WEBVTT - S14, Ep2 | Welcome to the Rapture! How Rightwing Populism and Accelerationism Intersect with Climate 0:00:02.560 --> 0:00:08.440 Hello, and welcome back to Drilled Season fourteen. Obstruction. In 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:11.320 our Carbon Brose season, we talked about one way that 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:15.920 climate obstruction intersects with the far right, the rigid enforcement 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:19.520 of gender norms and the feminizing of a politics of care, 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:23.080 care for the environment and for each other. Today we're 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:25.479 digging into the history of far right approaches to the 0:00:25.600 --> 0:00:29.320 environment in general and how that history informs how right 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:33.840 wing campaigners in the US and beyond approach climate issues. 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:36.880 Today I'm joined in the first half of the show 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:40.760 by Jesse Bryant, a researcher at Yale University who studies 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:44.240 far right conceptions of nature, and in the second half 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:48.760 by Dieter Plowe, a lecturer at University Kessel in Germany 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:52.480 who studies the intersection of far right politics and environmental 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:57.639 issues in Europe. I found both conversations absolutely fascinating and 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:01.200 really helpful for understanding the content we're dealing with in 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:04.600 many parts of the world at the moment. I hope 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:06.880 you find them helpful to Here we go. 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:13.920 My name is Jesse Callahan Bryant. I am a doctoral 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:15.840 candidate at the Yale School of the Environment. 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:18.000 One of the first questions I wanted to ask is 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:21.920 to have you explain the difference between conservatism and far 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:22.759 right culture. 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:25.640 Yeah, I can try my best, you know, I will 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.920 say that this is like a distinction that even in 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:34.280 the broader literature, I think is a tough distinction to make. 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:37.240 I think, you know. The way that I think about it, though, 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:41.720 first is that both categories need to be situated geographically 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:46.520 and historically. The conservatism and the far right I think 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:49.639 are useful categories, but they mean really different things in 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:52.680 the United States, as they do in Europe, as they 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:55.520 do in China, as they do in India, and so 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:57.320 I think the first thing is when we're talking about 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:01.000 these categories is to be pretty culturally specific, because what 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:06.960 matters to I think conservatism is a commitment to the 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:11.480 status quo in many ways. In the United States context, 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:15.079 I think there are many ways in which the center left, 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:19.800 mainstream Democrats even quite conservative. Actually, if you sort of 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:26.120 step back and let our partisan identifications and identities dissolve 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.200 a little bit, you know, there are a lot of 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:32.960 ways in which Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton especially 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:40.040 are were deeply conservative figures and are sort of oriented 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:49.160 towards upholding, you know, whatever social order exists now. So 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:51.280 that's how I sort of think about conservatism. You know, 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:56.840 there are touchstones in this sort of ideological canon. Edmund 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.679 Burke is often pointed to as a figure. It's important 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:05.600 to conservatism, a sort of sincere conservatism, that's you know, slow, 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:12.919 slow change tradition, sort of humble politics. And I think 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.079 when you think about the far right or radical right 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:19.919 or extreme right, I think the first thing that comes 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:22.960 to mind in contrast to conservatism, which is the politics 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:27.200 of stasis, is just the politics of change. And when 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:30.840 we think about something like the second Trump administration, well 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:34.480 the first as well, but what the MAGA movement has become. 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:36.800 I mean, it is a politics of change. There are 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:38.280 a lot of things that they would like to change. 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:43.280 And the question, you know, in distinguishing between conservative and 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:47.720 far right is is just like, okay, are these people 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:51.560 looking to switch the social order in some way? If so, 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.520 then they might be far right. And then the question 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:57.560 is are they on the right? And it's sort of like, yeah, 0:03:57.560 --> 0:03:58.840 they seem to be on the right. So I think 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:04.040 it's totally fair to call the current MAGA coalition a 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:07.600 far right movement. And another good example I think is, 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:11.040 you know what I think people often refer to as 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:16.680 fascism in early twentieth century Europe. Nazism is different. But 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:22.680 like Nazism itself was a very in some ways progressive 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:28.800 movement at the time. It was towards It was change oriented. 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.600 It was about a new vision for the social order, 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:34.720 as was Mussolini's fascism in Italy. And so if you're 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:39.200 dealing with the politics of change, for me, at least, 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:42.440 I will say, people will disagree with this. You're not 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.520 dealing with conservatism. You're dealing with something else. That something 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:46.760 else could be a lot of things. It could be 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:49.440 far right, it could be far left, it could be 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:54.040 some other thing. Right rightis versus change. That's so helpful. 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.440 This is infinitely fascinating for me, and also complicated because 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.240 because right now, if you look at the Maga Coalition, 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:04.919 you can say, yeah, it is a politics of change, 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:07.880 for sure, But when you think about the kinds of 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:10.320 change at play for me, there are two really distinct, 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:15.880 almost like imaginaries at play. There's, on one hand, an 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:19.480 imaginary that is much more related to a Nazi imaginary, 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:24.200 which is this nostalgic, a sort of conservative nostalgic revolution. 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:28.680 So there's a part of the MAGA Coalition I think 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:33.400 imagines this sort of like you know, the American chestnut 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:38.600 will return, and like the nuclear family will return. And 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:43.880 then of course there is the totally unrelated winds of 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:47.840 change that are extremely future oriented, in the form of 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:54.360 Elon Musk wanting to build a new society on Mars 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:57.720 and Peter Teel and the rest of the tech bros 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:02.800 trying to imagine you know, new forms of technologically driven 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.719 futuristic societies. Both of those are far right in right 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:10.520 sense that they are pro change and in my estimation 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:15.040 super pro hierarchy, super pro inequality. But they are different. 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:17.840 Once driven by nostalgia, it's a change of nostalgia, and 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:20.000 the other is driven by a change of sort of futurism. 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:24.560 And so within even sort of you know, there's conservatism, 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.560 which is sort of stasis. Within the far right, there 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:30.040 is a politics of change. But within that politics of 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.720 the far right, there is this really important cleavage right 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:34.839 now between the sort of politics of nostalgia and this 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.680 politics of futurism. And I think we see that play 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:40.120 out in the United States like literally every day. 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:43.560 Totally you know, related to the climate stuff too. I 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:48.200 was thinking about the Peter Teel kind of end of 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:53.000 the spectrum, this cyber libertarianism. And there's this group called 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:57.360 the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. I'm sure you've heard of them. 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:59.479 I don't know. There's so many of these groups, but 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.560 this one was like started a couple of years ago. 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:06.440 Jordan Peterson is nominally in charge of it, but it's 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:09.760 like funded by the people who funded Brexit, and it 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:13.800 includes like a bunch of right wing politicians from the US, 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:17.680 Canada and Australia, and then a ton of anti trans 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:22.120 people and then also climate skeptics. It's a really interesting crowd, 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:25.520 and a bunch of nationalists as well. The guy who 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.720 like used to be in Momford and Sons and then 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:32.600 left because he's like a far right guy. Now he's 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:33.040 in there. 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:36.840 He's not Marcus Mumford. Wait, what the hell? 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:41.720 It's so wild. I'm obsessed with this group because it's 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.560 such a random mix of people. And they made their 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:49.320 annual conference available for a streaming past this year, so 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:51.320 I bought one so I could tape all of it. 