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The green movement in Europe is a peculiar one, and although its political wing has been largely normalised across the continent by now, the increasing dissonance between green parties and the public opinion has put the oddity of this camp of politics at the forefront.
There was a time when ambitious climate policies, multiculturalism, and progressivism was the political centre in many European countries. Green parties were not uncommon collaborators with social democrats and socialists in many governments, and debatable emission reduction incentives and large-scale wind power farms were standard practice across the political spectrum. The green movement became so intertwined with the political establishment that their strange counter-cultural origins fell out of memory.
Now, when the climate ambitions of the EU and several European governments have received a massive backlash due to their consequences for the economy and ordinary people, the cultural eccentricity of the green movement has been accentuated once more. When the political centre starts leaning towards pragmatism and silently concedes their mistakes in pursuing the green transition, the ‘tree-huggers’ are largely left as the lone voice for the total eco-transformation of society.
The radical origins of the green movement
The green movements of the West were largely born out of the 1960s and 1970s counter-culture, which emphasised criticism of environmental destruction, consumerism, capitalism, and imperialism. At the time, they represented a grass roots activist movement with some grievances that would be considered legitimate even for conservatives today.
Other grievances were less legitimate. One of the most pervasive political conflicts that has survived the 1970s and into contemporaneity is the question of nuclear energy, the opposition to which was one of the foundational bedrocks of green activism.
But not counting nuclear energy and the cultural and lifestyle side of things, a nuanced mind will recognise that there are a few common criticisms of modern society where the original greens were at least in part correct. Many conservatives would potentially agree with the green criticism of environmental deterioration, the increasing globalisation of production and consumption, and how this impoverishes local communities in favour of giant corporations.
From the onset though, the green movement was like so many other alternative subcultures of its time likely to cross-pollinate with other ideologies that were critical of certain ideas that defined society at the time. Ecological concerns easily mingled with revolutionary communism and anarchism, and much of the green movement as such expressed itself politically with measures copied from the far left. Occupations, civil disobedience, and occasional violence and criminal sabotage quickly set green activism apart from ordinary politics. The activists themselves and the environments they drew their manpower from was in and of itself also culturally apart from wider society – fashion rebels, naturalists, radical intellectuals, artists and hippies – which solidified environmentalism as a rebellion against the establishment, including against civil, ‘bourgeois’ parliamentary politics.
It took a while for green activists to actively shed this branding. After the collapse of the counter-culture with the political success of the right wing in elections across the West in between 1976 and 1982, various parties identifying as green sprung up in several European countries. Most of the green parties on the continent trace their founding back to this decade, including the German, the Swedish, the Norwegian, the Dutch, the French, and the Irish green parties. For a long time these parties existed in the periphery of the left wing of politics, though sometimes aligning themselves closer to the middle, or trying to claim a transcendental position on the scale by rejecting traditional politics.
But naturally, the left were the most convenient allies of the greens due to their many shared goals, cultural expressions, and political methods. From the 1990s into the 2010s, the green parties of Europe started becoming part of governments, and put their often very radical plans into action.
For future reference, the green movement/green parties will from here on be referred to as such instead of using the term “environmentalists”, as might otherwise be customary. This is to not give the impression that the environment is central to green ideology, as it will become clear that the climate is their primary concern.
Normalised
It is difficult to explain the green parties’ success in transforming much of the political establishment to their liking. Despite originating out of a critical movement against many of modern society’s fundamentals, they gradually converted major actors in both the public sphere and in business to their now-evidently harmful policies in a matter of decades.
In the 1990s and 2000s, technology that manifested the green movements’ ideological visions, such as wind and solar power, represented the optimistic and progressive future in the public debate. Nuclear had already in the 1970s faced formal political opposition from various parties, and countries such as Austria and Sweden had held popular referendums as political guidance on the future of nuclear reactors, in 1978 and 1980, respectively. In the long run, both of these referendums were negative for the expansion of nuclear energy.
Did the greens “win” this battle, or were they just one of several groups in society who were sceptical of nuclear technology, and just happened to end up on the winning side? Regardless, they represented the future through their very deliberate embrace of renewable energy. Other political groups, such as liberal parties of varying stripes who did not want to jump on a radical bandwagon, but also did not want to be associated with ‘backwardness’, ended up following suit. Indisputably, the green technology optimism had won over the hearts and minds of larger society.
They convinced everybody the world was ending
Ironically, it is the green pessimism that raises a lot of questions as to how exactly the environmental ideology managed to get the political establishment, the media, and the corporate business world in such a stranglehold. The theories of climate change, a core of the green worldview from the very start, promised a near future in which society would be, at best, severely disrupted by cold and/or heat – or at worst, completely destroyed by an absolute climate armageddon.
