S14, Ep2 | Welcome to the Rapture! How Rightwing Populism and Accelerationism Intersect with Climate

Amy Westervelt: Hello and welcome back to Drilled Season 14: obstruction. In our Carbon Bro season, we talked about one way that climate obstruction intersects with the far right, the rigid enforcement of gender norms, and the feminizing of a politics of care. Care for the environment and for each other. Today we're digging into the history of far right approaches to the environment in general and how that history informs how right wing campaigners in the US and beyond approach climate issues.

I'm joined in the first half of the show by Jesse Bryant, a researcher at Yale University who studies far right conceptions of nature, and in the second half by Dieter Plehwe, a lecturer at University Kassell in Germany, who studies the intersection of far-right politics and environmental issues in Europe.

I found both [00:01:00] conversations absolutely fascinating and really helpful for understanding the context we're dealing with in many parts of the world at the moment. I hope you find them helpful too. Here we go!

Jesse Bryant: My name is Jesse Callahan Bryant. I'm a doctoral candidate at the Yale School of the Environment.

Amy Westervelt: Okay, so, one of the first questions I wanted to ask is to have you explain the difference between conservatism and far right culture.

Jesse Bryant: Yeah, I can try my best. You know, I will say that this is like a distinction that even in the broader [00:02:00] literature, I think is a tough distinction to make. I think, you know, the way that I think about it though, first is that both categories, need to be situated geographically and historically.

Conservatism and the far right I think are useful categories, but they mean really different things in the United States, as they do in Europe, as they do in China, as they do in India. And so I think the first thing when we're talking about these categories, is to be pretty culturally specific.

Because what matters to, I think, conservatism is a commitment to the status quo in many ways. In the United States context, I think there are many ways in which the center left mainstream Democrats even are quite conservative actually. If you sort of step back and let our partisan identifications and then, and identities dissolve a little bit. Um, you know, there are a lot of ways in which Hillary Clinton, Barack [00:03:00] Obama, um, bill Clinton especially are, we're deeply conservative figures, um, and, and are sort of oriented towards upholding, um, you know, whatever, uh, social order exists now.

Um, so that's how I sort of think about conservatism. You know, there are, um, touchstones in this sort of ideological canon. Edmund Burke is often pointed to, um, as a figure that's important to conservatism, a sort of sincere conservatism that's, you know, slow, slow change, tradition, um, sort of humble, humble politics.

And I think when you think about the far right or radical right, or extreme right, um, I think the first thing that comes to mind in contrast to conservatism, which is a politics of stasis, is just the politics of change. And when we think about something like, the second Trump [00:04:00] administration, well the first as well, but what the MAGA movement has.

Become, I mean, it is a politics of change. There are a lot of things that they would like to change, and the question, you know, in distinguishing between conservative and far right is, is just like, okay. Are these people looking to switch the social order in some way? If so, then they might be far right.

And then the question is, are they on the right? And it's sort of like, yeah, they seem to be on the right. So I think it's totally fair to call, the current maga coalition a far right movement. And another good example I think is, um, you know. What I think people often refer to as fascism in early 20th century Europe.

Nazism is different, but like Nazism itself was a very, in some ways progressive movement at the time. It was. Towards, it was change oriented. It was about a new [00:05:00] vision for the social order, as was Mussolini's fascism in Italy. And so if you're dealing with the politics of change, um, for me at least, I, I, I will say people will disagree with this.

You're not dealing with conservatism, you're dealing with something else. That's something else. Could be a lot of things. It could be far right, it could be far left, it could be some other thing.

Amy Westervelt: Right, right.

Jesse Bryant: stasis versus change.

Amy Westervelt: Awesome. That's so helpful.

Jesse Bryant: And one thing I'd say, yeah, it's weird. I think it, it, it all, this is infinitely fascinating for me and also complicated because, because right now if you look at the MAGA coalition, you, you can say yeah, the, it is a politics of change for sure. But when you think about the kinds of change at play, for me, there are two really distinct.

Uh, almost like imaginaries at play. There's on one hand an imaginary that is much more related to a Nazi imaginary, which is this nostalgic, uh, a sort of conservative nostalgic revolution. So there's a part of the [00:06:00] maga. Coalition that I think imagines this sort of like, you know, the American chestnut will return and, um, like the nuclear family will return.

And then of course there is the totally unrelated, uh, winds of change that are extremely future oriented. In the form of, Elon Musk wanting to build, a new society on Mars and Peter Thiel and the rest of the tech bros trying to imagine.

Um. You know, new forms of technologically driven futuristic societies. Both of those are far right in, in the sense that they're pro change and in my estimation, super pro hierarchy, super pro inequality. , But they're different one's driven by nostalgia. It's a change of nostalgia. And, and the other is driven by a change of sort of futurism and, um.

So within even sort of, you know, there's conservatism, which is sort of stasis [00:07:00] within the far right there is a politics of change, but within that politics of the far right, there is this really important cleavage right now between the sort of politics of nostalgia and this politics of futurism. Um, and I think we see that play out in the United States like literally every day.

Amy Westervelt: Totally. You know, related to the climate stuff too, I was thinking about the, the Peter Thiel kind of end of the spectrum. This, cyber libertarianism and there's this group called the, Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

I'm sure you've heard of them, I don't know, there's so many of these groups, but this

Jesse Bryant: I know man.

Amy Westervelt: started a couple years ago. Jordan Peterson is nominally in charge of it, but it's like funded by the people who funded Brexit, and it includes like a bunch of, right wing politicians from the us, Canada and Australia.

And then a ton of anti-trans people and then also climate skeptics. It's a really interesting crowd. And then a bunch of nationalists as well. The guy who like used to [00:08:00] be in, Mumford and Sons and

Jesse Bryant: What

Amy Westervelt: left because he is like a far right guy now. He's in there.

Jesse Bryant: this Mumford, wait, what the hell?

Amy Westervelt: It's so wild. But anyway, I'm obsessed with this group 'cause it's such a random mix of people and they made their annual conference available for, a streaming pass this year. So I bought one so I could, tape all of it. There's this guy, Eric Weinstein, who was the head of Peter Thiel's venture capital firm for years. And then they had sort of a like falling out, but mostly because Peter Thiel's so weirdly sensitive about his public perception, even though it's like everyone thinks you're a giant weirdo dude,

Jesse Bryant: He's so weird.

Amy Westervelt: Genie's not going back in the bottle on that one, you know,

Jesse Bryant: totally. Totally. Yeah.

Amy Westervelt: but he's really sensitive about it and some of the bro podcast universe started to turn on Eric Weinstein 'cause he had a bizarre appearance on the Joe Rogan [00:09:00] podcast. Anyway, this guy, Eric Weinstein gave this talk at the ARC Conference and it was so unhinged, but it totally made sense in the world of these guys, where he was just like, we can't share an atmosphere with these people anymore.

Eric Weinstein: You think you have been through the culture wars, which is some sort of cute internet conflict that seems really draining, exhausting.

No, no. This is actually something that has recently been termed hybrid war. It's a 2007 concept from Frank Hoffman, and it says that in the current situation, non shooting wars have no border and no end. Anything that can come through the internet means that there is no frontier. We are all combatants to the people who practice hybrid warfare.

We can all be manipulated from abroad. Tokyo arose as everywhere.

