For years, media coverage of global warming has shied from the green movement’s socialist undertones, downplaying, for example, prominent green communists like Mikhail Gorbachev. But as the Old World’s Communist Order collapsed, it was logical to ask whether its intellectual acolytes would reassemble under the New World Order of green central planning.
Now, greens are discovering their red inner child. Having mastered the rhetorical communist tools of fear and paranoia, they are increasingly open about the need for centralized governance. In Copenhagen this week, socialism has been front and center. Protestors, led by Climate Justice Action, “seemed to reflect an enduring frustration with the capitalist world order,” reports the New York Times. One of the most prominent slogans on placards was “System Change, Not Climate Change.”
For global-warming advocates everywhere, Red China has emerged as the role model. Consider the uniformity of these recent statements:
– “They have a different system,” sighs the Michigan Environmental Council’s David Gard, speaking enviously of Chinese authoritarianism that has simply dictated green policies.
– “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks,” writes green mansion-dweller and Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”
– “The point is that (the Chinese) know that the future of technology is going to be green tech,” says Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University (just as reds have always “known” what is best for their citizens)
– “We are clearly not in the lead today. That position is held by China, which understands the importance of controlling its energy future,” observes venture capitalist John Doerr and GE CEO Jeff Immelt, blurring the line between Big Business and Big Government. “China’s commitment to developing clean energy technologies and markets is breathtaking. But our government’s energy and climate policies are our principal obstacle to success.”
Sadly for these post–Cold War reds, “Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist (read small-d democrat),” laments Mr. Friedman. American democracy? A relic apparently. So who will be the first to call for cancelling the 2010 elections in the name of saving the planet?