The linked article was written by Chloe Maxmin (a fellow with "The Nation"), and in it she acknowledges that Neoliberal thinking has become “The Washington Consensus”, by means of a long-term, well planned coup; and that the climate movement currently has no such clear plan of action and is left playing defense by allowing climate skeptics to endlessly frame the discussion in the media, so that the climate movement cannot make significant progress.
Indeed, Maxmin concludes that the climate movement must take the time (decades) to develop a comparable action plan with a shared intellectual platform, clear mainstream messaging, and methodical implementation at all levels of society (from grass roots to the stratosphere).
Assuming that she is correct that the climate movement will continue to flounder without such a multi-decade effort to develop an action plan, we can conclude that by then the global socio-economic collapse will have occurred and that the action plan should be developed for the less than 1 Billion people remaining, or else we will wind-up with the feudalism envisioned by JimD.
In such a post-collapse society, I envision two main socio-economic frameworks keeping mankind above feudalism, which are: (a) the inheritors of those orchestrating the "4th Industrial Revolution" (AI, robotics, biotechnology, etc.) who will acquiesce personal freedom in order to focus on enhanced effectiveness via the information-driven fruits of the 4th Industrial Revolution and (b) the inheritors of the mindfulness movement who rally around a clear compelling message focused on "Free Will" as understood by millennia of wisdom from such traditions as the Vipassana movement (see the "Adapting to the Anthropocene" thread).
https://www.thenation.com/article/what-the-climate-movement-can-learn-from-the-neoliberal-coup/Extract: "What the Climate Movement Can Learn from the Neoliberal Coup
With its strategy and our moral compass, the climate movement could be unstoppable.
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How can the climate movement develop the political power to fight effectively?
To glean a few answers, I looked to what I regard as one of the most successful examples of social change in the modern era: the neoliberal coup. Between 1975 and 2008, an ideological movement called “neoliberalism” evolved from fringe theory into the dominant economic paradigm of our age, with great help from the Republican Party, and then, the Democrats as well.
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In 1958, 73 percent of Americans trusted their government.
All that changed in the 1970’s. Stagflation—high unemployment, high inflation, and stagnant growth—gripped the US economy. Keynesian policies did little to alleviate the crisis
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Then came neoliberalism’s true champion, Ronald Reagan, in 1981. He mesmerized the country (and the world) with free market idealism expressed in anti-big government rhetoric, policies, and practices. Reagan’s focus.
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Neoliberal thinking is now the status quo among Republicans, many Democrats, and most major institutions—it’s called “The Washington Consensus.”
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The Republican’s neoliberal movement rests on a shared vision and a long-range understanding of how to translate that vision from theory to practice. From the very beginning, neoliberals were committed to a disciplined long game.
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The climate movement has developed as a social force since the 1980s, but it does not yet have the shared vision or long game capable of changing the core of American society.
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The neoliberal movement’s vision was forged among an exclusive group of thinkers and then fed to a political party that champions elites. The climate movement will need to produce a shared vision in ways that are consistent with our democratic values.
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An important step in the neoliberal ascent was clean, clear, compelling messaging that exemplified neoliberal values, garnered support, and could flow through the Republican Party. One word did most of the work: freedom.
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Another key component of the mainstream infusion was think tanks—institutions that incubated ideas and policies. Neoliberalism’s converts developed a “transatlantic network,” as Jones calls it, that established think tanks to further the cause. As Jones comments, these “nodes” absorbed ideas from neoliberalism’s Founding Fathers and turned them into innovative policy formulations. It was these think tanks that then nurtured neoliberal thinking for three decades, maintained close relationships with Republican politicians, and ultimately fed innovative policies to Washington’s elite for mainstream diffusion. The Heritage Foundation was ground zero for the GOP’s original position on individual mandates for health insurance. (In 1983, Ronald Reagan told a Heritage gathering that they were leading an “intellectual revolution.”)
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… “The real action is in the think tanks these days.” Mirowski adds that the left has “no conception of the amount of regimentation it takes to achieve something like this.”
The lack of a shared intellectual platform, clear mainstream messaging, and methodical implementation leaves the climate movement playing defense.
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The best defense is a good offense. Brulle agrees that we need to “start taking examples from how effective the conservative movement has been and try to apply some of the strategies…. we need to expand our tactics to encompass some of this.” We focus on local specific campaigns to defend ourselves against the ever-present threats to home, family, and life. This work is crucial, but we also need to take the time to develop a vision, incubate our thinking, develop policies, disseminate new intellectual frameworks, and implement new action strategies. Some will say that the climate movement doesn’t have time to develop this kind of intellectual and political apparatus. My response: We don’t have the time not to.
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The next lesson to learn from the Republican neoliberal coup is the impressive top-down and bottom-up political apparatus. As Mirowski told me, true success stems from having a “central intellectual guide and a set of projects at the local, individual, parochial level.”
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The climate movements offers our society truth instead of denial, survival instead of chaos, justice instead of injustice, equality instead of inequality, and democracy instead of oligarchy."
See also:
http://www.chloemaxmin.com/
