Over at Newsweek, Stefan Theil is proclaiming the beginning of the end of environmentalism as a winning political issue:

What has turned the fight against global warming from vote getter to political hot potato in so many places at once? Each country has its own brute politics at play. Rudd was just as much a victim of infighting between factions in Australia’s Labor Party as of shifting public attitudes on global warming. Coming off a battle to push through landmark health-care-reform legislation through Congress, Obama has likely exhausted his political capital for another controversial and far-reaching bill. In Europe, bailouts first of banks and now entire countries have sucked up decision-making bandwidth and given an opening to those who argue that climate legislation is an unaffordable economic burden.

Well, okay, these are clearly factors explaining recent developments in the political debate about governments imposing expensive energy taxes, directly or indirectly. But I don’t think it can be established that global warming, or even environmental issues more generally, were ever major drivers of political victories — certainly not in America, and arguably in most of the other examples mentioned. Voters hate pollution, of course, and look askance at particular politicians who seem to be in the pocket of polluting industries. But has there ever been a significant political constituency willing to pay higher taxes or prices to combat more abstract and uncertain threats?