As I predicted in January, over the past few months we’ve seen some pretty seismic changes taking place in the global climate movement. Driven by Fukushima and the continuing reverberations from Copenhagen/Climategate/Deepwater Horizon, there’s a growing debate amongst climate concerned people about whether ‘environmentalism’, as currently conceived, is up to the job of dealing with climate change.

Although this ‘limits of environmentalism’ discussion has been going on for several years now in academic circles, over the past 6 months it’s starting to break through into activism, with growing numbers of groups discussing what a ‘post environmentalist’ agenda might mean in practical terms for their policy agenda, projects, communications and the way they work.

With that in mind, those of us who have adopted the label of ‘post-environmentalist’ have a real responsibility to define what we mean by it. Inevitably, some of that definition will involve us asserting our originality and defining ourselves against what has come before. Despite heated discussions otherwise, I think that’s perfectly legitimate. But it’s also crucial that we clearly outline what we are for, ensuring that the term means far more than a fashionable protest against the status quo.

Below, I’ve tried to outline the key things which I think define post-environmentalism, and which give it life and practical relevance.

• Post environmentalism is about fundamentals
  Over the past couple of years, the movement has paid more and more attention about how it communicates its messages and how it is perceived by others. That’s a good thing. But it’s also important to recognise that communications tactics have their limits- remember the adage about putting lipstick on a pig?Post-environmentalists believe that in the wake of the setbacks of the past two years, climate advocacy doesn’t just need a facelift, it needs a fundamental re-think of the way we conceive the problems, and the way in which we construct solutions.
• Post-environmentalism is expansive
  Rather than viewing climate change in a clearly-delimited, single-issue box marked ‘environment’, post-environmentalists conceive issue priorities such as climate, energy, transport, poverty and development as inseparable.A post-environmental coalition is more than a tick-box of interest groups, however.It is defined not by issues, but by shared values. Rather than asking others to see the world as we do, to care about ‘our’ issue, or by asking them to adopt ‘our’ policy aims, it works with them to define aims and policy objectives which fulfil the needs of all involved. Partnerships exist for the common and shared good, not just as a means to an end.
• Post environmentalism is relentlessly populist
  In a democratic society, lasting political change relies upon building mass support. Far too often, climate activists have developed policy prescriptions and campaign asks in wilful isolation from popular and political context. The result has been policies which make intellectual sense, but which are unlikely to have mass appeal.Post-environmentalists are focused on crafting policy that is designed to coincide with the demands, priorities and worldview of the democratic majority. It is communicated in terms which are unambiguous, clear and relentlessly relevant. In a time-limited issue with millions of lives at stake, there’s no point in policy that doesn’t sell.
• Post-environmentalism puts humanity at the centre
  Increasing attention to ‘green jobs’ and other economically-focused appeals are a great thing but, in many respects they miss the point. Appeals to human needs and human dignity need to be more than a hook with which to attract people to ‘our’ issue. Public transport matters because it improves people’s lives- not just because it reduces emissions.Post-environmentalists believe that human dignity and economic development must be at heart of our agenda for pragmatic as well as ethical reasons. Humanity is viewed as part of, rather than alongside or in opposition to the natural World.

  While they accept that there are legitimate critiques of our existing models of resource-intensive growth, Post-environmentalists also recognise that the human appetite for technological and economic ‘progress’ is a fundamental and legitimate part of our identity as a species. Post-environmental policies seek to channel, rather than challenge these impulses, viewing humanity’s creativity and ingenuity as resources to be harnessed rather than problems to be contained.

• Post-environmentalism is self-critical and responsive
  A movement which defines itself against another is one which lacks durability and the ability to proactively shape an agenda of its own. ‘Post-environmentalists’ need to work hard to ensure that their agenda is shaped by more than their alienation from established environmentalism.Equally, however, post-environmentalists assert the distinctiveness of their agenda. They are open and frank about the loss of public confidence in existing climate policy, and about the limits of its appeal. Post-environmentalists should be open about their own failings and open to discussion and debate over their values and principles. There should be no sacred cows.

It was both a shocking and a moving experience. Most of us have seen the photos- outlines of long-abandoned houses visible through the woodland from the roadside, now being slowly choked by trees. Coats and school bags still hanging on their named pegs in Pripyat’s school, and rooms strewn with books in what was once a library.

