Column: The climate/energy/environment debate is completely unhinged – here’s why
May 2, 20237:25 AM Terry Etam9 Comments
Old-school politics used to be easy, industrially speaking. The left/right divide seemed so endearingly simple. People existed in two world views, generally cleaved along the lines of more/less government control, or more collective vision vs. more individual.
An analogy that works: Imagine someone starts a business, it grows wildly, they hire a thousand people, and the owner gets fantastically wealthy. Old school voters would fall into one of two camps: Camp free enterprise would say that not only did the owner deserve to get rich but also created a thousand jobs out of thin air; Camp socialist/social democrat would say this is an injustice because the owner got rich off the backs of the employees who did not fall into wealth.
People are what they are, and they believe what they believe, and we had some fairly decent democratic runs where the tug of war between those two camps did wonders. We had free enterprise societies, but we also had social safety nets. We had arenas where business’ best could compete, but where it wasn’t a free for all. We had economic growth, but also had environmental standards that grew more stringent over time.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was as good of a balance as we could hope for from people that inherently view the world diametrically opposite. We’d elect a government leaning one way until they stepped out of the box or were overwhelmed by their own incompetence, then we’d elect one leading the other way. It may not have seemed peaceful or great at the time, but compared to what we have now, it was paradise.
https://boereport.com/2023/05/02/column-the-climate-energy-environment-debate-is-completely-unhinged-heres-why/
