I've called
Speaker 3: it the no Name Revolution since twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Right now, where we.
Speaker 3: Are is four light years from the nearest star. There
Speaker 3: is no way to get to the speed of light
Speaker 3: or even close. We are marooned in our solar system
Speaker 3: with only two habitable rocks that aren't the Earth, and
Speaker 3: that's with a lot of work. We cannot stay with
Speaker 3: all of us on one planet, with one atmosphere, with
Speaker 3: people this crazy and tools this powerful.
Speaker 1: The thing that I find interesting about them from a
Speaker 1: climate perspective is that they have almost the opposite opinion
Speaker 1: as all the client deniers, where like they very much
Speaker 1: believe that climate change is happening and they're freaked out
Speaker 1: about it, and it's part of the drive to leave
Speaker 1: the planet. Build bunkers, invest heavily in like AI twenty
Speaker 1: four hour surveillance so they can deal with the uprisings
Speaker 1: that are coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. I mean, it's it's for sure of
Speaker 2: politics of escapism, and it's for sure a lifeboat politics,
Speaker 2: and it's for sure never waste a good crisis sort
Speaker 2: of situation for those guys I think, I mean, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: Like Elon Musk, he's most famous for like renewable energy technologies,
Speaker 2: you know, like what are we doing? Yeah, But the
Speaker 2: way that they're reacting to that, of course, is that
Speaker 2: they really just do believe themselves, like categorically in terms
Speaker 2: of even onto logically just as a separate species of
Speaker 2: human from the rest of us. I guess totally, yeah, totally, yeah,
Speaker 2: they are totally fine generally with lee everybody behind. And
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what else is the goal?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If if not that, like I don't understand why, for instance,
Speaker 2: like if that is not true, Elon Musk isn't using
Speaker 2: his fucking huge brain to create a really good healthcare
Speaker 2: system or something else, because like it, I mean, to me,
Speaker 2: it is just a rebirth of the turn of the
Speaker 2: century super conservative and fucked up progressive politics from like
Speaker 2: the late eighteen hundreds of this sort of like the
Speaker 2: elite should rule everybody. We're going to like have a
Speaker 2: sort of eugenics program and sterilize that dumb people and
Speaker 2: then like the species will have a higher level of fitness.
Speaker 2: And we're obsessed with IQ and like that's it, and
Speaker 2: it's just that's what it is. The idea that there
Speaker 2: is some there's some virtue attached to this dimension of
Speaker 2: this of the fuck current far right movement or mega
Speaker 2: coalition in the US is like absurd to me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was just writing a paper. I'd say that I'm
Speaker 2: writing a fucking blog post about this, but about a
Speaker 2: transition in societies that has happened since the beginning of
Speaker 2: Western civilization. I mean Aristotle was writing about exactly this,
Speaker 2: you know, two thousand years ago, of the transition of
Speaker 2: in any society, when the selection of elites shifts from
Speaker 2: the virtuous to the wealthy. That is a degeneration that
Speaker 2: happens in every society and it leads to the downfalls
Speaker 2: of societies. And these people aren't virtuous, They just like
Speaker 2: believe themselves to be better than everybody else. And it's
Speaker 2: a function of wealth. And there's a lot I would
Speaker 2: say logics within American culture, going back to social Darwinism
Speaker 2: that sort of translate wealth into virtue and it's very sensible.
Speaker 2: Like people love Elon Musk in the US. You know,
Speaker 2: he's an extremely successful, popular celebrity. And if it were
Speaker 2: true that in American culture we didn't think that wealth
Speaker 2: meant to virtue, that he would not be popular because
Speaker 2: there's nothing appealing about this person, right, Yeah, virtuous in
Speaker 2: any sense of the term, even if he believes himself
Speaker 2: to be part of like Western civilization in some meaningful way,
Speaker 2: no figure of virtue in whatever you think of Western
Speaker 2: civilization in the past. I would look at this guy
Speaker 2: and be like, this is a virtuous person. He's just
Speaker 2: a wealthy guy, yeah, who, like you know, to his credit,
Speaker 2: does believe in climate change, does think it's a big thing,
Speaker 2: but is using this crisis in order to escape his
Speaker 2: responsibility along with the rest of sort of the right
Speaker 2: wing elite I think today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So I wanted to ask about the arguments
Speaker 1: against climate action being made by religious and particularly Catholic
Speaker 1: groups in the US. I don't know if that's something
Speaker 1: that you can speak to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think the question in the
Speaker 2: US right now of Catholicism, I think is like super
Speaker 2: under addressed currently. Yeah, Like in the US, you know,
Speaker 2: a prototypically Protestant, individualistic, rugged individualism, bootstrapsy sort of country
Speaker 2: that literally, like one hundred years ago was targeting Catholics
Speaker 2: with terrorist groups like the KKK. And the first American
Speaker 2: president who was Catholic, JFK, was assassinated, you know, and
Speaker 2: Biden was the second Catholic president. And you know, we
Speaker 2: have JD. Vance now who's very outward about his Catholicism.
Speaker 1: He and Leonard Leo like in the background.
Speaker 2: CEO huge amounts of dark money. Yeah, huge amounts of
Speaker 2: dark money. And it's sort of unthinkable one hundred years
Speaker 2: ago in the United States, and yet here we are
Speaker 2: with Catholic power increasing in the United States. The first
Speaker 2: American pope in Rome is like a massive deal in
Speaker 2: the religious history of the United States. And so I'm
Speaker 2: of two minds with the sort of Catholic orientation towards
Speaker 2: climate change, in part because the last pope, I think
Speaker 2: with led out to c and hosted huge climate conferences
Speaker 2: at the Vatican, had a lot to say about climate change.
Speaker 2: And I think right now it's not entirely clear what
Speaker 2: direction that will go in. As power is changing in
Speaker 2: Rome and conservative Catholic power is ascendant in the United States.
Speaker 2: And you know, I actually spent the past like living
Speaker 2: in Spain. I've become semi obsessed with Catholicism. Yeah, because isn't.
Speaker 1: That really the origin of Opus day is from Spain?
Speaker 1: Right Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh my god, Yeah totally. And there's a book
Speaker 2: that was written kind of recently about the collapse of
Speaker 2: Opista in Spain and the ascent of Opustay in the
Speaker 2: United States. Right the recent sort of like dark money
Speaker 2: Leonard Leo Catholic Information Center in DC sort of vibe.
Speaker 2: The president of the Heritage Foundation right now is a
Speaker 2: former president of Wyoming Catholic College. There's a lot there
Speaker 2: that I think is actually pretty under addressed. I think
Speaker 2: when it comes to climate change, I think the questions
Speaker 2: become weirder or something because on the one hand, my
Speaker 2: understanding especially the United States, but I think more globally,
Speaker 2: alongside this rise of this concept of national conservatism, this
Speaker 2: sort of drive towards national sovereignty and against global sovereignty.
