Understanding Our Political Elite On Climate

it's all for the best

John Hinderaker, in a piece on fake meat, proposes that our ruling class elite is offended that average people can live lives almost as satisfying as elitists. Thus climate change and “lab-grown” meat.

Liberals are trying to drive down the standard of living for all Americans. True, their own standards will suffer slightly.

But hey, the main thing is that the difference between the elite and the chumps will increase.

There is certainly a point to this argument. Otherwise what was the point of sumptuary laws back in the day that regulated the amount of finery that the lower classes could wear. There is no doubt that the casual observer should be in no doubt, as he looks around him, about who the good people are and who the peasants are.

And there is no doubt that the monstrous pickup trucks driven around needlessly by deplorable Americans is an offence to common decency.

But that is not how our rulers see things. They think of their Great Reset, their Energy Transformation, as a moral and political necessity if we are going to save the planet from climate change. Yes, it’s true that many people will have to consume less, and it is true that important people will still have to fly to conferences all over the world. But we are talking survival here.

I am reading Francis Fukuyama, and one of his themes is that modern state-based democracy has a problem two basic human instincts.

Natural human sociability is built around two phenomena: kin selection and reciprocal altruism.

In politics, kin selection is experienced as “nepotism favor[ing] genetic relatives.” “Reciprocal altruism involve an exchange of favors or resources”. In a state society these instincts result in “patrimonialism,” organizing government on a face-to-face basis for the benefit of your family or ethnic group, and “clientelism,” which is the corrupt exchange and distribution of political favors over a much larger group of voters that need to be mobilized to support the rulers.

Ideally, in a liberal democratic state, patronage and clientelism are minimized, and the most qualified person is hired for the job and the rest of us make do with the jobs we got. In fact, in politics, this never happens. Politics is always about favoring your friends and your supporters and your followers. But in our age it is necessary to find a moral basis for this ancient instinct. Thus reparations for the descendants of slaves, and DEI officers to shovel benefits to historically oppressed peoples.

The other side of politics is the Enemy. The sauntering politicians must have an enemy to fight. Using Fukuyama’s approach we may say that ideally, in a liberal democratic state, the need for enemies is minimized. In fact, this never happens. Modern, democratic states like to whack their enemies around just as much as humans did in days of yore. Thus the world wars of the last century.

The climate scam is a bit different, because it is a global thing — and did you know that it was all gussied up by the United Nations? Did you know that, per La Wik,

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities.[1] The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the IPCC in 1988.

See what I mean? If you are the UN, you naturally gravitate towards fighting enemies of the whole planet. And this appeals to the educated class all across the world that thinks itself a cut above the deplorable world of nationalism and populism.

And “advance scientific knowledge”. Whoo boy, we scientists are ready, willing and able to help on that front, providing that grants are involved.

With any great effort — think World War II — sacrifices must be made, and everyone must put their shoulder to the wheel. Of course, the best and brightest will not be putting their shoulders to the wheel; instead they will dedicate their lives to teaching us how to do it and directing us and organizing us. So we can save the planet.

Now I think, channeling Fukuyama, that a liberal democratic state ought to be able to minimize the need for enemies. But just as the liberal democratic state, led by the educated class, has turned modern society into a patronage scam, so it has turned the old game of defending the frontiers into a global war on CO2.

What we need is a new enlightened leadership that figures out how to minimize the need for enemies, and patronage and free stuff to a minimum, and make us like it.

Talk about genius!