Cyber attacks, diplomacy, psychological attacks, information warfare.

The new culture war hypothesis is, is that the culture war is domestic hybrid war.

I've called it the no name resolution [00:10:00] revolution since 2017.

Right now, where we are, is four light years from the nearest star. There is no way to get to the speed of light or even close. We are marooned in our solar system with only two habitable rocks that aren't the Earth and that's with a lot of work. We cannot stay with all of us on one planet with one atmosphere.

With people this crazy and tools this powerful.

Amy Westervelt: But the thing that I find interesting about them from a climate perspective is that they have almost the opposite, opinion as all the climate deniers where like, they very much believe that climate change is happening and they're, freaked out about it. And it's part of the drive to leave the planet, build bunkers, invest heavily in like AI 24 hour surveillance so they can deal with the uprisings that are coming.

Jesse Bryant: Escape.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

Jesse Bryant: It, it is, I mean, it's, it's for sure a politics of escapism. And it's for sure a lifeboat politics, [00:11:00] and it's for sure, a never waste a good crisis sort of situation for those guys, I think. I mean, yeah. Right. Like Elon Musk, he's most famous for like renewable energy technologies.

You know what I mean? Like, what are we doing? But the way that they're reacting to that, of course, is that they really just do believe themselves, like categorically in terms of even ontologically, just as a separate species of human from the rest of.

Um, US, I guess,

Amy Westervelt: totally.

Jesse Bryant: that they are totally fine generally with leaving everybody behind. And I, I'm not sure what else is the goal. If, if not that, like, I don't understand why, for instance, like if that is not true, Elon Musk isn't using his fucking huge brain to, uh, create a really good healthcare system or something else, because like, it, I mean, to me, it is just a rebirth of the turn of the century super conservative and fucked up [00:12:00] progressive politics. From like the late 18 hundreds of the sort of like the elite should rule everybody we're gonna like, have a sort of eugenics program and sterilize the dumb people. And then like the species will have a higher level of fitness and we're obsessed with IQ and like, that's it.

It's just, that's what it is. The idea that there is some, there's some virtue attached to this dimension of this, of the far current far right movement or mega coalition in the US is like absurd to me.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

Jesse Bryant: I was just writing a paper. I say that I'm writing a fucking blog post about this, but about a transition in societies that has happened since the beginning of western civilization.

I mean, Aristotle was writing about exactly this, you know, 2000 years ago of the transition of, in any society when the selection of elites shifts from the virtuous to the wealthy. That is a degeneration that happens in every [00:13:00] society, and it leads to the downfalls of societies. And these people aren't virtuous.

They just like believe themselves to be better than everybody else. And it's a function of wealth. And there's a lot in, I would say logics within American culture, going back to social Darwinism, that sort of translate wealth into virtue and it's very sensible. Like people love Elon Musk in the U.S. you know, he is an extremely successful, popular celebrity.

And if it were true that in American culture, we didn't think that wealth meant to virtue then he would not be popular because there's nothing appealing about this person,

Amy Westervelt: right, right.

Jesse Bryant: or virtuous in any sense of the term. Even if he believes himself to be part of like western civilization in some meaningful way.

No figure of virtue in in whatever you think of Western civilization in the past, would look at this guy and be like, this is a virtuous person. He's just a wealthy guy. Who [00:14:00] like, you know, to his credit, does believe in climate change. Does think it's a big thing, but is using this crisis in order to escape his responsibility, along with the rest of sort of the right wing elite, I think

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, Okay, so, I wanted to ask about the arguments against climate action being made by religious and particularly Catholic groups in the us. So I don't know if that's something that you can speak to.

Jesse Bryant: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think, the question in the US right now of Catholicism I think is like super underaddressed currently, like in the U.S. you know, a prototypically, protestant, individualistic, rugged individualism, bootstraps sort of country. That literally like a hundred years ago was targeting Catholics with terrorist groups like the KKK , and the first American president who was Catholic, JFK, was, [00:15:00] assassinated. And Biden was the second Catholic president. And you know, we have JD Vance now who's very outward about his Catholicism.

He.

Amy Westervelt: And Leonard Leo like in the

Jesse Bryant: Leonard Leo. Huge amounts of dark money. Yeah, huge amounts of dark money. And it's sort of unthinkable a hundred years ago in the United States, and yet here we are. With Catholic power increasing in the United States, the first American Pope in Rome is like a massive deal in the religious history of the United States.

And so I'm of two minds with the sort of Catholic orientation towards climate change. In part because the last Pope, I think, uh, with Laudato Si and, hosted huge climate conferences at the Vatican, had a lot to say about climate change. And I think right now it's not entirely clear what direction, that will go in as power is changing in [00:16:00] Rome, and conservative Catholic power is ascendant in the United States. And you know, I actually have spent the past, like living in Spain, I've become semi obsessed with Catholicism.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, because isn't that really the origin of Opus Dei is from Spain,

Jesse Bryant: yeah. Well, oh, oh, oh my God. Yeah, totally. And there's a book that was written kind of recently about the collapse of Opus Dei in Spain the ascendance of Opus Dei in the United States. Right the recent sort of like Dark Money Leonard Leo Catholic Information Center in DC sort of vibe.

The president of the Heritage Foundation right now is a former president of Wyoming Catholic College. There's a lot, there's a lot there that I think is actually pretty under-addressed I think when it comes to climate change. I think the questions become weirder or something because on the one hand, my understanding, especially in the United States, but I think more globally [00:17:00] alongside this rise of this concept of national conservatism, this sort of drive towards national sovereignty and against global sovereignty. But you know, that translates into everything from cynicism around the UN to international aid as we see with the, destruction of U-S-A-I-D. What's interesting about that is that from like a more Protestant perspective,, that is fundamentally skeptical towards massive structures of global power.

You know, that was the whole point of Protestantism was to

Amy Westervelt: right, right.

Jesse Bryant: The global overreach of the Catholic church. Yeah. So like, uh, that makes sense to me. This sort of isolationist paleoconservative, we don't wanna meddle in other people's shit and we don't want them to meddle in ours, that feels more aligned with this traditional climate skepticism, which is just screw the UN screw COP.

Why are we paying for, , on one hand climate adaptation in Peru and on the other hand funding [00:18:00] wars wherever. But now with the sort of ascendant power of Catholicism in the US which Catholicism is a global concept, it is imperial. , It does have a global imagination.

It is not against anything in particular, you know? So, uh, it, it almost complicates the picture and makes, I think, especially in the United States,, this is not true in European countries, but like, it makes the rise of Catholicism and isolationism in the US simultaneously and how that manifests both in politics in general, but climate change in particular feels like a new turn, I guess.

And one that feels to me less coherent than the, you know, more Protestant, um,

Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

Jesse Bryant: the Catholic church, screw any global solidarity. We're just doing our own thing. I have my own relationship to God. Like I have my own little church. We believe whatever, you know, so, yeah, I dunno.

Amy Westervelt: [00:19:00] Yeah. I was thinking about this. In general, I feel like the, Protestant focus on an individual relationship with God is sort of a huge underpinning of hyper individualism in the US in general, which seems like such a huge

Jesse Bryant: Yeah.

Amy Westervelt: problem. Amidst all the things right now, an underpinning of so much of this stuff.

