All the talk about the “1 percent” and the “47 percent” have
created the impression that this Presidential election will be a
matter of rich versus poor, people who pay taxes versus people who
collect government benefits, the top of the economic ladder against
the bottom.
But this is not entirely true. One constituency that is very
important to the Democrat President — and has enormous influence
over its economic policies — is that small slice of the population
that embraces full-fledged environmentalism.
Perhaps the signature accomplishment of the Obama Administration
has been its opposition to large energy and industrial projects.
The President has blocked the Keystone Pipeline, which would have
brought a million barrels of oil to Texas refineries. His
administration has shrunk the leasing of federal oil lands and
slowed offshore drilling to a crawl. Its Environmental Protection
Agency has closed down coal plants and constantly making noise
about cracking down on fracking for natural gas.
Say what you will about the 47 percent who don’t pay taxes or
the people who depend on food stamps, housing vouchers and Social
Security Disability benefits, it is certainly not their concerns
that are being expressed by these government actions.
Yet even as President Obama has pursued the most aggressive
environmental agenda in history, attempting to regulate carbon
emissions and cracking down on fossil fuels, the nation’s
environmental enthusiasts have remain largely unsatisfied. They are
upset because he licensed two new nuclear reactors. They want to
close down Vermont Yankee and Indian point, even if it leaves the
northeast short of electricity. They are currently sponsoring a
referendum in San Francisco to tear down the Hetch Hetchy Dam, even
though it provides the City by the Bay with 25 percent of its water
and 40 percent of its electricity.
Environmentalists proclaim that they only oppose these
technologies because they envision a new world built on wind and
solar energy. Yet when it comes to implementing these visions, they
end up equally opposed. Environmentalists are already suing to stop
President Obama’s plans for solar installations in the California
desert. In Vermont, activists have already laid down in front of
bulldozers to prevent construction of the windmills that are
supposed to replace Vermont Yankee. After a certain point, you have
to ask, “Exactly what do these people want?”
The answer was provided by early 20th century
sociologist Thorstein Veblen in his famous book, The
Theory of the Leisure Class. In a largely forgotten
chapter called “Industrial Exemption,” Veblen posed the question,
“Why is it that people who have benefited most from industrial
society are often the most violently opposed to its further
expansion?”
The answer, he said, is that as people grow more affluent, they
eventually reach a point where it becomes less important for them
to acquire more wealth and more important simply
to prevent others from achieving what they already
have.
This is what environmentalism is all about. It is an
aristocratic attitude, long honed in the upper reaches of European
society, which says that “trade” is something to be looked down
upon and that there are “higher things in life than the mere
accumulation of material possessions.” Easy enough to say when
you’ve already got all you want.
But it’s worse than that. Veblen warned that a combination of
this aristocratic disdain for industrial progress and an
ill-informed proletariat that had no real understanding for
business but simply resented businessmen as “the rich,” could form
a lethal tandem to undermine any advanced society. This alliance
between the top and the bottom would squeeze the productive middle
classes that produce most of the wealth.
That is what we are seeing in the current Presidential Election.
The growing numbers of people who are dependent on the government
may succeed in reelecting President Obama. But it will be the
upper-crust agenda of opposition to further industrial development
that will be put into effect.