Just a couple of hundred metres from the shell of the stricken reactor itself, men in protective suits could be seen on the roof. They were working, we were told matter-of-factly, to prevent the structure from collapsing, and had to be rotated on fortnightly shifts to prevent a potentially lethal dose of radiation.

However haunting, my day in the ‘Zone of Alienation‘ is a walk in the park compared to those forced to pack up and leave their lives behind when forced to evacuate, or the dozens of fire-fighters who gave their lives or health fighting the fire that day.

Perhaps it sounds crass though, but on balance, I left that day reluctantly believing that nuclear is our least bad option. We live in the shadow of a perfect storm: Our societies are faced with the need to de-carbonise energy supplies in no more than a couple of decades, whilst at the same time contending with soaring demand for the World’s remaining fossil fuel resources.

To meet these challenges, investment – both in deployment and research – in wind, tidal and solar needs to increase exponentially, on scales not seen since the Space Race. But even then, there’s no realistic way that renewables alone can meet existing energy demand, let alone projected growth from China, India, Brazil, Nigeria and others.

In an era of increased fuel competition, improved efficiency will be an economic no-brainer. But we would be naive to think that societies as a whole will willingly accept the kinds of wholesale lifestyle changes being promoted by some (usually affluent) Western environmentalists. China is not asking for our permission to build or consume- the question is not if, but how.

It would be unwise to speculate on the situation in Fukushima, because it is changing by the day, and I’m no nuclear engineer. It may be that we’ve experienced a meltdown, though even that would be far less serious than the fire at Chernobyl 25 years ago. Even so, Japanese authorities are quite rightly preparing for a worst case scenario.

But amidst the media hysteria, it’s worth putting things into perspective. The risks associated with our current fossil fuel-based system are far greater- many of us take for granted the 100,000 coal miners who have been killed in accidents over the past century or the 1100 cases of Black Lung Disease reported each year in the US alone. Whilst radioactive particles in the air may attract headlines, nobody bats an eyelid at the 180000 global deaths per year from asthma- the majority caused by chemical pollution in the air.

Like any technology, nuclear will go wrong and there will be accidents. Don’t believe any salesman who tells you the technology is now foolproof- though it’s certainly improved by leaps and bounds since ageing plants like Chernobyl and Fukushima were built.

But like so many risks associated with our modern world- from riding a car to invasive surgery- it is a risk that can be managed, minimised and, as citizens of France, Japan and other nations whose prosperity for the past 30 years has been built on nuclear know- lived with. Just as Tokyo exists in the shadow of the active volcano Mount Fuji, and San Francisco on the San Andreas faultline and New Orleans in a giant bowl below sea level, calculated risks are the price we pay for the lifestyles we choose to adopt.

Unlike natural disasters, the risks of nuclear can be managed. Proliferation risks can be dealt with by robust systems of international inspection and oversight. Construction costs and safety risks can be minimised by greater sharing of expertise and technology, particularly amongst groups of friends such as the EU. Disasters can be avoided by replacing outdated plants with new ones rather than placating nuclear energy’s opponents by prolonging the lives of obsolete ones indefinitely.

A 30km exclusion zone is a terrible thing. But in comparison to an unstoppable wall of water it seems positively orderly. Evacuations can be carried out, situations can be monitored, lives can be saved, damage can be minimised. While Japan’s Earthquakes and tsunamis are themselves unlinked to climate change, they nonetheless provide a taste of the power, scale and unpredictability of the natural disasters that will be inflicted on places such as Bangladesh by the heating of the Earth’s systems.

Back at Chernobyl – which remains so far the worst-case scenario- it’s possible 25 years later to safely stand in the vicinity of the reactor for up to 2 weeks. 100km away in Kiev, life has gone on more or less unaffected. Natural life has proven remarkably resilient, with natural selection playing its part in limiting genetic damage. In theory, resettlement of the outlying 10km of the exclusion zone is possible. I fed the fish in Chernobyl’s cooling ponds. However strangely, life and ecosystems at Chernobyl go on.

A World of climate change and limited fossil fuel supplies presents us with difficult choices that politicians and environmentalists alike struggle to face up to. There is no magic bullet- the time for ideal solutions passed several decades ago. It is no longer a question of good or bad, but a question of what our priorities are, the kind of societies we wish to live in and of acceptable and unacceptable risks.