Speaker 2: But you know, that translates into everything from cynicism around
Speaker 2: the UN to international aid, as we see with the
Speaker 2: destruction of USAID. What's interesting about that is that from
Speaker 2: like a more Protestant perspective that is fundamentally skeptical towards
Speaker 2: massive structures of global power. You know. That was the
Speaker 2: whole point of Protestantism, was the protest right, the global
Speaker 2: over of the Catholic Church. Yeah, so like that makes
Speaker 2: sense to me, this sort of isolationist, paleo conservative we
Speaker 2: don't want to meddle in other people's shit, and we
Speaker 2: don't want them to meddle in ours. That feels more
Speaker 2: aligned with this traditional climate skepticism, which is just like,
Speaker 2: screw the UN, screw cop Why are we paying for
Speaker 2: on one hand climate adaptation in Peru and on the
Speaker 2: other hand funding wars wherever? But now with the sort
Speaker 2: of ascendant power of Catholicism in the US, which Catholicism
Speaker 2: is a global concept. It is imperial, it does have
Speaker 2: a global imagination. It is not against anything in particular,
Speaker 2: you know, So it almost complicates the picture and makes
Speaker 2: I think, especially in the United States, this is not
Speaker 2: true in European countries. But like the rise of Catholicism
Speaker 2: and isolationism in the US simultaneously, and how that manifests
Speaker 2: both in politics in general but climate change in particular,
Speaker 2: feels like a new turn, I guess, and one that
Speaker 2: feels to me less coherent than the you know, more Protestant. Yeah,
Speaker 2: screw the Catholic Church, screw any global solidarity. We're just
Speaker 2: doing our own thing. I have my own relationship to God,
Speaker 2: like I have my church. We believe whatever, you know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, in general, I feel like the Protestant
Speaker 1: focus on an individual relationship with God is sort of
Speaker 1: a huge underpinning of hyperindividualism in the US in general,
Speaker 1: which seems like such a huge problem amidst all the things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: such an underpinning of so much of this stuff is
Speaker 1: this idea that all that matters is like me and
Speaker 1: my family in our direct relationship with God.
Speaker 2: You know, and that maps on what's weird right now,
Speaker 2: is that that maps onto our politics, you know, pretty well,
Speaker 2: like Protestantism. Protestanism is the majority Christian religion in most
Speaker 2: of Red America, and it's just the opposite in most
Speaker 2: of Blue America. Catholicism is the majority form of Christianity
Speaker 2: in the Northeast and the Midwest and parts of California,
Speaker 2: and so alignment with certain kinds of power, certain imaginations
Speaker 2: of global solidarity and capitalism, it sort of makes sense.
Speaker 2: But to understand exactly how certain figures thread that needle,
Speaker 2: like JD. Van So, I find absolutely fascinating. I think
Speaker 2: if you read too much into the way that he
Speaker 2: threads that needle, like a lot of people in the
Speaker 2: sort of Trump orbit, like the logical falls apart, right,
Speaker 2: it's not coherent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, kind of relatedly, certainly, not unrelatedly. I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you about how and why climate got pulled
Speaker 1: into great replacement theory. Oh yeah, what happened there?
Speaker 2: I have a lot of thoughts, for sure. One of
Speaker 2: my papers right now that I'm writing is about intra
Speaker 2: Republican polarization on climate change, not between the parties but
Speaker 2: within the parties over the past thirty years. And what
Speaker 2: you see when you look at the right over the
Speaker 2: past since climate change became a thing that was important
Speaker 2: to people and controversial, is that from the beginning it's
Speaker 2: a question of sovereignty. It's not a question of the science.
Speaker 2: For the main distinction within the right, you know, not
Speaker 2: between the right and left. You know that does have
Speaker 2: these sort of anti science denial sort of things. But
Speaker 2: the really salient, durable aspect of the climate question at
Speaker 2: least in the United States and in Europe also increasingly
Speaker 2: is a question of sovereignty. National sovereignty. It projects so
Speaker 2: cleanly onto questions of the global versus the national in
Speaker 2: ways that other things do not, and a lot of
Speaker 2: those What I see in my research is that a
Speaker 2: lot of those same policy frames, sort of like public
Speaker 2: projections of the question that was really underlying a lot
Speaker 2: of the right wing versus conservative discontent about climate change
Speaker 2: for about twenty years, really translated itself into the immigration
Speaker 2: question now in mega politics, which is to me, the
Speaker 2: main policy problem in the imagination of the American right today.
Speaker 2: It's really the thing that holds the whole coalition together.
Speaker 2: If there was not an invasion on the southern border,
Speaker 2: there would be no maga politics, do you know what
Speaker 2: I mean? Like it's not there isn't any other policy imagination.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So the way that I think about this is that
Speaker 2: the question of national sovereignty is very important to right
Speaker 2: wing politics globally and took American right wing politics today,
Speaker 2: although it wasn't literally twenty years ago. Climate change sort
Speaker 2: of like I think, was an almost laboratory for these
Speaker 2: policy framings, sort of like how do you tie sovereignty
Speaker 2: to policy questions. Throughout the nineties, this was true of
Speaker 2: the paleocons, the paleo conservatives in the United States. It
Speaker 2: kind of disappeared during Bush when we all did our
Speaker 2: sort of flag waving nine to eleven stuff for a while,
Speaker 2: emerged again with the Tea Party and really sort of
Speaker 2: gain power in MAGA. And the role of the Great
Speaker 2: Replacement theory in that politics is to suggest that there
Speaker 2: is some elite cabal, vaguely Jewish but global, that is
Speaker 2: causing this or is exerting agency in driving this loss
Speaker 2: of national sovereignty, this poisoning at the southern border, this
Speaker 2: dilution of whatever wasp Protestant thing that people imagine the
Speaker 2: United States. It's to have been or to be, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, only half true at any point in history.
Speaker 2: But it's a way to translate the realities of a
Speaker 2: global capitalist economy which necessarily just looks for cheap labor
Speaker 2: and moves people around and tries to like, you know,
Speaker 2: get the most for the cheapest possible thing, and that
Speaker 2: means like importing a ton of cheap labor from wherever
Speaker 2: the hell you want to. It translates that into a
Speaker 2: more legible story for the average person to understand that
Speaker 2: there is some person or people or cabal that is
Speaker 2: intentionally doing this kind of thing as opposed to the
Speaker 2: rights for me more true, which is just the sort
Speaker 2: of diffuse agency of actors within a giant system of
Speaker 2: capitalism that like, of course like brings you know, cheap
Speaker 2: quasi enslaved brown people into the United States to do
Speaker 2: cheap as whole point. So it makes a better story
Speaker 2: out of a reality that's too complex really to tell
Speaker 2: to a general public. And it's really powerful. It works
Speaker 2: like it works everywhere. That's whether we like it or not.
Speaker 2: It's a story that has salience and explains something that
Speaker 2: I think is real, which a lot of us, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever academics might not want to address, is real into
Speaker 2: a legible story for the average person.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like that's a lot of the explanation.
Speaker 4: Behind the backlash to trans people to just like this,
Speaker 4: looking for someone to pin the.
Speaker 1: Pains of lead stage capitalism on other than the capital
Speaker 1: is I guess, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel like that issue. It's funny that I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not funny, but the climate and trans issues have
Speaker 2: become increasingly entangled. I think it's a really interesting and
Speaker 2: telling reality for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, what is accelerationism? Why has it been embraced
Speaker 1: by some far right actors?
