Your post is more a criticism of "activism culture" than of the Climate Left.
I work in pretty close proximity to normalish Climate Left people (i.e. not tankie types). Most people seem to believe the following:
1. American or Western activism is unlikely to have much impact on Chinese policy? (E.g. Xinjiang)
2. If we in the US can't reach net zero (or whatever) to mitigate climate change, how can we expect others to do so?
3. If we Westerners go "all in" on climate mitigation (there is so much more we could do) and get our house in order, we will be better off AND in a position to push on China from a position of strength.
4. Democrats in Congress *know* we should be doing more on climate within the US, but they are afraid to do so and/or uncertain on what to do.
It's completely fair to argue that Leftists are too soft on China and that they should ALSO be pushing very hard on this globally. But I don't think it's right to say that it's a farce.
On something like nuclear (I am in favor), surely you can recognize why an environmentally-minded person might seriously (and rationally) see nuclear as a separate but still important environmental risk. They might be mistaken on the level of risk, but it's not a "farce" when activists miscalculate something.
Similarly, on issues like Palestine and police funding, people get activated into an "activism culture." I would argue that they are sometimes wrong, often distracted, and frequently undermining their own case on climate - but that does not make their climate activism a farce.
I'd be interested to see more of a steel man case for what a Climate Leftist could (realistically) be doing.
> I'd be interested to see more of a steel man case for what a Climate Leftist could (realistically) be doing.
In general, for all activists -- Write draft legislation that 47.5% of legislators would already agree with, then organize write in drives to sway around 5% of legislators in the middle, settling for incremental changes that actually move things in a positive direction.
I worry activism focuses way too much energy on "motivating legislators by signalling popular interest" in an issue. That was a more successful strategy in the 40s, before opinion polling makes it clear that a thousand people outside your office might be a bluff and doesn't necessarily mean it matters to your electoral chances.
Activism generally focuses too little energy on understanding how policy is actually made and what the real bottlenecks are. Legislators are constantly campaigning in one way or another, meeting with donors or managing an image, they are often too busy to research and draft policies. Hand them a reasonable bill they can introduce as-is with pre-typed talking points they can use to argue for it, and you save them work.
Usually I'm partial to Antoine de Saint Exupery, but I think in this domain... Don't make a legislator yearn for the sea, just lay out the tools so their job is half done.
Not sure if by "activism culture" you mean this or something more like what Julia Galef denotes with "soldier mindset", but it's definitely true that *going to left-of-center protests* is a subculture, one that's generally gatekept by far-leftists and ends up being a vector for liberals to move left or acquire additional leftist commitments (or, in the case of the liberal currently typing this, to not want to go to more protests).
The 'Climate Left' isn't interested in spending money effectively to improve carbon emissions—if they were, you would see an embrace of Generation IV nuclear reactors and fundamental R&D research that touches on many different kinds of energy sources.
Their aim, instead, is to spend endless trillions on uncompetitive technology and of course, increasingly, 'racial justice.' In their view, these issues are inseparable. They would rather sink vast amounts of money into all kinds of projects that form this left-wing constellation of perceived grievance.
Reducing carbon emissions is not their priority, even when the subject is climate change. If we were to follow their lead on this, the United States would find itself in a debt spiral as these extremists spend it into oblivion.. and a vanishing fraction of that spending would actually go to constructive efforts re: climate.
I'm sure many of these people would even prefer economic calamity compared to the status quo, as an opportunity to prostrate themselves before the world as martyrs. We're horrible racists, we're horrible carbon emitters—but *at least we tried.*
Re: activists getting things wrong. Your nominal activist obviously isn't responsible for the thinking - they're mostly just responsible for the broadcasting. So each individual activist getting something wrong aren't exactly farcacle. But when the people who actually do the thinking don't course-correct when the movement is getting things wrong on nuclear, then at some point you have to start calling it a farce.
But couldn't they be helping Democrats defeat Republicans in general elections, regardless of whether those Democrats are moderates or progressives? I spend a lot of my free time doing this: mainly text messaging, which is all I can really do since I live overseas.
Yglesias is right to emphasize the importance of winning legislative majorities, not just for climate but for all of the left's policy goals. Whoever is doing something else, unless it's at least equally effective, is causing harm by ignoring an opportunity cost.
Here's the problem: By spending his time and energy punching left Yglesias is actually harming Democrats political chances.
He's turning off the climate left by being mean to them. He's turning off swing voters who will associate the climate left with Democrats. He's doing far more harm to Democrats electoral chances than those he's complaining about.
That's a problem.
He could, instead, spend his time painting the GOP has the real problem preventing action on climate change which, importantly, would actually be true.
I mean, in a sense nothing any cultural or political commentator does or says will have much impact on the electorate itself. I would be shocked Matt Yglesias’ name recognition among swing voters was higher than 10%. The choices of politicians and parties will have much greater influence on swing voters.
It’s true he annoys a greater proportion of left activists, but if they’re so put off by his criticism that it distracts them from their activism then they are kind of proving his point.
I'd argue it's more of a collective action problem among center-left journalists and media outlets. Matt is just one example. Will any one article by one writer matter much? No. But moral panics like cancel culture and CRT became mainstream due to the way the center-left media and mainstream media act in aggregate, much like it did with the PC wars of the past. Their war against climate activists is no different. Center left media is harming the potential for action on climate by collectively complaining about the climate left instead of focusing on the actors that are actually holding us back.
The media plays a far bigger role in the attitudes of swing voters that you are giving them credit for. I'd argue the media has a bigger impact than politicians and parties.
Beyond that, Matt Yglesias’ has significant power. He's read in the White House and by members of Congress. He's distracting them from what they should actually be worried about which is the GOP and the far right.
My point is annoying climate activists won't distract them from their activism. He's giving them what they want which is attention. What Matt is doing is reducing the influence he might have to help them be more effective and reducing the likelihood that climate activists will turnout to vote for Democrats.
All of this is more problematic than the things Matt Yglesias’ is complaining about.
FWIW, I like Matt. I'm a paid subscriber to his Substack. I've listened to virtually every episode of the Weeds.
I'm just annoyed because he constantly complains about others doing ineffective things(often based on shallow evidence), but then he engages in behavior that has at least the same level of negative impact if not greater. He needs to follow his own advice as do the others like him(EG Jonathan Chait who I also generally like)
"But moral panics like cancel culture and CRT became mainstream due to the way the center-left media and mainstream media act in aggregate, much like it did with the PC wars of the past"
Um, no, they become mainstream because the right-wing media (which these days is a very different ecosystem from the mainstream media, which itself has blended in to the center-left media) pounds on those issues (because they always need some grievance for their old white grievance audience). CRT and cancel culture will still be issues even if all the media from mainstream on left didn't mention them at all. I personally think Yglesia should be listened to because the electorate is, in general, much older, much less educated, and much more socially conservative (also not all that much against right-wing authoritarianism) than the very vocal young left-wing that dominates online discourse. Essential, yes, I am agreeing with David Shor. And if you think Shor is correct (and also that the Trump party is a proto-authoritarian party now) then I would think you would want to keep Democratic politicians from the far-left as much as possible if you care about the US still staying a democratically elected representative republic.