Each society will have to make its own choices about how it deals with those risks and priorities. Any wise strategy will maximise the contribution made by renewables whilst recognising their technological and political limitations. In places such as Germany and the US, environmentalists have opposed nuclear and ended up with new coal.

Ultimately though, given the choice between the systemic threat of climate change and the manageable risks of nuclear, it’s a risk we can’t afford not to take.

As my colleague Hannah Smith has pointed out, it’s the year in which the world of climate campaigning came under pretty intense scrutiny from the media and public opinion, asking pretty searching and –at times uncomfortable- questions.

It’s not that having things thrown at us is anything new- the vested interests, the insiders, and the doubters have been throwing stuff at us for years. But 2010 has been different. The vast majority of people who have criticised us, accused us of lying or –in the bulk of cases- just plain stopped listening, are good people. The chances are at least one of them will be sitting around your Christmas dinner table.
Even more alarmingly for old-school environmentalists, some of the divergent voices are coming from within the movement itself. 2010 has been the year in which a few brave individuals such as Mark Lynas and groups such as the UKYCC have put their heads above the parapet.

These ‘Bright Greens’ and their counterparts such as Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in the US have challenged the movement to re-think its approach, its methods and to revisit some of our more fundamental assumptions, even revisiting sacred cows such as nuclear power and GM.

Whatever your view on the sacred cows, it’s hard to dismiss the argument that, amid the unprecedented airtime and incremental successes we enjoyed in the years leading up to Copenhagen, we got complacent and became detached from political and cultural reality.

Many of us felt free to retreat into our own worlds cushioned by the moral certainties of middle class idealism and ethical consumerism. We spent too much time preaching and not enough time listening, too much energy posturing and not enough time organising.

There’s nothing like a good knock across the head to clear the cobwebs away and 2010 has provided plenty of them. It would be a disaster for us to ignore or try to shut down the debate that has opened up over the past 6 months- to put our fingers in our ears and to suggest that the thing to do is for us to close ranks, to stick together and to keep on doing what we’re doing, just somehow harder.

Any dynamic movement truly committed to creating change must be open to change itself. It needs to be receptive to new ideas and dissenting voices, to be willing to engage with rather than to simply dismiss critics and challengers. Such debates make us stronger rather than weaker and contribute towards, rather than distract from, our ultimate goals.

Those debates will be difficult- they ask us to be critical friends to one another and to engage with the negative stereotypes of environmentalism rather than pretending they don’t exist.

2010 has given us all a heck of a headache and 2011 must be the year when the Bright Greens take centre stage and inject some much needed radicalism into an increasingly dull green climate movement.

Real radicalism isn’t re-fighting the battles of our parents’ generation, it’s having the courage to publicly challenge old orthodoxies and build something equal to the challenges of the here and now.

Given that the discovery of oil followed soon after the creation of such states, oil wealth has run parallel with development of their political and economic structures, facilitating the development of models which are defined and sustained by it.  As King Faisal of Saudi Arabia described it, “‘in one generation we went from riding camels to riding Cadillacs”[1]. Even those state which possess no oil resources of their own have not been left untouched.

Egypt, Syria and Jordan derive significant economic benefits from payments for pipeline crossings, transit fees and the use of the Suez Canal, whilst others such as Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco benefit from remittances from citizens working overseas. Relations between all Middle Eastern states and advanced industrialised countries in the West (and increasingly the East) are shaped above all else by considerations of the region’s significance as an energy producer.

Whilst there can be little disputing that oil has played a central role in creating the modern Middle East, then, it is far less clear how far this role has been a positive one. Flying in the face of early modernisation theorists, the extraordinary wealth experienced by the oil-producing states has failed to bring about true economic development. In the past decade, the Middle East as a whole has experienced the lowest growth rate in real GDP per capita of any part of the world except sub-Saharan Africa, whilst human development indicators such as literacy levels remain stubbornly low even in the wealthiest oil producing states.

Both statistics reveal a startling failure to invest oil revenues in the human capital necessary for genuine economic development. Politically too, the region remains weak, with political institutions that lack accountability to their citizens, widespread suppression of individual liberties and high levels of corruption. Nor has oil wealth coincided with security or stability. The past 50 years have witnessed three major wars between oil producing countries, most notably the Iran-Iraq war which resulted in over 1.5million casualties[2].