Is this, idea that all that matters is like me and my family and our direct relationship with God, you know?

Jesse Bryant: Yeah. And that maps on what's weird right now is that that maps onto our politics, you know, pretty well. Like

Amy Westervelt: totally.

Jesse Bryant: Protestantism is the majority Christian religion in most of red America. And it's just the opposite in most of Blue America. Catholicism is the is the majority, form of Christianity in, the Northeast and the Midwest and, parts of California. And so this alignment with certain kinds of power, certain imaginations of [00:20:00] global solidarity and capitalism, it sort of makes sense. But to understand exactly how certain figures thread that needle like JD Vance, who I find absolutely fascinating.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

Jesse Bryant: I think if you read too much into the way that he threads that needle, like a lot of pe people in the sort of Trump orbit, like the logic all falls apart, right? It's not coherent.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, kind of relatedly, certainly not unrelatedly, I wanted to ask you about how and why climate got pulled into great replacement theory and like

Jesse Bryant: Yeah.

Amy Westervelt: Oh yeah. How, what happened there?

Jesse Bryant: I have a lot of thoughts for sure. One of my papers right now that I'm writing is about, intra Republican polarization on climate change, not between the parties, but within the parties over the past 30 years. And what you see when you look at the right over the past, [00:21:00] since climate change became a thing that was important to people, and controversial is that from the beginning, it's a question of sovereignty.

It's not a question of the science for. Like the main distinction within the right, you know, not between the right and left, you know, that that does have these sort of anti-science denial sort of things. But, the really salient and durable aspect of the climate question, at least in the United States and in Europe also increasingly is a question of sovereignty, national sovereignty.

It projects so cleanly onto questions of the global versus the national. In ways that other things do not. And a lot of those, what I see in my research is that a lot of those same policy frames, sort of like public projections of the question that was really underlying a lot of the right wing versus conservative discontent about climate change for about 20 years really translated itself into the immigration question.

Now in MAGA politics, which is [00:22:00] to me the main policy. Problem in the imagination of the American, right? Today, it's really the thing that holds the whole coalition together. If there was not a, an invasion on the southern border, there would be no MAGA politics. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not, there isn't any other policy imagination

So, so the way that I think about this is that, the question of national sovereignty is very important to right wing politics globally and to American right-wing politics today, although it wasn't literally 20 years ago, climate change sort of like, I think was a almost laboratory for these, these policy framings, sort of like how do you tie sovereignty to policy questions.

For throughout the nineties, this was true of the paleo cons, the paleo conservatives in the United States. Um, it kind of disappeared during Bush when we all did our sort of flag waving nine 11 stuff for a while. Emerged again with the Tea Party and really sort of gained [00:23:00] power in, in MAGA. And the role of the great replacement theory in that politics is to suggest that there is some, elite, cabal, vaguely Jewish, but global, that is causing this or is exerting agency in driving this loss of national sovereignty, this poisoning at the southern border, this dilution of whatever, wasp Protestant thing that people imagine the United States to have been or to be, which is, you know, only half true at any point in history.

Um, but, it's a way to translate the realities of , a global capitalist economy, which necessarily just looks for cheap labor and moves people around and tries to like, you know. For the cheapest possible thing. And that means like importing a ton of cheap labor from wherever the hell you want to.

It translates that into a more legible [00:24:00] story for the average person to understand that there is some person or people or cabal, uh, that is intentionally doing this kind of thing as opposed to what is for me more true, which is just the sort of diffuse agency of actors within a giant system of capitalism that like, of course, like brings, you know, cheap.

Quasi enslaved brown people into the United States to do cheap labor. That's the whole point. So it, it makes a better story out of a reality that's too complex really to tell, um, to a general public. , And it's really powerful. It works like it works everywhere. It's, it's a thing that works in France. It,

Amy Westervelt: Right,

Jesse Bryant: um, I mean, so it's, it's whether we like it or not, it's a story that.

Has salience and, um, explains something that I think is real, which a lot of us, you know, uh, whatever

Amy Westervelt: right.

Jesse Bryant: might not want to address is real into a legible story for the average person.

Amy Westervelt: I mean, I feel like [00:25:00] that's a lot of the explanation behind the, um, the, the backlash to trans people too. Just like the, this looking for, um, someone to pin the, pains of late stage capitalism on, you know, other than the capitalists, I guess, you know.

Jesse Bryant: sure.

Amy Westervelt: yeah.

Jesse Bryant: Yeah. I feel like that issue, the, it's funny that, I mean, it's not funny, but the, the climate and trans issues have become increasingly entangled, I think is a really interesting and telling, um, reality for sure.

Amy Westervelt: yeah. Okay. What is accelerationism and why has it been embraced by some far right. Actors? Please explain.

Jesse Bryant: So, I often get these, these terms mixed up in sort of the sociology of religion, but, um, you know, there is an idea within a lot of evangelical. Has been, you know, [00:26:00] since, since the past a hundred, 200, 300 years, um, the, this idea of the second coming of Jesus is upon us that the apocalypse is coming.

It's around the corner. This pre millenarian thought, um, that this here, this tangible world that us Protestant evangelicals can feel and sense is not the real thing. And that soon. This will all burn and a new sort of heavenly world will be upon us. and that's a sort of a politics that's fueled American evangelical thought for hundreds of years. And the way that it projects onto climate politics is just like, okay, here's all these leftist libs who were like trying to stop the apocalypse. Which is, you know, climate change or some nuclear thing happening. And we actually believe that it is moral and ethical and just to accelerate that [00:27:00] process, to accelerate the sort of destruction of the,

of the immoral wasteland of late stage capitalism. Um,

Amy Westervelt: Right,

Jesse Bryant: in order to bring about more quickly the golden age. The odd thing about accelerationism is it has Protestant backing, in the sort of pre-millenerian thought, but it also, resonates with a lot of thoughts. And sort of mythic structures within like Hindu thought and South Asian and Eastern ideas of cyclicality.

And the way that you'll see this manifest in pop culture is, you know, it doesn't register as important to many people. But you'll hear Joe Rogan talk about the Cali Yuga, um, and these sort of ideas of like Hindu cyclicality, the Cali Yuga being the age we're in the dark age, that can only be.

We can only get to the golden Age completing the cycle [00:28:00] through complete destruction of civilization.

Amy Westervelt: Wow.

Jesse Bryant: And, and both the, I mean, so it, it manifests both in these sort of Hindu logics, it manifests in Protestant pre Arian logics and it's this sort of worshiping of the apocalypse and, um, the idea that we can't actually, um, get ourselves out of this.

That there are bigger forces, um, whether they're. Which Gods are in control of that. I'm not entirely sure. And this was a structure of Greek thought too, but it's very common. But that we don't have, we humans don't have control over this. So all we can do is sort of accelerate the cycle, get the apocalypse to come faster, and as a result, um, reinstate, you know, and ordered golden age. That's like the charitable interpretation of accelerationism.

It manifests obviously in like dumb ass ways too, where there's just people who are far right lunatics on their computers who are like, I'm just gonna go kill a ton of people, or shut down a. Server warehouse, [00:29:00] which, you know, say what you will like. I would rather people be shutting down server warehouses than shooting school children.

So,

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Yeah.