First, I encourage you to study the history of right wing moral panics. It is, in fact, objectively true that right wing moral panics have historically only crossed into mainstream consciousness when they are elevated by mainstream actors. In modern history, that's primarily through journalism.
Would CRT and Cancel Culture still be issues if they were not elevated by mainstream media? Sure, but they'd most likely be isolated to the right. Very few people actually consume right wing media. In a country of about 240 million eligible voters, only about 2-3 million watch Fox News, for example. Those ideas escape the right wing bubble in one of two ways: word of mouth and mainstream media. It's possible that they would gain steam solely through word of mouth, but that is historically rare.
One contemporary element that may change this historical finding is Facebook due to its broad reach to its editorial decision to use its algorithm to elevate right wing voices. Because these moral panics were both elevated by the mainstream, we can't, in fact, know if that would have happened or not in these cases.
More to the point: it's objectively bad for mainstream media outlets and journalists to spread bad faith right wing talking points. Mere exposure to an idea spreads belief in that idea even if the idea is presented in the context of a critique. Responsible actors should not do it.
If one feels the need to comment on these issues, one can do so without presenting the bad faith right wing version of the story. One can, and should, also do so without focusing on the non-representative anecdotes that are typically used to advance these bad faith arguments. Responsible actors should lead with fact, not fiction.
Second, I agree. it is good to have an understanding of the median and marginal voter. I have a lot of respect for David Shor. He's an incredible data scientist who does and has done great work in helping us get a better understanding of the views of the American people. He shares many of my beliefs, seems like a great guy, and seems to have his heart in the right place.
His theory of politics, on the other hand, is simply not based in evidence. In fact, his theories often contradict the best evidence we have about how people make decisions. Which is disappointing coming from someone who advocates evidence backed decision making.
I'm going to be very clear here. I would NEVER advocate that a politician (or business for that matter), make decisions based on my personal preferences. I am a professional. Professionals do no do that. I'll vote for the people and buy from the companies I believe in, but I do not make professional determinations based on those beliefs. At least, I avoid doing that to the best extent that I, as a fallible human, am capable of doing.
Humans do not make decisions rationally. We don't vote based on policy positions any more than we buy products and services based on their features. We are tribal, emotional creatures. We make decisions based first in our emotional response, that we use "rational" data points to justify the decisions we've already made to ourselves and others. We know this due to neuroscience studies that explore which parts of the brain are active when we are actually making decisions. The emotional centers act first. The logical centers are active second.
Instead, we vote based primarily on two things. First, we vote based on the choice that makes us feel good about ourselves. Second, and most importantly, we vote based on what feels culturally appropriate for members of our social group or tribe. Emotions, not facts, lead the way.
Humans, for important evolutionary reasons, do not like to feel like outsiders in their social groups. For the most part, we also don't like to lie to those we care about. So, the most effective way to influence party vote share is to influence culture. The more people and social circles that feel culturally pulled to vote for your candidate, the more likely it is that your candidate will win elections.
Policy positions can impact that, but they are downstream from the emotional stories we tell ourselves and the cultures we inhabit.
Beyond that, much of Shor's political theory comes from polls/survey data. This is problematic for two reasons.
First, surveys are a snapshot of the past. Political actors need to make decisions based in what they believe will happen in the future. Surveys can help inform that, but they can't predict the future.
Second, surveys are a low quality form of ethnographic research. To the extent that surveys are valuable, it is for generating data about simple ideas and concepts. Surveys are pretty good, for example, binary choices like will you vote for candidate A or B. Not perfect, but good.
Even in relatively simple cases survey data is relatively weak. We know, for example, survey respondents lie all of the time about basic, objective things like age, height, weight, etc. We also know that surveys are simply incapable of capturing accurate information about human's beliefs on complex subjects. Even if you assume that people understand the question being asked, which is honestly an unrealistic assumption, people's views simply can't be accurately expressed with multiple choice or binary responses. We're far more complex than that.
I do believe that the Trump party is a proto-authoritarian party. As a patriot, that terrifies me. That's why I think it's important that Democrats do things that have the best chance of successfully strengthening our democratic system and winning elections.
So, I believe it is vitally important that Democrats maximize their vote share. That means they should not go out of the way to make enemies with the left who are their natural allies in a two party system. They can't afford to waste potential votes. They also should try not to alienate persuadable voters in the center. The best way to do that is to just ignore the bad ideas/actors/etc. on the left and elevate the good.
Political actors, including journalists, have incredibly limited resources to persuade voters in the center. As a result it is objectively stupid to use those resources punching left.
One of the other key findings of Shor's research is that persuadable voters are low information voters. They don't read past the headlines. They don't listen past the soundbites. They don't distinguish between Democrats and the left. They don't have enough information to do so.
So, I'll leave you with a question. Which do you think is a better way to use limited resources to persuade voters to vote for Democrats:
Option A: Talk about how bad some progressive Democrat are?
or
Option B: Talk about how bad Republicans and their rich donors are?
1. Again, though, those low-information persuadable voters not only aren’t even reading Yglesias, they don’t even know who he is. So how would “punching left” hurt among that crowd?
2. If the far left gets pissy and doesn’t support Democrats just because someone like Yglesias is mean to them, I’ve got to wonder how committed they really are to democracy and preventing climate change (as opposed to just enjoying the cosplaying).
3. You really should read Kevin Drum. Yes, Fox may only get a few million viewers at any one time but add in all the other right-wing media (Fox is now on the moderate right in GOP land these days, where plenty get their news from OANN, Breitbart, and even kookier sources) + the very effective propaganda network called (white) evangelical culture/churches (drive between 2 large metro areas some day and spend 5 minutes on each radio station in both the AM and FM spectrum), then compare to the media reach of the left and center-left. How many viewers does MSNBC get?
4. Yes, ultimately, changing the culture is most important. But as T Greer (conservative, but insightful) pointed out, culture wars are long wars. But we don’t have decades to address climate change. Given that, how is anything like being against the Senate Democrats/Biden climate proposals helpful in any way?
5. Yes, most people are tribal. And right now in the US, at least when it comes to social issues, the tribes that range from lean-center-right to extreme-right (which includes a decent number of working class POC who traditionally vote Democratic, BTW) outnumber the tribes that range from lean-center-left to extreme-left. Given that, I don’t see how Shor is off the mark.
Great article. Fairly certain you’ve touched on this before, but is the “strength” of the climate left in the minds of intellectual elites purely based on the Left being overrepresented on social media? The Left, and especially the climate left, is disproportionately young, disproportionately well-educated, and disproportionately engaged in politics—all factors that would lead to strong social media presence. Since lots of intellectual elites are on social media, they get an unrealistic perspective on the strength of leftist climate activism.
Your post made me wonder, have you read KSR's The Ministry For the Future? It deals with some of the issues you raised but from the perspective of a great sci-fi writer.
Overall, this article is much better that MY's whiny missive. I say that as a big MY fan. I just think his choice to spend so much time complaining about the left on issues like climate, CRT, and cancel culture, etc. are doing more harm to the causes he believes in than the people he is complaining about. He's talents are more useful elsewhere.
With that being said, I have two points of critique.
First, it's important to note, as you briefly do, that the reason the Climate Left does the things it does is because people like you and MY and outlets like the NY Times, the New Yorker and the Washington Post write about the things they do. If center-left writers stopped writing about the "stupid" things the climate left do, the climate left would probably stop doing them and do something else instead because their primary goal is to raise awareness. People like Matt are, in fact, the literal cause of the problem they are complaining about. By wasting time condemning them, Matt is reducing support for climate policy among centrists. I wish you made that point directly.
Second, it's a bit disingenuous to paint Elon Musk as a martyr when his empire and personal wealth were generated through $4.9 billion in government subsidies. He's not some saint. He's just like Peter Thiel, but he chose to get rich off public funds doing something we like instead of something objectively terrible. Musk is no martyr. He's just another selfish rich dude. If the government hadn't paid him to build this, he wouldn't have. He owes us. We don't owe him.
1. You think battery tech would have advanced as fast without Elon Musk existing (I don't).
2. You feel climate change is an existential threat that is paramount to everything else (or among the Big 2, along with preserving American democracy) or not. If you really do think that climate change is an existential threat, who cares who gets what credit so long as the technology advances quicker than it would have otherwise.
1. There's no way to prove a counterfactual, but based on the history of innovation it seems individual actors are far less important than we typically think. Perhaps this is a special case, but we don't have any way of knowing that. Beyond that Musk himself isn't an innovator or inventor in his work at Tesla, Space X and Solar City. He just employs them.
He is a manager and a marketer. To assume that he played a the decisive role in the evolution of battery technology is to assume that he is a master manager. That may be true, but the evidence appears mixed. Though he is a master marketer, it's probably his most powerful skill. It seems likely to me that skill is the core driver of the success of his firms.
So, who knows, but this is irrelevant to my point. Musk is not a martyr nor is he benevolent no matter how much you, personally, like the guy.
2. This is just a strange argument. If giving credit matters at all, it should matter who gets that credit. Other wise, why give anyone credit at all?
Again, we can't know what would have happened under a different scenario.
It seems to me like the battery chemistry improvements were the critical sticking point for EV viability. How much of those came from research done for smartphones and consumer electronics versus just Tesla? It's not like EVs are the only industry that would have put money into better batteries.
"Second, it's a bit disingenuous to paint Elon Musk as a martyr when his empire and personal wealth were generated through $4.9 billion in government subsidies. "
How so? The government literally provided the capital that allowed him to start those businesses. Without government subsidies (and in the case of Space X contracts) this companies would not exist.
What are you talking about? He only started SpaceX, and the government did not provide the capital for that? And conflating contracts for services with subsidies is deeply dishonest.
More generally, the problem is the complete lack of context. Tesla got subsidies? And GM, Ford et al did not? They didn't get bailed out? Buyers of their vehicles didn't get trillions in de facto subsidies on their fuel? Same with Solarcity: the tax credit is worth a mention, but not how coal plants don't have to pay for all the people they kill and climate change? SpaceX got some contracts and some piddling grants? And ULA doesn't get contracts, and a billion dollars a year to exist?
It implies that his companies have received special treatment, that they wouldn't be competitive (or even exist) without it, while completely ignoring the vast assistance everyone else in their industries has received.
You're making arguments that are tangential and irrelevant to the points I was making. All of his companies received startup funding from the federal government. That is a fact.
Whether or not those things are good or bad is completely independent of the fact that the public funded his businesses.
Did he receive federal funding that was not accessible to others that were equally qualified? The answer is yes. Prior to starting these companies he had done nothing to suggest that he was capable of building an electric car company, a solar energy company or a rocket company. He was a founder of PayPal. A great company, but a company that has nothing to do with any of these activities. He had friends in high places and he took advantage of that. I don’t blame him, but he’s not a benevolent actor.
Did I say It was good Ford, GM, and Chrysler received bailouts? No, I did not,
Did I say fossil fuel subsidies were good? No, I did not.
It is true that space x would likely not exist without government contracts? Yes, that is true. Did space x earn those? I’d argue NASA could have done what space X did. They did build every other rocket we’ve used to get to space. I don’t think we needed private companies to do that work. Others may disagree and that’s ok.
My argument is that Elon musk is a capitalist, not a martyr. The end.
I get that you like him and appreciate what his companies have done. There’s nothing wrong with that.
My argument is that his wealth is a byproduct of government funding. That is undoubtedly true. Has he succeeded where others have failed? Yes. I would never argue otherwise. He’s an incredible marketer. I envy that skill.
Honestly, your rant is incoherent and I honestly don’t know what your objections are beyond the fact that I don’t idolize your hero.
Just don’t make shit up to cover for the fact that you made a weak argument. If you disagree, use evidence to support your opinions, not bombastic, incoherent, and tangential rhetoric.
"All of his companies received startup funding from the federal government. That is a fact."
It's called lying by omission. Creating a deceptive picture by only stating certain facts and not others. In this case, creating the impression that Tesla/SpaceX have been given special treatment by pointing out subsidies they have received while not mentioning the subsidies the rest of their industries have received.
"Did he receive federal funding that was not accessible to others that were equally qualified? "
Cite?
"He had friends in high places and he took advantage of that."
Cite?
"It is true that space x would likely not exist without government contracts? Yes, that is true. "
As true as it is of every other rocket company in existence.
"I’d argue NASA could have done what space X did. They did build every other rocket we’ve used to get to space. I don’t think we needed private companies to do that work. Others may disagree and that’s ok."
"I get that you like him and appreciate what his companies have done."
No, I don't like him. He's a douchebag and his actions and statements on COVID were reprehensible. I'm just sick of people criticizing new things while giving the status quo a pass, by, for instance, only pointing out the subsidies a new company or technology has gotten while making absolutely no mention of the mountain of subsidies that their competition receives and received.
"Honestly, your rant is incoherent and I honestly don’t know what your objections are beyond the fact that I don’t idolize your hero."
You shouldn't make assumptions about peoples motivations (which aren't relevant anyway). But go on, keep being a useful idiot for the status quo, I'm sure they appreciate it.
- I feel like people are defining the climate left as The Sunrise Movement. Contra to this though, a lot of people further to the left, including myself, are in favor of nuclear and pretty much whatever it takes to get our PPM under control. I don't agree with their activism on the substance or the tactics, but I also feel a constant internal critic is pretty counterproductive. To this end, I found this Sam Sanders episode reviewing the effectiveness of Act UP to be very informative: https://www.npr.org/2021/06/16/1007361916/act-up-a-history-of-aids-hiv-activism
- As an economist, I was hoping you might turn your sights towards the effectiveness of a carbon-border adjustment tax. The Niskanen Center had a good primary a while back: https://www.niskanencenter.org/qa-on-carbon-border-adjustments/. Basically, if we do it right, America is at a strategic advantage.
As far as I know, the Biden campaign made announcements of a carbon border adjustment but none of actual domestic carbon pricing, and it is trying to talk the EU into dropping the cba idea?
Regarding nuclear power which someone mentioned above: I'm a techno-optimist and interested in the development of safe fission reactors and nuclear fusion but it seems, from articles I read by Noah and others that it would be faster to deploy renewable energy than to deploy the next generation of nuclear reactors.
Baseload energy. Nuclear competes with batteries, not (intermittent) renewable energy. So the question is whether nuclear tech or battery tech would advance faster.
Batteries (short duration capacity) are about the last thing nuclear competes with. Nuclear needs the same thing - most of the world's pumped hydro was built to shift nuclear output.
Nuclear is mostly in competition with renewables + long duration (a couple of weeks) and seasonal storage in the north, where high heating demand, low solar output, and a couple weeks with little wind can all combine.
Pumped hydro and making chemical fuels to burn in gas plants is all old tech.
Yes, 25GW vs 61GW of nuclear, not to mention connections to the rest of Europe (Switzerland and Norway both do a lot of balancing for Europe with their hydro). They also use those same connections to supply their nuclear power to others, when they have too much. Nuclear is, just like renewables, both technically and economically inflexible, so connections help it a lot.
"Furthermore, their emissions are still increasing rapidly, thanks to the huge fleet of coal plants they’re building,"
No, it's thanks to oil and gas. Coal consumption peaked in 2013. New coal plants are somewhat worrying, but so far they've been replacing older less efficient ones (more MWhs, same emissions), and have been white elephants that just reduce the utilization of others (their coal plant capacity factors are very low).
"Yet as soon as you mention this to anyone on the Climate Left, and they instantly shift from talking about the imminent destruction of the planet to talking about moral issues, like per capita emissions or historical emissions — things which the climate definitely does not care about even a tiny, tiny bit."
You're doing exactly what you criticize the "climate left" for doing, Noah. The climate doesn't care about where emissions *reductions* come from, either. So why the focus on China? Why shouldn't the US reduce emissions to zero before China reduces them one bit*? Those are moral questions. You're just taking your morals as a given and criticizing others for wanting to talk about the issue.
Take a look at the chart in the article. You can't cut emissions below zero (well, you can suck carbon out of the air . . . also try to induce cloud cover through engineering the atmosphere, but I don't see the Climate Left pounding the table for that stuff) but China certainly can double/triple/quadruple the carbon emissions that the Western world cuts.
Did you look at the chart? The US and EU emits about 10b tons a year for energy and cement. China has grown emissions for that by about 6.5b tons a year in a decade. So even if you somehow magically cut to zero immediately in the West (which can’t/won’t happen), China will replace all that in 15 years if they keep doing what they have been doing.
But they're not going to keep doing what they have been doing. No one is. Extending trendlines from the past is a terrible method of predicting the future.
Regardless, I still don't know what point you're trying to make.
Why assume that this activism will cause liberal elites to want to push for climate policy? I have a masters degree and the absolutely farcical nature of the climate left forces me to lower my prior belief in the importance of climate policy.
I guess your master's degree didn't involve any critical thinking if you think that it's a good idea to judge the importance of something by what activists do.
The villagers in the boy who cried wolf agree. The boy had a long record of lying, therefore he was probably lying again, therefore they didn't believe him.
The villagers are dead, eaten by the wolf. Their decision was wrong and foolish. They relied on an unreliable source of information and used probability theory instead of *getting better information*.
A bit too straw man-based a take to be really useful.
"But the Climate Left does not actually mean business. The way you know this is that absolutely none of the people calling for radical civil disobedience and pipeline destruction etc. are calling for it to be done in China."
But:
A) In what sense would it be "serious" to call on a set of people (e.g.the Chinese) to do anything in a language they largely don't speak using platforms they don't read, and often are prevented from reading? Call a comms professional and ask them: I guarantee they will not describe this as a serious strategy. On the contrary, it makes sense to connect channels to targets to outcomes, and in that sense this litmus test does the opposite of what it intends.
B) But rhetorically the point that comes across is: the Climate Left are really Climate Tankies, and that is why they don't want to criticise China, we know.
This would always be an extremely bad take, but it's worse following a discussion of Malm, whose ideological roots are in anarchosyndicalism - he made his way up writing for Sweden's anarchosyndicalist paper.
He is also the author of a paper about emissions in China, and a book which apparently touches on the topic. Dealing critically with them - which I'd believe they deserve - would be useful, this isn't.
C) A model of society consisting of elites, the Climate Left and Climate sceptics seems oddly to give the Climate Left too much credit. Malm and his co-thinkers probably don't have much influence on mass opinion, directly or indirectly. The problem you seem to be pushing at is less the Climate Left than the general impotence of most of society, including both the Climate Left and ultra climate sceptics, in the face of mass institutional politics.
BTW there is a global economic history of emissions by Simon Pirani, which you should check out.
There have been cases when certain countries imposed a policy on others, such as Britain going after the slave trade. But it's doubtful anyone will do that to China, particularly when so little is already being done domestically.
Violent revolutions don't happen when the pot is simmering, only when it's boiling. Climate change is pretty bad already but it's not obvious that these natural disasters are a result of climate change, nor is anyone in the west being especially affected by them.
Once important medicinal species start to disappear en masse, and people lose their crops, and it becomes too hot to live, etc. things will go bad fast. You might then see a lot of people becoming 'climate activists'. And the battles they will fight probably wont be bombing pipelines because it will already be too late for that kind of solution. You will start to see something scarier, like people fighting over water or liveable land.
This article seems to be strawmanning the activist left, and also amalgamating a diverse cluster of activist groups into one group apparently holding conflicting and seemingly random beliefs at the same time. You also contradict yourself with the "what about China?" line, as you subsequently admit that protesting in China would be ineffective, as activists well know. "Why don't you go protest in China where your protest will have 0 impact and get yourself thrown in a dungeon or killed?" I think you just answered your own question. On the other hand, we all remember the greenpeace activists who chained themselves to the Russian offshore oil rigs and got arrested, so that form of activism does exist, despite its lack of impact and high risk.
In addition, you completely omit the fact that there is of course a political, societal and justice element to climate change, as well as the behaviour change element. It is to be expected that leftists and developing countries will take a "you caused this mess you pay to clean it up" approach, rather than the "how much decarb can we get per dollar spent?" approach preferred by wealthy nations and technocrats. I think this is at the heart of this disagreement, and it isn't really reconcilable, but I don't see a problem with that. Both lenses are necessary and inevitable and attempt to address different aspects of the problem of climate change.
Who benefits from strangling America with the Climate Change non-sense? China. Can we explore that, in this age where a foreign actor can change society and get us to fight each other (China, Russia), isn't it not possible the China is pushing this crap on us? China is eating our lunch.
Your post is more a criticism of "activism culture" than of the Climate Left.
I work in pretty close proximity to normalish Climate Left people (i.e. not tankie types). Most people seem to believe the following:
1. American or Western activism is unlikely to have much impact on Chinese policy? (E.g. Xinjiang)
2. If we in the US can't reach net zero (or whatever) to mitigate climate change, how can we expect others to do so?
3. If we Westerners go "all in" on climate mitigation (there is so much more we could do) and get our house in order, we will be better off AND in a position to push on China from a position of strength.
4. Democrats in Congress *know* we should be doing more on climate within the US, but they are afraid to do so and/or uncertain on what to do.
It's completely fair to argue that Leftists are too soft on China and that they should ALSO be pushing very hard on this globally. But I don't think it's right to say that it's a farce.