Speaker 2: Yeah, explain so. I often get these these terms mixed
Speaker 2: up in sort of the sociology of religion. But you know,
Speaker 2: there is an idea within a lot of evangelical for
Speaker 2: it has been you know, since since the past one hundred,
Speaker 2: two hundred, three hundred years, that this idea of the
Speaker 2: second Coming of Jesus is upon us, that the apocalypse
Speaker 2: is coming, it's around the corner. This pre millenarian thought
Speaker 2: that this here, this tangible world that US Protestant evangelicals
Speaker 2: can feel and since is not the real thing, and
Speaker 2: that soon this will all burn and I knew sort
Speaker 2: of heavenly world will be upon us. And that's a
Speaker 2: sort of a politics that's fueled American evangelical thought for
Speaker 2: hundreds of years. And the way that it projects out
Speaker 2: of climate politics is just like, okay, here's all these
Speaker 2: leftist libs who are like trying to stop the apocalypse,
Speaker 2: which is you know, climate change or some nuclear thing happening,
Speaker 2: and we actually believe that it is moral and ethical
Speaker 2: and just to accelerate that process, to accelerate the sort
Speaker 2: of destruction of the of the immoral wasteland of late
Speaker 2: stage capitalism in order to bring about more quickly the
Speaker 2: Golden Age. The odd thing about accelerationism is it has
Speaker 2: Protestant backing in the sort of pre millinary and thought,
Speaker 2: but it also resonates with a lot of thoughts and
Speaker 2: sort of mythic structures within like Hindu thought and South
Speaker 2: Asian and Eastern ideas of cyclicality. And the way that
Speaker 2: you'll see this manifest in pop culture is, you know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't register as important to many people, but you'll
Speaker 2: hear Joe Rogan talk about the Cali Yuga and these
Speaker 2: sort of ideas of like Hindu cyclicality, the Caliyuga being
Speaker 2: the age we're in, the dark age that can only
Speaker 2: be we can only get to the Golden Age completing
Speaker 2: the cycle through complete destruction of civilization. Wow and both,
Speaker 2: I mean so it manifests both in these sort of
Speaker 2: Hindu logics, it manifests in Protestant pre millenarian logics, and
Speaker 2: it's the sort of worshiping of the apocalypse and the
Speaker 2: idea that we can't actually get ourselves out of this
Speaker 2: that there are bigger forces, whether they're you know, wich
Speaker 2: gods are in control of that, I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 2: And this was a structure of Greek thought too, but
Speaker 2: it's very common, but that we don't have we human
Speaker 2: son of control over this, so all we can do
Speaker 2: is sort of accelerate the cycle, get the apocalypse to
Speaker 2: come faster, and as a result reinstate you know, an
Speaker 2: ordered golden age. But that's like the charitable interpretation of accelerationism.
Speaker 2: It manifests obviously in like dumb ass ways too, where
Speaker 2: there's just like far right lunatics on their computers who
Speaker 2: are like, I'm just gonna go kill a ton of
Speaker 2: people or shut down a server warehouse, which you know,
Speaker 2: say what you will, Like, I would rather people be
Speaker 2: shutting down server warehouses than shooting school children. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: more power to them. But yeah, the idea of acceleration
Speaker 2: is generally just to accelerate the destruction of society, whether
Speaker 2: that be cyclical in the Hindu sense or linear in
Speaker 2: the Christian sense.
Speaker 1: Okay, I this is such an uplifting conversation. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, it's really it's just interesting to me because
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, everyone is is pinpointing the same set
Speaker 1: of things that are wrong, but like the causes and
Speaker 1: solutions are so wildly divergent.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting. Hey, I've got to say, I mean
Speaker 2: that gives me hope though in a weird way. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like to know that these people, I think in
Speaker 2: the most charitable version, are like identifying late stage capitalism
Speaker 2: and trying to make sense of it. Yeah, I'm like
Speaker 2: sympathetic that, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you said, the visions are just the visions
Speaker 2: for after are so divergent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, there's like all those memes that are
Speaker 1: like men will do blah blah blah to avoid going
Speaker 1: to therapy. I feel like, yeah, it's like capitalists will
Speaker 1: do anything to avoid just like reducing consumption. It's really
Speaker 1: not that bad, guys, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I know, totally totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, like we've said, how much money on
Speaker 1: figuring out how to terriform mars instead of just reducing
Speaker 1: a tiny you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, for sure. I mean yeah, technological progress, man,
Speaker 2: that's that's the only real ideology. So it's the thing
Speaker 2: we all agree on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, to turn that ship. Yeah, it's really yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I should say really quick, this is something
Speaker 2: I just doesn't aside in the I think that is
Speaker 2: very true in the US, like being in Spain and
Speaker 2: living there, I'm sure this might be true in Coastrika too,
Speaker 2: Like yeah, like people don't worship technological progress in the
Speaker 2: same way even in Western Europe that they do in
Speaker 2: the US. It's like a really American thing.
Speaker 1: Or like the accumulation of stuff anywhere near as much
Speaker 1: at all. It's very just like actually, yeah, here it's
Speaker 1: much more like and I got this vibe in Spain
Speaker 1: as well. It's like the whole point is to have
Speaker 1: like time to hang out with people, time to hang
Speaker 1: out with people you enjoy. That's the goal of life.
Speaker 1: It's not yeah, making money or coming up with the
Speaker 1: coolest new technological innovation or whatever. And like I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that there's no good that's ever come of like
Speaker 1: that drive in the US, because there definitely has been.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just a very different goal than a
Speaker 1: lot of the rest of the world has.
Speaker 2: Dude, I have such double consciousness around this living in
Speaker 2: Spain because I'm like, I like intellectually understand like I'm
Speaker 2: a lunatic American who works too hard and like I
Speaker 2: should be better at enjoying free time. And then I
Speaker 2: like live my life and I'm like, why the hell
Speaker 2: are all these people just hanging out all day? I
Speaker 2: like walk through this town I live, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: what the fuck are all these people even doing? And
Speaker 2: like I'm watching myself like be a dumbass, you know,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, actually, actually get out of this. It's great.
Speaker 1: I have the same thing because like in Costa Rica,
Speaker 1: it's just like it's Costrinka's did a very good job
Speaker 1: of like putting a very bougie coat of paint on
Speaker 1: being a Central American country. But like the reality is
Speaker 1: like you are not. There is no multitasking. You are
Speaker 1: getting one test done a day, ma'am. And that is
Speaker 1: it's like so hard for me to accept that. Okay,
Speaker 1: I just have one more question for you, and that
Speaker 1: is around. I have been seeing this very persistent idea
Speaker 1: amongst a lot of climate people that goes roughly, oh,
Speaker 1: the more people experience climate disasters, the more they will
Speaker 1: get behind acting on climate. And then I say, oh, you,
Speaker 1: sweet summer child, because really, like most of the evidence
Speaker 1: we have points in exactly the opposite direction that like, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, people, people are not their best selves when
Speaker 1: they are facing multiple directions on those to their lives,
Speaker 1: and like, in fact, it tends to drive people towards
Speaker 1: the far right or authoritarianism or things like that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I just kind of wanted to get your take on that,
Speaker 1: like what the research actually shows in terms of how
Speaker 1: climate impacts fuel extremism.
Speaker 2: My understanding of where that research is at is it's
Speaker 2: just really mixed and pretty context dependent. There's wars all
Speaker 2: over the world now, and there's climate dimensions to that.
Speaker 2: But I think there's this within this research, within this
Speaker 2: conversation about like, well there will be more extreme weather
Speaker 2: and everyone will like get on board with what the
Speaker 2: UN says. I think is to misunderstand how human nature works,
Speaker 2: or at least how I understand human nature to work,
Speaker 2: which is that I'm not entirely sold that in moments
Speaker 2: of crisis, like a global imaginary will just appear. I
Speaker 2: think that's a thing that sort of Western developmental ideas
Speaker 2: like to assume is true. But in crisis, people turn
Speaker 2: inward a lot of the time. I mean, there is
Speaker 2: obviously evidence to the contrary. And my understanding is that
Speaker 2: in crisis, people are very sympathetic and issues of identity disappear.
Speaker 2: There's all these interviews, this beautiful study by these professors
Speaker 2: at Columbia about people's opinions immediately following the nine eleven attacks,
Speaker 2: and you would think that people would be quite angry
Speaker 2: towards like Middle Eastern and Arab people, but it was
Speaker 2: actually just the opposite happened. New Yorkers were immediately after
Speaker 2: the attacks super like, yeah, really sympathetic and hoping that
Speaker 2: this didn't lead to some bigger conflict, and it actually
Speaker 2: sparked sympathies across these identity boundaries that were ostensibly at
Speaker 2: play totally.