Jesse Bryant: more power to them. But yeah, the idea of acceleration is generally just to accelerate the destruction of society, whether that be cyclical in the Hindu sense or linear in the Christian sense.

Amy Westervelt: Hmm. Um. Okay. I, um, this is such an uplifting conversation.

Jesse Bryant: Are outta control.

Amy Westervelt: I know, I know. It's really, um, that's just interesting to me 'cause it's like, okay, everyone is, um, is pinpointing this, the same set of things that are wrong, but like the causes and solutions are so wildly divergent. It's very interesting.

Jesse Bryant: I've gotta say, I mean that gives me hope though in a weird

Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

Jesse Bryant: that it's like to know that these people, I think in the most charitable version are like identifying late stage capitalism and trying to make sense of it.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah,

Jesse Bryant: I'm like sympathetic to that, [00:30:00] you know?

Amy Westervelt: yeah,

Jesse Bryant: yeah. But like you said, the visions are just, the visions for after are so divergent.

Amy Westervelt: yeah, yeah. You know, there's like all those memes that are like, men will do blah, blah, blah to avoid going to therapy. I feel like

Jesse Bryant: Yeah.

Amy Westervelt: it's like capitalists will do anything to avoid, just like reducing consumption. It's really not that bad guys.

Jesse Bryant: Yeah, I know. Totally. Totally. Yeah.

Amy Westervelt: It's like, wow, like we've spent how much money on figuring out how to terraform Mars instead of just reducing. You know what I mean? Like, it's insane.

Jesse Bryant: Yes, for sure, for sure. I mean, yeah, technological progress, man. That's, that's the only real ideology.

Amy Westervelt: yeah,

Jesse Bryant: it's the thing we all agree on. Um,

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, yeah.

Jesse Bryant: turn that ship.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. It's really, yeah, it's interesting. Um, okay,

Jesse Bryant: I should say really quick, I, I, this is something, just as an aside in the, I think that is very [00:31:00] true in the U.S. like. Being in Spain and living there, I'm sure this might be true in Costa Rica too, like,

Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

Jesse Bryant: like people don't worship technological progress in the same way, even in Western Europe that they do in the us.

It's like a really American thing.

Amy Westervelt: Or like the accumulation of stuff

Jesse Bryant: Oh, for sure. Dude.

Amy Westervelt: at all. It's very just like, actually, yeah. Here it's much more like, um. And I, I got this vibe in Spain as well. It's like the whole point is to have time to hang out with people,

Jesse Bryant: Yes, totally. Yep.

Amy Westervelt: to hang out with people you enjoy. That's the like goal of life. It's not, um. Making money or coming up with the coolest new technological innovation or whatever. And like, I'm, I'm not saying that there's no good that's ever come of like that drive in the US 'cause there definitely has been. But um, but yeah, it's just a very [00:32:00] different, goal than a lot of the rest of the world has.

Jesse Bryant: Dude, I am, I have such double consciousness around this living in Spain. 'cause I'm like, I like intellectually understand like I'm a lunatic American who works too hard and I should be better at. Enjoying free time and hanging out with people. And then I like live my life and I'm like, why the hell are all these people just hanging out all day?

Like, I, I, I like walk through this town I live in. I'm like, what the fuck are all these people even doing? And I like, I'm watching myself like, be a dumb ass, you know? And I'm like, I can't actually get outta this. It's

Amy Westervelt: No, I have the same thing because in Costa Rica it's just like, um, it's Costa a very good job of like, um. Putting a very bougie coat of paint on being a central American country. You know?

Jesse Bryant: Yeah.

Amy Westervelt: But like the reality is, like you're not, there is no multitasking that can [00:33:00] be done. Like you are getting one task done a day, ma'am.

And that is it. And it's like so hard for me to accept that sometimes.

Um, okay. I just have one more question for you and that is around, I have been seeing this very, um, persistent idea amongst a lot of climate people. That goes roughly, oh, the more people experience climate disasters, the more they will get behind acting on climate. And I, and then I say, oh, you sweet summer child.

Like, um, because really like most of the evidence, we have points in exactly the opposite direction that like, actually, you know, people, people are not their best selves when they're facing multiple direct threats to their lives. And like in fact, it tends to drive. People towards the far right or authoritarianism or things like that.

So, um, so yeah, I just kind of wanted to get your take on that. Like what, what the research actually shows in terms of, [00:34:00] um, how climate impacts fuel extremism.

Jesse Bryant: Yeah. My understanding of where that research is at is it's just really mixed, and pretty context dependent . There's wars all over the world now. Um, and there's climate dimensions to that.

But I, I think there's this, within this research, within this conversation about like, well, there will be more extreme weather and everyone will like get on board with what the UN says, I think is to misunderstand how human nature works. Um, or at least how I understand human nature to work, which is that I'm not entirely sold that in moments of crisis like.

Uh, a global imaginary will just appear. Um, I think that's a thing that sort of western developmental, ideas, like to assume is true. But in crisis people turn inward a lot of the time. I mean, there, there is obviously [00:35:00] evidence to the contrary, and my understanding is that in crisis people are very sympathetic and issues of identity disappear. There's all these interviews, this beautiful study by these professors at Columbia about people's opinions immediately following the nine 11 attacks. And you would think that people would be quite angry towards like Middle Eastern and Arab people, but it was actually just the opposite happened.

New Yorkers were immediately after the attacks.

Amy Westervelt: Right.

Jesse Bryant: ex like yeah, really sympathetic and hoping that this didn't lead to some bigger conflict. And it actually sparked sympathies across these identity boundaries that were ostensibly at play

Amy Westervelt: Totally. There was actually so much like warm and fuzzy community building

Jesse Bryant: Yeah, for sure. And, and

Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

Jesse Bryant: yeah, so immediately in the wake of those sorts of things, I mean, you see this with natural disasters all the time, but what natural disasters do. Not in the short run, I mean, in the short run. That is true In the long run. What natural disasters do is they just like, fuck up communities. So like, [00:36:00] and when people are struggling just to survive, they turn inward. Like, it's not like there's the immediate crisis situation with any of these, you know, climate driven natural disasters, whether it be a hurricane or tornado or lightning storm, like whatever.

But like the destruction of community is hard. Whether it's war or natural disaster and it's hard to recover. And a lot of times, you know, if, if we don't have sort of systems to support communities, FEMA for instance, is getting gutted. Like we're not doing U-S-A-I-D anymore. In the long term when people are hurting, they really have to turn inward and survive.

And I'm not entirely sure when, when the human animal is in survival mode, there's a whole lot of evidence to suggest that like, we're our best selves. Uh, I mean, when I don't eat lunch, I turn into an asshole. And so like,

Amy Westervelt: Right, exactly. Like we have a word for being hungry and angry at the same time.

Jesse Bryant: Yeah. And so the idea of like instability, [00:37:00] and I think we're seeing this, is that what. Global instability and insecurity does is it turns preexisting organisms, whether they be biological or social inward. And I think we're seeing that in the form of national conservatism and the sort of resurgence of national, counterintuitive national nationalism in a moment when our national systems are also being destroyed in some ways, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, you know?

And so I just don't totally get why, I don't know on how, especially the way that climate change has been pitched to the general public over the past 30 years, that in any way in moments of insecurity, people would be more willing to extend, um, sympathies towards global organizations like the UN or, um, sort of international agreements.