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:54.960 There's this guy, Eric Weinstein, who was the head of 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:58.600 Peter Thiel's venture capital firm for years and then they 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:01.760 had sort of a like falling out, but mostly because 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:06.440 Peter Teel's so weirdly sensitive about his public perception, even 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.440 though it's like everyone thinks you're a giant weirdo dude, Like. 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:10.520 He's so weird. 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:15.520 Jeanie's not going back in the bottle on that one. Litally, yeah, 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:17.880 but he's really sensitive about it. And some of the 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:21.280 sort of rowe podcast universe started to turn on Eric 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:24.880 Weinstein because he had a bizarre appearance on the Joe 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:28.800 Rogan podcast. Anyway, this guy Eric Weinstein gave this talk 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:31.640 at the ARC conference and it was so unhinged, but 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:35.040 it totally made sense in the world of these guys, 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:38.640 where he was just like, we can't share an atmosphere 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:39.960 with these people anymore. 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:42.719 You think you've been through the culture wars, which is 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:47.440 some sort of cute Internet conflict that seems really draining, exhausting. No, No, 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:51.199 this is actually something that has recently been termed hybrid war. 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:54.800 It's a two thousand and seven concept from Frank Hoffman, 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:58.360 and it says that in the current situation, non shooting 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:02.240 wars have no border and no end. Anything that can 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.719 come through the Internet means that there is no frontier. 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:07.240 We are all. 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:10.360 Combatants to the people who practice hybrid warfare. We can 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:15.880 all be manipulated from abroad, Tokyo roses, everywhere, cyber attacks, diplomacy, 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:20.839 psychological attacks, information warfare. The new culture war hypothesis is 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:25.040 that the culture war is domestic hybrid war. I've called 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:28.440 it the no Name Revolution since twenty seventeen. 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:31.280 Right now, where we. 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.200 Are is four light years from the nearest star. There 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:37.079 is no way to get to the speed of light 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:39.960 or even close. We are marooned in our solar system 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:42.400 with only two habitable rocks that aren't the Earth, and 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:46.120 that's with a lot of work. We cannot stay with 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:49.520 all of us on one planet, with one atmosphere, with 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:51.760 people this crazy and tools this powerful. 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:55.240 The thing that I find interesting about them from a 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:58.960 climate perspective is that they have almost the opposite opinion 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:01.800 as all the client deniers, where like they very much 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:05.560 believe that climate change is happening and they're freaked out 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:09.160 about it, and it's part of the drive to leave 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:14.000 the planet. Build bunkers, invest heavily in like AI twenty 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:17.040 four hour surveillance so they can deal with the uprisings 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:17.800 that are coming. 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:21.960 Yeah, it is. I mean, it's it's for sure of 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:26.400 politics of escapism, and it's for sure a lifeboat politics, 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:32.199 and it's for sure never waste a good crisis sort 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:36.520 of situation for those guys I think, I mean, right, yeah, right, 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.839 Like Elon Musk, he's most famous for like renewable energy technologies, 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:44.160 you know, like what are we doing? Yeah, But the 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:45.839 way that they're reacting to that, of course, is that 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:49.360 they really just do believe themselves, like categorically in terms 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:52.280 of even onto logically just as a separate species of 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:57.440 human from the rest of us. I guess totally, yeah, totally, yeah, 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:01.480 they are totally fine generally with lee everybody behind. And 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:03.440 I'm not sure what else is the goal? 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:04.240 Yeah. 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:07.240 If if not that, like I don't understand why, for instance, 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:10.320 like if that is not true, Elon Musk isn't using 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:14.160 his fucking huge brain to create a really good healthcare 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:19.480 system or something else, because like it, I mean, to me, 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:23.480 it is just a rebirth of the turn of the 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:28.240 century super conservative and fucked up progressive politics from like 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:30.640 the late eighteen hundreds of this sort of like the 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:33.360 elite should rule everybody. We're going to like have a 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.920 sort of eugenics program and sterilize that dumb people and 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:40.440 then like the species will have a higher level of fitness. 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:44.800 And we're obsessed with IQ and like that's it, and 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:46.959 it's just that's what it is. The idea that there 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:52.040 is some there's some virtue attached to this dimension of 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:56.440 this of the fuck current far right movement or mega 0:11:56.480 --> 0:11:59.760 coalition in the US is like absurd to me. Yeah, 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:03.240 I was just writing a paper. I'd say that I'm 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:05.880 writing a fucking blog post about this, but about a 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:09.000 transition in societies that has happened since the beginning of 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:13.240 Western civilization. I mean Aristotle was writing about exactly this, 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:16.920 you know, two thousand years ago, of the transition of 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:21.600 in any society, when the selection of elites shifts from 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:25.640 the virtuous to the wealthy. That is a degeneration that 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:28.760 happens in every society and it leads to the downfalls 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:34.440 of societies. And these people aren't virtuous, They just like 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:37.920 believe themselves to be better than everybody else. And it's 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:40.720 a function of wealth. And there's a lot I would 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:44.200 say logics within American culture, going back to social Darwinism 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:49.920 that sort of translate wealth into virtue and it's very sensible. 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:52.320 Like people love Elon Musk in the US. You know, 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:57.560 he's an extremely successful, popular celebrity. And if it were 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:02.320 true that in American culture we didn't think that wealth 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:04.960 meant to virtue, that he would not be popular because 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:10.160 there's nothing appealing about this person, right, Yeah, virtuous in 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:13.319 any sense of the term, even if he believes himself 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.240 to be part of like Western civilization in some meaningful way, 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:20.520 no figure of virtue in whatever you think of Western 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:22.360 civilization in the past. I would look at this guy 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:24.640 and be like, this is a virtuous person. He's just 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:29.199 a wealthy guy, yeah, who, like you know, to his credit, 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:31.720 does believe in climate change, does think it's a big thing, 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:34.720 but is using this crisis in order to escape his 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:39.240 responsibility along with the rest of sort of the right 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:41.080 wing elite I think today. 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:44.959 Yeah, okay, So I wanted to ask about the arguments 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:49.480 against climate action being made by religious and particularly Catholic 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:52.040 groups in the US. I don't know if that's something 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:52.959 that you can speak to. 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:57.120 Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think the question in the 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:00.440 US right now of Catholicism, I think is like super 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:05.440 under addressed currently. Yeah, Like in the US, you know, 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:14.360 a prototypically Protestant, individualistic, rugged individualism, bootstrapsy sort of country 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.920 that literally, like one hundred years ago was targeting Catholics 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:23.120 with terrorist groups like the KKK. And the first American 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:27.520 president who was Catholic, JFK, was assassinated, you know, and 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:31.000 Biden was the second Catholic president. And you know, we 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:35.440 have JD. Vance now who's very outward about his Catholicism. 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.160 He and Leonard Leo like in the background. 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.840 CEO huge amounts of dark money. Yeah, huge amounts of 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:46.640 dark money. And it's sort of unthinkable one hundred years 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:48.120 ago in the United States, and yet here we are 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:52.880 with Catholic power increasing in the United States. The first 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:57.960 American pope in Rome is like a massive deal in 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:02.800 the religious history of the United States. And so I'm 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:07.360 of two minds with the sort of Catholic orientation towards 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:10.720 climate change, in part because the last pope, I think 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:15.840 with led out to c and hosted huge climate conferences 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:18.480 at the Vatican, had a lot to say about climate change. 