AH Challenge: Environmentalism viewed as a right-wing ideology

[George Carty]

In OTL environmentalism is heavily associated with the political Left, to the extent that right-wing rhetoric often describes environmentalists as "watermelons" (green on the outside, red on the inside)*.

However, there is nothing inherently left-wing about environmentalism. Many environmentalists come from very wealthy families (George Monbiot for example is a descendant of the Beaumont family of French aristocrats, who changed their name to Monbiot to escape the vengeance of the French revolutionaries).

Leon Trotsky (about as leftist as you can get) wrote in 1938 in Their Morals and Ours that "A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified. From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man".

What could have caused politics to evolve differently such that environmentalism was associated with backward-looking conservatism, rather than with socialism?

*As a matter of interest, the watermelon metaphor was originally invented by Japanese militarists, as an attack on Esperantists (green being the colour of Esperanto).

 

[False Dmitri]

*Environmintalism and *conservation arose slightly earlier, in mid-19th centrury Britain. Its chief early proponents were members of the landed aristocracy and country folk looking to slow the pace of the Industrial Revolution. Some of the leading leaders of the British Empire brought the ideology to the colonies, setting up vast land reserves and forcing locals to continue living traditional lifestyles.

 

[Berra]

Three ideas I have toyed with.

1) CIA had a hard time penetrating the Soviet Union and gather intelligence in the early cold war. Say they set up a team that is tasked with finding large industrial centers, facilities associated with the the nuclear program and such trough their enviromental effects. They recruit a bunch of young scientists who look at that and later branch into looking at the effects on humans and food security. I could se such a group developing into something very anti-communistic.

2) I think it's possible the green movemnt adopt the Austrian economic and a disire to adopt the gold standard. First of all, it's nerdy (not that it's no non-nerdy theory on monetary policy) and that's fit the green movemnt. Secondly, it focus on sustainable growth rather pushing growth as high as possible (and arguably resulting in bubbles that burst).

3) There is a lot of green stuff based around ownership, ie you can't pollute my forrest.

However, there is nothing inherently left-wing about environmentalism. Many environmentalists come from very wealthy families

That is a very bad definition of left and right. Lenin came from a (low level) noble family for example.

 

[General Mung Beans]

Environmentalism is led by conservative Christians who believe they have to preserve God's green earth and opposed to the secular, satanist earth-destoryers.

 

[Magniac]

Three letters; J-R-R.

Have Tolkien's pre-industrial, rural ideals be adopted by Rightwing tories in the UK and elsewhere.

Otherwise, have Teddy Roosevelt be just as interested in the policies of the Sierra Club et al as he was OTL, but remove his social conscience and have him be a strident Old Guard reactionary on matters economic.

This wouldn't prevent the eventual rise of leftleaning Green political movements, it'd just make them 'late to the party'.

As a matter of interest, the watermelon metaphor was originally invented by Japanese militarists, as an attack on Esperantists (green being the colour of Esperanto)

OT. Is this for real? The Imperial Japanese invented that widely used slur because they had an irrational hatred for a small group of linguists? That's freaky.

 

[Masri]

Had the Nazi regime survived into the late 20th Century IMHO they probably would have adopted a green platform in order to "ensure the purity of the fatherland" or some other crap like that. So a Nazi victory scenario might be a good POD.

 

[George Carty]

OT. Is this for real? The Imperial Japanese invented that widely used slur because they had an irrational hatred for a small group of linguists? That's freaky.

Esperanto wasn't anything like as much of a fringe movement then as it is now. A huge proportion of Esperantists died in the Holocaust.

 

[Ferto]

The Soviet Union screws up the environment even more and the USA uses that as propaganda against them.

 

[Magniac]

Esperanto wasn't anything like as much of a fringe movement then as it is now. A huge proportion of Esperantists died in the Holocaust

Yeah, I've heard about the relative popularity of Esperanto that existed in the past. There's an ex-politician in this country, Kep Enderby, who is so enthusiastic in preaching the cause that his wiki page begins, "Keppel "Kep" Enderby QC (b. 25 June 1926) is an Australian Esperantist and former politician." He was the nation's attorney general!

But the Japanese Right focussing their hatred on this group was irrational. Shades of Hitler's paranoia about Jehovah's Witnesses (not to mention the Jews, the Gypsies, and Europe's Esperanto speakers).

 

[Sachyriel]

The Soviet Union screws up the environment even more and the USA uses that as propaganda against them.

Kind of Pot-Calling-Kettle-Black.

Anyways, there are right-wing Environmentalists, however they're shunned by the right and mainstream environmentalism. They started earlier than normal Conservatives or Environmentalism, you can see it their recruiting advertisement on TV in the 1970s.