As Michael Herb rightly recognises, we should be sceptical about claims that all these problems can be attributed to oil wealth alone[3]. What should be clear, however, is that oil wealth has certainly not delivered political or economic development or security to the Middle East, and so cannot in any significant sense be considered a ‘blessing’. By considering the causal link between oil wealth and the significant political and economic development problems of the region in more detail over the remainder of this essay, we will establish how far it can be considered a ‘curse’.

At the core of the argument that oil has ‘cursed’ the development of responsive and accountable political institutions in the Middle East is the ‘rentier effect’, the most robust definition for which has been put forward by Hazem Beblawi. Beblawi and other proponents of the theory assume a link between taxation and political accountability. Because oil revenues significantly reduce a government’s dependence on taxation as a source of income, they argue, there is less of a need for governments to respond to the needs of their citizens, sustaining ruling elites that are detached both politically and financially from their citizens.

At the same time, citizens that lack a financial stake in political institutions are far less likely to engage with, or demand anything from, those institutions, impeding the development of a political culture. For one extreme example, we might consider Kuwait, in which formal citizenship is confined to just a third of the resident population, and in which, at the last election, just 15% of the population was eligible to vote. Although this situation has not gone without challenge in recent years, it seems reasonable to assume that the survival of such an unresponsive political system is at least in part thanks to the fact that the Kuwaiti oil wealth enables the government to make few financial demands upon the population, whilst at the same time delivering the highest level of GDP per capita in the world.

Although both the presence of a ‘rentier effect’ and a negative link between oil wealth and democratization have long been posited,  it has not been until much more recently that individual studies such as Michael Ross’ article ‘Does Oil Hinder Democracy?’ [4]have provided the statistical evidence to support them. Through the use of regression analysis to account for and isolate regionally-specific variables, Ross showed that the discovery of oil and (albeit to a lesser extent) other forms of mineral wealth had a detrimental effect on the development on democratization, especially where those states had previously been poor. In addition, Ross’ study demonstrates that the supposed anti-democratic properties of oil wealth are not confined to the Middle East, but experienced in oil-producing states elsewhere such as Nigeria and Venezuela.

The apparent universality of the phenomenon suggests that whilst we should certainly account for regionally-specific causes such as colonialism and the role of Islam in attributing blame for the Middle East’s weak political structures, the effects of oil wealth must share at least a portion of the blame. In addition to finding evidence for the ‘rentier effect’ as a causal mechanism, Ross also finds support for a ‘repression effect’, through which governments use oil wealth in order to build up an internal security apparatus in order to repress political opposition. Although subsequent studies such as Herb have questioned the centrality of the ‘rentier effect’ as a  causal mechanism and others have suggested alternatives, the claim that oil wealth has ‘cursed’ the development of responsive political structures in Middle Eastern states is well grounded both statistically and anecdotally.

Not only has oil wealth actively hindered the development of political structures in the Middle East that are responsive to their citizens, but it has also failed to deliver meaningful economic development. Such a conclusion may seem paradoxical given the astonishing physical transformation witnessed in oil rich states over the past 50 years. In 1950, for examples, Saudi Arabia had just 150 miles of paved roads compared to 28,000 today, whist the city of Dubai has recorded an annual population growth rate of 6.4% and as high as 16.7% in 2004. Despite the almost unprecedented scale of economic growth experienced in the past 50 years by oil-rich states, however, the evidence shows the need to distinguish mere growth from lasting and sustainable development.

More complex indicators of development, for example reveal a different picture[5]. Whilst the per capita GDP of Kuwait is close to the OECD average, for example, infant mortality rates are nearly twice as high, and the percentage of women employed in industry compared to agriculture stands at just 2%, compared to an OECD average of 18%. In Saudi Arabia, the contrast is even greater, with female literacy standing at just 62.9% compared to a OECD average of 98.6%, and infant mortality at 26 per 1000 live births, compared to 6.5 amongst OECD countries. What these indices suggest is that wealth has not brought about the changes in the levels of education, healthcare and economic diversification that we would expect from genuine economic development. Nor is the growth experienced by these countries self-sustaining.