Speaker 1: There was actually so much like warm and fuzzy community building.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, for sure at some time. Yeah yeah, So
Speaker 2: immediately in the wake of those sorts of things. I mean,
Speaker 2: you see this with natural disasters all the time. But
Speaker 2: what natural disasters do not in the short run, I mean,
Speaker 2: in the short run that is true. In the long run,
Speaker 2: what natural disasters do is they just like fuck up
Speaker 2: communities so like, and when people are struggling just to survive,
Speaker 2: they turn inward like it's not like there's the immediate
Speaker 2: crisis situation with any of these, you know, climate driven
Speaker 2: natural disasters, whether it be a hurricane or tornado or
Speaker 2: lightning storm like whatever. But like the destruction of community
Speaker 2: is hard, whether it's war or natural disaster, and it's
Speaker 2: hard to recover in a lot of times. You know,
Speaker 2: if if we don't have sort of systems to support communities, FEMA,
Speaker 2: for instance, is getting gutted. Like we're not doing USAID anymore.
Speaker 2: In the long term, when people are hurting, they really
Speaker 2: have to turn inward and survive. And I'm not entirely
Speaker 2: sure when the human animal is in survival mode. There's
Speaker 2: a whole lot of evidence to suggest that, like we're
Speaker 2: our best selves. I mean, when I don't eat lunch,
Speaker 2: I turn into an asshole and so like right exactly.
Speaker 1: Like we have a word for being hungry and angry
Speaker 1: at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so the idea of like instability, and I
Speaker 2: think we're seeing this is that what global instability and
Speaker 2: insecurity does is it turns pre existing organisms, whether they
Speaker 2: be biological or social, inward, and I think we're seeing
Speaker 2: that in the form of national conservatism and the sort
Speaker 2: of resurgence of national counterintuitive national nationalism in a moment
Speaker 2: when our national systems are also being destroyed in some ways,
Speaker 2: which doesn't make a whole of sense, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so I just don't totally get why. I don't
Speaker 2: know on how, especially the way the climate change has
Speaker 2: been pitched to the general public over the past thirty years,
Speaker 2: that in any way, in moments of insecurity, people would
Speaker 2: be more willing to extend sympathies towards global organizations like
Speaker 2: the UN or sort of international agreements between countries based
Speaker 2: on good faith to set aside resources in order to
Speaker 2: support the collective good. I wish that was the case.
Speaker 2: I guess I just might have a little bit more
Speaker 2: of a pessimistic view towards the human animal than some people.
Speaker 2: I mean, if people want to do big climate change
Speaker 2: work at an international level in a moment of crisis,
Speaker 2: it's just going to take a lot of authoritarianism. So
Speaker 2: that's the trade off. You can either have dout intervention
Speaker 2: that mandates things of people in crisis, but to assume
Speaker 2: that people are going to become more sympathetic towards climate
Speaker 2: efforts instituted by people they don't know from a disadvantage
Speaker 2: in a moment of crisis, I think doesn't make a
Speaker 2: whole lot of I would say common sense to me.
Speaker 2: And there's also obviously the problem of like hurricane is
Speaker 2: a hurricane, Like is it did climate change affect it? Yeah? Probably,
Speaker 2: but like it fu So it's not like, oh, here's
Speaker 2: a climate narrative coming at you. It's like, no, Like
Speaker 2: my house is underwater, so.
Speaker 1: Right, right. I've also seen some stuff around right when
Speaker 1: groups kind of seizing on those moments to have boots
Speaker 1: on the ground and be like helping people out and
Speaker 1: kind of endearing themselves to people and seizing local power
Speaker 1: in those moments too. Yeah, But like, I guess there's
Speaker 1: an opportunity there for climate people as well. Malcolm Harris
Speaker 1: wrote this book that came out I think earlier this year,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that he talked about being
Speaker 1: a possible, you know, action item for climate people was
Speaker 1: to create like community disaster councils that basically like mutual
Speaker 1: aid networks that activate in times of disaster.
Speaker 2: I think that's incredible. I just like, to be honest
Speaker 2: with that kind of stuff. I have no idea what
Speaker 2: it has anything to do with climate change, Like, I
Speaker 2: just don't It's like it appears to me similar to
Speaker 2: like missionary work when people from a church go down
Speaker 2: to like Costa Rica after hurt me.
Speaker 1: And yes, it's sort of like help people. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sort of like sympathetic to that because like
Speaker 2: they're helping people even though they're like maybe evangelizing a
Speaker 2: little bit. But that feels like what that climate thing
Speaker 2: would be if people, if climate researchers were to do
Speaker 2: like mutual aid work. That's just basically to me missionary work.
Speaker 1: It's missionary work, it is, yeah, exactly, But I think
Speaker 1: that was I think actually like I'm kind of into that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: do that because otherwise the people that are going to
Speaker 1: do it are either evangelicals or right wing militia exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I think maybe like missionaries, you might
Speaker 2: like the people who are doing that just might need
Speaker 2: to distance themselves a little bit from their evangelical goals,
Speaker 2: you know, and just sort of like often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just help again. That was Jesse Bryant at Yale University.
Speaker 1: He contributed to a chapter in a new book from
Speaker 1: the folks at the Climate Social Science Network called Climate
Speaker 1: Obstruction a Global Survey. I highly recommend this book for
Speaker 1: folks who are looking to get a handle on all
Speaker 1: the various forces working to obstruct climate action today. Coming
Speaker 1: up after the break, what far right climate obstruction looks
Speaker 1: like elsewhere in the world, particularly in the UK and Europe.
Speaker 1: Stay with us and we're back. Joining me now is
Speaker 1: Dieter Ploe, researcher and lecturer at University Cassel in Germany.
Speaker 1: Dieter and I had spoken before, back when I was
Speaker 1: working on a story about the Atlas Network, a global
Speaker 1: network of right wing think tanks that Dieter has spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time researching. We touched on that research
Speaker 1: here as well, and a whole lot more. Okay, so
Speaker 1: tell me about the wise use concept. Can you kind
Speaker 1: of define what that is and tell me what the
Speaker 1: wise use movement is?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 5: Basically, when we looked at the history of the climate
Speaker 5: opposition opposition to environment movement, we were struck by the
Speaker 5: fact that already in the nineteen seventies eighties, the corporate
Speaker 5: opposition and the conservative opposition to environmental activism had started
Speaker 5: to come up with counter narratives, counter concepts.
Speaker 6: To the need to upgrade environmental regulation and against the
Speaker 6: regulatory activism of the federal government. In the United States,
Speaker 6: starting basically with the founding of EPA and the early
Speaker 6: legislation in the nineteen seventies, the conservative movement basically responded
Speaker 6: that this is all intrusion from the federal government and
Speaker 6: that the local people know much better how to deal
Speaker 6: with the environment and perfectly capable of making wise use
Speaker 6: of the environmental resources, basically protect the environment in accordance
Speaker 6: to the ways in which they interact with nature, use nature,
Speaker 6: and so the wise use concept was a deliberate concept
Speaker 6: to place local wisdom and knowledge against what was regarded
Speaker 6: as unnecessary and intrusive regulation from the federal government.
Speaker 1: It seems very prevalent right now as well. So I
Speaker 1: wonder you're seeing it have a resurgence or if it
Speaker 1: just never went away, if the same groups are pushing
Speaker 1: it still. What's happening with that?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I think it's a key trope in the
Speaker 6: kind of opposition to federal government or central government intervention.
Speaker 6: And basically, you know, we came across this reading Andrew
Speaker 6: Rohlds book The Green Backlash, which is from nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 6: so quite a while ago, and it was in fact
Speaker 6: striking how much of the present climate obstruction. Climate opposition
Speaker 6: discourse is preceded by the controversies and the mobilization against
Speaker 6: the environmental policy making in the nineteen seventies eighties, and
Speaker 6: how many of the themes that are very very important
Speaker 6: in the present constellation have been basically developed against the
Speaker 6: establishment of the very first generation of environmental regulatory politics.