Between countries based on good faith to, you know, set aside resources in order [00:38:00] to support the collective good. I wish that was the case. I guess I just might have a little bit more of a, um, pessimistic view towards the human animal. Then. Um, some, some people, I mean, if people want to do big. Climate change work at an international level in a moment of crisis, it's gonna take a lot of authoritarianism.

So that's the trade off. You can either have huge top down intervention that mandates things of people in crisis, but to assume that people are gonna, um, become more sympathetic towards climate, efforts instituted by people they don't know from a distant vantage in a moment of crisis, I think, um, doesn't make a whole lot of, I would say, common sense to me.

And there's also obviously the problem of like a hurricane's, a hurricane, like is it, did climate change affect it? Yeah, probably. But like, it fucking sucks. So like, it's not [00:39:00] like, oh, here's a climate narrative coming at you. It's like, no, like my house is underwater, so, yeah.

Amy Westervelt: right, I've also seen some stuff around, right wing groups kind of seizing on those moments to, have boots on the ground and be like, helping people out and kind of endearing themselves to people and seizing local power in those moments too. Um. But like, I guess there's an opportunity there, um, for climate people as well.

Malcolm Harris wrote this book that came out, I think earlier this year, and one of the things that he talked about being a possible, you know, action item for climate people was to create like community. Disaster councils that basically like mutual aid networks that activate in times of disaster.

Jesse Bryant: I guess. I guess I think that's incredible. I just like to be honest with that kind of stuff, like have no idea what it has anything to do with climate change. Like I just don't.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, yeah,

Jesse Bryant: it's like, it's like it, [00:40:00] it appears to me similar to like missionary work when like people go, people from a church go down to like Costa Rica after a hurricane and

Amy Westervelt: Yes.

Jesse Bryant: It's sort of like.

Amy Westervelt: people. Yeah.

Jesse Bryant: Yeah, I'm sort of like sympathetic to that because like they're helping people even though they're like maybe evangelizing a little bit, but that feels like what that climate thing would be if people, if like climate researchers were to do like mutual aid work. That's just basically to me, missionary work,

Amy Westervelt: It's missionary work. It's, yeah, exactly. But I think that was, I think actually like that

Jesse Bryant: Yeah. I'm kind of into that.

Amy Westervelt: for, it was like, yeah, do that. Because otherwise the people that are gonna do it are either evangelicals or right wing militias.

Jesse Bryant: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think, I think maybe like missionaries you might like the people who are doing that just might need to distance themselves a little bit from their e evangelical,

Amy Westervelt: [00:41:00] Yeah.

Jesse Bryant: you know, and just sort

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Just help.

Jesse Bryant: be down for.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.

[ music up]

Again, that was Jesse Bryant at Yale University. He contributed to a chapter in a new book from the folks at the Climate Social Science Network called Climate Obstruction, a Global Survey. I highly recommend this book for folks who are looking to get a handle on all the various forces working to obstruct climate action today.

Coming up after the break, what far right climate obstruction looks like elsewhere in the world, particularly in the UK and Europe. Stay with us.

Amy Westervelt: [ad break]

And we're back. Joining me now is Dieter Plewhe, a researcher and lecturer at University Kassell in Germany. Dieter and I had spoken before, back when I was working on a story [00:42:00] about the Atlas Network, a global network of right-wing think tanks that Dieter has spent a lot of time researching.

We touched on that research here as well and a whole lot more.

[ music]

Okay. So tell me about the wise use concept. Can you kind of define what that is and tell me what the Wise use movement is?

Dieter Plehwe: Sure. Basically when we looked at the history of the, uh, climate opposition. Opposition to environment movement. It, we were struck by the fact that already in the 1970s, eighties, the [00:43:00] corporate opposition and the conservative opposition to environmental activism, had started to come up with counter narratives, counter concepts to, uh, the need to upgrade environmental regulation and against the, the regulatory activism, uh, of the federal government in the United States. Starting basically, with the founding of EPA and the, the early legislation in the 1970s, the. Conservative movement basically responded that this is all intrusion from the federal government and that the local people know much better, um, how to deal with the environment and are perfectly capable of making.

Wise use of the environmental re resources, um, basically protect the environment in accordance to the, the ways in which they interact with nature, use nature. And so the wise use [00:44:00] concept was a deliberate concept. Tools of like place local. Wisdom and knowledge, uh, against what was regarded as unnecessary and intrusive, uh, regulation from the federal government.

Amy Westervelt: It seems very prevalent right now as well. So I wonder, you are seeing it have a resurgence or if it just never went away or if the same groups or pushing it still, what, what's happening with that?

Dieter Plehwe: Oh yeah, I think it's a key trope in the kind of, opposition to, federal government or central government intervention. And, basically, you know, we came across this, reading Andrew Rowell's book, the Green Backlash, which is from 1996, so quite a while ago. And, um, it was in fact, uh, striking how much of the present climate obstruction, climate opposition discourse is, preceded by the [00:45:00] controversies and the mobilization against and environmental policy making, in the 1970s, eighties.

And how many of the themes that are very, very, uh, important in the. Present, uh, constellation, have been basically developed against the establishment of the very first generation of environmental, regulatory politics and is all framed as the sort of like local versus central government. There's presently even a stronger revival of such sentiments, now basically framed as, opposition to global governance. So the national government is held to be,, better prepared to deal with these challenges than any sort of like of, global governance. So in a way, yes, continuity and certain forms of mutations we can see. Um,

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Okay, let's talk about the Atlas Network and their role in climate obstruction, because as [00:46:00] I'm sure you know, they've really been trying to, claim that they have done no such thing, in recent years.

Dieter Plehwe: that's basically since the takeover of, uh, responsibility at the, at the central headquarters at the Atlas Network, uh, by Brad Lips, um, after the period in which, uh, Alejandro. Chafuen the Argentinian who headed the Atlas Network, after, the founders, um, Antony Fisher's, uh, death in 1989, roughly until, um, the global financial crisis.

And then, I mean, he stayed basically. Part of the leadership, but Brad Lips took over and I think that, , lips, in a way, was, moving Atlas Network, the central headquarters was moving it away from climate politics because Chafuen was quite a bit involved and quite a bit more supportive, uh, of the climate obstruction, climate denial efforts

Amy Westervelt: Hmm.

Dieter Plehwe: The international conferences, Atlas was [00:47:00] co-sponsoring the Heartland conferences a few times, and, there's very clear like indications that, Atlas were closely involved in climate politics. Um, also the headquarters itself, of course, is not like a major, organization compared to some of its members partners.

Like Kalo Institute or Heartland Institute, or the Heritage Foundation or other partners in Europe or South Africa. So basically, the move of red lips to declare strong distance. We're not involved, we're not funded by, oil companies. It all relates to the backlash, the neoliberals and, the firms, the corporations and business associations that funded and were involved in outright climate denial with Heartland conference and so on, so forth.

There was a lot of backlash against ExxonMobil in particular, and I think that was basically considered, a tricky thing from the perspective also of the think tanks that were involved, that they, much like the corporations. Try to [00:48:00] distance a little bit the, the general purpose of the free market movement from the specific politics of climate denial and climate obstruction.

