When thousands of school children walked out of class to join a UK-wide protest against political inaction on climate change, they were widely applauded. Some thought the violation of the UK’s strict school attendance policy problematic but few dared question the merit of the children’s demand for something to be done. Predictably, the loudest cheers came from the left. Action on climate change has become a cause célèbre on the left, as if fondness for economic redistribution and public ownership automatically spills over into concern for the environment. This might seem curious, but in Manchester, the work of a climate conscious youngster gave a clue: on a piece of cardboard were scribbled the words ‘Climate over Capitalism’.
Never mind how a child derived the juxtaposition of global warming versus an economic system based on free trade and private property; the left has managed to skilfully position the fight against climate change opposite free market capitalism and thereby rally constituencies like school children under their anti-capitalist banners. Popular books like ‘This Changes Everything’ by Naomi Klein pins the blame for what is describes at the ‘climate crisis’ squarely on capitalism and implies that the solution therefore must come from the state in the form of interventionism and regulation.
But it goes further than that. Take the Green New Deal, the ludicrously ambitious plan put forward by leading US Democrats to transform the US economy to a green energy nirvana. According to the plan, achieving ecological sustainability requires the state to ‘mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2’. Central planning, nationalization, taxes and subsidies are supposed to reduce harmful emissions and guarantee employment and robust economic growth (the growth part may prove controversial for some hard-line environmentalists who view economic expansion as fundamentally incompatible with environmental sustainability). But the deal is not just proposing to address emissions with conventional tools like carbon taxes, green subsidies, public transport etc. According to the plan, the goal of a carbon neutral economy is to be achieved via measures like guarantees of jobs with ‘a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security’. Policies like these are proposed under the guise of mitigating the ‘long-term adverse health, economic, and other effects of pollution and climate change’, and as such are relying on the spurious idea that climate change disproportionally affects certain ‘vulnerable’ constituencies who are hence deserving of government assistance.
The insidious truth is that left is using climate change as a trojan horse to introduce collectivist and progressive policies which on the face of it have nothing at all to do with the environment. They rely on the notion that government action is needed to address environmental issues as cover for a continuous expansion of the remit of the state. That is why the left has an inherent interest in exaggerating the extend and impact of climate change and are quick to label any sceptics as ‘science deniers’.
So, when school children march for climate action, the left greets them as the child in The Emperor’s New Clothes, pointing out to us all what we should see ourselves: that immediate action is paramount. But there are reasons why we do not trust big decisions to children. In the words of Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish writer and climate environmental researcher: “Just because there is a problem doesn’t mean that we have to solve it, if the cure is going to be more expensive than the original ailment”. This is a truth the big government advocates do not want to hear.