Speaker 6: And it's all framed sort of like local versus central government.
Speaker 6: And there's presently a stronger revival of such sentiments now
Speaker 6: basically framed as opposition to global governance. So the national
Speaker 6: government has held to be better prepared to deal with
Speaker 6: these challenges than any sort of like of global governance.
Speaker 6: So in a way, yes, continuity and certain forms of
Speaker 6: mutations we can see.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the Atlas Network and their role
Speaker 1: in climate obstruction, because as I'm sure you know, they've
Speaker 1: really been trying to claim that they have done no
Speaker 1: such thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's basically since the takeover of a response ability
Speaker 6: at the central headquarters at the Atlas Network by Bratt Lipps,
Speaker 6: after the period in which Alejandro Chamwen, the Argentinian who
Speaker 6: headed the Atlas Network after the founders Anthony Fisher's death
Speaker 6: in nineteen eighty nine roughly until the global financial crisis,
Speaker 6: and then I mean stayed basically a part of the leadership,
Speaker 6: but Brett Lips took over, and I think that Lips
Speaker 6: in a way was moving ATLAS network, the central headquarters,
Speaker 6: was moving it away from climate politics because Shamwuen was
Speaker 6: quite a bit involved and quite a bit more supportive
Speaker 6: of the climate obstruction climate denial efforts of Artland and
Speaker 6: the international conferences. ATLAS was co sponsoring the Heartland Conferences
Speaker 6: a few times, and there's very clear indications that ATLAS
Speaker 6: were closely involved in climate politics also the headquarters itself.
Speaker 6: Of course, it is not like a major organization compared
Speaker 6: to some of its members' partners like Calo Institute or
Speaker 6: Heartland Institute or the Heritage Foundation or other partners in
Speaker 6: Europe South Africa. So basically the move of Red Lips
Speaker 6: to Declear strong distance, we're not involved, we're not funded
Speaker 6: by oil companies. It all relates to the backlash the
Speaker 6: New Liberals and the firms, corporations and business associations that
Speaker 6: funded and were involved in outright climate denial with heart Land.
Speaker 2: Conferences and so on.
Speaker 6: So of course there was a lot of backlash against
Speaker 6: Exonmobile in particular, and I think that was basically considered
Speaker 6: a tricky thing from the perspective also of the think
Speaker 6: tanks that were involved, that they much like the corporations,
Speaker 6: right to distance a little bit the general purpose of
Speaker 6: the free market movement from the specific politics of climate
Speaker 6: denial and climate obstruction. So they changed the name also
Speaker 6: to from Atlasic Research Foundation to a network. So now
Speaker 6: we have an organization, the Umbrella Organization, which is Adlas Network,
Speaker 6: and Brett Libs will say, we're not getting any funding
Speaker 6: from the oil company, and that sounds like the Atlas
Speaker 6: Network as a whole, which has like five hundred organizations,
Speaker 6: doesn't get any funding from the oil company. The one
Speaker 6: thing may be right, Atlas Network as the Umbrella organization,
Speaker 6: may not get money from Excell Mobile, but many of
Speaker 6: these think things for sure get money from oil and
Speaker 6: fossil sources. And so it's a kind of a nice
Speaker 6: play they have there where they can legitimately maybe say
Speaker 6: we don't as Alas Network the Umbrella organization, and then
Speaker 6: it sounds like it's the network as a whole, which
Speaker 6: is obviously not true. But even Alas Network the Umbrella
Speaker 6: Organization would have to declare openly where it's funding comes
Speaker 6: from and how much money they get from donors trust,
Speaker 6: which is actually of course then covering up money that
Speaker 6: comes from possibly oil companies other fossil groups.
Speaker 2: So I mean, even.
Speaker 6: Strong claim we are not getting money from fossil sources
Speaker 6: is basically impossible to verify or falsify as long as
Speaker 6: they don't clarify the funding sources from these dark money machines.
Speaker 6: But of course, the Atlas Network as a whole, with
Speaker 6: its large membership, has been home to many think tanks
Speaker 6: in many countries that were absolutely part and parcel of
Speaker 6: the climate denial and climate obstruction movement. US organizations like
Speaker 6: Cato Institute, like the Heartland Institute, like the Independent Institute,
Speaker 6: Heritage Foundation, they're all very involved in spreading a climate
Speaker 6: denial and other misinformation. Canadians Phrase Institute, the Frontiers and
Speaker 6: European organizations like the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Global
Speaker 6: Warning Foundation, the Adam Smith Institute, the Austrian Economic Center
Speaker 6: in Austria, in Africa, in South Africa, the Freedom Foundation
Speaker 6: and so on. So forcing Yeah, So basically we found
Speaker 6: in our research that about half of the ADDAS Network
Speaker 6: partner organizations do publish content on climate and a small
Speaker 6: number of thing tanks, maybe no more than twelve to
Speaker 6: fifteen think tanks are basically publishing a lot of material,
Speaker 6: and many of them were closely involved in the climate
Speaker 6: denial movement, which has morphed into a broader range of
Speaker 6: climate denial and other obstruction messages.
Speaker 1: Actually, one of the things that I found really interesting
Speaker 1: last time I was there that I had not realized
Speaker 1: that Atlas was involved in setting up the Donors Trust
Speaker 1: for the Cooke Guys.
Speaker 6: Well Red Lips, the head of the Address Network the
Speaker 6: Umbrella Organization is on the board of the Donors Trust,
Speaker 6: and not exactly sure how the arrangements are. But there's
Speaker 6: one of the interesting findings with regard to finance where
Speaker 6: where most of the information we have is from the
Speaker 6: United States, unfortunately, because most of the other countries are
Speaker 6: way less open with regard to source material that can
Speaker 6: be studied and for the US, therefore, we know quite
Speaker 6: a bit about the philanthropic funding of think tanks and
Speaker 6: the inter relationships between think tanks and foundations. And it's
Speaker 6: quite interesting indeed that big funders of ATLAS network, I
Speaker 6: mean the Templeton Foundation, which is the biggest funder of
Speaker 6: the Umbrella organization. Atlas Network is also heavily funding another
Speaker 6: ady Think tanks of the Atlas Network, both in the
Speaker 6: US and abroad, so they have an open access database
Speaker 6: where you can actually trace the funding. So we know
Speaker 6: that they fund six organizations that are part of the
Speaker 6: Atlas Network in Europe, indeed part of the European Epicenter network,
Speaker 6: like the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Institute of Bruno
Speaker 6: Leoni in Italy, which is sort of like the Expert
Speaker 6: organization in Europe, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute, which is
Speaker 6: a very successful big thing tank in the Baltics, and
Speaker 6: the German Brometoise Institute and CPUs in Denmark. So it's
Speaker 6: very interesting that Templeton not only is the largest funder
Speaker 6: by far of the Umbrella Organization, but also a funder
Speaker 6: of quite a large number of Atlas Network members in Europe,
Speaker 6: in Latin America and elsewhere. And other big foundations are
Speaker 6: more focused on the US but also have interlockx with
Speaker 6: European I think thanks like the Bradley Foundation as people
Speaker 6: sitting on the board of the Institute of Economic Affairs,
Speaker 6: and they also mobilize some of the funding there. So yeah,
Speaker 6: no surprise that the arrangements to cover up some of
Speaker 6: the funding sources from corporations. We see that has been
Speaker 6: manufactured with the help of the experts the Atlas network
Speaker 6: because they know what they need and they can help
Speaker 6: the com needs to basically cover their traces.
Speaker 1: Okay. Relatedly, let's talk about the mont Pelerin Society for
Speaker 1: a mine. Can I have you define what that is
Speaker 1: and explain its role in incubating or bringing a lot
Speaker 1: of these think tank guys together.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 6: Well, it's quite important to know that the origins really
Speaker 6: of the think tank strategy of the so called free
Speaker 6: market movement, which basically is the neoliberal movement, which was
Speaker 6: founded post World War two by Fritish August van Hayek
Speaker 6: the likes of Germany Is Rutger and Americans from the
Speaker 6: Chicago School and from other places, was founded in nineteen
Speaker 6: forty seven in Switzerland in Montpelura, which is a small
Speaker 6: location on top.
Speaker 2: Of the Lake of Geneva.
Speaker 6: And basically when Anthony Fisher, the founder of the Institute
Speaker 6: of Economic Affairs as entrepreneur friend of British Augustphon Hiak,
Speaker 6: when he asked Hyak for it twice. He wanted to
Speaker 6: go into politics, and Hike advised him not to go
Speaker 6: into politics and to instead invest in intellectual resources. In fact,
Speaker 6: the founding of a think tank than Fisher actually started
Speaker 6: the Institute of Economic Affairs, and together with business friends
Speaker 6: in many countries, he was closely involved in starting this
Speaker 6: new liberal think tank movement up the Phraser Institute in Canada,
Speaker 6: Peru's Institute for Democracy, by this of De Soto in Australia.
Speaker 6: He was very very global immediately, and then in nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty one Fisher was organizing the Atlas Network to have
Speaker 6: more help in coordinating and growing the network. So the
Speaker 6: inspiration to go for the think tank strategy came from
Speaker 6: Haiek based on his reading of the political conflicts in
Speaker 6: society and the need to have a long, long range
Speaker 6: strategy and intellectual warfare, so to speak. And since then
Speaker 6: every leader of the Other's network has been a member
Speaker 6: of the more Pera society. So this network of academics,
Speaker 6: business people, media people, some politicians and think tank professionals,
Speaker 6: that's really the core membership of the more Pera society
Speaker 6: that meets globally and coordinates and learns globally, discusses the
Speaker 6: challenges that neoliberalism faces and develops strategies, and they don't
Speaker 6: become active themselves as the more pera society. It's basically
Speaker 6: a self image of an academic society more than of
Speaker 6: ant organization. And they basically lean on think tanks, many
Speaker 6: of which have been founded by more per society member
Speaker 6: or see more perent society members helping to run them
Speaker 6: on their boards. So the think tank are basically, in
Speaker 6: a way the organizational capacity where more para society people
Speaker 6: intervene in media, in political consulting, in all kinds of
Speaker 6: policy errors, including, of course what they perceive as a
Speaker 6: challenge for less regulated markets, the intense regulation coming from
Speaker 6: environmental regulatory politics and climate politics.
Speaker 1: Now, have you walked me through some of the key
Speaker 1: discourses of delay that these think tanks use and kind
Speaker 1: of spread around.
Speaker 6: Sure, I mean discourse of delay. Of course, complement in
Speaker 6: the early period of climate opposition movement activities was really
Speaker 6: climate denihilism. So basically, as as soon as the signs consolidated,
Speaker 6: there was this concerted effort to undermine the scientific basis
Speaker 6: by erecting organizations like Heartland and the non Governmental Panel
Speaker 6: on Climate Change that they organized to publish publications against
Speaker 6: the IPCC and so on and so force. And so
Speaker 6: we see that in the two thousands we have really
Speaker 6: the the growth of a climate denial movement. But that
Speaker 6: was never all that happened in these neoliberal conservative circles,
Speaker 6: because quite a large.
Speaker 2: Part of the neoliberal universe.
Speaker 6: Is not denying climate science nor its unthropogenic causes. It's
Speaker 6: rather taking issue with the climate policy, so like objecting
Speaker 6: to state regulation, to all kinds of policy tools that
Speaker 6: they regard as wrong and problematic or counter productive, and
Speaker 6: so advocate instead market solutions. So one of the specialties
Speaker 6: that have emerged in the context of the outless network
Speaker 6: is free market so called free market environmentalism, which basically
Speaker 6: is a counter narrative to state regulation, very much along
Speaker 6: the lines of the old vice use movement, basically asking
Speaker 6: for the privatization of nature so that the owners of
Speaker 6: the forests, of the rivers of the air can basically
Speaker 6: be in charge of taking care of it. So the
Speaker 6: radical proposal of radical free market environmentalism means essentially everything
Speaker 6: will be fine as soon as we really completely deregulate
Speaker 6: and privatize nature, so that the owners of the resources
Speaker 6: can be in charge. And then of course a much milder,
Speaker 6: much more mainstream version is the pricing of nature, so
Speaker 6: that involves of course state capacities, and that's basically the
Speaker 6: carbon pricing mechanisms we have, the emissions trading mechanisms we
Speaker 6: have that have been proposed by economists to be a
Speaker 6: better tool than regulations that outlaw certain emissions or regulate
Speaker 6: the quantities quantities in other ways, basically suggesting that relying
Speaker 6: on market mechanisms will improve environmental governance, which you know,
Speaker 6: in theory is an interesting model, but in practice in
Speaker 6: many ways has so far failed to materialize. And in fact,
Speaker 6: in the United States, where many of these things were
Speaker 6: first proposed, as soon as become relevant and would mean
Speaker 6: that corporations would actually be charged, then there was actually
Speaker 6: everywhere in the world. As soon as market mechanisms are
Speaker 6: turning out to be somewhat effective, they're usually opposed by
Speaker 6: the actors that are supposed to support market mechanisms. So
Speaker 6: it's unclear to what extent the market mechanisms that are
Speaker 6: part of the legitimate discourse of climate policy make me
Speaker 6: very much a part of even the mainstream IPCC discourse. Basically,
Speaker 6: the shift in a policy instrument in the Paris Treaty
Speaker 6: has been all moving more towards market mechanisms. But we
Speaker 6: don't see really that this development has actually been really effective.
Speaker 6: So serious economists and serious climate policy concerned people must
Speaker 6: ask themselves, of course, to what extent is this really
Speaker 6: a reliable method and to what extent is it actually
Speaker 6: leading us into a dead end road, Because as soon
Speaker 6: as carbon pricing becomes very expensive, we usually get set
Speaker 6: back because people protest the high prices because they cannot
Speaker 6: afford it. So it's basically frequently failing to take into
Speaker 6: account the redistribution that is then going on. And usually
Speaker 6: under conditions of austerity, which we had most of the
Speaker 6: time over the past decade, people are simply very short
Speaker 6: of money, and social week classes are very quick to
Speaker 6: rebel against the price increases if there's no compensation available.
Speaker 6: So there's an interesting problematic But the whole field of
Speaker 6: climate policy opposition basically has become fairly broad, ranging from
Speaker 6: climate denial through policy skepticism, where basically policy instruments are
Speaker 6: debated and policy measures are debated, and then we have
Speaker 6: other counter proposals we don't need to do mitigation because
Speaker 6: technology will in the future solve this problem again with
Speaker 6: the help of economists who use the discounting methods, suggesting
Speaker 6: that ten years from now certain measures are much cheaper,
Speaker 6: so we should delay them because they can be much
Speaker 6: more efficiently in an economic sense employed later. And so
Speaker 6: many of these elements simply lead to not take decisive
Speaker 6: action with regard to climate mitigation now and are basically
Speaker 6: employed to derail processes that have been set up and
Speaker 6: suggest they are better alternatives, although basically the argument is
Speaker 6: more or less simply hiding the fact that one wants
Speaker 6: to block rather than to improve climate governance.
Speaker 1: Okay, you mentioned these three themes of philanthropic financial support
Speaker 1: within the political economy of climate obstruction, opacity, concentration, and heterogeneity.
