A Meta-Discussion of the Ongoing Left and Right Dialog about the Environment (and Other Things)
File under "Speak of the Devil"
Steven Hayward of the Claremont Institute published today a short (~6 minute reading) article that relates how the relatively intransigent personality traits of both the left and the right reveal themselves during the cultural and political discussion and decision-making about the natural environment.
If you’ve already read my October 3rd post, you should be able to recognize in Hayward’s article each of the psychometrically-identified liberal and conservative characteristics and tendencies I brought to your attention in that most recent Grundvilk piece.
You will also see that Hayward1 provides examples of how the characteristic “alarm” and “anxiety” of the American left wing very has often led to constructive cooperation with the American right wing — and to very significant improvement of the nationwide interaction with the natural world. Hayward also gives, however, examples of chaos-inducing and environmentally harmful policies resulting from one-sided left wing decision-making and eventual legislation/administrative action.
Ah — science really, really, really is a lot of fun when it turns out to be reliably predictive and consistent with the many other systems operating around it.
For Hayward’s article, “Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists - Can We Protect the Planet without Kneecapping the Economy?”, go to: https://americanmind.org/features/saving-the-environment-from-environmentalists/.
Hayward makes a big thing in his article about ‘thinking local’. Recall that my October 3rd post pointed out that beaver-like conservatives are, indeed, characteristically more concerned than liberals about what’s going on in their own home “ponds”.