A new paradigm is needed for the green transition

By
BrusselsReport.eu
-

By Lorenzo Montanari (@lorenzmontanari), Executive Director of the Property Rights Alliance (PRA) and Vice-President International Affairs of Americans for Tax Reform

Radical and globalist environmentalism certainly is the new dominant ideology that is challenging what Roger Scruton once named “oikophilia» or the close relationship between humans and the environment they are rooted in.

This ideology of ‘catastrophism’ has been radicalizing to the extent it is losing sight of the very object of its struggle: the environment.

The attack on capitalism

The environmentalist narrative is slipping into a sterile and counterproductive criticism of the so-called ‘capitalist’ system, there overlooking that 90% of deaths from pollution happen, according to the World Health Organisation, in developing countries.

If the much-criticised capitalist system were to be blamed, then the Soviet Union and all communist regimes should have been the ‘environmental paradise’ par excellence. However, we know full well that the greatest ‘environmental crimes’ were committed precisely there, in those places where property rights were limited, if not absent.

Property rights and environmental protection

There is a vast liberal and conservative literature detailing in a very articulate and scientific way the fundamental role played by the protection of property rights in the defence of the environment: the so-called free market environmentalism. According to the International Property Rights Index and the Yale University Environmental Index, there is a very strong correlation between environmental defence and respect for and protection of property rights.

The geopolitical challenge

Today it is more than ever necessary to rethink the “Green Transition” in the face of the war in Ukraine. For a start, a new geo-economic strategy is needed which is able to answer the urgent question of where to acquire raw materials, like lithium and rare earth super magnets, without creating new dependencies on China, as happened with Russia for gas and oil.

Also the war in Ukraine is relevant for the new race for the supply of lithium and rare earths, of which the Donbass is very rich. As scholar Giuseppe Sabella has reminded, rare earths ‘are crucial not only for the production of new electric motors, as well as for smartphones and televisions, but also for the entire wind power industry, for optical fibre and for medical diagnostics’.

If lithium and rare earth supplies were to be restricted, there will be no technological transition and therefore no green transition. Today, faced with the drama of the war in Ukraine, there are new questions which until a few months ago, American and European governments, as well as the G7 and G20, were not asking.

What does it mean to talk about green transition today, in the context of a tough political and military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, which is militarily supported by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union? However, what kind of public policies are able to deal with the new geopolitical challenges? How to rethink the green transition in the face of a redefinition of the very idea of globalisation?

Today, globalisation is not in crisis, but globalism is. The latter can be described as the globalisation of “crony capitalism”: the patron-client combination of the business world and authoritarian regimes, in the total absence of any free market logic.

Nuclear energy as indispensable

Throughout all of this, are we sure that accelerating the decarbonisation processes really suits the European Union and the United States? What we can witness today, is the momentary reactivation of coal-fired power stations as the only solution, in the short term, to alleviate the dramatic energy crisis.

A concrete solution is to focus on new-generation nuclear power, to avoid future energy crises of the magnitude we are facing today.

The environment must be protected, regardless of whether there is climate change or not, while keeping the central role of the individual as the main actor. The protection of the environment should not be the monopoly of one political party. It increasingly has become cross-partisan issue, and should be purified from counterproductive ideological confrontation.

 

Originally published in Italian by Nicolaporro.it

Disclaimer: www.BrusselsReport.eu will under no circumstance be held legally responsible or liable for the content of any article appearing on the website, as only the author of an article is legally responsible for that, also in accordance with the terms of use.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR