Much has been made over the last decade or more of the divide between “elite” opinion and popular opinion on a range of issues. George Megalogenis reports on the divide between popular opinion and that of an important category of elites - major party candidates - at the time of the 2007 Federal election, based on the 2007 Australian Candidate Study.
A key issue on which the candidates were out of alignment with the voters is our old friend, global warming. According to the 2007 Australian Election Study, 51.5% of voters considered this issue “Extremely Important” and a further 36.8% considered it “Quite Important”. This compares with 65.5% of Labor candidates who, according to the candidate study, considered the issue important, and contrasts strikingly with Liberal-National Coalition candidates, of whom only 32.4% considered it important.
This raises the further question of what the result would be of polling other right-of-centre elite constituencies on this issue, such as Quadrant contributors and subscribers, conservative media commentators, and staff and directors of right-of-centre think-tanks. One gets the impression it would be lower than 32.4%.
However it wouldn’t be zero. John Quiggin has posted on the related theme of the existence of right-of-centre individuals and actors who do think climate change is a problem which public policy needs to tackle, and who are arguably a real example of a view being suppressed in the climate change debate.
Paul, my initial explorations into the underlying philosophy of green ecology indicate that the predominant view on both left and right has been that nature is there for human benefit to exploit as we see fit.
In the case of the left if the themes of solidarity and equity are extended beyond our own species, which is relatively easy transition, a green philosophy becomes mainstream, and a foundational value.
Libertarians would seem to have to go through an intellectual process whereby self interest is seen to be aligned with preserving the environment for long term benefit, but the value position remains exploitative.
Conservatives, who don’t have a true philosophy that you’d want to own or can build from the ground up, can see it as a duty on the part of those who have power to preserve nature, either because God gave us that role, or to preserve the status quo, or to retain the capacity for continued exploitation.
That’s no doubt a bit simplistic, but green philosophy does seem to be a better fit with the left than the right.
Feminism is another matter and very interesting, but I’ll leave that for now.
I know that you have great learning in these matters. Any comment?
Brian, I’d comment at length if I didn’t have to prepare for a two-hour lecture on this very topic which I have to deliver at 12!
“Brian, I’d comment at length if I didn’t have to prepare for a two-hour lecture on this very topic which I have to deliver at 12!”
Just hope you can bring a sandwich for that one.
Brian: I’ve argued in the past that the precautionary principle aligns quite well with conservatism - we can’t know the consequences of meddling, so we shouldn’t meddle.
Yes, Robert, but if we want to preserve our freedoms we are going to have to meddle (see my other post).
Paul, go to it, we can wait, we can wait!
As you know, I agree that meddling is now inevitable (or, more to the point, we have been meddling for a century, we’re going to have to meddle more to fix it).
But - as a general principle - the conservative viewpoint should surely lead to the view that we should be very hesitant before doing anything that might adversely affect the natural environment, because we don’t know what the potentially adverse consequences are.
Just a brief comment prompted by Robert at #4. There are a range of points at which conservative dispositions and sensibilities overlap with environmentalist ones, and there are historical examples of political conservatives being sincere conservationists. I think part of the contemporary Right’s problem is that it hasn’t thought through its position on climate change in particular, and environmental issues in general, from a starting point of conservative or liberal first principles. I have a post coming which goes into some dimensions of this issue.
Robert at 6, yes I agree.
Paul, I grabbed Heywood’s Political ideologies in response to Adrien’s challenge on another thread. Heywood has a 25 page chapter on “ecologism” where he relates it to other political philosophies. That was complicated enough and I’m sure you know much more.
So I’ll vacate the field for now and wait to see what you come up with.
I think that a major problem of most western view-points is a shared Lockean assumption that nature is limitless and inexhaustible.
The extremist expression of this Lockeanism is found in the nutty notions of space travel and colonisation. This “final frontier” fantasy continues to nurture a dwindling but frenetic coterie of Lockeans.
If this false Lockean assumption were repudiated, then a tourniquet might be applied that chokes off the blood supply to the notion that there are no limits to growth and that natural systems are impervious to disruption.
Eventually, this element of Lockeanism will be repudiated by facts on the ground.
I think part of what’s driving the Right in the climate change debate is the perceived threat of wealth redistribution via the emissions trading system. If, for example, the Rudd Government decides to focus its compensation not on emissions-intensive industries, but instead on the displaced workers of these failing industries, then there’s a lot at stake for big econmic interests. That such a move might be seen to align with a more progressive agenda is, I believe, a factor in the resistance to timely action on climate change. Unfortunately, the environment is agnostic regarding political alignment - it is, however, highly sensitive to greenhouse gas concentrations. What say you?
