Environmentalism is McCarthyism

I have been pondering for a while exactly why our elected politicians are banging on so much about environmental politics. I mean, there is no real evidence that climate change is occurring, and if it is occurring then there is no real evidence that it is linked to anything other than natural phenomena*. So why on earth would the political elite be so focussed on meeting the demands of the environmental lobby?

The obvious answer would be to win votes. But do the electorate really care about environmental concerns. Since my basic theory about voting is that people vote based on naked self interest**, and that (ignoring the dubious and spurious scientific data behind the environmental lobby) the impending global environmental catastrophe is decades away, why would environmentalism be seen by our leaders as a vote winner?

I don’t actually think that our politicians do see environmentalism as a vote winner, and I don’t think that they truly believe in environmentalism***. But they are conscious that the issues that are vote winners – such as the NHS, education and crime – are also extremely difficult to deal with. There are tangible ways for the success – or lack of – policies relating to crime to be assessed. The same is not true of the environment – not least because the science behind it all is so fiercely debated and potentially flawed. Parties can claim that their policies in this area are best, and are the ones that will save the world. They have the added benefit that environmental taxes will increase the government’s coffers. Put simply, the politicians are the ones forcing environmentalism onto the agenda because they can make money and cannot really be held accountable for how well their policies actually do. The environment is not a mass vote winner, but politicians want to make it into one.

Which is why environmentalism reminds me of McCarthyism. Just as America really wasn’t about to descend into a Communist dystopia in the late 1940’s and 1950’s, the world today is not about to descend into the catastrophic hell of The Day After Tomorrow. But it is in the interests of our leaders to make us think it is. To use environmentalism as a distraction from the real issues, just as fear of communist infiltration was used in post-war America to distract the American people.

I am not saying that there is a massive conspiracy – that Blair, Brown, Cameron et al have sat down and decided together to use the environment to pull the wool over the eyes of their people. But I think it is in the cynical nature of the modern politician to do this instinctively. The environment is a non policy that they cannot really be held accountable for. It is far easier for them to jump on this bandwagon than it is to work out, for example, how to fix the NHS or whether it is actually worth fixing.

The good news for people like me who really see no validity in the environmental movement is that, most likely, our leaders will move on from it if it does not bring the electoral success they crave. Just as McCarthy fell from grace so too will the mendacious, hysterical environmental lobby. And the more people who critique the claims of the environmentalist, the quicker this fall from grace will happen. But, just as the environment has replaced the War On Terror as the politicians distraction of choice, so something else – something as equally cynical and meaningless as environmentalism – is likely to be picked up and used by our leaders. Unless we see a sudden change in the type of people running for and being elected to power, cynical smokescreens hiding the real issues will continue to dominate our political landscape.

* Please don’t quote the Stern report at me. I said “real evidence”.
** Sorry, I have meant to write a post about this for ages and haven’t got round to it. Will do so later this week, I think.
*** Otherwise, why would they leave a massive carbon footprint to fly out to photographed with a husky during a local election campaign?