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:22.560 And I think right now it's not entirely clear what 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:26.080 direction that will go in. As power is changing in 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:30.800 Rome and conservative Catholic power is ascendant in the United States. 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:35.640 And you know, I actually spent the past like living 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:40.920 in Spain. I've become semi obsessed with Catholicism. Yeah, because isn't. 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.240 That really the origin of Opus day is from Spain? 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:44.560 Right Yeah? 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:48.360 Yeah, Oh my god, Yeah totally. And there's a book 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:50.320 that was written kind of recently about the collapse of 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:54.080 Opista in Spain and the ascent of Opustay in the 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:57.520 United States. Right the recent sort of like dark money 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:02.760 Leonard Leo Catholic Information Center in DC sort of vibe. 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:06.160 The president of the Heritage Foundation right now is a 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:10.640 former president of Wyoming Catholic College. There's a lot there 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:14.120 that I think is actually pretty under addressed. I think 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:17.960 when it comes to climate change, I think the questions 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:23.160 become weirder or something because on the one hand, my 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:26.360 understanding especially the United States, but I think more globally, 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:31.080 alongside this rise of this concept of national conservatism, this 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:35.880 sort of drive towards national sovereignty and against global sovereignty. 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.760 But you know, that translates into everything from cynicism around 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:44.360 the UN to international aid, as we see with the 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:48.200 destruction of USAID. What's interesting about that is that from 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:52.760 like a more Protestant perspective that is fundamentally skeptical towards 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:55.840 massive structures of global power. You know. That was the 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:59.640 whole point of Protestantism, was the protest right, the global 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:03.400 over of the Catholic Church. Yeah, so like that makes 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:08.800 sense to me, this sort of isolationist, paleo conservative we 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:11.480 don't want to meddle in other people's shit, and we 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:14.400 don't want them to meddle in ours. That feels more 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:17.919 aligned with this traditional climate skepticism, which is just like, 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.880 screw the UN, screw cop Why are we paying for 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:27.399 on one hand climate adaptation in Peru and on the 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:32.040 other hand funding wars wherever? But now with the sort 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:36.320 of ascendant power of Catholicism in the US, which Catholicism 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:40.919 is a global concept. It is imperial, it does have 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:46.919 a global imagination. It is not against anything in particular, 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:51.680 you know, So it almost complicates the picture and makes 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:55.040 I think, especially in the United States, this is not 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.080 true in European countries. But like the rise of Catholicism 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:03.080 and isolationism in the US simultaneously, and how that manifests 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:06.800 both in politics in general but climate change in particular, 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:09.960 feels like a new turn, I guess, and one that 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:18.200 feels to me less coherent than the you know, more Protestant. Yeah, 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.960 screw the Catholic Church, screw any global solidarity. We're just 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.960 doing our own thing. I have my own relationship to God, 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:27.919 like I have my church. We believe whatever, you know. 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:32.160 So yeah, yeah, in general, I feel like the Protestant 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.399 focus on an individual relationship with God is sort of 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:39.520 a huge underpinning of hyperindividualism in the US in general, 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:47.520 which seems like such a huge problem amidst all the things. Yeah, 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:50.840 such an underpinning of so much of this stuff is 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:54.320 this idea that all that matters is like me and 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:57.200 my family in our direct relationship with God. 0:18:57.240 --> 0:19:00.600 You know, and that maps on what's weird right now, 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:03.520 is that that maps onto our politics, you know, pretty well, 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:09.480 like Protestantism. Protestanism is the majority Christian religion in most 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.400 of Red America, and it's just the opposite in most 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:17.160 of Blue America. Catholicism is the majority form of Christianity 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:23.119 in the Northeast and the Midwest and parts of California, 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:27.840 and so alignment with certain kinds of power, certain imaginations 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:32.560 of global solidarity and capitalism, it sort of makes sense. 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:38.520 But to understand exactly how certain figures thread that needle, 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:43.080 like JD. Van So, I find absolutely fascinating. I think 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:46.080 if you read too much into the way that he 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:48.760 threads that needle, like a lot of people in the 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:52.000 sort of Trump orbit, like the logical falls apart, right, 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:52.880 it's not coherent. 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:57.879 Yeah, anyway, kind of relatedly, certainly, not unrelatedly. I wanted 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:04.199 to ask you about how and why climate got pulled 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:11.920 into great replacement theory. Oh yeah, what happened there? 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:15.399 I have a lot of thoughts, for sure. One of 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:17.600 my papers right now that I'm writing is about intra 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:21.080 Republican polarization on climate change, not between the parties but 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:24.680 within the parties over the past thirty years. And what 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:27.199 you see when you look at the right over the 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:30.520 past since climate change became a thing that was important 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:34.080 to people and controversial, is that from the beginning it's 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:37.200 a question of sovereignty. It's not a question of the science. 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:40.840 For the main distinction within the right, you know, not 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.280 between the right and left. You know that does have 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:46.960 these sort of anti science denial sort of things. But 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:50.840 the really salient, durable aspect of the climate question at 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:54.960 least in the United States and in Europe also increasingly 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:59.159 is a question of sovereignty. National sovereignty. It projects so 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:03.639 cleanly onto questions of the global versus the national in 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:06.240 ways that other things do not, and a lot of 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:08.240 those What I see in my research is that a 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:12.920 lot of those same policy frames, sort of like public 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:17.720 projections of the question that was really underlying a lot 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:21.000 of the right wing versus conservative discontent about climate change 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:24.280 for about twenty years, really translated itself into the immigration 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:29.600 question now in mega politics, which is to me, the 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:35.080 main policy problem in the imagination of the American right today. 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:37.480 It's really the thing that holds the whole coalition together. 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.760 If there was not an invasion on the southern border, 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:42.840 there would be no maga politics, do you know what 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:46.880 I mean? Like it's not there isn't any other policy imagination. 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:48.520 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:52.000 So the way that I think about this is that 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:56.159 the question of national sovereignty is very important to right 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:59.919 wing politics globally and took American right wing politics today, 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:03.840 although it wasn't literally twenty years ago. Climate change sort 0:22:03.880 --> 0:22:09.280 of like I think, was an almost laboratory for these 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:12.440 policy framings, sort of like how do you tie sovereignty 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:16.199 to policy questions. Throughout the nineties, this was true of 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:19.800 the paleocons, the paleo conservatives in the United States. It 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:21.800 kind of disappeared during Bush when we all did our 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:24.240 sort of flag waving nine to eleven stuff for a while, 0:22:24.920 --> 0:22:27.719 emerged again with the Tea Party and really sort of 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:34.520 gain power in MAGA. And the role of the Great 0:22:34.640 --> 0:22:38.760 Replacement theory in that politics is to suggest that there 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:45.600 is some elite cabal, vaguely Jewish but global, that is 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:51.119 causing this or is exerting agency in driving this loss 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:54.840 of national sovereignty, this poisoning at the southern border, this 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:59.560 dilution of whatever wasp Protestant thing that people imagine the 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:03.399 United States. It's to have been or to be, which is, 0:23:04.040 --> 0:23:06.600 you know, only half true at any point in history. 