So the, they changed the name also to from Atlas Economic Research Foundation to Atlas Network. So now we have an organization, the umbrella organization, which is Atlas Network. And Brett Lips will say. We are not getting any funding from the oil company. And that sounds like the Atlas Network as a whole, which has like 500 organizations, doesn't get any funding from the oil company.

The one thing may be right, Atlas Network as the umbrella organization may not get money from ExxonMobil, but many of these think tanks for sure get money from oil and other fossil sources. And so it's a kind of a nice play they have there where they can legitimately maybe say we don't as Atlas Network, the umbrella organization.

And then it sounds like it's the network as a whole, which is obviously not true, but even at just network, the umbrella organization. Would have to declare openly where its [00:49:00] funding comes from and how much money they get from donors trust, which is actually of course then covering up money that comes from possibly oil companies, other fossil groups.

So, I mean, even the very strong claim we are not getting money from fossil sources, is basically impossible to verify. Or falsify as long as they don't, clarify the funding sources from these Dark money machines.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

Dieter Plehwe: Of course, the Atlas Network as a whole with its, , large membership has been home to many think tanks, in many countries that were absolutely part and parcel of the climate denial and climate obstruction movement.

US organizations like Cato Institute, like the Heartland Institute, like the Independent Institute. Heritage Foundation, they're all very involved in spreading, climate denial and other misinformation. Canadians Fraser Institute, the, the Frontier Centre and, European organizations [00:50:00] like the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Global Warming Foundation, the Adam Smith Institute.

Amy Westervelt: Mm.

Dieter Plehwe: The Austrian Economic Center in Austria, in Africa, in South Africa, the Freedom Foundation, and so on and so forth in Australia. Many of the think tanks that are part of the network. So basically, , we found in our research that, about half of the, Atlas Network partner organizations do publish, content on climate and, a small number of think tanks, maybe no more than 12, 15 think tanks, are basically publishing a lot of material.

And, many of them were closely involved in the climate denial movement, which has morphed into a broader range of climate denial and other obstruction messages.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Actually one of the things that I found really interesting last time I was there that I had not realized that Atlas was involved in, setting up the Donors [00:51:00] Trust for the Koch guys.

Dieter Plehwe: Well, Brad Lips, the head of, the Atlas Network, the umbrella organization is on the board of the Donors Trust. And, I'm not exactly sure how the arrangements are, but there's, uh, one of the interesting findings with regard to finance where most of the information, we have is from the United States, unfortunately, because, most of the other countries are way, less open.

With regard to, uh, source material that can be studied. And for the U.S. therefore, we know quite a bit about the philanthropic funding of think tanks and the interrelationships, between think tanks and foundations. And it's, quite, , interesting indeed that, big funders of Abta network, I mean like the Templeton Foundation, which is the biggest funder of.

The umbrella organization, Atlas Network is also heavily funding another 80 think tanks of the Atlas Network, both in the US and abroad. So, they [00:52:00] have an open access database where you can actually trace the funding. So we know that they fund six organizations, that are part of the Atlas network in Europe.

Indeed part of the European epicenter network. Like the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Institute to Bruno Leone in, in Italy, which is sort of like the energy expert organization in Europe, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute, which is a very, successful big think tank in the Baltics. And the German Brome Institute, and CPOs in Denmark.

So it's very interesting that, Templeton not only is the largest funder by far of the umbrella organization, but also a funder of, uh, quite large number of Atlas network members in Europe, in Latin America and elsewhere. And, other big foundations are more focused on the US. But also have, interlocks with European think tanks like the Bradley Foundation has people sitting on the board of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

And, in that they also [00:53:00] mobilized some of the funding, there. So, yeah, no surprise, that the, arrangement To, to cover up some of the funding sources from corporations we see that, has been manufactured with the help of the experts, the Atlas, network, because they know what they need and they, they can help the companies to basically cover their traces.

Amy Westervelt: Mm-hmm. Okay, relatedly, let's talk about the Mont Pein Society for a minute. Can I have you define what that is and explain its role in, incubating or bringing a lot of these think tank guys together?

Dieter Plehwe: Sure. Well, it's quite important to know that, the origins really of the think tank strategy of the so-called free market movement, which basically is, the neoliberal movement. Which, was founded post World War II by Fredrich Van Hayek, the likes of Germany's, Reka and, Americans from the Chicago School and from other places.

[00:54:00] Was founded in 1947, in Switzerland in Mont Pellerin which is a, a small location, on top of the lake of Geneva. And, basically when Anthony Fisher, the founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs, close, entrepreneur friend of Friedrich August Van Hyek, when he asked Hayek for advice, he wanted to go into politics.

And Hayek advised him not to go into politics and to instead invest in, uh, intellectual resources, in fact the founding of a think tank Then. Fisher actually started, the Institute of Economic Affairs and together with business friends in many countries, he was closely involved in starting this neoliberal think tank movement, up the Fraser institute in Canada.

Peru's Institute for Democracy by the of De Soto, um, in Australia. He was very, very global immediately. And then in 1981 , Fisher was, organizing the Atlas, network, to have, have more help in coordinating, and growing the [00:55:00] network. So the inspiration to go for the think tank strategy came from Hayek based on his reading of the political conflicts in society, and the need to have a long, long range strategy and intellectual warfare, so to speak. And since then, every leader of the Atlas network has been a member of the society.

So this network of, academics, business people, media people, some politicians and think tank, professionals. That's really the core membership of the Mont Pellerin society that meets globally. And coordinates and learns globally, , discusses the challenges that neoliberalism faces and develops strategies and they don't become active themselves as, as the Montpellerin society.

It's basically a self image of an academic society more than of an organization. And they basically, lean on think tanks. Many of which have been founded by Montpellerin Society member or seat Montpellerin [00:56:00] Society members, helping to run them on their boards. So the think tank are basically in a way the organizational capacity where more paranoid society people, intervene in media, in, political consulting, in, in all kinds of policy areas, including, of course, what they perceive as a challenge for, less regulated markets. The, the intense regulation coming from environmental, regulatory politics and climate politics.

Amy Westervelt: Can I have you walk me through some of the, the key discourses of delay that the these think tanks use and kind of spread around?

Dieter Plehwe: Sure. I mean, the discourse of delay, of course, complement, what in the early, sort of like period of climate. Opposition movement activities was really climate denialism. So basically as, as soon as the science consolidated, there was this concerted effort to undermine the [00:57:00] scientific, basis by erecting organizations like Heartland and, the non-governmental, panel on climate change that they organized to.

Publish publications against the IPCC and so on and so forth. And so we see that, in the two thousands, we have really the, the growth of a climate denial movement. But that was never all that happened in these neoliberal conservative circles, because, quite a large part of the, neoliberal universe is not, denying climate science nor its anthropogenic, causes.

It's rather, taking issue with the climate policy. So like objecting to, state regulation to, all kinds of, policy tools that they regard as as wrong and problematic or counterproductive. And so advocate instead market solutions. So one of the, the specialties that has have emerged in the context of the Atlas network is free market, so-called free market environmentalism, [00:58:00] which basically is a counter narrative to state regulation, very much along the lines of the old wise use movement.

