Washington Post: The Climate Cult Must Adapt

This opinion piece by Alex Flint ignores one huge problem

If the climate movement wants to succeed, it must adapt

The global climate movement recently experienced its biggest setbacks to date. The United States withdrew from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change — which America helped design — and relaxed emissions standards for cars and power plants. Meanwhile, Canada eliminated its consumer carbon tax, and the European Union is scaling back its emissions reductions goals.

The climate movement inherited many of the instincts of the broader environmental movement, including a deep skepticism of development itself. As a result, it finds itself at odds with one of humanity’s most powerful and enduring forces: the desire to improve living standards. When climate advocacy runs counter to that aspiration, it fails to gain durable support.

“Movement”

If the climate movement is to succeed, it must reorganize around a different premise. Its measure of success should not be how much development it prevents but how much development it helps enable — while minimizing climate impact.

Anti-development

Any credible climate strategy must acknowledge that this demand is likely to materialize. Billions of people are still climbing the energy ladder. They want refrigerators, air conditioning, clean water, mobility and modern health care — and those desires are both understandable and legitimate.

Therefore, the climate movement’s task cannot be to suppress demand. It must be to meet that demand in ways that do the least harm to the climate.

Like they’re going to give up demanding Other People give up their own use of energy?

This reframing carries important implications.

First, climate advocacy will be most effective when it is grounded in demand and economics rather than moral appeals alone. People rarely respond to calls for sacrifice when the alternative is a better life. They do respond to technologies and systems that are cheaper, cleaner and more reliable than what they replace.

Look, the piece has 4 more pieces of advice, but, at the end, Alex forgets that this is a cult, and they do not want to change to being rational. Their moral outrage is baked into the actions of the cult. Their climahypocrisy is baked in. Their preaching and Crazy are baked in. Because it is a cult.