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:13.000 But it's a way to translate the realities of a 0:23:13.040 --> 0:23:17.320 global capitalist economy which necessarily just looks for cheap labor 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:19.879 and moves people around and tries to like, you know, 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:22.520 get the most for the cheapest possible thing, and that 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:24.520 means like importing a ton of cheap labor from wherever 0:23:24.560 --> 0:23:27.320 the hell you want to. It translates that into a 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:31.000 more legible story for the average person to understand that 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:36.600 there is some person or people or cabal that is 0:23:36.880 --> 0:23:39.600 intentionally doing this kind of thing as opposed to the 0:23:39.640 --> 0:23:42.120 rights for me more true, which is just the sort 0:23:42.119 --> 0:23:45.040 of diffuse agency of actors within a giant system of 0:23:45.040 --> 0:23:49.159 capitalism that like, of course like brings you know, cheap 0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:53.000 quasi enslaved brown people into the United States to do 0:23:53.080 --> 0:23:56.520 cheap as whole point. So it makes a better story 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:59.200 out of a reality that's too complex really to tell 0:23:59.680 --> 0:24:02.399 to a general public. And it's really powerful. It works 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:05.479 like it works everywhere. That's whether we like it or not. 0:24:05.560 --> 0:24:10.240 It's a story that has salience and explains something that 0:24:10.400 --> 0:24:13.119 I think is real, which a lot of us, you know, 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:18.760 whatever academics might not want to address, is real into 0:24:18.920 --> 0:24:20.760 a legible story for the average person. 0:24:21.400 --> 0:24:23.719 I mean, I feel like that's a lot of the explanation. 0:24:23.359 --> 0:24:29.960 Behind the backlash to trans people to just like this, 0:24:30.920 --> 0:24:35.639 looking for someone to pin the. 0:24:34.760 --> 0:24:39.159 Pains of lead stage capitalism on other than the capital 0:24:39.280 --> 0:24:43.160 is I guess, you know, yeah, yeah. 0:24:42.960 --> 0:24:45.199 I feel like that issue. It's funny that I mean, 0:24:45.240 --> 0:24:48.000 it's not funny, but the climate and trans issues have 0:24:48.080 --> 0:24:51.560 become increasingly entangled. I think it's a really interesting and 0:24:51.640 --> 0:24:55.040 telling reality for sure. 0:24:55.800 --> 0:25:03.040 Yeah, okay, what is accelerationism? Why has it been embraced 0:25:03.040 --> 0:25:05.040 by some far right actors? 0:25:05.520 --> 0:25:11.720 Yeah, explain so. I often get these these terms mixed 0:25:11.800 --> 0:25:15.359 up in sort of the sociology of religion. But you know, 0:25:15.680 --> 0:25:20.600 there is an idea within a lot of evangelical for 0:25:20.680 --> 0:25:24.359 it has been you know, since since the past one hundred, 0:25:24.600 --> 0:25:28.520 two hundred, three hundred years, that this idea of the 0:25:28.560 --> 0:25:31.800 second Coming of Jesus is upon us, that the apocalypse 0:25:31.880 --> 0:25:35.560 is coming, it's around the corner. This pre millenarian thought 0:25:37.560 --> 0:25:42.480 that this here, this tangible world that US Protestant evangelicals 0:25:42.520 --> 0:25:46.080 can feel and since is not the real thing, and 0:25:46.240 --> 0:25:51.280 that soon this will all burn and I knew sort 0:25:51.320 --> 0:25:55.879 of heavenly world will be upon us. And that's a 0:25:55.920 --> 0:25:59.280 sort of a politics that's fueled American evangelical thought for 0:25:59.400 --> 0:26:02.719 hundreds of years. And the way that it projects out 0:26:02.760 --> 0:26:05.720 of climate politics is just like, okay, here's all these 0:26:05.840 --> 0:26:10.800 leftist libs who are like trying to stop the apocalypse, 0:26:11.520 --> 0:26:15.680 which is you know, climate change or some nuclear thing happening, 0:26:16.200 --> 0:26:20.280 and we actually believe that it is moral and ethical 0:26:20.320 --> 0:26:24.160 and just to accelerate that process, to accelerate the sort 0:26:24.160 --> 0:26:33.440 of destruction of the of the immoral wasteland of late 0:26:33.480 --> 0:26:39.399 stage capitalism in order to bring about more quickly the 0:26:39.440 --> 0:26:42.560 Golden Age. The odd thing about accelerationism is it has 0:26:42.720 --> 0:26:46.080 Protestant backing in the sort of pre millinary and thought, 0:26:46.600 --> 0:26:50.480 but it also resonates with a lot of thoughts and 0:26:50.560 --> 0:26:54.800 sort of mythic structures within like Hindu thought and South 0:26:54.840 --> 0:26:59.399 Asian and Eastern ideas of cyclicality. And the way that 0:26:59.440 --> 0:27:02.479 you'll see this manifest in pop culture is, you know, 0:27:03.320 --> 0:27:06.840 it doesn't register as important to many people, but you'll 0:27:06.840 --> 0:27:10.400 hear Joe Rogan talk about the Cali Yuga and these 0:27:10.400 --> 0:27:14.240 sort of ideas of like Hindu cyclicality, the Caliyuga being 0:27:14.560 --> 0:27:16.800 the age we're in, the dark age that can only 0:27:16.800 --> 0:27:21.040 be we can only get to the Golden Age completing 0:27:21.080 --> 0:27:27.280 the cycle through complete destruction of civilization. Wow and both, 0:27:27.480 --> 0:27:29.840 I mean so it manifests both in these sort of 0:27:29.880 --> 0:27:33.879 Hindu logics, it manifests in Protestant pre millenarian logics, and 0:27:33.920 --> 0:27:37.159 it's the sort of worshiping of the apocalypse and the 0:27:37.240 --> 0:27:41.359 idea that we can't actually get ourselves out of this 0:27:41.480 --> 0:27:45.720 that there are bigger forces, whether they're you know, wich 0:27:45.760 --> 0:27:48.040 gods are in control of that, I'm not entirely sure. 0:27:48.400 --> 0:27:50.199 And this was a structure of Greek thought too, but 0:27:50.359 --> 0:27:52.840 it's very common, but that we don't have we human 0:27:52.880 --> 0:27:54.760 son of control over this, so all we can do 0:27:54.800 --> 0:27:58.879 is sort of accelerate the cycle, get the apocalypse to 0:27:58.880 --> 0:28:02.440 come faster, and as a result reinstate you know, an 0:28:02.520 --> 0:28:10.000 ordered golden age. But that's like the charitable interpretation of accelerationism. 0:28:10.680 --> 0:28:13.440 It manifests obviously in like dumb ass ways too, where 0:28:13.440 --> 0:28:16.359 there's just like far right lunatics on their computers who 0:28:16.400 --> 0:28:17.840 are like, I'm just gonna go kill a ton of 0:28:17.840 --> 0:28:21.879 people or shut down a server warehouse, which you know, 0:28:22.280 --> 0:28:24.399 say what you will, Like, I would rather people be 0:28:24.440 --> 0:28:29.119 shutting down server warehouses than shooting school children. So yeah, yeah, 0:28:29.359 --> 0:28:32.480 more power to them. But yeah, the idea of acceleration 0:28:32.560 --> 0:28:37.040 is generally just to accelerate the destruction of society, whether 0:28:37.080 --> 0:28:40.160 that be cyclical in the Hindu sense or linear in 0:28:40.200 --> 0:28:41.040 the Christian sense. 0:28:44.320 --> 0:28:51.680 Okay, I this is such an uplifting conversation. I know, 0:28:52.000 --> 0:28:55.200 I know, it's really it's just interesting to me because 0:28:55.240 --> 0:29:01.720 it's like, Okay, everyone is is pinpointing the same set 0:29:01.760 --> 0:29:04.280 of things that are wrong, but like the causes and 0:29:04.320 --> 0:29:06.280 solutions are so wildly divergent. 0:29:06.400 --> 0:29:08.880 It's very interesting. Hey, I've got to say, I mean 0:29:08.880 --> 0:29:11.040 that gives me hope though in a weird way. Yeah, 0:29:11.120 --> 0:29:13.560 it's like to know that these people, I think in 0:29:13.600 --> 0:29:17.680 the most charitable version, are like identifying late stage capitalism 0:29:17.760 --> 0:29:20.000 and trying to make sense of it. Yeah, I'm like 0:29:20.040 --> 0:29:21.160 sympathetic that, you know. 0:29:22.200 --> 0:29:22.880 Yeah. 0:29:22.960 --> 0:29:25.920 Yeah, like you said, the visions are just the visions 0:29:25.920 --> 0:29:29.080 for after are so divergent. Yeah. 0:29:29.320 --> 0:29:32.040 Yeah, you know, there's like all those memes that are 0:29:32.080 --> 0:29:34.680 like men will do blah blah blah to avoid going 0:29:34.720 --> 0:29:37.760 to therapy. I feel like, yeah, it's like capitalists will 0:29:37.760 --> 0:29:40.880 do anything to avoid just like reducing consumption. It's really 0:29:40.880 --> 0:29:43.120 not that bad, guys, Yeah. 0:29:43.000 --> 0:29:46.880 I know, totally totally. Yeah. 0:29:46.920 --> 0:29:49.600 It's like, wow, like we've said, how much money on 0:29:49.720 --> 0:29:53.640 figuring out how to terriform mars instead of just reducing 0:29:55.520 --> 0:29:56.680 a tiny you know what I mean? 0:29:56.840 --> 0:30:01.280 Yes, for sure, for sure. I mean yeah, technological progress, man, 0:30:01.320 --> 0:30:05.680 that's that's the only real ideology. So it's the thing 0:30:05.760 --> 0:30:06.560 we all agree on. 0:30:07.320 --> 0:30:13.000 Yeah, yeah, to turn that ship. Yeah, it's really yeah, 0:30:13.080 --> 0:30:13.760 it's interesting. 0:30:14.240 --> 0:30:16.880 Okay, so I should say really quick, this is something 0:30:17.320 --> 0:30:19.120 I just doesn't aside in the I think that is 0:30:19.200 --> 0:30:21.920 very true in the US, like being in Spain and 0:30:21.960 --> 0:30:24.280 living there, I'm sure this might be true in Coastrika too, 0:30:24.320 --> 0:30:29.080 Like yeah, like people don't worship technological progress in the 0:30:29.120 --> 0:30:32.000 same way even in Western Europe that they do in 0:30:32.040 --> 0:30:33.960 the US. It's like a really American thing. 0:30:34.480 --> 0:30:38.040 Or like the accumulation of stuff anywhere near as much 0:30:38.280 --> 0:30:40.920 at all. It's very just like actually, yeah, here it's 0:30:41.000 --> 0:30:45.920 much more like and I got this vibe in Spain 0:30:45.960 --> 0:30:49.160 as well. It's like the whole point is to have 0:30:49.280 --> 0:30:57.920 like time to hang out with people, time to hang 0:30:57.960 --> 0:31:01.000 out with people you enjoy. That's the goal of life. 0:31:01.000 --> 0:31:05.200 It's not yeah, making money or coming up with the 0:31:05.240 --> 0:31:09.320 coolest new technological innovation or whatever. And like I'm not 0:31:09.520 --> 0:31:12.320 saying that there's no good that's ever come of like 0:31:12.440 --> 0:31:15.920 that drive in the US, because there definitely has been. 0:31:16.120 --> 0:31:21.000 But yeah, it's just a very different goal than a 0:31:21.040 --> 0:31:22.440 lot of the rest of the world has. 0:31:23.000 --> 0:31:26.720 Dude, I have such double consciousness around this living in 0:31:26.760 --> 0:31:31.840 Spain because I'm like, I like intellectually understand like I'm 0:31:31.840 --> 0:31:34.719 a lunatic American who works too hard and like I 0:31:35.080 --> 0:31:41.640 should be better at enjoying free time. And then I 0:31:41.720 --> 0:31:44.280 like live my life and I'm like, why the hell 0:31:44.320 --> 0:31:49.560 are all these people just hanging out all day? I 0:31:49.680 --> 0:31:51.920 like walk through this town I live, and I'm like, 0:31:51.960 --> 0:31:54.000 what the fuck are all these people even doing? And 0:31:54.160 --> 0:31:57.000 like I'm watching myself like be a dumbass, you know, 0:31:57.720 --> 0:32:00.520 and I'm like, actually, actually get out of this. It's great. 0:32:00.600 --> 0:32:03.400 I have the same thing because like in Costa Rica, 0:32:03.440 --> 0:32:06.440 it's just like it's Costrinka's did a very good job 0:32:06.480 --> 0:32:10.080 of like putting a very bougie coat of paint on 0:32:10.160 --> 0:32:16.480 being a Central American country. But like the reality is 0:32:16.520 --> 0:32:21.000 like you are not. There is no multitasking. You are 0:32:21.080 --> 0:32:23.760 getting one test done a day, ma'am. And that is 0:32:23.840 --> 0:32:29.160 it's like so hard for me to accept that. Okay, 0:32:29.200 --> 0:32:31.400 I just have one more question for you, and that 0:32:31.560 --> 0:32:35.240 is around. I have been seeing this very persistent idea 0:32:35.440 --> 0:32:39.080 amongst a lot of climate people that goes roughly, oh, 0:32:39.160 --> 0:32:43.800 the more people experience climate disasters, the more they will 0:32:43.800 --> 0:32:47.960 get behind acting on climate. And then I say, oh, you, 0:32:48.080 --> 0:32:53.479 sweet summer child, because really, like most of the evidence 0:32:53.520 --> 0:32:56.360 we have points in exactly the opposite direction that like, actually, 0:32:56.840 --> 0:33:00.400 you know, people, people are not their best selves when 0:33:01.640 --> 0:33:05.400 they are facing multiple directions on those to their lives, 0:33:05.800 --> 0:33:09.280 and like, in fact, it tends to drive people towards 0:33:09.440 --> 0:33:13.160 the far right or authoritarianism or things like that. So yeah, 0:33:13.160 --> 0:33:16.240 I just kind of wanted to get your take on that, 0:33:16.320 --> 0:33:21.000 like what the research actually shows in terms of how 0:33:21.160 --> 0:33:23.880 climate impacts fuel extremism. 0:33:24.640 --> 0:33:27.320 My understanding of where that research is at is it's 0:33:27.400 --> 0:33:31.560 just really mixed and pretty context dependent. There's wars all 0:33:31.600 --> 0:33:36.320 over the world now, and there's climate dimensions to that. 0:33:36.480 --> 0:33:40.800 But I think there's this within this research, within this 0:33:40.880 --> 0:33:43.720 conversation about like, well there will be more extreme weather 0:33:43.760 --> 0:33:45.920 and everyone will like get on board with what the 0:33:46.080 --> 0:33:49.760 UN says. I think is to misunderstand how human nature works, 0:33:51.560 --> 0:33:53.640 or at least how I understand human nature to work, 0:33:54.200 --> 0:33:57.720 which is that I'm not entirely sold that in moments 0:33:57.720 --> 0:34:05.280 of crisis, like a global imaginary will just appear. I 0:34:05.320 --> 0:34:10.799 think that's a thing that sort of Western developmental ideas 0:34:11.080 --> 0:34:14.239 like to assume is true. But in crisis, people turn 0:34:14.280 --> 0:34:16.040 inward a lot of the time. I mean, there is 0:34:16.120 --> 0:34:20.759 obviously evidence to the contrary. And my understanding is that 0:34:20.880 --> 0:34:27.640 in crisis, people are very sympathetic and issues of identity disappear. 