Ed quotes VDH below on the way that America’s elites are railing about the failings of the common man from their position of comfort. It’s an old story, of course, and it happens all over the world. Here’s Brendan O’Neill of Spiked — no conservative, he – commenting on how George “Moonbat” Monbiot went from fringe figure to the muse of the chatterati in the UK:

The metamorphosis of Monbiot is telling. It shows, in microcosm, how the politics and science of environmentalism have added a new, legitimising coating to elite fears and prejudices. The most striking thing about the rise and rise (and rise) of the environmentalist ethos is how it has acted as a life support machine for the political and cultural elites’ contempt for the lifestyles of the lower orders and how it has added a new scientific end of the world twist to the authorities’ attempts to manage, control and change our behaviour and expectations… And what of the science of climate change? No doubt there is research that shows the planet has warmed and that humanity may have played a role in its warming; yet this science, too, has conveniently metamorphosed into a political and moral campaign to lower people’s horizons and keep them in their place. Call me a cynic, a doubter, even a denier if you like, I don’t care; but when scientific research continually and conveniently, almost magically, “proves” that people are disgusting and must rein in their desires and change their habits – just as the elite caste, from priests to politicians, have been arguing for decades – then I get suspicious.

Moonbat is actually just the latest in a long line of elitist, privileged, environmentalist demophobes in the UK. They have corrupted the preservationist vision of Wordsworth into something highly damaging. As a colleague of mine notes,

It might be called the tree worshipping tradition. Modern global warming alarmism is a variation, and can be seen most clearly when proponents let slip the fact that it doesn’t matter whether it’s true because it will make us do the right thing: de-industrialize, adopt simple rural lifestyles, save the forests or re-forest, etc. What has happened is that Monbiot was earlier seen as a perfect caricature, but now is seen as an exemplar, even though he hasn’t changed at all. As O’Neill correctly notes, by once again claiming to be scientific the movement is becoming mainstream among the chattering class.

The parallels with Myron Magnet’s thesis in The Dream and The Nightmare are just too many to spell out.