Basically asking for the privatization of nature so that the owners of the forest, of the rivers of the air can basically, be in charge of taking care of it. So it's a radical proposal of radical, free market environmentalism means, essentially everything will be fine as soon as we really completely deregulate and privatize nature, so that the, the owners of the resources can be in charge. And then of course, a much milder, much more mainstream version is the pricing of nature. So that involves, of course, state capacities, and that's basically the, the carbon pricing mechanisms. We have, the emissions trading mechanisms we have that have been proposed by economists, to be a better tool than, regulations that outlaw certain emissions or regulate the quantities, quantities in other ways, [00:59:00] basically suggesting that.

Relying on market mechanisms will improve environmental governance. Which, you know, in theory is an interesting model, but in practice in many ways has so far failed to materialize. And in fact, in the United States where many of these things were first proposed, as soon as it become relevant and would mean that, corporations would actually be charged, then. There was actually everywhere in the world. As soon as market mechanisms are, turning out to be somewhat effective, they're usually a opposed by the actors that are supposed to support marketing mechanisms. So it's unclear, you know, to what extent the market mechanisms that are part of the legitimate. Discourse of climate policy making very much a part of even the mainstream IPCC discourse. Basically the shift in a policy instrument in the Paris treaty has been all moving more towards market mechanisms. We don't see really that, this development has actually been really effective.

So serious [01:00:00] economists and serious, climate policy, concerned, people must ask themself, of course. To what extent is this really a reliable method and to what extent is it actually. Leading us into a, a dead end road because as soon as, carbon pricing becomes very expensive, we usually get, setbacks because people protest the high prices because they cannot afford it.

So it's basically frequently failing to take into account the redistribution that is then going on. And, usually under conditions of austerity, which we had most of the time, over the past decade, people are simply very short of money. And social weak classes are very quick to rebel against, price increases if there's no compensation available.

So there's an interesting, problematic. But, the whole field of climate policy opposition basically has become fairly broad, ranging from climate denial to policy skepticism where basically policy instruments are debated and policy measures are [01:01:00] debated and, then we have other counter proposals.

We don't need to do mitigation because technology will in the future solve this problem. Again, with the help of economists who use the discounting methods suggesting that 10 years from now, certain measures are much cheaper, so we should delay them 'cause they can be much more efficiently in an economic sense, employed, later.

And so many of these, elements simply lead to not take decisive action. With regard to climate mitigation now and are basically employed to, derail, processes that have been set up and suggest there are better alternatives. Also basically the argument is more or less, simply hiding the fact that one wants to block rather than to improve climate governance.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Okay. You mentioned these three themes of philanthropic financial support within the political economy of climate obstruction, opacity, [01:02:00] concentration, and heterogeneity. Can I have you, explain what each of those is and how that translates to, what we're seeing kind of around us right now?

Dieter Plehwe: Sure. I mean, basically, the theme of philanthropy, of course, is so important because, we have seen the share of income of think tanks from philanthropies has been increasing over the past decades. I think partly because the pushback against corporations and the fear of corporations being involved in politics and getting exposed.

So basically they have, relied also on philanthropies, to fund their strategies . So philanthropic funding for think tanks in climate politics is simply becoming more important. The opacity relates to the fact that even if we have more transparency in US data with regard to how much philanthropies fund and about the income of think tanks, we can only account for about a quarter to a [01:03:00] third of the total of the Atlas think tanks we looked at.

A lot of the funding sources remain unclear and a lot of the funding sources and among the philanthropies donors trust and other dark money machines that are basically not foundations from specific corporations, from specific owners like the Koch Foundations, or the Dunn Foundation or the Bradley Foundation.

Basically donors trust and donors Capital fund are money collection machines that collect money from different sources that don't have to be laid open and redistribute to the final recipient.

The donors Trust and donors capital fund are the largest funders of the Atlas Network think Tanks out of more than 3000 corporate foundations in the US.

And yet the opacity theme is even much more important with regard to other world regions and countries because no comparable, openness to foundation, funding and non-for-profit [01:04:00] income is available in other countries.

So we have, simply no data that compares to the US data. And that's of course, a big drawback, to study, the, the right wing, the neoliberal right wing, and other think tanks. In Europe, in Latin America. We do have on the boards of think tanks, we find corporate foundations in Europe, almost 50 compared to more than 300 in the US and, uh, like a good 30 in Latin America.

So we have some, clues about which foundations are involved in running and funding think tanks. But we just have no scientific tool to investigate these amounts and these, these channels of influence. The concentration refers to the observation that a lot of the funding, for say the Atlas members in the United States comes from a relatively small group of foundations. As I [01:05:00] mentioned in this one database,, we have more than 3000 foundations, but just a very small share of these foundation, account for like a very large share of the funding. So yes, there are plenty of foundations, but the real music is played by a small orchestra. And so we, we can say that about 50 to 100 corporate foundations are really the core group that is in charge of channeling money to organizations like the Atlas Network think tanks.

And then the third category, heterogeneity that basically, I think referred to the, wide range of organizations and strategies and perspectives funded by corporate foundations. So you would think that, a philanthropic organization that funds climate denial funds climate denial, no. They also can fund quite different strategies and other think tanks.

Amy Westervelt: They're very intersectional, these guys.

Dieter Plehwe: Absolutely, absolutely. Don't [01:06:00] bet. Just on one horse,

Amy Westervelt: yeah. When everyone was talking about Project 2025 in the U.S. I was working on this spreadsheet to look at maybe 105 organizations involved in that.

Dieter Plehwe: Safety.

Amy Westervelt: I was looking at all of 'em and their funders, and there's so much overlap, amongst the funders and the staff.

You know, everyone's working for each other's think tank or on the board or whatever. And one of the things that really jumped out was that, you know, when a lot of the anti-abortion organizations in the US as they started to be more successful, started to get into, you know, other issues because they needed to keep the money coming in.

They were all of a sudden pushing anti-trans stuff, or even some of them were getting into anti-climate work as well. And it was like, well, I guess if you have a $20 million a year budget and your issue is not gonna be an issue for that [01:07:00] much longer, you need to find new things to work on.

Dieter Plehwe: Yeah.

Basically, it's also necessary to understand that uh, we are not looking usually at single issue

Amy Westervelt: No, almost never. Yeah.

Dieter Plehwe: People who are driven by a worldview that can be and will be applied to literally each subject matter. And yes, there will be a fair amount of specialization on environmental climate issues, maybe on public health issues.

On criminal justice issues, on gender issues. But I mean, it's very interesting to see that a number of organizations co-sponsored Heartland conferences on climate politics that were actually not involved in climate politics. So we can look at this as a, as members of like a large party where some parts of the party specialize, have committees on special issues, but at the same time are very happy that their party friends are taking care of other issues, no? So it's basically the same principle as a political [01:08:00] apparatus, which also needs to be involved in many, many different policy areas and subject matters. And nobody can do it all. No. But if need be, I mean, if there's a special need for campaigning, you can actually mobilize many more people than the specialized people.

Amy Westervelt: Mm-hmm.

Dieter Plehwe: I remember when the free trade for the Americas conflict was on, in north America, with Bush trying to expand NAFTA to the whole of the Americas. And there was a lot of pushback from progressive organizations or left winging organizations against trade in the Americas. The Fraser Insitute Worked on the issue for the time it needed until the subject was over and then they closed the mechanism again. So basically many of these, larger think tanks, certainly have the capacity to shift resources like from one subject matter to another.

