Weekly Briefing

Why progressives offer a more hopeful vision for the future 

Quick, who adheres to a more optimistic view of the world - American progressives or conservatives? For too long, especially since the early-1980's when millions fell for the sunny charms of Ronald Reagan, there has been a persistent myth in American politics that the ideological right offers a more optimistic vision of humanity and its future. You know the rap, it goes something like this:

"‘Liberals' hate America. All they see are the shortcomings and flaws. That's why they're always tearing things down and criticizing the country. If they think things are so bad here, why don't they try living in Russia? Conservatives know that the American free enterprise system is the envy of the world. That's why so many countries hate us - they're jealous of our success."   

Sometimes, even progressives fall into this trap of thinking about themselves this way. Especially when contemplating the dizzying array of problems confronting the modern world and the innumerable shades of gray that one must wrestle with while fashioning solutions, it's easy to feel like a perpetual naysayer:

"There's the far right, blissfully content and smug in the belief (albeit erroneous) that they've unlocked the secret to human prosperity and happiness while we progressives sit here, dourly examining the collateral damage."

Dig a little deeper, however, and the optimism/pessimism meter gets turned upside down. 

Optimistic about what?

Few issues of current import better illustrate the real difference between the two competing philosophies than the world's burgeoning environmental crisis - especially the problem of global warming. Earlier this week, a staffer over at the John Locke Foundation released a "Carolina Journal Exclusive" in which he attempted to describe a "study" released a couple of months ago by a group that has dedicated itself to challenging the scientific consensus about the planet's rapid, ongoing climate change. According to the "Exclusive," recent planetary warming trends are just the byproduct of "natural" oscillations in weather patterns. The piece went on:

"In addition to examining long-term trends in temperature increases, sea levels, and weather patterns, the report says that climate-mitigation efforts in North Carolina would have no impact on effectively curbing carbon dioxide emissions on a global scale.

Carbon dioxide emissions in North Carolina accounted for 0.57 percent of worldwide emissions in 2003, and the proportion will grow smaller in the 21st century as the demand for energy in developing nations grows, the report says.

"This means that even a complete cessation of all CO2 emissions in North Carolina would be undetectable globally, and would be entirely subsumed by rising global emissions in less than two month's time," Ferguson wrote.

Got that? North Carolinians can't solve the problem of explosive growth in planetary CO2 emissions by themselves. Well, who would have imagined? Guess we might as well give up. And while, we're at it, we should probably give up on a whole long list of societal problems:

• Health care? Heck, even if we cover all 1.5 million North Carolinians who currently lack insurance, that's just a drop in the bucket compared to the national and global problem. So, why bother?
• Affordable housing? Oh well, there are millions of people living in huts in some parts of the world. What difference does it make if we build some decent apartment to rent here?
• Cancer, diabetes, AIDS? Oh there's always some new disease coming along -people are gonna' die of something. If there's a big enough "demand" the market will respond.
• Torture and political repression? An age-old phenomenon - who are we to think we can do something about it?

In short, what seems at first blush to amount to a kind of optimism ("Hey, we've got the world figured out - the genius of the market will take care of everything!") is actually a profoundly pessimistic take on humanity and human nature. According to the Locke people and other market fundamentalists, it's futile for humans to tackle societal problems like global warming in an intentional and collective way. Not only are such actions doomed because they interfere with the "natural" order that results from the "free market," but they also require (gasp!) actual cooperation amongst states and nations.

In other words, these people are so enamored with the premise that all human behavior is (and ought to be) driven by the self-interest of individuals and groups that they can't even imagine the idea of intentional and cooperative societal (much less global) action. The very idea of individuals and nations coming together to address big picture challenges in a public and intentional manner (i.e. of everyone making modest, short-term sacrifices for the common, long-term good) is so foreign and noxious to them that they can't even make the small intellectual step that would be obvious to any schoolchild - namely, that North Carolina doesn't have to solve the CO2 crisis by itself!

Instead, they wallow in a strangely defeatist world in which humans are consigned to doing only for themselves as part of some bizarre, pre-ordained cosmic order. It is just such a philosophy, of course, that gave rise to President Bush's lame directive to Americans that they respond to September 11 by (remember?) shopping more.

Think globally act locally

What's perhaps most remarkable about the inherent pessimism of the market fundamentalist philosophy is its failure to account for history - particularly those episodes in American history in which the country was at its best. Think about them for a minute - the Revolution, the end of slavery, Social Security, defeating Hitler, the Civil Rights movement. These were not moments in which people merely did for themselves and placed their faith in Adam Smith's invisible hand. Rather, these were all moments in which the country came together to directly and intentionally make the world a better place and in which individuals sacrificed for the long-term common good.    

Given such a background, it's actually rather amazing that some people continue to reject the possibility of intentional, collective action to address the world environmental crisis. As people as varied as Thomas Friedman and T. Boone Pickens have argued, Americans have squandered an enormous opportunity over the last seven years. We could have seized upon the 9/11 attacks to launch an ambitious modern day equivalent of the Manhattan Project to kick our carbon addiction, modernize our economy and alter the dynamics of middle east politics. Instead, however, we've cast our lot with the "free market" (at least as its practiced by the energy industry oligopoly) and done as our president has told us - finding patriotism in trips to Target and Wal-Mart.

That's worked real well, hasn't it?

Going forward

Fortunately, there's still time to act. Notwithstanding the pessimists on the market fundamentalist right, humans still have it within their power to directly and intentionally change themselves and their world. Even through conservation and efficiency alone (i.e. being smarter and less obscenely wasteful), humans can, today, reduce their carbon footprint by a huge amount. All that is required is that they become informed, provided with incentives and act. Mix in 20 years of an intense, publicly funded commitment to finding a new and better way of powering our lives and there is no telling how radically and rapidly we might remake our economy. As has been noted in more than one place of late, "the Stone Age didn't end because humans ran out of rocks."

All of which brings us back to where we started and the following questions:

1)      As we contemplate the decades to come, what gives humans a better chance of building a better, healthier, sustainable world - pulling together to fix things directly and intentionally or simply pursuing our own self-interests and hoping forces beyond our control will make things all work out in the end?  

2)      Which approach do you think reflects a more optimistic view of the world and its future? 

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Weekly Briefing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.