Speaker 1: Can I have you explain wage of this is and
Speaker 1: how that translates to what we're seeing kind of around
Speaker 1: us right now.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 6: I mean, basically, the theme of philanthropy, of course, is
Speaker 6: so important because we have seen the share of income
Speaker 6: of tanks from philanthropies has been increasing over the past decades.
Speaker 6: I think partly because the pushback against corporations and the
Speaker 6: fear of corporations being involved in politics and getting exposed,
Speaker 6: so basically they have relied also on philanthropies to fund
Speaker 6: their strategies. So philanthropic funding for think tanks in climate
Speaker 6: politics is simply becoming more important. The opacity relates to
Speaker 6: the fact that even if we have more transparency in
Speaker 6: US data with regard to how much philanthropies fund and
Speaker 6: about the income of think tanks, we can only account
Speaker 6: for about a quarter to a third of the total
Speaker 6: of the outlasting tanks we looked at. A lot of
Speaker 6: the funding sources remain unclear, and a lot of the
Speaker 6: funding sources and among the philanthropies Donors Trust in other
Speaker 6: dark money machines that are basically not foundations from specific
Speaker 6: corporations from specific owners like the co Foundation or the
Speaker 6: Dunn Foundation or Bradley Foundation, basically Donors Trust and Dona's
Speaker 6: Capital Fund or money collection machines that collect money from
Speaker 6: different sources that don't have to be laid open and
Speaker 6: redistribute to the final recipient. The Donors Trust and Dona's
Speaker 6: Capital Fund are the largest funders of the Atlas Network
Speaker 6: think tanks out of more than three thousand corporate foundations
Speaker 6: in the US, and yet the opacity theme is even
Speaker 6: much more important with regard to other world regions and countries,
Speaker 6: because no comparable openness to foundation funding and non for
Speaker 6: profit income is available in other countries. So we have
Speaker 6: simply no data that compares to the US data, and
Speaker 6: that's of course a big drawback to study the right wing,
Speaker 6: the nearable right wing and other think tanks in Europe.
Speaker 6: In that America, we do have on the boards of
Speaker 6: think tanks we find corporate fundundations in Europe almost fifty
Speaker 6: compared to more than three hundred in the US and
Speaker 6: like a good thirty in Latin America. So we have
Speaker 6: some clues about which foundations are involved in running and
Speaker 6: funding thing thanks, but we just have no scientific tool
Speaker 6: to investigate these amounts.
Speaker 2: And these.
Speaker 6: These channels of influence with concentration refers to the observation
Speaker 6: that a lot of the funding for say, the ATLAS
Speaker 6: members in the United States comes from a relatively small.
Speaker 2: Group of foundations.
Speaker 6: As I mentioned, in this one database, we have more
Speaker 6: than three thousand foundations, but just a very small share
Speaker 6: of these foundations account for like a very large share
Speaker 6: of the funding. So yes, there are plenty of foundations,
Speaker 6: but the real music is played by a small orchestra,
Speaker 6: and so we can say that about fifty two hundred
Speaker 6: corporate foundations are really the core group that is in
Speaker 6: charge of channeling money to organizations like the Atlas Network
Speaker 6: thing tanks. And then the third category heterogeneity that basically
Speaker 6: I think referred to the wide range of organizations and
Speaker 6: strategies and perspectives funded by corporate foundations. So you would
Speaker 6: think that the philanthropic organization that funds climate denial funds climaty,
Speaker 6: now know, they also can fund quite different strategies and
Speaker 6: other thing tanks.
Speaker 1: Activity They're very intersectional. These guys absolutely absolutely just on
Speaker 1: one horse. Yeah, when everyone was talking about Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five in the US, I was working on this
Speaker 1: spreadsheet to look at maybe one hundred and five organizations
Speaker 1: involved in that, and I was looking at all of
Speaker 1: them and their funders, and there's so much overlap amongst
Speaker 1: the funders and the staff, you know, so everyone's working
Speaker 1: for each other's think tank or on the board or whatever.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that really jumped out was that,
Speaker 1: you know, when a lot of the anti abortion organizations
Speaker 1: in the US, as they started to be more successful,
Speaker 1: started to get into, you know, other issues because they
Speaker 1: needed to keep the money coming in. They were all
Speaker 1: of a sudden pushing anti trans stuff or even some
Speaker 1: of them were getting into anti climate work as well,
Speaker 1: and it was like, well, I guess if you have
Speaker 1: a twenty million dollar a year budget and your issue
Speaker 1: is not going to be an issue for that much longer,
Speaker 1: you need to find new things to work on.
Speaker 5: Interesting.
Speaker 6: Basically, it's also necessary to understand that we are not
Speaker 6: looking usually at.
Speaker 2: Single issue no alm.
Speaker 6: Yeah, people who were driven by a worldview that can
Speaker 6: be and will be applied to literally each subject matter.
Speaker 6: And yes, there will be a fair amount of specialization
Speaker 6: on environmental climate issues, maybe on public health issues, on
Speaker 6: criminal justice issues, on gender issues. But I mean, it's
Speaker 6: very interesting to see that a number of organizations co
Speaker 6: sponsored hard and conferences on climate politics that were actually
Speaker 6: not involved in climate politics.
Speaker 2: So we can look at this as members of a large.
Speaker 6: Party where some parts of the party specialize have committees
Speaker 6: on special issues. But at the same time, I'm very
Speaker 6: happy that their party friends are taking care of other
Speaker 6: issues now. So it's basically the same principle as a
Speaker 6: political apparatus, which also needs to be involved in many,
Speaker 6: many different policy areas and subject matters, and nobody can
Speaker 6: do it all. But if need be, I mean, if
Speaker 6: there's a special need for campaigning, you can actually mobilize
Speaker 6: many more people than the specialized people. I remember when
Speaker 6: the Free Trade for the America's conflict was on in
Speaker 6: North America, push trying to expand NAFTA to the whole
Speaker 6: of the Americas, and there was a lot of pushback
Speaker 6: from progressive organizations. For left wing organization Against the Americas
Speaker 6: raised an institute and worked on the issue for the
Speaker 6: time it needed until the subject was over, and then
Speaker 6: they closed the mechanism again. So basically, many of these
Speaker 6: larger think tanks certainly have the capacity to shift resources
Speaker 6: like from one subject matter to another. And also of
Speaker 6: course the large thing tanks with multimillion dollar budgets, they
Speaker 6: push quite a number of different themes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I want to ask you about how religious
Speaker 1: groups get in on this as well. So what are
Speaker 1: some of the key arguments that religious groups use against
Speaker 1: climate action.
Speaker 6: Well, there are different arguments really. On the one hand,
Speaker 6: it's important to note that the neoliberal movement, the conservative
Speaker 6: movement always had like also their religious side to it.
Speaker 6: Now the ACT and the think tanks that are specifically
Speaker 6: like the ACT and Institute are specifically Catholic neoliberal think
Speaker 6: tank that has been founded in the US, in Latin
Speaker 6: America and Europe and other thing tanks that are actually
Speaker 6: combining free trade and religious messages. So it's basically the
Speaker 6: link between a conservative social morality and the kind of
Speaker 6: patriarchal family ownership economic freedom model, which really is the
Speaker 6: economic freedom of the owner of the property. And so
Speaker 6: we see that many of the religious articulations with regard
Speaker 6: to climate policy and with regard in plicular to climate
Speaker 6: denials and climate obstruction are actually in this sphere of
Speaker 6: links between the neoliberal movement and their religious partners. The
Speaker 6: Cornwall Initiative sort of like is a mobilization of was
Speaker 6: founded by ACT and Institute people and as part of
Speaker 6: the Atlas network, so its co part of the hardcore
Speaker 6: of the free market movement, but actually tries to cater
Speaker 6: specifically to the Catholic world and of course reacts in
Speaker 6: the Catholic world to the challenges of theology of generation
Speaker 6: and other progressive forces that articulate themselves in the Catholic universe.