In response to Brian’s requests I am pasting in some ppt slides from the lecture I’ve just given which relate conventional ideologies to the sustainability imperative. I hope they aren’t too illegible in WordPress. I’m currently too tired to post anything more today.
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Ecology and Conservatism
• Core principles of conservatism:
- tradition (‘the desire to conserve’, including caution about unintended effects of change);
- pragmatism (including belief in limits of human rationality);
- human imperfection;
- organicism;
- hierarchy;
- authority;
- property.
• Some affinities seen between conservatism and environmentalism, e.g. desire to conserve, organicism.
However:
- conservative principles of hierarchy, authority and property are problematic for many environmentalists;
- desire to conserve social structures is incompatible with green projects involving major social change;
- conservatism silent on limits to growth and extending value beyond humans;
- In practice little cooperation between conservatives and environmentalists.
Ecology and Liberalism
• Core liberal principles:
- individualism;
- freedom;
- reason;
- political and legal equality;
- toleration;
- consent;
- constitutionalism.
• Varieties:
- classical liberalism (laissez faire);
- social liberalism (accepts role for state intervention in markets and welfare state);
- neo-liberalism.
• Eco-liberals:
- believe in possibility of achieving sustainability within framework of liberal democracy and market economy;
- tend to support “ecological modernisation” and “market solutions” which will be considered later in course.
• Many examples of political liberals being environmentally concerned (liberal US Democrats, Al Gore, Australian Democrats, Liberal Party “wets”, UK Liberal Democrats).
• Many green theorists utilise liberal principles of “rights” and “justice” as basis of “moral extensionism”, green theories of justice, concept of ecological citizenship.
• Problematic elements of liberalism:
- emphasis on individualism and economic freedom may conflict with need for collective solutions to environmental problems and constraints on individual lifestyles;
- strong emphasis on property rights may not be ecologically rational.
Ecology and Socialism
• Core socialist principles:
- community;
- “fraternity” (or sorority!);
- social and economic equality;
- production and distribution for need;
- class politics;
- common ownership and control;
- planning.
• Ambivalent relationship with environmentalism.
• Traditional socialist positions:
- “productivism”: economic growth is unproblematically good because it creates jobs and rising living standards;
- anthropocentrism - rational to use and transform nature for human benefit;
- environmental problems are due to irrationality of capitalism rather than industrialism (and former communist countries weren’t really socialist);
- no limits to growth.
• Minority alternative currents within socialism have questioned productivism.
• Eco-socialism attempts to reconcile socialism and ecologism:
- human emancipation and achievement of sustainable society both require replacing capitalism with democratic socialism;
- ecological sustainability must be a core principle of socialist society;
- accept ecological limits to growth and need to revise conventional socialist positions.
• Notable cases of red-green cooperation and alliances, but elements of both “red” and “green” camps remain hostile.
“The New Right”
• Combination of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism.
• Internally contradictory (e.g. values traditional single-income family yet supports destruction of industrial relations framework designed to support this family form).
• New Right parties and governments:
- US Republicans;
- Thatcher Conservative government in UK;
- right wing of Liberal and National parties in Australia.
• Also various industry-funded “think-tanks”.
• Neo-liberal element:
- disapproves of environmental regulation which entails intervention in market or infringement of property rights;
- advocates “free market environmentalism”.
• Neo-con element:
- hostile to movements seen as associated with “the Left”, including environmentalism;
- tends to deny or downplay existence of environmental problems (e.g. global warming)
• Both wings defend economic benefits of activities which lead to environmental problems, and warn of costs of environmental policy proposals.
“The Old Left”
• Adhere to traditional labourist and communist doctrines which make material economic goals central to the socialist project.
• Uncritical faith in science and technology.
• Hostile to alleged “middle class” environmentalists.
• Posit “jobs versus environment” dilemma as irreconcilable conflict.
• Tend to deny or downplay existence of environmental problems (e.g. global warming).
• Often in alliance with the New Right and business against environmentalists (even though this is detrimental to working class interests – 2004 Federal election).
NB: Relevant reading for this lecture: Carter, Neil (2007), The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy, 2nd edn, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
And what Katz said about the assumption of abundance, which is a key assumption of both liberalism and Marxism.
