Capitalism vs. the Climate

Naomi Klein has a piece in The Nation which struck me quite forcibly. Briefly, she notes that while the right in America identifies accounts of climate change with a left-wing agenda, the left either denies the connection or stays mute. The connection that right-wingers make is that the measures necessary to alleviate the effects of climate change do in fact have many of the aspects of left-wing policies: reduction of consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (the latter requiring the former), and the imposition of strict controls in order to effect these. Most aspects of such a program are anathema to the free-market dogma of the right.

Klein argues that few left-wingers seem to have allied themselves with climate-change scientists, who occupy their own domain. But, she says, they ought to because, in effect, it's the left that understands the type of action required and would have the political will to undertake it. So the left wing ought to strongly endorse the work of scientists in the field and promote itself vigorously as the only body capable of overseeing the task of mitigating the effects of climate change. Otherwise the world will continue on its present course and suffer the full consequences.