Not really kidding, if the native American movement suffered less racism, you could perhaps see some form of proto-environmentalism as early as 1800s. You know "Don't kill off all the animals like we did the buffalo!". Just a thought, feel free to tear it down. I was just wondering if you could put the 'Conservative' into 'Conservative Party' when it comes to natural resources development.

 

[Kazmarov]

If the left as we know it was a more soulless, utilitarian socialist ideology (where function is valued above beauty), I could see environmentalism as attached to the right, while the left assails it for leaving miners, lumberjacks, carpenters (working to middle-class) unemployed while not contributing to the output of the state.

It's generally believed by environmentally-influenced citizens that hard conservatives are short-sighted- attacking environmentalists for contracting the economy despite the fact that excessive environmental degradation leads over the long term to declining returns. I don't think it's all that insane that the right could accuse the left of doing the same- producing excessively for the point of full employment.

So more or less the left-wing as we know it has to change- Huey Long, Upton Sinclair, and a general rise in the 20th century of populist socialism would nudge it away from the New Left/progressive base it's had for the last three decades.

 

[pipisme]

Originally posted by Magniac
Have Tolkien's pre-industrial rural ideals be adopted by Rightwing tories in the UK and elsewhere.

Tolkien was a conservative and opposed to socialism because he was averse to planning, but his political views were more inclined to anarchism than right wing toryism.

On 29 November 1943 he wrote to his son Christopher

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) - or to 'unconstituional' Monarchy.

He was opposed to any form of colonialism or imperialism, whether political or cultural. In a letter to his friend Christopher Wiseman on 16 November 1914 he declared

I am not of course a militarist. I no longer defend the Boer War! I am a more & more convinced Home Ruler.....

He was horrified by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Although Tolkien was a conservative and William Morris a socialist they were both romantics in revolt against the tyranny of the machine. The Shire of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is similar in many ways to the rural post-industrial England which is the setting of Morris's utopian novel, News from Nowhere (1890): http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_from_Nowhere .

Both are rural societies with little or no government. This essay - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/An+unexpected+Guest-a0154698403 - compares the two societies:

The Shire is Nowhere seen through the lens of Tolkien's natural conservatism.

Meredith Veldmen in Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain: Romantic Protest, 1945-1980 (1984), points out the similarities between Tolkien and Morris in their rejection of the industrial world and their belief in anarchist-like communities.

Veldman writes:

Decades ahead of the Greens, he denounced the exaltation of mechanization and the narrow definition of economic progress that resulted in the degradation of the natural environment, and he did so in romantic terms. In Tolkien's Middle-earth, nature expressed a reality beyond human comprehension and worthy of human respect. Through his creation of Middle-earth, Tolkien offered a vision of an alternative reality, one that he believed could never be achieved because of the sinfulness of humankind, but one that both drew on and nourished the romantic protest tradition.

It is difficult to reconcile environmentalism with the right wing belief in the superiority of uncontrolled, or lightly controlled, capitalism. It is right wingers who are sceptical regarding human made global warming and are opposed to measures to stop exploitation of the environment. "Drill, baby, drill" was a slogan at last year's Republican convention.

 

[W. T. Sherman]

In the U.S., a lot of environmental regulations (Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, Environmental Quality Improvement Act, the creation of the EPA) were enacted under Nixon. If there is no Watergate, Nixon would probably be seen as a successful president, and Republicans might take up his mantle, while the Democrats, relying on support of miners' and loggers' unions, end up in opposition.

 

[carlton_bach]

It is difficult to reconcile environmentalism with the right wing belief in the superiority of uncontrolled, or lightly controlled, capitalism. It is right wingers who are sceptical regarding human made global warming and are opposed to measures to stop exploitation of the environment. "Drill, baby, drill" was a slogan at last year's Republican convention.

That's not necessarily a right-wing position, though. For much of the time, conservatives espoused ideas of control over the economy in the interest of wider society - laissez-faire was a liberal thing. Today, most conservative parties really are heir to the old liberals, but as late as the 70s, that wasn't a given. If they had embraced conservation early and made it more 'core' to their beliefs, then the moment where ecology becomes a science turns it into a conservative cause. Responsibility towards future generations, love of country and respect for Creation are just as valid as conservative reasons to be environmentalist as any left-wing ones.

 

[Lautréamont]

Actually, Nazi germany was quite environmentalist, at least compared to the rest of the world at that time. Okay, environmentalist in a hypocrite way. But still, they were the first to implement laws against bad treatment of animals. By the way, "The Eternal Jew" begins with a shechita.
Now, if Nazi germany would have become more like those Thule society esoterics like Himmler or Rosenberg wanted it, in opposition to the technocrat Göring, well, perhaps... on the other hand, the Nazi ideology was based on the world war plans, which aren't really thinkable without Göring's military industrialism.