0:34:28.200 --> 0:34:30.760 There's all these interviews, this beautiful study by these professors 0:34:30.760 --> 0:34:36.440 at Columbia about people's opinions immediately following the nine eleven attacks, 0:34:36.800 --> 0:34:38.720 and you would think that people would be quite angry 0:34:38.719 --> 0:34:40.920 towards like Middle Eastern and Arab people, but it was 0:34:40.960 --> 0:34:46.320 actually just the opposite happened. New Yorkers were immediately after 0:34:46.360 --> 0:34:51.880 the attacks super like, yeah, really sympathetic and hoping that 0:34:51.920 --> 0:34:55.040 this didn't lead to some bigger conflict, and it actually 0:34:55.080 --> 0:34:59.080 sparked sympathies across these identity boundaries that were ostensibly at 0:34:59.160 --> 0:35:00.360 play totally. 0:35:00.360 --> 0:35:03.600 There was actually so much like warm and fuzzy community building. 0:35:03.760 --> 0:35:07.000 Yes, yeah, for sure at some time. Yeah yeah, So 0:35:07.080 --> 0:35:09.040 immediately in the wake of those sorts of things. I mean, 0:35:09.080 --> 0:35:10.960 you see this with natural disasters all the time. But 0:35:11.280 --> 0:35:13.680 what natural disasters do not in the short run, I mean, 0:35:13.680 --> 0:35:15.160 in the short run that is true. In the long run, 0:35:15.160 --> 0:35:17.319 what natural disasters do is they just like fuck up 0:35:17.320 --> 0:35:22.080 communities so like, and when people are struggling just to survive, 0:35:22.280 --> 0:35:25.280 they turn inward like it's not like there's the immediate 0:35:25.640 --> 0:35:28.880 crisis situation with any of these, you know, climate driven 0:35:28.960 --> 0:35:31.480 natural disasters, whether it be a hurricane or tornado or 0:35:31.640 --> 0:35:36.040 lightning storm like whatever. But like the destruction of community 0:35:36.080 --> 0:35:39.080 is hard, whether it's war or natural disaster, and it's 0:35:39.120 --> 0:35:41.560 hard to recover in a lot of times. You know, 0:35:41.680 --> 0:35:46.920 if if we don't have sort of systems to support communities, FEMA, 0:35:46.960 --> 0:35:50.520 for instance, is getting gutted. Like we're not doing USAID anymore. 0:35:50.680 --> 0:35:52.799 In the long term, when people are hurting, they really 0:35:52.880 --> 0:35:54.760 have to turn inward and survive. And I'm not entirely 0:35:54.800 --> 0:35:58.439 sure when the human animal is in survival mode. There's 0:35:58.440 --> 0:36:01.239 a whole lot of evidence to suggest that, like we're 0:36:01.280 --> 0:36:04.880 our best selves. I mean, when I don't eat lunch, 0:36:05.320 --> 0:36:09.719 I turn into an asshole and so like right exactly. 0:36:09.320 --> 0:36:12.600 Like we have a word for being hungry and angry 0:36:12.680 --> 0:36:13.560 at the same time. 0:36:14.160 --> 0:36:19.239 Yeah, And so the idea of like instability, and I 0:36:19.239 --> 0:36:23.319 think we're seeing this is that what global instability and 0:36:23.360 --> 0:36:27.960 insecurity does is it turns pre existing organisms, whether they 0:36:28.000 --> 0:36:31.040 be biological or social, inward, and I think we're seeing 0:36:31.040 --> 0:36:34.080 that in the form of national conservatism and the sort 0:36:34.120 --> 0:36:40.799 of resurgence of national counterintuitive national nationalism in a moment 0:36:40.840 --> 0:36:43.400 when our national systems are also being destroyed in some ways, 0:36:43.520 --> 0:36:46.160 which doesn't make a whole of sense, you know. Yeah, 0:36:46.160 --> 0:36:53.440 and so I just don't totally get why. I don't 0:36:53.440 --> 0:36:56.120 know on how, especially the way the climate change has 0:36:56.160 --> 0:36:58.800 been pitched to the general public over the past thirty years, 0:36:58.840 --> 0:37:02.000 that in any way, in moments of insecurity, people would 0:37:02.040 --> 0:37:07.520 be more willing to extend sympathies towards global organizations like 0:37:08.120 --> 0:37:14.600 the UN or sort of international agreements between countries based 0:37:14.640 --> 0:37:19.200 on good faith to set aside resources in order to 0:37:19.400 --> 0:37:22.080 support the collective good. I wish that was the case. 0:37:22.160 --> 0:37:24.120 I guess I just might have a little bit more 0:37:24.120 --> 0:37:31.400 of a pessimistic view towards the human animal than some people. 0:37:31.440 --> 0:37:36.280 I mean, if people want to do big climate change 0:37:36.440 --> 0:37:39.320 work at an international level in a moment of crisis, 0:37:39.320 --> 0:37:41.480 it's just going to take a lot of authoritarianism. So 0:37:41.960 --> 0:37:46.360 that's the trade off. You can either have dout intervention 0:37:46.520 --> 0:37:51.560 that mandates things of people in crisis, but to assume 0:37:51.600 --> 0:37:56.760 that people are going to become more sympathetic towards climate 0:37:57.600 --> 0:38:02.280 efforts instituted by people they don't know from a disadvantage 0:38:02.520 --> 0:38:06.040 in a moment of crisis, I think doesn't make a 0:38:06.080 --> 0:38:08.360 whole lot of I would say common sense to me. 0:38:09.040 --> 0:38:13.120 And there's also obviously the problem of like hurricane is 0:38:13.120 --> 0:38:16.080 a hurricane, Like is it did climate change affect it? Yeah? Probably, 0:38:16.120 --> 0:38:19.600 but like it fu So it's not like, oh, here's 0:38:19.640 --> 0:38:21.960 a climate narrative coming at you. It's like, no, Like 0:38:22.440 --> 0:38:24.200 my house is underwater, so. 0:38:24.840 --> 0:38:30.399 Right, right. I've also seen some stuff around right when 0:38:30.440 --> 0:38:35.000 groups kind of seizing on those moments to have boots 0:38:35.040 --> 0:38:37.319 on the ground and be like helping people out and 0:38:37.400 --> 0:38:41.520 kind of endearing themselves to people and seizing local power 0:38:41.640 --> 0:38:45.600 in those moments too. Yeah, But like, I guess there's 0:38:45.640 --> 0:38:49.200 an opportunity there for climate people as well. Malcolm Harris 0:38:49.239 --> 0:38:52.520 wrote this book that came out I think earlier this year, 0:38:52.960 --> 0:38:55.359 and one of the things that he talked about being 0:38:55.360 --> 0:38:59.840 a possible, you know, action item for climate people was 0:38:59.880 --> 0:39:05.800 to create like community disaster councils that basically like mutual 0:39:05.880 --> 0:39:08.840 aid networks that activate in times of disaster. 0:39:09.200 --> 0:39:11.560 I think that's incredible. I just like, to be honest 0:39:11.560 --> 0:39:13.160 with that kind of stuff. I have no idea what 0:39:13.239 --> 0:39:15.440 it has anything to do with climate change, Like, I 0:39:15.520 --> 0:39:19.719 just don't It's like it appears to me similar to 0:39:20.000 --> 0:39:24.279 like missionary work when people from a church go down 0:39:24.360 --> 0:39:26.799 to like Costa Rica after hurt me. 0:39:27.360 --> 0:39:30.720 And yes, it's sort of like help people. Yeah. 0:39:31.360 --> 0:39:34.320 Yeah, I'm sort of like sympathetic to that because like 0:39:34.360 --> 0:39:37.400 they're helping people even though they're like maybe evangelizing a 0:39:37.440 --> 0:39:40.000 little bit. But that feels like what that climate thing 0:39:40.360 --> 0:39:43.799 would be if people, if climate researchers were to do 0:39:43.880 --> 0:39:47.319 like mutual aid work. That's just basically to me missionary work. 0:39:47.480 --> 0:39:50.319 It's missionary work, it is, yeah, exactly, But I think 0:39:50.360 --> 0:39:53.799 that was I think actually like I'm kind of into that, Yeah, 0:39:53.920 --> 0:39:56.080 do that because otherwise the people that are going to 0:39:56.160 --> 0:40:01.640 do it are either evangelicals or right wing militia exactly. 0:40:03.560 --> 0:40:08.000 Yeah. I think I think maybe like missionaries, you might 0:40:08.200 --> 0:40:10.200 like the people who are doing that just might need 0:40:10.239 --> 0:40:16.120 to distance themselves a little bit from their evangelical goals, 0:40:16.160 --> 0:40:18.400 you know, and just sort of like often. 0:40:18.320 --> 0:40:26.279 Yeah, just help again. That was Jesse Bryant at Yale University. 0:40:26.880 --> 0:40:29.319 He contributed to a chapter in a new book from 0:40:29.320 --> 0:40:32.800 the folks at the Climate Social Science Network called Climate 0:40:32.840 --> 0:40:36.759 Obstruction a Global Survey. I highly recommend this book for 0:40:36.800 --> 0:40:39.359 folks who are looking to get a handle on all 0:40:39.440 --> 0:40:44.479 the various forces working to obstruct climate action today. Coming 0:40:44.560 --> 0:40:47.480 up after the break, what far right climate obstruction looks 0:40:47.560 --> 0:40:50.840 like elsewhere in the world, particularly in the UK and Europe. 0:40:51.280 --> 0:41:02.759 Stay with us and we're back. Joining me now is 0:41:02.840 --> 0:41:07.080 Dieter Ploe, researcher and lecturer at University Cassel in Germany. 0:41:07.800 --> 0:41:10.400 Dieter and I had spoken before, back when I was 0:41:10.480 --> 0:41:13.440 working on a story about the Atlas Network, a global 0:41:13.440 --> 0:41:16.280 network of right wing think tanks that Dieter has spent 0:41:16.440 --> 0:41:19.880 a lot of time researching. We touched on that research 0:41:19.920 --> 0:41:25.880 here as well, and a whole lot more. Okay, so 0:41:25.920 --> 0:41:29.439 tell me about the wise use concept. Can you kind 0:41:29.440 --> 0:41:31.480 of define what that is and tell me what the 0:41:31.520 --> 0:41:33.400 wise use movement is? 0:41:35.160 --> 0:41:35.560 Sure? 0:41:35.760 --> 0:41:40.480 Basically, when we looked at the history of the climate 0:41:40.719 --> 0:41:45.440 opposition opposition to environment movement, we were struck by the 0:41:45.480 --> 0:41:49.880 fact that already in the nineteen seventies eighties, the corporate 0:41:49.880 --> 0:41:56.400 opposition and the conservative opposition to environmental activism had started 0:41:56.440 --> 0:42:01.239 to come up with counter narratives, counter concepts. 0:42:00.600 --> 0:42:05.759 To the need to upgrade environmental regulation and against the 0:42:07.520 --> 0:42:11.800 regulatory activism of the federal government. In the United States, 0:42:12.080 --> 0:42:16.840 starting basically with the founding of EPA and the early 0:42:16.920 --> 0:42:22.440 legislation in the nineteen seventies, the conservative movement basically responded 0:42:22.480 --> 0:42:26.680 that this is all intrusion from the federal government and 0:42:26.880 --> 0:42:31.400 that the local people know much better how to deal 0:42:31.480 --> 0:42:37.120 with the environment and perfectly capable of making wise use 0:42:37.640 --> 0:42:43.200 of the environmental resources, basically protect the environment in accordance 0:42:43.239 --> 0:42:46.880 to the ways in which they interact with nature, use nature, 0:42:47.560 --> 0:42:51.440 and so the wise use concept was a deliberate concept 0:42:51.520 --> 0:42:57.920 to place local wisdom and knowledge against what was regarded 0:42:57.960 --> 0:43:03.120 as unnecessary and intrusive regulation from the federal government. 0:43:04.560 --> 0:43:08.640 It seems very prevalent right now as well. So I 0:43:08.719 --> 0:43:12.480 wonder you're seeing it have a resurgence or if it 0:43:12.560 --> 0:43:15.640 just never went away, if the same groups are pushing 0:43:15.680 --> 0:43:17.799 it still. What's happening with that? 0:43:18.360 --> 0:43:21.319 Oh yeah, I think it's a key trope in the 0:43:21.640 --> 0:43:27.480 kind of opposition to federal government or central government intervention. 0:43:28.239 --> 0:43:32.280 And basically, you know, we came across this reading Andrew 0:43:32.360 --> 0:43:36.200 Rohlds book The Green Backlash, which is from nineteen ninety six, 0:43:36.280 --> 0:43:40.720 so quite a while ago, and it was in fact 0:43:41.200 --> 0:43:46.760 striking how much of the present climate obstruction. Climate opposition 0:43:46.920 --> 0:43:52.760 discourse is preceded by the controversies and the mobilization against 0:43:52.760 --> 0:43:57.000 the environmental policy making in the nineteen seventies eighties, and 0:43:57.080 --> 0:44:01.120 how many of the themes that are very very important 0:44:01.120 --> 0:44:07.040 in the present constellation have been basically developed against the 0:44:07.160 --> 0:44:12.560 establishment of the very first generation of environmental regulatory politics. 0:44:12.640 --> 0:44:16.360 And it's all framed sort of like local versus central government. 0:44:16.480 --> 0:44:21.560 And there's presently a stronger revival of such sentiments now 0:44:21.600 --> 0:44:26.920 basically framed as opposition to global governance. So the national 0:44:26.920 --> 0:44:30.440 government has held to be better prepared to deal with 0:44:30.480 --> 0:44:33.640 these challenges than any sort of like of global governance. 0:44:33.840 --> 0:44:37.239 So in a way, yes, continuity and certain forms of 0:44:37.440 --> 0:44:40.680 mutations we can see. 0:44:42.000 --> 0:44:46.359 Okay, let's talk about the Atlas Network and their role 0:44:46.760 --> 0:44:50.080 in climate obstruction, because as I'm sure you know, they've 0:44:50.120 --> 0:44:54.040 really been trying to claim that they have done no 0:44:54.160 --> 0:44:54.640 such thing. 0:44:54.920 --> 0:45:00.480 Yeah, that's basically since the takeover of a response ability 0:45:00.600 --> 0:45:05.360 at the central headquarters at the Atlas Network by Bratt Lipps, 0:45:06.160 --> 0:45:11.560 after the period in which Alejandro Chamwen, the Argentinian who 0:45:11.600 --> 0:45:17.240 headed the Atlas Network after the founders Anthony Fisher's death 0:45:17.440 --> 0:45:21.960 in nineteen eighty nine roughly until the global financial crisis, 0:45:22.040 --> 0:45:25.560 and then I mean stayed basically a part of the leadership, 0:45:25.560 --> 0:45:28.360 but Brett Lips took over, and I think that Lips 0:45:28.400 --> 0:45:33.000 in a way was moving ATLAS network, the central headquarters, 0:45:33.320 --> 0:45:36.799 was moving it away from climate politics because Shamwuen was 0:45:37.280 --> 0:45:40.200 quite a bit involved and quite a bit more supportive 0:45:40.680 --> 0:45:44.839 of the climate obstruction climate denial efforts of Artland and 0:45:44.880 --> 0:45:50.279 the international conferences. ATLAS was co sponsoring the Heartland Conferences 0:45:50.360 --> 0:45:54.680 a few times, and there's very clear indications that ATLAS 0:45:54.760 --> 0:45:59.800 were closely involved in climate politics also the headquarters itself. 