On something like nuclear (I am in favor), surely you can recognize why an environmentally-minded person might seriously (and rationally) see nuclear as a separate but still important environmental risk. They might be mistaken on the level of risk, but it's not a "farce" when activists miscalculate something.
Similarly, on issues like Palestine and police funding, people get activated into an "activism culture." I would argue that they are sometimes wrong, often distracted, and frequently undermining their own case on climate - but that does not make their climate activism a farce.
I'd be interested to see more of a steel man case for what a Climate Leftist could (realistically) be doing.
well, you have a substack, write the steelman post, post the link in the comments and we can all and read it, it'll be fun
Haha. I like the suggestion - I was hoping to get someone smarter than me to do it! But perhaps I will give it a shot!
Thanks for reminding me that I have a substack of my own.
> I'd be interested to see more of a steel man case for what a Climate Leftist could (realistically) be doing.
In general, for all activists -- Write draft legislation that 47.5% of legislators would already agree with, then organize write in drives to sway around 5% of legislators in the middle, settling for incremental changes that actually move things in a positive direction.
I worry activism focuses way too much energy on "motivating legislators by signalling popular interest" in an issue. That was a more successful strategy in the 40s, before opinion polling makes it clear that a thousand people outside your office might be a bluff and doesn't necessarily mean it matters to your electoral chances.
Activism generally focuses too little energy on understanding how policy is actually made and what the real bottlenecks are. Legislators are constantly campaigning in one way or another, meeting with donors or managing an image, they are often too busy to research and draft policies. Hand them a reasonable bill they can introduce as-is with pre-typed talking points they can use to argue for it, and you save them work.
Usually I'm partial to Antoine de Saint Exupery, but I think in this domain... Don't make a legislator yearn for the sea, just lay out the tools so their job is half done.
Not sure if by "activism culture" you mean this or something more like what Julia Galef denotes with "soldier mindset", but it's definitely true that *going to left-of-center protests* is a subculture, one that's generally gatekept by far-leftists and ends up being a vector for liberals to move left or acquire additional leftist commitments (or, in the case of the liberal currently typing this, to not want to go to more protests).
This is very obviously incorrect.
The 'Climate Left' isn't interested in spending money effectively to improve carbon emissions—if they were, you would see an embrace of Generation IV nuclear reactors and fundamental R&D research that touches on many different kinds of energy sources.
Their aim, instead, is to spend endless trillions on uncompetitive technology and of course, increasingly, 'racial justice.' In their view, these issues are inseparable. They would rather sink vast amounts of money into all kinds of projects that form this left-wing constellation of perceived grievance.
Reducing carbon emissions is not their priority, even when the subject is climate change. If we were to follow their lead on this, the United States would find itself in a debt spiral as these extremists spend it into oblivion.. and a vanishing fraction of that spending would actually go to constructive efforts re: climate.
I'm sure many of these people would even prefer economic calamity compared to the status quo, as an opportunity to prostrate themselves before the world as martyrs. We're horrible racists, we're horrible carbon emitters—but *at least we tried.*
At least we did the right thing in the end.
Re: activists getting things wrong. Your nominal activist obviously isn't responsible for the thinking - they're mostly just responsible for the broadcasting. So each individual activist getting something wrong aren't exactly farcacle. But when the people who actually do the thinking don't course-correct when the movement is getting things wrong on nuclear, then at some point you have to start calling it a farce.
But couldn't they be helping Democrats defeat Republicans in general elections, regardless of whether those Democrats are moderates or progressives? I spend a lot of my free time doing this: mainly text messaging, which is all I can really do since I live overseas.
Yglesias is right to emphasize the importance of winning legislative majorities, not just for climate but for all of the left's policy goals. Whoever is doing something else, unless it's at least equally effective, is causing harm by ignoring an opportunity cost.
Here's the problem: By spending his time and energy punching left Yglesias is actually harming Democrats political chances.
He's turning off the climate left by being mean to them. He's turning off swing voters who will associate the climate left with Democrats. He's doing far more harm to Democrats electoral chances than those he's complaining about.
That's a problem.
He could, instead, spend his time painting the GOP has the real problem preventing action on climate change which, importantly, would actually be true.
I mean, in a sense nothing any cultural or political commentator does or says will have much impact on the electorate itself. I would be shocked Matt Yglesias’ name recognition among swing voters was higher than 10%. The choices of politicians and parties will have much greater influence on swing voters.
It’s true he annoys a greater proportion of left activists, but if they’re so put off by his criticism that it distracts them from their activism then they are kind of proving his point.
Patrick Healyjust now
I'd argue it's more of a collective action problem among center-left journalists and media outlets. Matt is just one example. Will any one article by one writer matter much? No. But moral panics like cancel culture and CRT became mainstream due to the way the center-left media and mainstream media act in aggregate, much like it did with the PC wars of the past. Their war against climate activists is no different. Center left media is harming the potential for action on climate by collectively complaining about the climate left instead of focusing on the actors that are actually holding us back.
The media plays a far bigger role in the attitudes of swing voters that you are giving them credit for. I'd argue the media has a bigger impact than politicians and parties.
Beyond that, Matt Yglesias’ has significant power. He's read in the White House and by members of Congress. He's distracting them from what they should actually be worried about which is the GOP and the far right.
My point is annoying climate activists won't distract them from their activism. He's giving them what they want which is attention. What Matt is doing is reducing the influence he might have to help them be more effective and reducing the likelihood that climate activists will turnout to vote for Democrats.
All of this is more problematic than the things Matt Yglesias’ is complaining about.
FWIW, I like Matt. I'm a paid subscriber to his Substack. I've listened to virtually every episode of the Weeds.
I'm just annoyed because he constantly complains about others doing ineffective things(often based on shallow evidence), but then he engages in behavior that has at least the same level of negative impact if not greater. He needs to follow his own advice as do the others like him(EG Jonathan Chait who I also generally like)
"But moral panics like cancel culture and CRT became mainstream due to the way the center-left media and mainstream media act in aggregate, much like it did with the PC wars of the past"
Um, no, they become mainstream because the right-wing media (which these days is a very different ecosystem from the mainstream media, which itself has blended in to the center-left media) pounds on those issues (because they always need some grievance for their old white grievance audience). CRT and cancel culture will still be issues even if all the media from mainstream on left didn't mention them at all. I personally think Yglesia should be listened to because the electorate is, in general, much older, much less educated, and much more socially conservative (also not all that much against right-wing authoritarianism) than the very vocal young left-wing that dominates online discourse. Essential, yes, I am agreeing with David Shor. And if you think Shor is correct (and also that the Trump party is a proto-authoritarian party now) then I would think you would want to keep Democratic politicians from the far-left as much as possible if you care about the US still staying a democratically elected representative republic.
First, I encourage you to study the history of right wing moral panics. It is, in fact, objectively true that right wing moral panics have historically only crossed into mainstream consciousness when they are elevated by mainstream actors. In modern history, that's primarily through journalism.
Would CRT and Cancel Culture still be issues if they were not elevated by mainstream media? Sure, but they'd most likely be isolated to the right. Very few people actually consume right wing media. In a country of about 240 million eligible voters, only about 2-3 million watch Fox News, for example. Those ideas escape the right wing bubble in one of two ways: word of mouth and mainstream media. It's possible that they would gain steam solely through word of mouth, but that is historically rare.