To be perfectly clear – this is a very radical message. Few movements would be able to make traction in the mainstream with doomsday predictions, and considering how much the climate theory clashes with either the lived experiences of ordinary people, with the lifestyle and comforts of ordinary people, the general probability rates of something so bombastic, or all of the above, it cannot be denied that it is fascinating how climate change managed to captivate just about an entire world.
The importance of this supposedly impending doom scenario to the green movement has shifted through the years, but has always lingered in the backdrop of general environmental concerns since the 1970s. The 2010s and the start of the 2020s is when it arguably reached its height, but the aftermath of the recent spike of climate activism has subsequently become one of the most obvious indications that the green movement is beginning to suffer its fall from grace.
To rationally explain the acceleration of climate change concern across the West one needs to consider the power dynamics between the political parties that have been at play – but also the religious, or at least spiritual, aspect of green ideology, and how this may in fact fulfill a purpose in society.
The first is by far the easiest to explain.
Playing the game of political tactics
Left-wing parties that did not have an explicitly green agenda, but were more traditionally social democratic or socialist, likely felt threatened in the long term by the growth of green parties. They were perhaps considered more in tune with the times, especially as classical socialism became disreputable after the end of the Cold War. The green movement had already laid claims on many leftist social justice ideals, so the necessity for old-fashioned socialists to modernise became all the more pressing. In an act of balancing their traditional voter base with a new group of voters, they embraced just about all green policies, although with varying degrees of moderation. Liberals and the political centre came to join the big green tent as well, not wanting to lose out on what was obviously a winning issue – but without necessarily being swayed by the communal and anti-bourgeois ideals espoused by the true environmentalists.
The 2000s and most of the 2010s were characterised by an intensive intermingling between what a few decades before were largely irreconciliable camps. The “hippies” had put on suits and not only cut their hair, but also their most confrontational and divisive political issues. They remained sceptical towards unapologetic capitalism, but as long as the centre-right was a willing vehicle for the green transformation, they gladly cooperated also with them.
Increasingly, as both the left and the right let down their guards towards the greens, so did they. To a large extent, the presence and influence of green parties in governing coalitions across Europe became so common that this political subculture, rooted out of a sometimes revolutionary movement, became indistinguishable from the parties of old.
This is when the narrative of disastrous climate change in the near future started to grow more acceptable. The Greens had been tacitly proven correct on many of their grievances – renewable energy was the future, nuclear be damned, disarmament and cooperation did put global tensions at an all-time low, and everybody benefitted from borderless mass migration. Only when the green experiment’s results did not match the expectations did the major political parties start to become disenchanted by the green parties’ perhaps unproportional influence over politics. A chaotic cocktail of raised costs of living, immigration and crime spikes, and a general sense of politicians, the media, and the business elite not being in touch with reality is enough to snap any democratically elected party out of a fantasy.
Green parties generally tend to reach somewhere between 5 and 12 percent of the voters in most European countries, with some countries having better-performing parties than others. Despite this, and despite their proposals and worldview being ridiculed and detested by the population at large, they seduced the leadership of entire nations.
It is appealing to make a comparison between the greens and the nationalist and right-wing populist movements of Europe that appeared at the same time. In most countries where the political establishment is threatened by right-wing populist ‘usurpers’, major political parties tend to co-opt many nationalist and conservative grievances in an effort to save themselves. Right now in Europe, acknowledgements of the failure of multiculturalism are standard rhetoric for just about any creatively bankrupt social democratic or centre-right party, just as promises to invest in renewable energy, end fossil fuels, and stop climate change were standard ten years ago. This dynamic is recurring whenever there is a major shift in political trends, and is inherent to democratic politics.
The only difference is that the threshold for the green movement to become normalised and seize power has been ludicrously low. In many European countries, despite nationalist parties being backed by between 20 and 30 percent of voters, this normalisation has barely even begun. This advantage may be attributed to the function that green idealism is very good at serving for the modern secular Westerner.
Green ideology as substitute for religion
That the conviction that massively disruptive climate changes will destroy human civilisation is easily compared to a religious belief is a low-hanging fruit that has been used to lampoon climate activists for decades. But there is something unmistakenly profound to the comparison. Especially as modern Western society has been increasingly secularised and religion has been relegated away from public life in the past century. This has in many ways made atheism, or at least agnosticism the social norm (although this varies vastly between regions inside countries and between countries themselves). Most anthropologists, historians, and psychologists would likely agree that the spiritual need for a higher being or a higher purpose is ubiquitous for mankind across all cultures and across all epochs. Thus it is not without serious consideration that climate concern can be proposed as a substitute for God, in a society characterised by consumption, progressivist determinism, and irreverence towards traditional customs and authorities.