0:46:00.000 --> 0:46:02.920 Of course, it is not like a major organization compared 0:46:02.960 --> 0:46:07.560 to some of its members' partners like Calo Institute or 0:46:07.640 --> 0:46:10.880 Heartland Institute or the Heritage Foundation or other partners in 0:46:10.960 --> 0:46:16.080 Europe South Africa. So basically the move of Red Lips 0:46:16.120 --> 0:46:20.640 to Declear strong distance, we're not involved, we're not funded 0:46:20.680 --> 0:46:24.480 by oil companies. It all relates to the backlash the 0:46:24.560 --> 0:46:28.600 New Liberals and the firms, corporations and business associations that 0:46:28.760 --> 0:46:33.400 funded and were involved in outright climate denial with heart Land. 0:46:33.280 --> 0:46:34.160 Conferences and so on. 0:46:34.280 --> 0:46:36.120 So of course there was a lot of backlash against 0:46:36.120 --> 0:46:40.280 Exonmobile in particular, and I think that was basically considered 0:46:40.400 --> 0:46:43.200 a tricky thing from the perspective also of the think 0:46:43.239 --> 0:46:47.400 tanks that were involved, that they much like the corporations, 0:46:48.160 --> 0:46:51.040 right to distance a little bit the general purpose of 0:46:51.080 --> 0:46:54.880 the free market movement from the specific politics of climate 0:46:54.960 --> 0:46:58.640 denial and climate obstruction. So they changed the name also 0:46:58.680 --> 0:47:03.200 to from Atlasic Research Foundation to a network. So now 0:47:03.239 --> 0:47:06.840 we have an organization, the Umbrella Organization, which is Adlas Network, 0:47:06.880 --> 0:47:09.720 and Brett Libs will say, we're not getting any funding 0:47:09.760 --> 0:47:12.880 from the oil company, and that sounds like the Atlas 0:47:13.000 --> 0:47:16.200 Network as a whole, which has like five hundred organizations, 0:47:16.200 --> 0:47:18.879 doesn't get any funding from the oil company. The one 0:47:18.920 --> 0:47:22.560 thing may be right, Atlas Network as the Umbrella organization, 0:47:22.760 --> 0:47:26.759 may not get money from Excell Mobile, but many of 0:47:26.760 --> 0:47:29.920 these think things for sure get money from oil and 0:47:30.360 --> 0:47:32.840 fossil sources. And so it's a kind of a nice 0:47:32.920 --> 0:47:36.239 play they have there where they can legitimately maybe say 0:47:36.360 --> 0:47:39.919 we don't as Alas Network the Umbrella organization, and then 0:47:40.000 --> 0:47:42.000 it sounds like it's the network as a whole, which 0:47:42.040 --> 0:47:45.320 is obviously not true. But even Alas Network the Umbrella 0:47:45.440 --> 0:47:49.280 Organization would have to declare openly where it's funding comes 0:47:49.320 --> 0:47:52.120 from and how much money they get from donors trust, 0:47:52.440 --> 0:47:55.040 which is actually of course then covering up money that 0:47:55.160 --> 0:47:58.800 comes from possibly oil companies other fossil groups. 0:47:58.800 --> 0:47:59.920 So I mean, even. 0:48:00.120 --> 0:48:03.120 Strong claim we are not getting money from fossil sources 0:48:03.280 --> 0:48:07.120 is basically impossible to verify or falsify as long as 0:48:07.160 --> 0:48:10.960 they don't clarify the funding sources from these dark money machines. 0:48:11.680 --> 0:48:14.960 But of course, the Atlas Network as a whole, with 0:48:15.120 --> 0:48:18.680 its large membership, has been home to many think tanks 0:48:18.760 --> 0:48:22.200 in many countries that were absolutely part and parcel of 0:48:22.239 --> 0:48:27.000 the climate denial and climate obstruction movement. US organizations like 0:48:27.120 --> 0:48:31.480 Cato Institute, like the Heartland Institute, like the Independent Institute, 0:48:32.280 --> 0:48:36.600 Heritage Foundation, they're all very involved in spreading a climate 0:48:36.719 --> 0:48:44.160 denial and other misinformation. Canadians Phrase Institute, the Frontiers and 0:48:44.520 --> 0:48:47.880 European organizations like the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Global 0:48:47.920 --> 0:48:52.480 Warning Foundation, the Adam Smith Institute, the Austrian Economic Center 0:48:52.520 --> 0:48:57.320 in Austria, in Africa, in South Africa, the Freedom Foundation 0:48:57.719 --> 0:49:01.800 and so on. So forcing Yeah, So basically we found 0:49:01.920 --> 0:49:07.400 in our research that about half of the ADDAS Network 0:49:07.480 --> 0:49:13.520 partner organizations do publish content on climate and a small 0:49:14.360 --> 0:49:16.800 number of thing tanks, maybe no more than twelve to 0:49:16.880 --> 0:49:21.520 fifteen think tanks are basically publishing a lot of material, 0:49:21.640 --> 0:49:24.720 and many of them were closely involved in the climate 0:49:24.760 --> 0:49:28.640 denial movement, which has morphed into a broader range of 0:49:28.680 --> 0:49:31.560 climate denial and other obstruction messages. 0:49:32.000 --> 0:49:34.680 Actually, one of the things that I found really interesting 0:49:34.840 --> 0:49:37.080 last time I was there that I had not realized 0:49:37.080 --> 0:49:41.400 that Atlas was involved in setting up the Donors Trust 0:49:43.040 --> 0:49:46.480 for the Cooke Guys. 0:49:46.840 --> 0:49:49.960 Well Red Lips, the head of the Address Network the 0:49:50.080 --> 0:49:52.920 Umbrella Organization is on the board of the Donors Trust, 0:49:52.960 --> 0:49:56.200 and not exactly sure how the arrangements are. But there's 0:49:56.640 --> 0:50:00.000 one of the interesting findings with regard to finance where 0:50:00.000 --> 0:50:02.960 where most of the information we have is from the 0:50:03.080 --> 0:50:07.279 United States, unfortunately, because most of the other countries are 0:50:07.360 --> 0:50:11.160 way less open with regard to source material that can 0:50:11.200 --> 0:50:14.520 be studied and for the US, therefore, we know quite 0:50:14.520 --> 0:50:18.680 a bit about the philanthropic funding of think tanks and 0:50:18.719 --> 0:50:22.479 the inter relationships between think tanks and foundations. And it's 0:50:22.640 --> 0:50:27.279 quite interesting indeed that big funders of ATLAS network, I 0:50:27.320 --> 0:50:30.279 mean the Templeton Foundation, which is the biggest funder of 0:50:30.440 --> 0:50:35.040 the Umbrella organization. Atlas Network is also heavily funding another 0:50:35.160 --> 0:50:38.520 ady Think tanks of the Atlas Network, both in the 0:50:38.600 --> 0:50:42.880 US and abroad, so they have an open access database 0:50:43.000 --> 0:50:45.719 where you can actually trace the funding. So we know 0:50:45.960 --> 0:50:48.960 that they fund six organizations that are part of the 0:50:49.000 --> 0:50:53.239 Atlas Network in Europe, indeed part of the European Epicenter network, 0:50:53.800 --> 0:50:57.120 like the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Institute of Bruno 0:50:57.200 --> 0:51:00.840 Leoni in Italy, which is sort of like the Expert 0:51:01.080 --> 0:51:05.120 organization in Europe, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute, which is 0:51:05.120 --> 0:51:08.879 a very successful big thing tank in the Baltics, and 0:51:09.120 --> 0:51:13.399 the German Brometoise Institute and CPUs in Denmark. So it's 0:51:13.680 --> 0:51:17.840 very interesting that Templeton not only is the largest funder 0:51:17.880 --> 0:51:21.280 by far of the Umbrella Organization, but also a funder 0:51:21.320 --> 0:51:26.240 of quite a large number of Atlas Network members in Europe, 0:51:26.280 --> 0:51:29.920 in Latin America and elsewhere. And other big foundations are 0:51:29.920 --> 0:51:33.279 more focused on the US but also have interlockx with 0:51:33.360 --> 0:51:36.760 European I think thanks like the Bradley Foundation as people 0:51:36.800 --> 0:51:39.200 sitting on the board of the Institute of Economic Affairs, 0:51:39.320 --> 0:51:44.719 and they also mobilize some of the funding there. So yeah, 0:51:44.840 --> 0:51:49.160 no surprise that the arrangements to cover up some of 0:51:49.200 --> 0:51:52.959 the funding sources from corporations. We see that has been 0:51:52.960 --> 0:51:56.600 manufactured with the help of the experts the Atlas network 0:51:56.640 --> 0:51:59.600 because they know what they need and they can help 0:51:59.640 --> 0:52:02.120 the com needs to basically cover their traces. 0:52:04.160 --> 0:52:07.840 Okay. Relatedly, let's talk about the mont Pelerin Society for 0:52:07.920 --> 0:52:11.240 a mine. Can I have you define what that is 0:52:11.320 --> 0:52:16.120 and explain its role in incubating or bringing a lot 0:52:16.120 --> 0:52:17.640 of these think tank guys together. 0:52:19.000 --> 0:52:19.400 Sure. 0:52:19.719 --> 0:52:23.600 Well, it's quite important to know that the origins really 0:52:23.640 --> 0:52:26.399 of the think tank strategy of the so called free 0:52:26.440 --> 0:52:31.360 market movement, which basically is the neoliberal movement, which was 0:52:31.480 --> 0:52:34.880 founded post World War two by Fritish August van Hayek 0:52:35.080 --> 0:52:39.120 the likes of Germany Is Rutger and Americans from the 0:52:39.200 --> 0:52:43.280 Chicago School and from other places, was founded in nineteen 0:52:43.320 --> 0:52:47.320 forty seven in Switzerland in Montpelura, which is a small 0:52:47.360 --> 0:52:48.440 location on top. 0:52:48.320 --> 0:52:50.160 Of the Lake of Geneva. 0:52:50.600 --> 0:52:54.080 And basically when Anthony Fisher, the founder of the Institute 0:52:54.080 --> 0:52:58.640 of Economic Affairs as entrepreneur friend of British Augustphon Hiak, 0:52:58.680 --> 0:53:00.840 when he asked Hyak for it twice. He wanted to 0:53:00.880 --> 0:53:03.040 go into politics, and Hike advised him not to go 0:53:03.440 --> 0:53:08.640 into politics and to instead invest in intellectual resources. In fact, 0:53:08.719 --> 0:53:12.280 the founding of a think tank than Fisher actually started 0:53:12.480 --> 0:53:15.440 the Institute of Economic Affairs, and together with business friends 0:53:15.480 --> 0:53:18.759 in many countries, he was closely involved in starting this 0:53:19.320 --> 0:53:23.120 new liberal think tank movement up the Phraser Institute in Canada, 0:53:23.719 --> 0:53:29.440 Peru's Institute for Democracy, by this of De Soto in Australia. 0:53:29.560 --> 0:53:33.040 He was very very global immediately, and then in nineteen 0:53:33.080 --> 0:53:38.600 eighty one Fisher was organizing the Atlas Network to have 0:53:39.040 --> 0:53:43.520 more help in coordinating and growing the network. So the 0:53:43.600 --> 0:53:47.480 inspiration to go for the think tank strategy came from 0:53:47.520 --> 0:53:50.920 Haiek based on his reading of the political conflicts in 0:53:51.000 --> 0:53:53.840 society and the need to have a long, long range 0:53:53.880 --> 0:53:59.319 strategy and intellectual warfare, so to speak. And since then 0:53:59.560 --> 0:54:02.880 every leader of the Other's network has been a member 0:54:02.880 --> 0:54:06.080 of the more Pera society. So this network of academics, 0:54:06.680 --> 0:54:11.960 business people, media people, some politicians and think tank professionals, 0:54:12.080 --> 0:54:14.719 that's really the core membership of the more Pera society 0:54:15.040 --> 0:54:20.560 that meets globally and coordinates and learns globally, discusses the 0:54:20.680 --> 0:54:26.040 challenges that neoliberalism faces and develops strategies, and they don't 0:54:26.080 --> 0:54:29.720 become active themselves as the more pera society. It's basically 0:54:29.760 --> 0:54:33.200 a self image of an academic society more than of 0:54:33.239 --> 0:54:38.759 ant organization. And they basically lean on think tanks, many 0:54:38.840 --> 0:54:41.320 of which have been founded by more per society member 0:54:41.480 --> 0:54:44.719 or see more perent society members helping to run them 0:54:44.719 --> 0:54:47.880 on their boards. So the think tank are basically, in 0:54:47.920 --> 0:54:52.920 a way the organizational capacity where more para society people 0:54:53.440 --> 0:54:58.239 intervene in media, in political consulting, in all kinds of 0:54:58.400 --> 0:55:01.759 policy errors, including, of course what they perceive as a 0:55:01.840 --> 0:55:07.359 challenge for less regulated markets, the intense regulation coming from 0:55:07.480 --> 0:55:11.280 environmental regulatory politics and climate politics. 0:55:11.920 --> 0:55:14.959 Now, have you walked me through some of the key 0:55:15.200 --> 0:55:19.680 discourses of delay that these think tanks use and kind 0:55:19.680 --> 0:55:20.640 of spread around. 0:55:22.719 --> 0:55:27.080 Sure, I mean discourse of delay. Of course, complement in 0:55:27.160 --> 0:55:33.000 the early period of climate opposition movement activities was really 0:55:33.000 --> 0:55:38.200 climate denihilism. So basically, as as soon as the signs consolidated, 0:55:38.360 --> 0:55:43.680 there was this concerted effort to undermine the scientific basis 0:55:44.120 --> 0:55:49.520 by erecting organizations like Heartland and the non Governmental Panel 0:55:49.600 --> 0:55:54.560 on Climate Change that they organized to publish publications against 0:55:54.600 --> 0:55:57.040 the IPCC and so on and so force. And so 0:55:57.120 --> 0:55:59.760 we see that in the two thousands we have really 0:55:59.800 --> 0:56:02.680 the the growth of a climate denial movement. But that 0:56:02.880 --> 0:56:07.520 was never all that happened in these neoliberal conservative circles, 0:56:07.680 --> 0:56:09.759 because quite a large. 0:56:09.480 --> 0:56:11.920 Part of the neoliberal universe. 