The Great Divide in the Environmentalist Movement
The debate between conservationists and innovators is rarely discussed enough
"earthquake fault line, Inyo National Forest (with snow)" by m01229 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
In today’s column, we will look at a deep fault line that isn’t discussed nearly often enough. Recognizing the contours of the fault line will help us understand recent news stories as diverse as the fall of the Sri Lankan government, the French government nationalizing EDF and the German Greens abandoning climate targets.
We already briefly mentioned the great divide in last week’s column. On one side are apocalyptic environmentalists, conservationists and Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) activists. On the other side are cleantech innovators, investors with environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns and regulatory bodies pushing for science-based climate solutions. Charles Mann calls their proponents prophets and wizards, respectively, which is certainly poetic. I would suggest conservationists and innovators as a better shorthand.
In the spirit of Virginia Postrel, though, I think we can coin the names backward-looking environmentalists (BLEs) for conservationists and forward-looking environmentalists (FLEs) for innovators. The names might be a little biased - I am more sympathetic to FLEs - but I think they capture something important. BLEs want to turn the clock backwards in order to mitigate climate change; but FLEs think this is impossible and instead want to use science, entrepreneurialism and regulation to cultivate and engineer a better future for humanity.
If this sounds a little abstract, a joke should help capture the flavour of the debate between the two sides. An Englishman is lost in the Irish countryside. He spots a farmer in a field, pulls over his car and waves at him. The farmer comes over. “How can I help you?” “I’m lost and need to get to Dublin. Which is the best way?” The farmer thinks deeply. “If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”
At the risk of ruining the joke, the BLEs/conservationists want to rewind their route, go back to the point that they got lost and start again in a better direction. The FLEs/innovators want to start where they happen to be and find a new route to their destination.
Let’s turn to the news. Earlier in July, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned after angry protesters stormed his official residency. The background was an experiment in organic farming that went catastrophically wrong. Rajapaksa listened to BLEs, who convinced him that the country’s future lay in organic farming. In April 2021, he banned synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. The country’s 2m farmers went organic overnight.
The results were horrendous. Rice production fell 20% in six months; the country had to begin importing rice; prices soared 50%; and the tea crop was devastated. The government was forced to walk back the ban on fertilizers and compensate farmers as its currency collapsed, but the damage was done. Half a million people fell back into poverty, while others had to cut back on food and fuel. For a full post-mortem, read this excellent analysis in Foreign Policy from March, which is the source of the facts mentioned above.
Meanwhile in France, the liberal government surprised observers by promising to nationalize electricity company EDF in the name of energy sovereignty. EDF invests billions of euros in nuclear power every year. Around the same time, the European Parliament voted to reclassify nuclear power as a green source of energy.
Many FLEs have long argued that a transition to a cleaner world cannot work without nuclear power. This argument has gained traction in France. However, this approach horrifies many BLEs, who are worried about nuclear waste and accidents. FLEs respond that ESG investment in innovative cleantech will gradually reduce the risks.
The German Greens are firmly in the anti-nuclear BLE camp. They recently committed to burning more coal so the country could decommission three nuclear plants. Germany’s ruling coalition, which includes Greens, will have to abandon climate targets as a direct result of this decision.
As a generalist news reporter and observer of current affairs, I can’t offer any definitive answers to the debate, even though my sympathies lie with the FLEs. However, the debate is of vital importance to all of us. I recommend keeping the fault line on your radar as you read the news in future. The comments are open. See you next week!
Further Reading
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann
The Future and Its Enemies by Virginia Postrel
The City & the City by China Miéville
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Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.
I think one thing to realize is that a lot of what eventually became an environmentalist movement is around 2 main points.
First, that countries were rich enough to be able to afford the costs. There's a reason it started in the US, Western Europe, Japan, etc... In many ways environmentalism is a luxury good as people in poor countries have much bigger concerns. Sri Lanka is a good example of a society not able to bear the costs.
Second, that when the movement was birthed, the goal was to stop things. And it really was necessary. Basically the factories spewing soot in Milwaukee, Manchester, or Mannheim needed to be transformed. But the toolkit has never really changed and so what was incremental progress then to very good ends is now the exact same toolkit that prevents progress for the next set of challenges, but very few steeped in the movement seem to be willing to recognize that different challenges require different tactics.