And, also of course the large think tanks with, you know, multimillion dollar budgets, they push, um, quite a number of different themes.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Okay. I [01:09:00] wanna ask you about how religious groups get in on this as well. So what are some of the key arguments that religious groups use against climate action?

Dieter Plehwe: Well, there are different arguments, really. On the one hand it's important to note that, the neoliberal movement, the conservative movement always had like also their religious side to it. No. The Acton, the think tanks that are specifically like the Acton Institute are specifically Catholic neoliberal think tank that, has been founded in the US in Latin America, in Europe, and other think tanks that are actually, combining, free trade and religious messages.

So it's basically the. Link between a conservative social morality and the kind of patriarchal, family ownership , economic freedom model, which really is the economic freedom of the owner of the property.

Amy Westervelt: Mm-hmm.

Dieter Plehwe: And so we see that many of the religious articulations with [01:10:00] regard to climate policy and with regard in particular to climate denialism, climate obstruction , are actually, in this sphere of, links between the neoliberal movement and their religious partners. The Cornwall, initiative, , sort of like, is a mobilization of, was founded by Acton Institute people, and Acton Institute is part of the Atlas Network, so it's. Part of the hardcore of the free market movement, but actually tries to cater specifically to the Catholic world. And of course reacts in the Catholic world to the challenges of theology of Liberation and other progressive forces that articulate themselves in the Catholic universe in sort of like a socially progressive manner.

And you have also a very strong environmentalism in the Catholic church. Pope Francis, the last, before the present Pope, he was a, a huge activist in, in environmental policy issues and that basically cost the, the Catholic right, [01:11:00] and the Catholic conservatives to mobilize very actively against, Pope Francis' encyclical and, climate messages and trying to push back against this.

You know, the church should keep out of these areas. Church should not be involved in, these political issues. So sort of like separating the, the spheres. And so some of the religious arguments that that feed the, obstruction movement is basically that climate science is part of the. Scientific world, which is not infallible.

So they kind of turn the argument of religion versus science, upside down. In church, in religious belief, you have the full belief and that's where you trust, even if you obviously don't know. Whereas in science, that's the sphere where you can't believe where there is actually always needs to be debate.

And that's an interesting argument where the, the religious belief is held to be superior to the scientific belief. And, [01:12:00] is held to supply, sort of like munition against the belief in climate science, you know. They cannot be a belief in climate science because it's part of the rationalist world that is not infallible.

And other sort of like Catholic subsidiarity, thinking, which is a very old concept, used by the Catholic social teaching to object against centralized intervention in family affairs. Sort of like the smallest entity of social life, the family should take care of itself, and only in case of need should sort of like be supported maybe by the local church and even, and if there's a natural, uh, catastrophe, maybe the local church can ask for help by the state and so on and so forth.

So subsidiarity is the thinking that the more local. The self-organization works is the better it is. And so it's a, basically, it aligns very nicely with the kind of wise use concept and aligns very nicely with the objection against centralized government [01:13:00] regulation and intervention.

Even if you can also argue that in cases where the local cannot take care of policy issues, it's necessary that the higher levels of government need to be involved. So, of course, a Policy issue like global warming, which is way beyond any local scale of politics, simply cannot be taken care of at the local level.

So basically also these concepts like subsidiarity, the Catholic right will use it as an argument against centralizing regulation, whereas the Catholic left will sort of like use it as, a good example of how subsidiarity can also not be considered an objection against centralized policymaking.

So it's an contested concept essentially. But we see that subsidiarity arguments are part of the mobilization against climate action and align perfectly well with neoliberal arguments and with conservative arguments.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Okay. [01:14:00] So, I keep seeing this belief amongst a lot of people in climate spaces that as people experience more climate impacts, that they will of course, get on board with doing something about climate. But I think, especially with the far right stuff, but I would say even some of the Atlas stuff tells us is that that's definitely not guaranteed.

I'm curious what you think about the potential for climate impacts to actually sort of supercharge some of this thinking as opposed to defeating it.

Dieter Plehwe: Yeah. That's basically now of course our huge challenge. I mean in the chapter of course we talk about this broad spectrum of the right where neoliberalism as right-wing liberalism is very closely overlapping with what Americans call conservatism and can of course align with social conservatism sometimes also with progressivism as with the Democratic party and so on, [01:15:00] forth, and have an impact in shifting the debates toward economic reasoning rather than the whole spectrum of policy interventions that we need to succeed in climate mitigation. And then of course, we have seen as a result of the multiple crises, both global warming, COVID, financial crisis, we have seen this much more radical far right rebellion expressed many times in right-wing populist beliefs where we get messages that go way beyond the traditional spectrum of free market conservatism and neoliberalism which is in a way is still engaged in this debate of how the world should be governed and what types of governance and what scales of governance should be employed.

And in many areas the neoliberal movement was actually all in favor of global governance for trade regulation, for property rights regulation, even for migration issues, because [01:16:00] parts of the neoliberal movement are much more in favor of labor migration and so on and so forth, remain to this day more in favor like the Koch Brothers, for example compared to the Trumpists.

But we see that the opposition against global governance in climate opened the door to actually challenge global governance altogether. And what we see as the far right in the form of the right wing populist governments and, political lead figures like Trump, Milei, many others around the world now, they converge on a new ideology that is actually partly opposed to neoliberalism as far as neoliberalism is global.

You know, globalist so to speak. And this new ideology, is really national conservatism, actually remove all these levels of global governance and, move everything back in the sphere of the national nation state. Then some of them are more radical.

The libertarians, they want more, even more decentralization. [01:17:00] And, other far right groups, would also probably radicalize the message and try to destabilize many of the political entities more.

And move us into the territory of this much more complex and, complicated area where we have seen in many places the rise of similar ideologies, conspiracy theories, like the Great Replacement theory where basically the National Conservatism Alliance in particular against, foreign migration.

And the far right has embraced this concept of ethno pluralism. So that yes, there are different ethnicities, but they better keep separated each in their place. And so there's a very interesting movement where I would say the global warming challenges have led to a, an approach that was definitely global.

The whole process, the whole Rio process, Kyoto protocol, Paris and led to a very ambitious agenda that has been stalled in the meantime. And the backlash against it [01:18:00] converges on the rejection, not only of the concrete policy goals but actually against the whole politics of climate change, the global governance aspect . And that's actually, undermining obviously the efforts to globally coordinate and negotiate solutions.

And so in that regard, the climate denial and climate obstruction movement was hugely successful. Not only with the immediate impact they had, but now we see that the whole process is in danger of being derailed by the strengths of the right wing mobilization against global government.

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Amy Westervelt: That's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Next week we're digging into the psychology of misinformation and why this stuff works so well, come back for that.

Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can find more on this season, including transcripts and lots of related [01:19:00] articles and background information on our website at drilled.media. You can also sign up for our newsletter there one of these days. We're gonna actually get it out every week. Until then, it's an occasional newsletter with thoughts from me, new stories from the site, and the rest of the team, and updates on what we're getting up to next.

Our producers for this season are Martin Zal Swick and Peter Duff. Our theme song is Bird in the Hand By Foreknown.

Our cover art is done by Matthew Fleming. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton with the First Amendment Project. The [01:20:00] show was created, written and reported by me, Amy Westervelt.

Thanks for listening and see you next time.