0:56:12.120 --> 0:56:17.239 Is not denying climate science nor its unthropogenic causes. It's 0:56:17.320 --> 0:56:21.759 rather taking issue with the climate policy, so like objecting 0:56:21.920 --> 0:56:26.120 to state regulation, to all kinds of policy tools that 0:56:26.160 --> 0:56:30.719 they regard as wrong and problematic or counter productive, and 0:56:30.800 --> 0:56:35.759 so advocate instead market solutions. So one of the specialties 0:56:35.800 --> 0:56:39.000 that have emerged in the context of the outless network 0:56:39.120 --> 0:56:43.719 is free market so called free market environmentalism, which basically 0:56:43.840 --> 0:56:47.280 is a counter narrative to state regulation, very much along 0:56:47.320 --> 0:56:50.520 the lines of the old vice use movement, basically asking 0:56:50.560 --> 0:56:54.879 for the privatization of nature so that the owners of 0:56:54.920 --> 0:56:58.560 the forests, of the rivers of the air can basically 0:56:58.760 --> 0:57:01.120 be in charge of taking care of it. So the 0:57:01.320 --> 0:57:07.560 radical proposal of radical free market environmentalism means essentially everything 0:57:07.600 --> 0:57:10.959 will be fine as soon as we really completely deregulate 0:57:11.040 --> 0:57:16.360 and privatize nature, so that the owners of the resources 0:57:16.400 --> 0:57:19.880 can be in charge. And then of course a much milder, 0:57:20.160 --> 0:57:23.840 much more mainstream version is the pricing of nature, so 0:57:23.920 --> 0:57:27.760 that involves of course state capacities, and that's basically the 0:57:27.800 --> 0:57:31.520 carbon pricing mechanisms we have, the emissions trading mechanisms we 0:57:31.600 --> 0:57:34.800 have that have been proposed by economists to be a 0:57:34.840 --> 0:57:39.440 better tool than regulations that outlaw certain emissions or regulate 0:57:39.480 --> 0:57:44.640 the quantities quantities in other ways, basically suggesting that relying 0:57:44.720 --> 0:57:49.800 on market mechanisms will improve environmental governance, which you know, 0:57:49.920 --> 0:57:52.840 in theory is an interesting model, but in practice in 0:57:52.920 --> 0:57:56.600 many ways has so far failed to materialize. And in fact, 0:57:56.720 --> 0:57:58.760 in the United States, where many of these things were 0:57:58.760 --> 0:58:02.000 first proposed, as soon as become relevant and would mean 0:58:02.040 --> 0:58:06.520 that corporations would actually be charged, then there was actually 0:58:06.520 --> 0:58:09.520 everywhere in the world. As soon as market mechanisms are 0:58:09.720 --> 0:58:13.160 turning out to be somewhat effective, they're usually opposed by 0:58:13.240 --> 0:58:16.680 the actors that are supposed to support market mechanisms. So 0:58:16.680 --> 0:58:20.000 it's unclear to what extent the market mechanisms that are 0:58:20.040 --> 0:58:23.520 part of the legitimate discourse of climate policy make me 0:58:23.640 --> 0:58:28.160 very much a part of even the mainstream IPCC discourse. Basically, 0:58:28.200 --> 0:58:31.920 the shift in a policy instrument in the Paris Treaty 0:58:32.320 --> 0:58:36.760 has been all moving more towards market mechanisms. But we 0:58:36.840 --> 0:58:41.240 don't see really that this development has actually been really effective. 0:58:41.400 --> 0:58:46.080 So serious economists and serious climate policy concerned people must 0:58:46.160 --> 0:58:48.640 ask themselves, of course, to what extent is this really 0:58:48.680 --> 0:58:51.960 a reliable method and to what extent is it actually 0:58:52.360 --> 0:58:56.280 leading us into a dead end road, Because as soon 0:58:56.360 --> 0:58:59.760 as carbon pricing becomes very expensive, we usually get set 0:58:59.800 --> 0:59:03.120 back because people protest the high prices because they cannot 0:59:03.120 --> 0:59:06.640 afford it. So it's basically frequently failing to take into 0:59:06.640 --> 0:59:10.840 account the redistribution that is then going on. And usually 0:59:10.880 --> 0:59:13.400 under conditions of austerity, which we had most of the 0:59:13.440 --> 0:59:16.680 time over the past decade, people are simply very short 0:59:16.720 --> 0:59:20.160 of money, and social week classes are very quick to 0:59:20.240 --> 0:59:24.280 rebel against the price increases if there's no compensation available. 0:59:24.360 --> 0:59:29.120 So there's an interesting problematic But the whole field of 0:59:29.200 --> 0:59:34.240 climate policy opposition basically has become fairly broad, ranging from 0:59:34.280 --> 0:59:39.919 climate denial through policy skepticism, where basically policy instruments are 0:59:40.120 --> 0:59:43.960 debated and policy measures are debated, and then we have 0:59:44.040 --> 0:59:47.720 other counter proposals we don't need to do mitigation because 0:59:47.880 --> 0:59:51.120 technology will in the future solve this problem again with 0:59:51.200 --> 0:59:55.320 the help of economists who use the discounting methods, suggesting 0:59:55.360 --> 0:59:58.400 that ten years from now certain measures are much cheaper, 0:59:58.480 --> 1:00:01.200 so we should delay them because they can be much 1:00:01.240 --> 1:00:05.520 more efficiently in an economic sense employed later. And so 1:00:05.720 --> 1:00:10.040 many of these elements simply lead to not take decisive 1:00:10.200 --> 1:00:15.360 action with regard to climate mitigation now and are basically 1:00:15.360 --> 1:00:19.760 employed to derail processes that have been set up and 1:00:19.880 --> 1:00:24.640 suggest they are better alternatives, although basically the argument is 1:00:24.680 --> 1:00:27.560 more or less simply hiding the fact that one wants 1:00:27.600 --> 1:00:30.560 to block rather than to improve climate governance. 1:00:30.920 --> 1:00:35.000 Okay, you mentioned these three themes of philanthropic financial support 1:00:35.040 --> 1:00:41.400 within the political economy of climate obstruction, opacity, concentration, and heterogeneity. 1:00:41.760 --> 1:00:44.960 Can I have you explain wage of this is and 1:00:46.360 --> 1:00:49.880 how that translates to what we're seeing kind of around 1:00:49.960 --> 1:00:50.640 us right now. 1:00:51.360 --> 1:00:51.800 Sure. 1:00:51.960 --> 1:00:55.160 I mean, basically, the theme of philanthropy, of course, is 1:00:55.240 --> 1:00:59.400 so important because we have seen the share of income 1:00:59.560 --> 1:01:05.560 of tanks from philanthropies has been increasing over the past decades. 1:01:05.800 --> 1:01:09.840 I think partly because the pushback against corporations and the 1:01:09.920 --> 1:01:13.240 fear of corporations being involved in politics and getting exposed, 1:01:13.640 --> 1:01:17.840 so basically they have relied also on philanthropies to fund 1:01:18.000 --> 1:01:21.880 their strategies. So philanthropic funding for think tanks in climate 1:01:21.960 --> 1:01:26.400 politics is simply becoming more important. The opacity relates to 1:01:26.440 --> 1:01:29.960 the fact that even if we have more transparency in 1:01:30.120 --> 1:01:34.240 US data with regard to how much philanthropies fund and 1:01:34.280 --> 1:01:37.840 about the income of think tanks, we can only account 1:01:37.960 --> 1:01:41.120 for about a quarter to a third of the total 1:01:41.160 --> 1:01:43.760 of the outlasting tanks we looked at. A lot of 1:01:43.800 --> 1:01:47.880 the funding sources remain unclear, and a lot of the 1:01:48.000 --> 1:01:52.120 funding sources and among the philanthropies Donors Trust in other 1:01:52.240 --> 1:01:56.760 dark money machines that are basically not foundations from specific 1:01:56.800 --> 1:02:01.080 corporations from specific owners like the co Foundation or the 1:02:01.160 --> 1:02:05.640 Dunn Foundation or Bradley Foundation, basically Donors Trust and Dona's 1:02:05.680 --> 1:02:09.640 Capital Fund or money collection machines that collect money from 1:02:09.680 --> 1:02:12.880 different sources that don't have to be laid open and 1:02:13.000 --> 1:02:17.760 redistribute to the final recipient. The Donors Trust and Dona's 1:02:17.800 --> 1:02:21.800 Capital Fund are the largest funders of the Atlas Network 1:02:21.880 --> 1:02:25.800 think tanks out of more than three thousand corporate foundations 1:02:25.840 --> 1:02:29.040 in the US, and yet the opacity theme is even 1:02:29.400 --> 1:02:33.040 much more important with regard to other world regions and countries, 1:02:33.120 --> 1:02:38.840 because no comparable openness to foundation funding and non for 1:02:39.000 --> 1:02:42.760 profit income is available in other countries. So we have 1:02:43.000 --> 1:02:46.320 simply no data that compares to the US data, and 1:02:46.360 --> 1:02:51.320 that's of course a big drawback to study the right wing, 1:02:51.720 --> 1:02:55.440 the nearable right wing and other think tanks in Europe. 1:02:55.480 --> 1:02:58.200 In that America, we do have on the boards of 1:02:58.280 --> 1:03:01.920 think tanks we find corporate fundundations in Europe almost fifty 1:03:02.400 --> 1:03:04.600 compared to more than three hundred in the US and 1:03:05.440 --> 1:03:08.440 like a good thirty in Latin America. So we have 1:03:08.560 --> 1:03:12.720 some clues about which foundations are involved in running and 1:03:12.840 --> 1:03:16.760 funding thing thanks, but we just have no scientific tool 1:03:16.960 --> 1:03:19.920 to investigate these amounts. 1:03:19.440 --> 1:03:20.040 And these. 1:03:21.400 --> 1:03:27.600 These channels of influence with concentration refers to the observation 1:03:27.800 --> 1:03:33.120 that a lot of the funding for say, the ATLAS 1:03:33.280 --> 1:03:37.520 members in the United States comes from a relatively small. 1:03:37.240 --> 1:03:39.120 Group of foundations. 1:03:39.560 --> 1:03:42.240 As I mentioned, in this one database, we have more 1:03:42.280 --> 1:03:46.800 than three thousand foundations, but just a very small share 1:03:46.880 --> 1:03:50.200 of these foundations account for like a very large share 1:03:50.200 --> 1:03:53.160 of the funding. So yes, there are plenty of foundations, 1:03:53.160 --> 1:03:56.440 but the real music is played by a small orchestra, 1:03:57.080 --> 1:04:00.640 and so we can say that about fifty two hundred 1:04:00.800 --> 1:04:05.120 corporate foundations are really the core group that is in 1:04:05.240 --> 1:04:09.640 charge of channeling money to organizations like the Atlas Network 1:04:09.800 --> 1:04:15.840 thing tanks. And then the third category heterogeneity that basically 1:04:15.920 --> 1:04:20.360 I think referred to the wide range of organizations and 1:04:20.480 --> 1:04:26.919 strategies and perspectives funded by corporate foundations. So you would 1:04:26.920 --> 1:04:31.000 think that the philanthropic organization that funds climate denial funds climaty, 1:04:31.040 --> 1:04:34.320 now know, they also can fund quite different strategies and 1:04:34.400 --> 1:04:35.200 other thing tanks. 1:04:35.320 --> 1:04:40.760 Activity They're very intersectional. These guys absolutely absolutely just on 1:04:40.760 --> 1:04:44.360 one horse. Yeah, when everyone was talking about Project twenty 1:04:44.360 --> 1:04:47.480 twenty five in the US, I was working on this 1:04:47.680 --> 1:04:51.520 spreadsheet to look at maybe one hundred and five organizations 1:04:51.560 --> 1:04:54.080 involved in that, and I was looking at all of 1:04:54.120 --> 1:04:58.000 them and their funders, and there's so much overlap amongst 1:04:58.040 --> 1:05:01.200 the funders and the staff, you know, so everyone's working 1:05:01.280 --> 1:05:04.200 for each other's think tank or on the board or whatever. 1:05:04.440 --> 1:05:06.840 And one of the things that really jumped out was that, 1:05:07.320 --> 1:05:12.440 you know, when a lot of the anti abortion organizations 1:05:12.480 --> 1:05:16.680 in the US, as they started to be more successful, 1:05:17.080 --> 1:05:21.360 started to get into, you know, other issues because they 1:05:21.400 --> 1:05:24.240 needed to keep the money coming in. They were all 1:05:24.280 --> 1:05:29.000 of a sudden pushing anti trans stuff or even some 1:05:29.120 --> 1:05:33.120 of them were getting into anti climate work as well, 1:05:33.160 --> 1:05:34.920 and it was like, well, I guess if you have 1:05:34.960 --> 1:05:38.320 a twenty million dollar a year budget and your issue 1:05:38.400 --> 1:05:40.560 is not going to be an issue for that much longer, 1:05:40.680 --> 1:05:42.800 you need to find new things to work on. 1:05:43.120 --> 1:05:43.600 Interesting. 1:05:43.720 --> 1:05:47.920 Basically, it's also necessary to understand that we are not 1:05:48.120 --> 1:05:49.520 looking usually at. 1:05:49.480 --> 1:05:51.960 Single issue no alm. 1:05:52.760 --> 1:05:56.280 Yeah, people who were driven by a worldview that can 1:05:56.360 --> 1:06:00.720 be and will be applied to literally each subject matter. 1:06:01.120 --> 1:06:03.480 And yes, there will be a fair amount of specialization 1:06:03.760 --> 1:06:08.600 on environmental climate issues, maybe on public health issues, on 1:06:08.800 --> 1:06:13.000 criminal justice issues, on gender issues. But I mean, it's 1:06:13.120 --> 1:06:16.200 very interesting to see that a number of organizations co 1:06:16.360 --> 1:06:20.920 sponsored hard and conferences on climate politics that were actually 1:06:20.920 --> 1:06:22.400 not involved in climate politics. 1:06:22.440 --> 1:06:26.440 So we can look at this as members of a large. 1:06:26.200 --> 1:06:30.080 Party where some parts of the party specialize have committees 1:06:30.120 --> 1:06:32.640 on special issues. But at the same time, I'm very 1:06:32.640 --> 1:06:35.120 happy that their party friends are taking care of other 1:06:35.200 --> 1:06:38.800 issues now. So it's basically the same principle as a 1:06:38.840 --> 1:06:42.360 political apparatus, which also needs to be involved in many, 1:06:42.400 --> 1:06:46.560 many different policy areas and subject matters, and nobody can 1:06:46.720 --> 1:06:49.680 do it all. But if need be, I mean, if 1:06:49.680 --> 1:06:53.160 there's a special need for campaigning, you can actually mobilize 1:06:53.480 --> 1:06:56.919 many more people than the specialized people. I remember when 1:06:57.000 --> 1:07:00.240 the Free Trade for the America's conflict was on in 1:07:00.560 --> 1:07:04.959 North America, push trying to expand NAFTA to the whole 1:07:05.000 --> 1:07:07.720 of the Americas, and there was a lot of pushback 1:07:07.760 --> 1:07:12.680 from progressive organizations. For left wing organization Against the Americas 1:07:13.080 --> 1:07:15.800 raised an institute and worked on the issue for the 1:07:15.840 --> 1:07:18.680 time it needed until the subject was over, and then 1:07:18.680 --> 1:07:21.720 they closed the mechanism again. So basically, many of these 1:07:22.040 --> 1:07:26.000 larger think tanks certainly have the capacity to shift resources 1:07:26.040 --> 1:07:29.280 like from one subject matter to another. And also of 1:07:29.320 --> 1:07:34.200 course the large thing tanks with multimillion dollar budgets, they 1:07:34.280 --> 1:07:37.360 push quite a number of different themes. 