 

[Mark E.]

Only after the sixties has "conservatism" become defined as opposite of "conservationism." Consider the Amish, outside most political/economic circles: they are both conservative and conservationist.

Conservation of resources went left, because in the sixties, the term "liberal" was identified with "change" and "conservative" with the status quo (a non-conservationist military-industrial complex). The realignment of politics to social issues in the eighties and nineties only entrenched this alignment.

While conservation might be amenable to the right, pollution control is a different story. To get the right wing into pollution control, you need some sort of an environmental scare. Unfortunately, the smog episodes between WWII and the sixties did not quite do the job.

We need a POD that combines conservation of resources with pollution control.

 

[Manfr]

In a world subjected to massive Soviet wanking, environmentalism is a reactionary force stopping People's Progress !

 

[Kevin R.]

I think it's gonna be pretty tough to drive a wedge between the Left and environmentalism, at least in America. The whole Progressive movement was built around fixing the negative aspects of modern society, and one of the big ones was all the pollution in the cities. Left-wing support for clean air laws, much like minimum wage, workers' safety, ending child labor, and other social justice issues, was inevitable, and from there, the marriage between liberalism and environmentalism has never wavered. I do think, however, that you could get a rural, populist movement that calls for the protection of God's creation against the consequences of pollution and urbanization. Such a movement is consistent with the call in the Bible to act as the stewards of the Earth (don't remember the exact wording). It's not that difficult to associate such a movement with the Christian Right - the only reason they became so anti-environmentalist in OTL was because the Republicans also represented Big Business. Which brings me to...

... why associating environmentalism with the broader conservative movement is almost as difficult as separating it from the Left. Until now, with global warming threatening to destabilize economies over the next several decades, industry and business have never really cared about the environment. In fact, they've traditionally been opposed to environmental legislation, as it usually cuts into their profits. These guys, of course, are also supporters of free-market capitalism. It's going to be pretty tough to reconcile laissez-faire economic views with environmentalism, in my opinion. And by "pretty tough," I mean "practically impossible." The only way I feel that environmentalism could become a right-wing phenomenon would be to separate free market capitalism from the Right, which opens up a whole slew of other problems.

Or, reverse the seating arrangement at the National Assembly during the French Revolution, so that all the radicals were seated on the right side of the room instead of the left. (That was, after all, the origin of the terms "left-wing" and "right-wing".) There - you've got the Right championing not only environmentalism, but social justice, civil liberties, and all those other liberal causes.

 

[SteveW]

The English Greens derive originally from a Tory splinter group, and there is a Green Right tendency (see the Goldsmiths).

 

[Magniac]

Have Tolkien's pre-industrial rural ideals be adopted by Rightwing tories in the UK and elsewhere

Tolkien was a conservative and opposed to socialism because he was averse to planning, but his political views were more inclined to anarchism than right wing toryism.

On 29 November 1943 he wrote to his son Christopher

He was opposed to any form of colonialism or imperialism, whether political or cultural. In a letter to his friend Christopher Wiseman on 16 November 1914 he declared

He was horrified by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Although Tolkien was a conservative and William Morris a socialist they were both romantics in revolt against the tyranny of the machine. The Shire of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is similar in many ways to the rural post-industrial England which is the setting of Morris's utopian novel, News from Nowhere (1890): http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_from_Nowhere .

Both are rural societies with little or no government. This essay - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/An+unexpected+Guest-a0154698403 - compares the two societies:

Meredith Veldmen in Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain: Romantic Protest, 1945-1980 (1984), points out the similarities between Tolkien and Morris in their rejection of the industrial world and their belief in anarchist-like communities.

Veldman writes:

It is difficult to reconcile environmentalism with the right wing belief in the superiority of uncontrolled, or lightly controlled, capitalism. It is right wingers who are sceptical regarding human made global warming and are opposed to measures to stop exploitation of the environment. "Drill, baby, drill" was a slogan at last year's Republican convention

I didn't know that about Tolkien's ideological orientation (not a LOTR fan), but I do think that regardless of whatever guild socialist- or digger-esque views he held I think his basic traditionalism has genuine appeal for UK Rightwingers.

Think of the way the little Englander philosophy of the old Liberals has been appropriated by eurosceptic Tories. Tolkien's mythos of the shires and his muscular, warrior faith could fit very well with elements of the party that is, after all, the Anglican Church at prayer. Also, if the Conservatives are locked out of urban constituencies by a strong and coherent Liberal-Labour side of politics (say, the Liberal Unionists never defect, there's no Great War) then the Tories may enter the era of 20th Century universal suffrage as a party dominated by backwoods squires.