One contemporary element that may change this historical finding is Facebook due to its broad reach to its editorial decision to use its algorithm to elevate right wing voices. Because these moral panics were both elevated by the mainstream, we can't, in fact, know if that would have happened or not in these cases.
More to the point: it's objectively bad for mainstream media outlets and journalists to spread bad faith right wing talking points. Mere exposure to an idea spreads belief in that idea even if the idea is presented in the context of a critique. Responsible actors should not do it.
If one feels the need to comment on these issues, one can do so without presenting the bad faith right wing version of the story. One can, and should, also do so without focusing on the non-representative anecdotes that are typically used to advance these bad faith arguments. Responsible actors should lead with fact, not fiction.
Second, I agree. it is good to have an understanding of the median and marginal voter. I have a lot of respect for David Shor. He's an incredible data scientist who does and has done great work in helping us get a better understanding of the views of the American people. He shares many of my beliefs, seems like a great guy, and seems to have his heart in the right place.
His theory of politics, on the other hand, is simply not based in evidence. In fact, his theories often contradict the best evidence we have about how people make decisions. Which is disappointing coming from someone who advocates evidence backed decision making.
I'm going to be very clear here. I would NEVER advocate that a politician (or business for that matter), make decisions based on my personal preferences. I am a professional. Professionals do no do that. I'll vote for the people and buy from the companies I believe in, but I do not make professional determinations based on those beliefs. At least, I avoid doing that to the best extent that I, as a fallible human, am capable of doing.
Humans do not make decisions rationally. We don't vote based on policy positions any more than we buy products and services based on their features. We are tribal, emotional creatures. We make decisions based first in our emotional response, that we use "rational" data points to justify the decisions we've already made to ourselves and others. We know this due to neuroscience studies that explore which parts of the brain are active when we are actually making decisions. The emotional centers act first. The logical centers are active second.
Instead, we vote based primarily on two things. First, we vote based on the choice that makes us feel good about ourselves. Second, and most importantly, we vote based on what feels culturally appropriate for members of our social group or tribe. Emotions, not facts, lead the way.
Humans, for important evolutionary reasons, do not like to feel like outsiders in their social groups. For the most part, we also don't like to lie to those we care about. So, the most effective way to influence party vote share is to influence culture. The more people and social circles that feel culturally pulled to vote for your candidate, the more likely it is that your candidate will win elections.
Policy positions can impact that, but they are downstream from the emotional stories we tell ourselves and the cultures we inhabit.
Beyond that, much of Shor's political theory comes from polls/survey data. This is problematic for two reasons.
First, surveys are a snapshot of the past. Political actors need to make decisions based in what they believe will happen in the future. Surveys can help inform that, but they can't predict the future.
Second, surveys are a low quality form of ethnographic research. To the extent that surveys are valuable, it is for generating data about simple ideas and concepts. Surveys are pretty good, for example, binary choices like will you vote for candidate A or B. Not perfect, but good.
Even in relatively simple cases survey data is relatively weak. We know, for example, survey respondents lie all of the time about basic, objective things like age, height, weight, etc. We also know that surveys are simply incapable of capturing accurate information about human's beliefs on complex subjects. Even if you assume that people understand the question being asked, which is honestly an unrealistic assumption, people's views simply can't be accurately expressed with multiple choice or binary responses. We're far more complex than that.
I do believe that the Trump party is a proto-authoritarian party. As a patriot, that terrifies me. That's why I think it's important that Democrats do things that have the best chance of successfully strengthening our democratic system and winning elections.
So, I believe it is vitally important that Democrats maximize their vote share. That means they should not go out of the way to make enemies with the left who are their natural allies in a two party system. They can't afford to waste potential votes. They also should try not to alienate persuadable voters in the center. The best way to do that is to just ignore the bad ideas/actors/etc. on the left and elevate the good.
Political actors, including journalists, have incredibly limited resources to persuade voters in the center. As a result it is objectively stupid to use those resources punching left.
One of the other key findings of Shor's research is that persuadable voters are low information voters. They don't read past the headlines. They don't listen past the soundbites. They don't distinguish between Democrats and the left. They don't have enough information to do so.
So, I'll leave you with a question. Which do you think is a better way to use limited resources to persuade voters to vote for Democrats:
Option A: Talk about how bad some progressive Democrat are?
or
Option B: Talk about how bad Republicans and their rich donors are?
To me, it's an easy choice.
1. Again, though, those low-information persuadable voters not only aren’t even reading Yglesias, they don’t even know who he is. So how would “punching left” hurt among that crowd?
2. If the far left gets pissy and doesn’t support Democrats just because someone like Yglesias is mean to them, I’ve got to wonder how committed they really are to democracy and preventing climate change (as opposed to just enjoying the cosplaying).
3. You really should read Kevin Drum. Yes, Fox may only get a few million viewers at any one time but add in all the other right-wing media (Fox is now on the moderate right in GOP land these days, where plenty get their news from OANN, Breitbart, and even kookier sources) + the very effective propaganda network called (white) evangelical culture/churches (drive between 2 large metro areas some day and spend 5 minutes on each radio station in both the AM and FM spectrum), then compare to the media reach of the left and center-left. How many viewers does MSNBC get?
4. Yes, ultimately, changing the culture is most important. But as T Greer (conservative, but insightful) pointed out, culture wars are long wars. But we don’t have decades to address climate change. Given that, how is anything like being against the Senate Democrats/Biden climate proposals helpful in any way?
5. Yes, most people are tribal. And right now in the US, at least when it comes to social issues, the tribes that range from lean-center-right to extreme-right (which includes a decent number of working class POC who traditionally vote Democratic, BTW) outnumber the tribes that range from lean-center-left to extreme-left. Given that, I don’t see how Shor is off the mark.
See also: https://twitter.com/micahanglais/status/1416093365800734722
Great article. Fairly certain you’ve touched on this before, but is the “strength” of the climate left in the minds of intellectual elites purely based on the Left being overrepresented on social media? The Left, and especially the climate left, is disproportionately young, disproportionately well-educated, and disproportionately engaged in politics—all factors that would lead to strong social media presence. Since lots of intellectual elites are on social media, they get an unrealistic perspective on the strength of leftist climate activism.
Your post made me wonder, have you read KSR's The Ministry For the Future? It deals with some of the issues you raised but from the perspective of a great sci-fi writer.
Nuclear is clearly the answer if you are serious about arresting climate change now. Renewables aren’t a serious answer yet. YIMBY.
Renewables are clearly the answer if you are serious about arresting climate change now. Nuclear isn't a serious answer yet. YIMBY.
Nuclear is clearly the answer if you are serious about arresting climate change now. Renewables aren’t a serious answer yet. YIMBY.
Do everything and anything that will help. There is no single "answer."
Overall, this article is much better that MY's whiny missive. I say that as a big MY fan. I just think his choice to spend so much time complaining about the left on issues like climate, CRT, and cancel culture, etc. are doing more harm to the causes he believes in than the people he is complaining about. He's talents are more useful elsewhere.
With that being said, I have two points of critique.