1:07:37.680 --> 1:07:41.520 Yeah, okay, I want to ask you about how religious 1:07:41.520 --> 1:07:44.360 groups get in on this as well. So what are 1:07:44.400 --> 1:07:47.760 some of the key arguments that religious groups use against 1:07:48.480 --> 1:07:49.400 climate action. 1:07:50.520 --> 1:07:52.800 Well, there are different arguments really. On the one hand, 1:07:52.840 --> 1:07:56.200 it's important to note that the neoliberal movement, the conservative 1:07:56.200 --> 1:08:00.360 movement always had like also their religious side to it. 1:08:00.440 --> 1:08:04.440 Now the ACT and the think tanks that are specifically 1:08:04.560 --> 1:08:08.360 like the ACT and Institute are specifically Catholic neoliberal think 1:08:08.400 --> 1:08:10.760 tank that has been founded in the US, in Latin 1:08:10.760 --> 1:08:14.160 America and Europe and other thing tanks that are actually 1:08:14.360 --> 1:08:19.600 combining free trade and religious messages. So it's basically the 1:08:19.640 --> 1:08:23.720 link between a conservative social morality and the kind of 1:08:24.080 --> 1:08:29.960 patriarchal family ownership economic freedom model, which really is the 1:08:30.000 --> 1:08:34.200 economic freedom of the owner of the property. And so 1:08:34.280 --> 1:08:38.599 we see that many of the religious articulations with regard 1:08:38.680 --> 1:08:42.080 to climate policy and with regard in plicular to climate 1:08:42.120 --> 1:08:46.160 denials and climate obstruction are actually in this sphere of 1:08:46.439 --> 1:08:51.439 links between the neoliberal movement and their religious partners. The 1:08:51.520 --> 1:08:55.320 Cornwall Initiative sort of like is a mobilization of was 1:08:55.360 --> 1:08:59.160 founded by ACT and Institute people and as part of 1:08:59.160 --> 1:09:02.800 the Atlas network, so its co part of the hardcore 1:09:02.840 --> 1:09:06.240 of the free market movement, but actually tries to cater 1:09:06.360 --> 1:09:11.080 specifically to the Catholic world and of course reacts in 1:09:11.120 --> 1:09:14.919 the Catholic world to the challenges of theology of generation 1:09:15.200 --> 1:09:20.640 and other progressive forces that articulate themselves in the Catholic universe. 1:09:20.840 --> 1:09:24.080 In sort of like a socially progressive manner, and you 1:09:24.120 --> 1:09:27.320 have also a very strong environmentalism in the Catholic Church. 1:09:27.439 --> 1:09:31.439 Pope Francis last before the present Pope, he was a 1:09:31.560 --> 1:09:36.439 huge activist in environmental policy issues, and that basically caused 1:09:36.600 --> 1:09:42.320 the Catholic Right and the Catholic conservatives to mobilize very 1:09:42.439 --> 1:09:48.240 actively against Pop francis encyclical and climate messages and trying 1:09:48.280 --> 1:09:51.000 to push back against this. You know, the Church should 1:09:51.240 --> 1:09:54.559 keep out of these areas. Church should not be involved 1:09:54.640 --> 1:10:00.840 in these political issues like separating the spheres, and so 1:10:00.880 --> 1:10:05.320 some of the religious arguments that feed the obstruction movement 1:10:05.360 --> 1:10:11.160 is basically that climate science is part of the scientific world, 1:10:11.360 --> 1:10:14.080 which is not infallible. So they kind of turn the 1:10:14.160 --> 1:10:18.240 argument of religion versus science upside down in church, in 1:10:18.320 --> 1:10:21.919 religious belief, you have the full belief and that's where. 1:10:21.720 --> 1:10:24.160 You trust, even if you obviously. 1:10:23.720 --> 1:10:27.600 Don't know, whereas in science that's the sphere where you 1:10:27.680 --> 1:10:31.360 can't believe, where there is actually always needs to be debate. 1:10:31.439 --> 1:10:35.000 And that's an interesting argument where the religious belief is 1:10:35.080 --> 1:10:38.720 held to be superior to the scientific belief and is 1:10:38.760 --> 1:10:42.000 held to supply sort of like munition against the belief 1:10:42.080 --> 1:10:44.880 in climate science. Now they cannot be a believe in 1:10:44.920 --> 1:10:47.920 climate science because it's part of the rationalist world that 1:10:48.040 --> 1:10:53.040 is not infallible. And other sort of like Catholic subsidiarity thinking, 1:10:53.120 --> 1:10:57.439 which is a very old concept used by the Catholic 1:10:57.640 --> 1:11:03.479 social teaching to object against centralized intervention in family affairs. 1:11:03.920 --> 1:11:07.519 So like the smallest entity of social life, the family 1:11:07.840 --> 1:11:10.280 should take care of itself and only in case of 1:11:10.400 --> 1:11:13.960 need should sort of be supported maybe by the local church, 1:11:14.160 --> 1:11:18.600 and even and if there's a natural catastrophe, maybe the 1:11:18.680 --> 1:11:21.360 local church can ask for help by the state, and 1:11:21.439 --> 1:11:23.599 so on and so forth. So subsidiary is the thinking 1:11:24.000 --> 1:11:27.920 that the more local the self organization works as the 1:11:27.960 --> 1:11:31.559 better it is. And so it's basically it aligns very 1:11:31.640 --> 1:11:34.960 nicely with the kind of vice use concept and aligns 1:11:35.040 --> 1:11:39.640 very nicely with the objection against centralized government regulation and intervention. 1:11:40.400 --> 1:11:41.559 Even if you can also. 1:11:41.439 --> 1:11:45.320 Argue that in cases where the local cannot take care 1:11:45.439 --> 1:11:49.439 of policy issues, it's necessary that the higher levels of 1:11:49.520 --> 1:11:52.400 government need to be involved. So of course a policy 1:11:52.439 --> 1:11:56.160 issue like global warming, which is way beyond any local 1:11:56.200 --> 1:11:59.080 scale of politics, simply cannot be taken care of at 1:11:59.080 --> 1:12:02.920 the local level. So basically also these concepts like subsidiarity. 1:12:03.080 --> 1:12:06.479 The Catholic right will use it as an argument against 1:12:06.880 --> 1:12:10.960 centralizing regulation, whereas the Catholic left will sort of like 1:12:11.120 --> 1:12:14.160 use it as a good example of how subsidiarity can 1:12:14.200 --> 1:12:18.599 also not be considered an objection against centralized policy making. 1:12:18.800 --> 1:12:23.439 So it's an contested concept essentially. But we see that 1:12:23.680 --> 1:12:29.080 subsidiarity arguments are part of the mobilization against climate action 1:12:29.400 --> 1:12:34.280 and align perfectly well with neoliberal arguments and with conservative arguments. 1:12:36.200 --> 1:12:41.400 Yeah. Okay, So I keep seeing this belief amongst a 1:12:41.400 --> 1:12:45.440 lot of people in climate spaces that as people experience 1:12:45.720 --> 1:12:50.000 more climate impacts that they will of course get on 1:12:50.040 --> 1:12:53.400 board doing something about climate. But I think, especially with 1:12:53.640 --> 1:12:56.320 the spar right stuff. But I would say even some 1:12:56.400 --> 1:12:59.120 of the Applas stuff tells us is that that's definitely 1:12:59.120 --> 1:13:03.360 not guarantee. I'm curious what you think about the potential 1:13:03.400 --> 1:13:07.519 for climate impacts to actually sort of supercharge some of 1:13:07.560 --> 1:13:09.800 this thinking as opposed to defeating it. 1:13:11.000 --> 1:13:11.320 Yeah. 1:13:11.400 --> 1:13:15.360 Well, that's basically now, of course, our huge challenge. I mean, 1:13:15.400 --> 1:13:18.759 in the chapter of course, we talk about this broad 1:13:18.800 --> 1:13:23.280 spectrum of the right where neoliberalism as right wing liberalism 1:13:23.439 --> 1:13:28.360 is very closely overlapping with what Americans call conservatism, and 1:13:28.600 --> 1:13:32.240 can of course align with social conservatism, sometimes also with 1:13:32.560 --> 1:13:35.880 progressivism as with the Democratic Party and so on force 1:13:35.920 --> 1:13:39.200 and have an impact in the shifting the debate toward 1:13:39.320 --> 1:13:45.400 economic reasoning rather than the whole spectrum of policy interventions 1:13:45.439 --> 1:13:49.080 that we need to succeed in climate mitigation. And then, 1:13:49.120 --> 1:13:51.760 of course we have seen as a result of the 1:13:52.160 --> 1:13:57.120 multiple crises, both global warming and COVID financial crisis, we 1:13:57.160 --> 1:14:00.759 have seen this much more radical far right right rebellion 1:14:01.320 --> 1:14:05.360 expressed many times in right wing populist beliefs, where we 1:14:05.400 --> 1:14:09.320 get messages that go way beyond the traditional spectrum of 1:14:09.400 --> 1:14:13.320 free market conservatism and nearliberalism, which is in a way 1:14:13.600 --> 1:14:18.280 still engaged in this debate of how the world should 1:14:18.320 --> 1:14:21.800 be governed and what types of governance and what scales 1:14:21.840 --> 1:14:25.120 of governance should be employed. And in many areas the 1:14:25.160 --> 1:14:28.560 New Liberal movement was actually all in favor of global governance, 1:14:28.640 --> 1:14:34.280 for trade regulation, for property rights regulation, even for migration issues, 1:14:34.439 --> 1:14:37.320 because parts of the New Liberal movement are much more 1:14:37.320 --> 1:14:40.120 in favor of migration and so on, and so force 1:14:40.479 --> 1:14:43.080 remain to the stay more in favor like the Cook brothers, 1:14:43.240 --> 1:14:46.559 for example, compared to the Trump is But we see 1:14:46.600 --> 1:14:50.840 that the opposition against global governance in climate opened the 1:14:50.880 --> 1:14:55.639 door to actually challenge global governance altogether. And what we 1:14:55.720 --> 1:14:58.320 see as the far right in the form of the 1:14:58.400 --> 1:15:02.839 right wing populist government and political lead figures like Trump, Relay, 1:15:03.560 --> 1:15:06.720 many others around the world. Now they converge on a 1:15:06.800 --> 1:15:11.479 new ideology that is actually partly opposed to neoliberalism as 1:15:11.520 --> 1:15:15.519 far as neoliberalism is global you know, globalists, so to speak. 1:15:15.560 --> 1:15:21.280 And this new ideology is really national conservatism actually remove 1:15:21.400 --> 1:15:25.400 all these levels of global governance and move everything back 1:15:25.640 --> 1:15:29.240 in the sphere of the national nation state. Then some 1:15:29.280 --> 1:15:32.519 of them are more radical, the libertarians they want more 1:15:32.840 --> 1:15:37.840 even more decentralization, and other far right groups would also 1:15:37.920 --> 1:15:41.720 probably radicalize the message and try to destabilize many of 1:15:41.760 --> 1:15:45.240 the political entities more and move us into the territory 1:15:45.400 --> 1:15:50.400 of this much more complex and complicated area where we 1:15:50.439 --> 1:15:53.960 have seen in many places the rise of similar ideologies, 1:15:54.040 --> 1:15:58.760 conspiracy theories like the great Replacement theory, where basically the 1:15:58.880 --> 1:16:03.160 national conservatism lines in particular against foreign migration, and the 1:16:03.200 --> 1:16:07.599 far right has embraced the concept of ethnobluralism, so that yes, 1:16:07.720 --> 1:16:11.719 there are different ethnicities, but they better keep separated, each 1:16:11.760 --> 1:16:15.960 in their place. And so there's a very interesting movement 1:16:16.560 --> 1:16:20.320 where I would say the global forming challenges have led 1:16:20.439 --> 1:16:25.280 to an approach that was definitely global, the whole process, 1:16:25.280 --> 1:16:28.640 the whole real process, Kyoto Protocol Paris, and led to 1:16:28.720 --> 1:16:33.000 a very ambitious agenda that has been stalled in the meantime, 1:16:33.400 --> 1:16:37.320 and the backlash against it converges on the rejection not 1:16:37.400 --> 1:16:41.160 only of the concrete policy goals, but actually against the 1:16:41.200 --> 1:16:45.840 whole politics of climate change, the global governance aspect, and 1:16:45.920 --> 1:16:51.439 that's actually undermining, obviously the efforts to globally coordinate and 1:16:51.960 --> 1:16:56.640 negotiate solutions. And in that regard, the climate denial and 1:16:56.720 --> 1:17:01.280 climate obstruction movement was hugely successful, not only with the 1:17:02.000 --> 1:17:04.800 immediate impact they had, but now we see that the 1:17:04.840 --> 1:17:09.560 whole process is in danger of being derailed by the 1:17:09.600 --> 1:17:13.360 strength of the writing mobilization against global government. 1:17:16.720 --> 1:17:19.880 That's it for this time, Thanks for listening. Next week 1:17:20.200 --> 1:17:25.040 we're digging into the psychology of misinformation why this stuff 1:17:25.200 --> 1:17:28.080 works so well. Come back for that. Make sure you're 1:17:28.120 --> 1:17:31.559 subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can find 1:17:31.600 --> 1:17:35.760 more on this season, including transcripts and lots of related 1:17:35.920 --> 1:17:40.280 articles and background information on our website at drilled dot Media. 1:17:40.920 --> 1:17:44.519 You can also sign up for our newsletter there. One 1:17:44.520 --> 1:17:46.160 of these days, we're going to actually get it out 1:17:46.200 --> 1:17:50.360 every week. Until then, it's an occasional newsletter with thoughts 1:17:50.400 --> 1:17:53.320 from me, new stories from the site and the rest 1:17:53.400 --> 1:17:56.400 of the team, and updates on what we're getting up 1:17:56.400 --> 1:18:00.559 to next. Our producers for this season are In Saltz 1:18:00.600 --> 1:18:04.560 Ostwick and Peter duff. Our theme song is Bird in 1:18:04.600 --> 1:18:07.960 the Hand by Forknown. Our cover art is done by 1:18:08.040 --> 1:18:11.479 Matthew Fleming. Our First Amendment Attorney is James Wheaton with 1:18:11.560 --> 1:18:16.000 the First Amendment Project. The show was created, written, and 1:18:16.040 --> 1:18:19.400 reported by me Amy Westervelt. Thanks for listening and see 1:18:19.439 --> 1:18:20.040 you next time.