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia’s dependence on foreign expertise to operate their oil infrastructure reflects an abject failure by these states to develop human capital of their own. The number of scientific and technical journals published in both countries per 100,000 residents is just 9.6 and 3.2 for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia respectively, compared to an OECD average of 50.5. Just as oil wealth has permitted the ruling families of oil-producing states to escape the need to be accountable to their citizens and thus impeded the development of responsive political structures, easy oil income has allowed these states to buy the infrastructure of wealthy countries whilst avoiding the much deeper systemic social and economic change associated with economic development in countries that historically have possessed far fewer natural resources of their own, such as Korea or the United Kingdom.

It is therefore clear that oil wealth, rather than facilitating economic development, has in fact acted as a ‘crutch’, creating an economic model which relies upon external expertise to exploit natural resources and nullifies the need for investment in human capital, the development of secondary industry, or the social change associated with it.

At the same time, however, it is important to put these findings into perspective. Although the development indices of oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait lag behind the OECD average, they are still far higher than those of their non-oil producing neighbours. By the same measure of infant mortality, for example, Egypt’s rate is as high as 66.1 per 1000 births.

Similarly, despite it lacking the luxury of access to easy oil money, Egypt has also failed to build up the technical infrastructure for self-sustaining economic development: just 1.8 scientific and technical journal articles are published in Egypt per 100,000 people. What this shows us, therefore, is that economic and political underdevelopment is a regional problem, not confined to oil-producing countries. Whilst  regional factors such as legacy of colonialism, competing sub-state and supra-state allegiances and the possible effects of Islamic culture on political life all play their part, there is a great deal of evidence that oil wealth too, has had a negative effect on the region as a whole.

Beyond the direct affects of oil wealth in stunting political and economic development in oil-producing countries themselves, the presence of oil has also contributed to the insecurity of the region as a whole. In addition, it has left it exposed to the foreign interference that has proven so damaging to the historical development of Middle Eastern states. Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906, for example, demonstrated the potential within Iran for a gradual transition towards more accountable forms of democratic government to take place. From the discovery of oil by D’Arcy onwards, however, Anglo-American policy towards Iran continually prioritised control of the nation’s oil reserves over its political development.

A CIA/MI6 orchestrated coup in 1953 removed Iran’s first stable elected government, instead endorsing the increasingly autocratic rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The experience of Iran is just one example of the way in which the West’s dependency upon Middle Eastern oil has caused them to peruse access to it at the expense of Middle Eastern political and economic development.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the United States and Britain pursued a contradictory policy of simultaneously condemning Iraq’s Saddam Hussein for his lack of respect for human rights, whilst at the same time ignoring the similar lack of civil liberties in Saudi Arabia, the region’s largest oil supplier. In seeking to explain this discrepancy, former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan commented that he was “saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,”. Similarly, for all the rhetoric employed by George HW Bush during the 1991 Gulf conflict about the need to restore Kuwait’s sovereignty, it is hard to ignore the fact that Kuwaiti and Iraqi disputes over levels of oil production and slant drilling into Iraqi’s Rumaila oil fields played a significant role in the build-up to the conflict, and that the war itself was largely financed by a $36bn contribution by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing states in the region.

Whilst one would be correct to identify colonialism’s legacy of weak states as an important contributor to the region’s instability, we should not ignore the fact that the colonial interests of both Britain and the United States over the past century are inextricably linked to their status as oil-consuming nations. With the exception of French intervention and the Suez Canal, it is easy to conclude that the Middle East would never have been cursed by colonialism in the way that it was, unless it had first been cursed by abundant oil reserves.

As we have demonstrated, whilst oil wealth cannot be given sole blame for the extensive political, economic and security problems of the Middle East, it is nonetheless inextricably tied up with them. As statistical and anecdotal studies show, the discovery of oil within weak, initially poor states typically has a negative effect on their political and economic development. Whilst oil wealth did not create the autocratic monarchies which dominate oil producing states such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, it has played a crucial role in sustaining them and in warding off pressures for political change. Similarly, whilst economic underdevelopment is a problem experienced by oil producers and non-oil producers in the region alike, the discovery of oil wealth has forestalled, rather than catalysed true economic development.

Ultimately, however, oil’s greatest curse has been its role in incentivising colonial interference and exploitation of the Middle East by external powers over the past century, causing untold damage to its historic political and economic development in the process.