Speaker 6: In sort of like a socially progressive manner, and you
Speaker 6: have also a very strong environmentalism in the Catholic Church.
Speaker 6: Pope Francis last before the present Pope, he was a
Speaker 6: huge activist in environmental policy issues, and that basically caused
Speaker 6: the Catholic Right and the Catholic conservatives to mobilize very
Speaker 6: actively against Pop francis encyclical and climate messages and trying
Speaker 6: to push back against this. You know, the Church should
Speaker 6: keep out of these areas. Church should not be involved
Speaker 6: in these political issues like separating the spheres, and so
Speaker 6: some of the religious arguments that feed the obstruction movement
Speaker 6: is basically that climate science is part of the scientific world,
Speaker 6: which is not infallible. So they kind of turn the
Speaker 6: argument of religion versus science upside down in church, in
Speaker 6: religious belief, you have the full belief and that's where.
Speaker 2: You trust, even if you obviously.
Speaker 6: Don't know, whereas in science that's the sphere where you
Speaker 6: can't believe, where there is actually always needs to be debate.
Speaker 6: And that's an interesting argument where the religious belief is
Speaker 6: held to be superior to the scientific belief and is
Speaker 6: held to supply sort of like munition against the belief
Speaker 6: in climate science. Now they cannot be a believe in
Speaker 6: climate science because it's part of the rationalist world that
Speaker 6: is not infallible. And other sort of like Catholic subsidiarity thinking,
Speaker 6: which is a very old concept used by the Catholic
Speaker 6: social teaching to object against centralized intervention in family affairs.
Speaker 6: So like the smallest entity of social life, the family
Speaker 6: should take care of itself and only in case of
Speaker 6: need should sort of be supported maybe by the local church,
Speaker 6: and even and if there's a natural catastrophe, maybe the
Speaker 6: local church can ask for help by the state, and
Speaker 6: so on and so forth. So subsidiary is the thinking
Speaker 6: that the more local the self organization works as the
Speaker 6: better it is. And so it's basically it aligns very
Speaker 6: nicely with the kind of vice use concept and aligns
Speaker 6: very nicely with the objection against centralized government regulation and intervention.
Speaker 2: Even if you can also.
Speaker 6: Argue that in cases where the local cannot take care
Speaker 6: of policy issues, it's necessary that the higher levels of
Speaker 6: government need to be involved. So of course a policy
Speaker 6: issue like global warming, which is way beyond any local
Speaker 6: scale of politics, simply cannot be taken care of at
Speaker 6: the local level. So basically also these concepts like subsidiarity.
Speaker 6: The Catholic right will use it as an argument against
Speaker 6: centralizing regulation, whereas the Catholic left will sort of like
Speaker 6: use it as a good example of how subsidiarity can
Speaker 6: also not be considered an objection against centralized policy making.
Speaker 6: So it's an contested concept essentially. But we see that
Speaker 6: subsidiarity arguments are part of the mobilization against climate action
Speaker 6: and align perfectly well with neoliberal arguments and with conservative arguments.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, So I keep seeing this belief amongst a
Speaker 1: lot of people in climate spaces that as people experience
Speaker 1: more climate impacts that they will of course get on
Speaker 1: board doing something about climate. But I think, especially with
Speaker 1: the spar right stuff. But I would say even some
Speaker 1: of the Applas stuff tells us is that that's definitely
Speaker 1: not guarantee. I'm curious what you think about the potential
Speaker 1: for climate impacts to actually sort of supercharge some of
Speaker 1: this thinking as opposed to defeating it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, that's basically now, of course, our huge challenge. I mean,
Speaker 6: in the chapter of course, we talk about this broad
Speaker 6: spectrum of the right where neoliberalism as right wing liberalism
Speaker 6: is very closely overlapping with what Americans call conservatism, and
Speaker 6: can of course align with social conservatism, sometimes also with
Speaker 6: progressivism as with the Democratic Party and so on force
Speaker 6: and have an impact in the shifting the debate toward
Speaker 6: economic reasoning rather than the whole spectrum of policy interventions
Speaker 6: that we need to succeed in climate mitigation. And then,
Speaker 6: of course we have seen as a result of the
Speaker 6: multiple crises, both global warming and COVID financial crisis, we
Speaker 6: have seen this much more radical far right right rebellion
Speaker 6: expressed many times in right wing populist beliefs, where we
Speaker 6: get messages that go way beyond the traditional spectrum of
Speaker 6: free market conservatism and nearliberalism, which is in a way
Speaker 6: still engaged in this debate of how the world should
Speaker 6: be governed and what types of governance and what scales
Speaker 6: of governance should be employed. And in many areas the
Speaker 6: New Liberal movement was actually all in favor of global governance,
Speaker 6: for trade regulation, for property rights regulation, even for migration issues,
Speaker 6: because parts of the New Liberal movement are much more
Speaker 6: in favor of migration and so on, and so force
Speaker 6: remain to the stay more in favor like the Cook brothers,
Speaker 6: for example, compared to the Trump is But we see
Speaker 6: that the opposition against global governance in climate opened the
Speaker 6: door to actually challenge global governance altogether. And what we
Speaker 6: see as the far right in the form of the
Speaker 6: right wing populist government and political lead figures like Trump, Relay,
Speaker 6: many others around the world. Now they converge on a
Speaker 6: new ideology that is actually partly opposed to neoliberalism as
Speaker 6: far as neoliberalism is global you know, globalists, so to speak.
Speaker 6: And this new ideology is really national conservatism actually remove
Speaker 6: all these levels of global governance and move everything back
Speaker 6: in the sphere of the national nation state. Then some
Speaker 6: of them are more radical, the libertarians they want more
Speaker 6: even more decentralization, and other far right groups would also
Speaker 6: probably radicalize the message and try to destabilize many of
Speaker 6: the political entities more and move us into the territory
Speaker 6: of this much more complex and complicated area where we
Speaker 6: have seen in many places the rise of similar ideologies,
Speaker 6: conspiracy theories like the great Replacement theory, where basically the
Speaker 6: national conservatism lines in particular against foreign migration, and the
Speaker 6: far right has embraced the concept of ethnobluralism, so that yes,
Speaker 6: there are different ethnicities, but they better keep separated, each
Speaker 6: in their place. And so there's a very interesting movement
Speaker 6: where I would say the global forming challenges have led
Speaker 6: to an approach that was definitely global, the whole process,
Speaker 6: the whole real process, Kyoto Protocol Paris, and led to
Speaker 6: a very ambitious agenda that has been stalled in the meantime,
Speaker 6: and the backlash against it converges on the rejection not
Speaker 6: only of the concrete policy goals, but actually against the
Speaker 6: whole politics of climate change, the global governance aspect, and
Speaker 6: that's actually undermining, obviously the efforts to globally coordinate and
Speaker 6: negotiate solutions. And in that regard, the climate denial and
Speaker 6: climate obstruction movement was hugely successful, not only with the
Speaker 6: immediate impact they had, but now we see that the
Speaker 6: whole process is in danger of being derailed by the
Speaker 6: strength of the writing mobilization against global government.
Speaker 1: That's it for this time, Thanks for listening. Next week
Speaker 1: we're digging into the psychology of misinformation why this stuff
Speaker 1: works so well. Come back for that. Make sure you're
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Speaker 1: to next. Our producers for this season are In Saltz
Speaker 1: Ostwick and Peter duff. Our theme song is Bird in
Speaker 1: the Hand by Forknown. Our cover art is done by
Speaker 1: Matthew Fleming. Our First Amendment Attorney is James Wheaton with
Speaker 1: the First Amendment Project. The show was created, written, and
Speaker 1: reported by me Amy Westervelt. Thanks for listening and see
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