First, it's important to note, as you briefly do, that the reason the Climate Left does the things it does is because people like you and MY and outlets like the NY Times, the New Yorker and the Washington Post write about the things they do. If center-left writers stopped writing about the "stupid" things the climate left do, the climate left would probably stop doing them and do something else instead because their primary goal is to raise awareness. People like Matt are, in fact, the literal cause of the problem they are complaining about. By wasting time condemning them, Matt is reducing support for climate policy among centrists. I wish you made that point directly.
Second, it's a bit disingenuous to paint Elon Musk as a martyr when his empire and personal wealth were generated through $4.9 billion in government subsidies. He's not some saint. He's just like Peter Thiel, but he chose to get rich off public funds doing something we like instead of something objectively terrible. Musk is no martyr. He's just another selfish rich dude. If the government hadn't paid him to build this, he wouldn't have. He owes us. We don't owe him.
Source: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html#page=1
This comes back to whether
1. You think battery tech would have advanced as fast without Elon Musk existing (I don't).
2. You feel climate change is an existential threat that is paramount to everything else (or among the Big 2, along with preserving American democracy) or not. If you really do think that climate change is an existential threat, who cares who gets what credit so long as the technology advances quicker than it would have otherwise.
1. There's no way to prove a counterfactual, but based on the history of innovation it seems individual actors are far less important than we typically think. Perhaps this is a special case, but we don't have any way of knowing that. Beyond that Musk himself isn't an innovator or inventor in his work at Tesla, Space X and Solar City. He just employs them.
He is a manager and a marketer. To assume that he played a the decisive role in the evolution of battery technology is to assume that he is a master manager. That may be true, but the evidence appears mixed. Though he is a master marketer, it's probably his most powerful skill. It seems likely to me that skill is the core driver of the success of his firms.
So, who knows, but this is irrelevant to my point. Musk is not a martyr nor is he benevolent no matter how much you, personally, like the guy.
2. This is just a strange argument. If giving credit matters at all, it should matter who gets that credit. Other wise, why give anyone credit at all?
Again, we can't know what would have happened under a different scenario.
It seems to me like the battery chemistry improvements were the critical sticking point for EV viability. How much of those came from research done for smartphones and consumer electronics versus just Tesla? It's not like EVs are the only industry that would have put money into better batteries.
This is correct.
"Second, it's a bit disingenuous to paint Elon Musk as a martyr when his empire and personal wealth were generated through $4.9 billion in government subsidies. "
Utter bullshit.
How so? The government literally provided the capital that allowed him to start those businesses. Without government subsidies (and in the case of Space X contracts) this companies would not exist.
What are you talking about? He only started SpaceX, and the government did not provide the capital for that? And conflating contracts for services with subsidies is deeply dishonest.
More generally, the problem is the complete lack of context. Tesla got subsidies? And GM, Ford et al did not? They didn't get bailed out? Buyers of their vehicles didn't get trillions in de facto subsidies on their fuel? Same with Solarcity: the tax credit is worth a mention, but not how coal plants don't have to pay for all the people they kill and climate change? SpaceX got some contracts and some piddling grants? And ULA doesn't get contracts, and a billion dollars a year to exist?
It implies that his companies have received special treatment, that they wouldn't be competitive (or even exist) without it, while completely ignoring the vast assistance everyone else in their industries has received.
You're making arguments that are tangential and irrelevant to the points I was making. All of his companies received startup funding from the federal government. That is a fact.
Whether or not those things are good or bad is completely independent of the fact that the public funded his businesses.
Did he receive federal funding that was not accessible to others that were equally qualified? The answer is yes. Prior to starting these companies he had done nothing to suggest that he was capable of building an electric car company, a solar energy company or a rocket company. He was a founder of PayPal. A great company, but a company that has nothing to do with any of these activities. He had friends in high places and he took advantage of that. I don’t blame him, but he’s not a benevolent actor.
Did I say It was good Ford, GM, and Chrysler received bailouts? No, I did not,
Did I say fossil fuel subsidies were good? No, I did not.
It is true that space x would likely not exist without government contracts? Yes, that is true. Did space x earn those? I’d argue NASA could have done what space X did. They did build every other rocket we’ve used to get to space. I don’t think we needed private companies to do that work. Others may disagree and that’s ok.
My argument is that Elon musk is a capitalist, not a martyr. The end.
I get that you like him and appreciate what his companies have done. There’s nothing wrong with that.
My argument is that his wealth is a byproduct of government funding. That is undoubtedly true. Has he succeeded where others have failed? Yes. I would never argue otherwise. He’s an incredible marketer. I envy that skill.
Honestly, your rant is incoherent and I honestly don’t know what your objections are beyond the fact that I don’t idolize your hero.
Just don’t make shit up to cover for the fact that you made a weak argument. If you disagree, use evidence to support your opinions, not bombastic, incoherent, and tangential rhetoric.
"All of his companies received startup funding from the federal government. That is a fact."
It's called lying by omission. Creating a deceptive picture by only stating certain facts and not others. In this case, creating the impression that Tesla/SpaceX have been given special treatment by pointing out subsidies they have received while not mentioning the subsidies the rest of their industries have received.
"Did he receive federal funding that was not accessible to others that were equally qualified? "
Cite?
"He had friends in high places and he took advantage of that."
Cite?
"It is true that space x would likely not exist without government contracts? Yes, that is true. "
As true as it is of every other rocket company in existence.
"I’d argue NASA could have done what space X did. They did build every other rocket we’ve used to get to space. I don’t think we needed private companies to do that work. Others may disagree and that’s ok."
Those others include NASA. They could build a rocket of course, but it would have been far more expensive. https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/586023main_8-3-11_NAFCOM.pdf
"I get that you like him and appreciate what his companies have done."
No, I don't like him. He's a douchebag and his actions and statements on COVID were reprehensible. I'm just sick of people criticizing new things while giving the status quo a pass, by, for instance, only pointing out the subsidies a new company or technology has gotten while making absolutely no mention of the mountain of subsidies that their competition receives and received.
"Honestly, your rant is incoherent and I honestly don’t know what your objections are beyond the fact that I don’t idolize your hero."
You shouldn't make assumptions about peoples motivations (which aren't relevant anyway). But go on, keep being a useful idiot for the status quo, I'm sure they appreciate it.
A couple of things:
- I feel like people are defining the climate left as The Sunrise Movement. Contra to this though, a lot of people further to the left, including myself, are in favor of nuclear and pretty much whatever it takes to get our PPM under control. I don't agree with their activism on the substance or the tactics, but I also feel a constant internal critic is pretty counterproductive. To this end, I found this Sam Sanders episode reviewing the effectiveness of Act UP to be very informative: https://www.npr.org/2021/06/16/1007361916/act-up-a-history-of-aids-hiv-activism
- As an economist, I was hoping you might turn your sights towards the effectiveness of a carbon-border adjustment tax. The Niskanen Center had a good primary a while back: https://www.niskanencenter.org/qa-on-carbon-border-adjustments/. Basically, if we do it right, America is at a strategic advantage.
As far as I know, the Biden campaign made announcements of a carbon border adjustment but none of actual domestic carbon pricing, and it is trying to talk the EU into dropping the cba idea?