At its core, both belief in God as according to common Christian theology and climate radicalism is a conviction of human subordinance to a system beyond our understanding. Climate ideology also carries with it predictions about cataclysmic events, perhaps attributable to the actions of Man, found in many religions. That a certain segment of the population at any given time in any society will be susceptible to fatalistic worldviews has historically translated into the rise of radical sects, often manifesting around superstitions found in the mainstream, which they then exaggerate. Assuming this pattern to persist even in a modern and highly educated society, it is easy to fit (at least parts of) the green movement into this mould.
Climate activists are committed, and they are loud. It is therefore no wonder in a democratic society that they did manage to sway large parts of the public, especially if the public majority is not excessively politically engaged, and especially if the public majority is also spiritually and religious bereft. This is one theory of how people in politics, media, and business who might be considered intelligent, rational, and well-adjusted walk blindly into so many obvious mistakes. Economically unviable and environmentally damaging wind farms, wasteful climate symbolism, and unsustainable green industry projects are but a few harmful pursuits that have been undertaken nearly unopposed across the political spectrum. And it has seemingly all been instigated by an ultimately very small political minority.
Has the spell been broken?
Europe is reeling from the failure of its green policies. Slowly but surely the controversial impositions from the EU and from national governments about emission goals, renewable energy, electrification and even diet directives are silently being rolled back or renegotiated. Green parties have plummeted in the polls, or are at least being treated more cautiously as potential governing partners.
Outside of politics, we can see that the climate has dropped in significance when voters rank their most important issues, as seen in polling done in Sweden. From being the number two or number three issue, it now barely cracks the top ten. Among young people the disillusion with climate hysteria is even more noticeable. Media sensations like the activist Greta Thunberg gave the false impression that Generation Z was going green – the aftermath green policies in action have proven the exact opposite. Perhaps this trend was also helped by the incredibly poor public reception of climate activism such as that carried out by Extinction Rebellion and other eco-radical groups, who glued themselves to roads, sabotaged concerts and other public events, and vandalised museums.
Overall, concerns about the climate armageddon have increasingly been dampened by other more direct issues in people’s lives. A passive and despondent response to the supposedly impending end of the world is probably not an indication of a very highly held belief – it rather suggests that the climate cataclysm angst was from the start merely a trend as sensitive as any passing fashion fad.
With that said, it cannot be ruled out that a wave of leftism might sweep over Europe again in the near future. Only then will the rumour of the green movement’s death be truly confirmed. The likely issues that may bring a left-wing government to power in most currently conservatively governed European countries are cost of living and growing inequality – in such an event, what mandate will a social democratic or socialist government really have to revive the much-detested climate policies of old?
For conservatives, are the greens worse than the socialists?
As much as socialism, even without any additional labels or specifications, is considered the traditional nemesis of conservatism, has the past two decades not proven that the greens are more dangerous to the conservatives’ societal ideals than the socialists?
On the key issues of our time, such as immigration, crime, the decline of freedom of speech, and the undermining of the national state, socialists and greens are on the same page. They recognise that their common antagonists are conservatives and nationalists, and as such they rarely fight amongst themselves on these topics.
The development of the past few years in Europe has shown that the greens are however not equipped to compete against conservatives on salt-of-the-earth, basic economic issues. The rampant energy crisis, the driver in the explosion in the cost of living in Europe as well as de-industrialisation, is after all widely acknowledged to be the result of green policies. That conservatives have in these circumstances found a very potent weapon to use against not only the greens themselves, but also their other leftist allies, has not been lost on socialist parties.
We can see how the Swedish Social Democrats, the Swedish Left Party, and the British Labour Party have over the past few years tried to shift their focus away from ‘ivory tower’ issues. It has frequently been observed how woke identity politics has recently become less front-and-centre for the European left, but something that is just as apparent is how oppressive climate policies started to be omitted from their communication as well, when the public backlash to these often elitist pursuits became too apparent. Instead, some parties have rebranded their image to be more familiar to the native working class of their respective countries, and to stress economic issues before anything else in their repertoire.
To name a concrete example, for the Swedish Social Democrats, subsidising the “green” industries in Sweden is not overtly about the climate; it is about fostering Swedish innovation and growth. They have draped these ideologically green projects in the national colours of Sweden, a part in the wider project to portray themselves more as patriots and less as internationalists.
Regardless of the credibility or success of these rebrands, the ‘traditional’ left in Europe has shown that it has not forgotten how to respond to real issues that people relate to, when it comes to unemployment, the cost of living, and welfare issues. Increasingly it has been the green parties that have held the banner of climate action alone, and being unable to win ground on any other issue, they have only done so with more fervour – despite the already catastrophic results of the past decade’s green policies.
Socialists have the redeeming quality of at least still being able to manifest working class interests every once in a while. Green parties have none of that – they made being unaware of ordinary citizens’ everyday problems their defining characteristic.