The irony about the obsession with some about the possibilities of space travel and colonisation is that even as modest a goal as getting humans to Mars and back will require advances in developing closed loop systems, low entropy, low resources throughput, reducing/reusing/recycling etc., for the spaceships which would be more productively employed here on Earth.
Hmmm. Looks like I need to do a post something along the lines of “in defence of the space nuts”…
I’ve started to suspect that a lot of the reason the right deny climate change is that otherwise they’d have to admit that the hippies were closer to the mark than they were 40 years ago.
The question was put differently to the candidates and to the voters.
Voters just had to categorize each of 14 issues as no important, important, or extremely important. Pretty well issues had 80% or more saying it was at least important
Candidates were given a list of fourteen issues and asked to pick the four most important in order. I think “in the top four” is closest to “extremely important”.
Also, some of the candiates must have misunderstood the question, since the the total number of issues in the top four is more than four times the number of candidates…
I saw those tables today, and thought it was an interesting shorthand account of why the Coalition a. lost office, and b. continue to stink electorally.
Climate denialism is a right wing elitist viewpoint - its not mainstream.
Workchoices was even worse - strictly ideologues only, not even a rump elite caste were that supportive. Note that the coalition was happy to hyper-regulate the price of labour, but oh!! Give people accurate info about the price of cheese and coffee - that’s BIG GOVT!
Re conservatism and the precautionary principle. It’s important to keep separate political conservatism and conservatism concerned with risk aversion. Although the precautionary principle was set up for managing environmental risks, it can be more widely seen as a risk averse stance towards a particular set of values. I argue in work linked to in the past that risk aversion to economic damages and to environmental damages look pretty similar when assessed from each group’s point of view. These values meet head on in the climate debate and need to be incorporated into the formal assessment of risk, where we try and reflect on these very different values, using an understanding of behavioural economics amongst other things (rate of time preference, how people value intangibles etc).
Risk aversion to economic damage, even to limiting growth by the smallest increment, was Howard’s policy to climate change until the last months, and was the central element of Bush’s stance. It was the subject of a very funny column by Terry McCrann who, considering costs to 2050, concluded that 0.2% too much to bear because of the potential loss of schools and hospitals. Apparently, we spend the last 0.2% of our economy on this important social infrastructure, having spent the other 99.8% on much more important stuff.
Of course, this is an extreme position, and should have been debated by political conservatives who are also conservationists, of which there are many. (Off topic, the bush conservatives who lined up against mandatory detention were fantastic - making the Nats very nervous, and pushing a couple of parliamentary reps to work from the inside).
As Paul said, there are a significant number of green conservatives out there. Analysis in hindsight will show their silence of the past decade to be another depressing contribution to the delay to act.
And some blame the environmental movement for this failure.
Obama had a cracker of a line (on a completely different subject): “It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.” Maybe that is what’s happening here. In certain circles, it’s cool to dis certain ideas, because of their “1uvv1eness”.
I’ll have to think more about this.
Well today I went to an Australian Institute of Company Directors lunch, on the topic of Climate change. The feeling from the keynote speaker (Chair of Origin Energy) and the panel was along the lines of, “this is how emissions trading is going to work, get used to it, and figure out what your company needs to do to make money in that environment”.
There were a number of comments from the floor and the panel that the time for skepticism is past, and one question from the floor along the lines that Directors need to consider the risks they run by agreeing to major carbon emitting projects, given it seems likely that the limits on carbon will end up greater than promised, rather than less. Of course a panel and a few questions are not representative, but they are certainly a bit of a guide.
So the elites of the business world (do they count as “elites” - they’re certainly paid that way - and they are probably right of centre)are firmly in the camp of acknowledging climate change as a major issue. So the coalition is out of step with it’s natural business constituency also.
The identification with the ‘Intelligentsia’ with elitism by (hah hah) those in power is a pretty standard tactic. It’s been used in Egypt in order to sabotage middle-class liberals who advocate free and fair elections, the rule of law and other Western ideas. This usually by persons entrenched at the top courtesy of American subsidy.
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It’s an irritating tactic. One of the ways around it is to take care to communicate clearly ane accessibly.
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There was a report in The Australian that puts support for AGW action higher - well over 90%. And the rest are Andrew Bolt’s supporters I s’pose.
I know what you’re actually saying, and I generally agree, but the time for skepticism is never past.