Regarding nuclear power which someone mentioned above: I'm a techno-optimist and interested in the development of safe fission reactors and nuclear fusion but it seems, from articles I read by Noah and others that it would be faster to deploy renewable energy than to deploy the next generation of nuclear reactors.
Baseload energy. Nuclear competes with batteries, not (intermittent) renewable energy. So the question is whether nuclear tech or battery tech would advance faster.
Batteries (short duration capacity) are about the last thing nuclear competes with. Nuclear needs the same thing - most of the world's pumped hydro was built to shift nuclear output.
Nuclear is mostly in competition with renewables + long duration (a couple of weeks) and seasonal storage in the north, where high heating demand, low solar output, and a couple weeks with little wind can all combine.
If you prefer, use the term “long duration/seasonal storage” instead of “batteries”. How is that technology coming along?
And does France have a ton of hydroelectric dams, then? Because I remember something like 70% of their electricity being from nuclear at one point.
Pumped hydro and making chemical fuels to burn in gas plants is all old tech.
Yes, 25GW vs 61GW of nuclear, not to mention connections to the rest of Europe (Switzerland and Norway both do a lot of balancing for Europe with their hydro). They also use those same connections to supply their nuclear power to others, when they have too much. Nuclear is, just like renewables, both technically and economically inflexible, so connections help it a lot.
"Furthermore, their emissions are still increasing rapidly, thanks to the huge fleet of coal plants they’re building,"
No, it's thanks to oil and gas. Coal consumption peaked in 2013. New coal plants are somewhat worrying, but so far they've been replacing older less efficient ones (more MWhs, same emissions), and have been white elephants that just reduce the utilization of others (their coal plant capacity factors are very low).
"Yet as soon as you mention this to anyone on the Climate Left, and they instantly shift from talking about the imminent destruction of the planet to talking about moral issues, like per capita emissions or historical emissions — things which the climate definitely does not care about even a tiny, tiny bit."
You're doing exactly what you criticize the "climate left" for doing, Noah. The climate doesn't care about where emissions *reductions* come from, either. So why the focus on China? Why shouldn't the US reduce emissions to zero before China reduces them one bit*? Those are moral questions. You're just taking your morals as a given and criticizing others for wanting to talk about the issue.
*for effect, I am not arguing this
Take a look at the chart in the article. You can't cut emissions below zero (well, you can suck carbon out of the air . . . also try to induce cloud cover through engineering the atmosphere, but I don't see the Climate Left pounding the table for that stuff) but China certainly can double/triple/quadruple the carbon emissions that the Western world cuts.
I don't know what point you're trying to make. And no, China certainly can't add 16/24/32 billion tonnes per annum.
Did you look at the chart? The US and EU emits about 10b tons a year for energy and cement. China has grown emissions for that by about 6.5b tons a year in a decade. So even if you somehow magically cut to zero immediately in the West (which can’t/won’t happen), China will replace all that in 15 years if they keep doing what they have been doing.
But they're not going to keep doing what they have been doing. No one is. Extending trendlines from the past is a terrible method of predicting the future.
Regardless, I still don't know what point you're trying to make.
Why assume that this activism will cause liberal elites to want to push for climate policy? I have a masters degree and the absolutely farcical nature of the climate left forces me to lower my prior belief in the importance of climate policy.
I guess your master's degree didn't involve any critical thinking if you think that it's a good idea to judge the importance of something by what activists do.
You don’t think that unreasonable ideas are more likely than reasonable ideas to have unreasonable advocates?
I don't think the answer to that question has any relevance to the validity of any given idea.
It does, actually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem
The villagers in the boy who cried wolf agree. The boy had a long record of lying, therefore he was probably lying again, therefore they didn't believe him.
The villagers are dead, eaten by the wolf. Their decision was wrong and foolish. They relied on an unreliable source of information and used probability theory instead of *getting better information*.
You are making the same mistake.
A bit too straw man-based a take to be really useful.
"But the Climate Left does not actually mean business. The way you know this is that absolutely none of the people calling for radical civil disobedience and pipeline destruction etc. are calling for it to be done in China."
But:
A) In what sense would it be "serious" to call on a set of people (e.g.the Chinese) to do anything in a language they largely don't speak using platforms they don't read, and often are prevented from reading? Call a comms professional and ask them: I guarantee they will not describe this as a serious strategy. On the contrary, it makes sense to connect channels to targets to outcomes, and in that sense this litmus test does the opposite of what it intends.
B) But rhetorically the point that comes across is: the Climate Left are really Climate Tankies, and that is why they don't want to criticise China, we know.
This would always be an extremely bad take, but it's worse following a discussion of Malm, whose ideological roots are in anarchosyndicalism - he made his way up writing for Sweden's anarchosyndicalist paper.
He is also the author of a paper about emissions in China, and a book which apparently touches on the topic. Dealing critically with them - which I'd believe they deserve - would be useful, this isn't.
C) A model of society consisting of elites, the Climate Left and Climate sceptics seems oddly to give the Climate Left too much credit. Malm and his co-thinkers probably don't have much influence on mass opinion, directly or indirectly. The problem you seem to be pushing at is less the Climate Left than the general impotence of most of society, including both the Climate Left and ultra climate sceptics, in the face of mass institutional politics.
BTW there is a global economic history of emissions by Simon Pirani, which you should check out.
There have been cases when certain countries imposed a policy on others, such as Britain going after the slave trade. But it's doubtful anyone will do that to China, particularly when so little is already being done domestically.
We won't solve a thing without social change. Oh well.
Violent revolutions don't happen when the pot is simmering, only when it's boiling. Climate change is pretty bad already but it's not obvious that these natural disasters are a result of climate change, nor is anyone in the west being especially affected by them.
Once important medicinal species start to disappear en masse, and people lose their crops, and it becomes too hot to live, etc. things will go bad fast. You might then see a lot of people becoming 'climate activists'. And the battles they will fight probably wont be bombing pipelines because it will already be too late for that kind of solution. You will start to see something scarier, like people fighting over water or liveable land.
This article seems to be strawmanning the activist left, and also amalgamating a diverse cluster of activist groups into one group apparently holding conflicting and seemingly random beliefs at the same time. You also contradict yourself with the "what about China?" line, as you subsequently admit that protesting in China would be ineffective, as activists well know. "Why don't you go protest in China where your protest will have 0 impact and get yourself thrown in a dungeon or killed?" I think you just answered your own question. On the other hand, we all remember the greenpeace activists who chained themselves to the Russian offshore oil rigs and got arrested, so that form of activism does exist, despite its lack of impact and high risk.
In addition, you completely omit the fact that there is of course a political, societal and justice element to climate change, as well as the behaviour change element. It is to be expected that leftists and developing countries will take a "you caused this mess you pay to clean it up" approach, rather than the "how much decarb can we get per dollar spent?" approach preferred by wealthy nations and technocrats. I think this is at the heart of this disagreement, and it isn't really reconcilable, but I don't see a problem with that. Both lenses are necessary and inevitable and attempt to address different aspects of the problem of climate change.
Who benefits from strangling America with the Climate Change non-sense? China. Can we explore that, in this age where a foreign actor can change society and get us to fight each other (China, Russia), isn't it not possible the China is pushing this crap on us? China is eating our lunch.
If they didn't reject nuclear out of hand, I would take them far more seriously.