[1] Quoted by Nahle, Carole in Doha Debates: ‘This House believes that oil has been more of a curse than a blessing for the Middle East’, transcript downloaded from (http://www.thedohadebates.com/debates/debate.asp?d=23&s=2&mode=transcript)

[2] Global Security.org ‘Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)’ (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/iran-iraq.htm)

[3] Herb, Michael. “No Representation without Taxation? Rents, Development and Democracy,” Comparative Politics 37, no. 3 (2005).

[4] Ross, Michael. “Does Oil Hinder Democracy?” World Politics 53, no. 3 (2001): 325-361

[5] Figures found in ibid, Herb

The Reagan presidency transformed the federal government itself too. It halted the expansion of the incipient American welfare state, wasting no time in dismantling significant numbers of Johnson’s Great Society initiatives, as well as bringing into executive departments and the judiciary a new generation of conservative officials and advisors, many of them highly sceptical of the utility of the very departments and agencies they were supposed to be heading.

Whilse there are plenty of grounds to regard the Reagan presidency as a transformative one in both political, economic and electoral terms, there is also much to suggest that it fell short of the ‘revolution’ which Reagan had promised during his presidential campaign. In his first State of The Union Address on the 18th of February, the new president articulated what he called “four common-sense fundamentals” of his economic programme: Reductions in the growth of government spending; Individual and business tax reductions to stimulate saving and investment; Elimination of government regulation considered harmful to business; Maintaining a consistent monetary policy that would maintain the value of the dollar.

Though primarily economic (dubbed Reaganomics), these aims had a wider, political purpose.

They were designed to “curb the size and influence of the federal establishment”, promoting in its place a new ethic of restored American self-confidence, individualism and entrepreneurship as the drivers of economic growth and prosperity. Measured in these terms, the Reagan presidency did not resemble a ‘revolution’ in any practical sense. In the event, government grew in the Reagan years. By the time his successor, George HW Bush left office, government debt was higher than at all other periods in American history combined. The share of national income diverted into federal taxes stood at just 0.1% lower than when Reagan had come into office, whilst total spending on welfare programmes in 1989 exceeded 1981 levels.

Although from 1982 onwards Americans did enjoy one of the longest periods of economic growth in American history, the rate of growth itself was no higher than it had been during the Carter years, and indeed, much of it can be credited, ironically, to Keynsian-style deficit spending by the federal government rather than the ‘Reaganomics’ of which so much was made. Though Reagan years brought with them significant change, they were far less successful in overturning the old order than the president and his supporters had promised. Because of this, Reagan’s presidency is far better understood as a transformation than a revolution.

With this in mind, we must weigh up the reasons for the failure and limitations of the self-proclaimed ‘Reagan Revolution’, and consider the questions it raises. Were these problems with their origins in the many contradictions and oversights of New Conservative philosophy, or might a President of different qualities to Reagan have been more successful? Even under different leadership, how far would the United States Constitution and political system, designed to constrain and counterbalance federal and executive power, have allowed a true ‘revolution’ to take place? Finally, in a system so sensitive to the ebb and flow of Presidential prestige, we must allow for contingency and the role that it played in assisting or hindering the President’s objectives.

It is clear that the contradictions within the philosophy underlying the ‘Reagan revolution’ themselves contributed to its limitations, as did divisions within the broad electoral coalition created to deliver him the Presidency. As Hodgson explains in his history of the ascendancy of the ‘religious right’, Reagan was the first president to explicitly endorse the aims of the evangelical protestant movement, with its commitment to overturning abortion rights and restoring prayer in schools.

In electoral terms they had become a politically significant force by 1980, with 23% of voters regarding themselves as ‘evangelical’ Protestants, peaking at 32% in 1987. These religious voters were just one component, however, in a wildly diverse political coalition. Hodgson notes the “oddity” of their support for a once-divorced movie star, “a ‘light drinker’” and a man “fond of telling off-colour stories”. Reagan, he writes, “had a family life that was in several respects by no means a model of evangelical purity” .

These social conservatives sat alongside Reagan’s ‘kitchen cabinet’ of California businessmen, architects of the very permissive modernity that they deplored. At the same time, anti-Communists such as Reagan’s supporters within the Committee on the Present Danger were urging astronomical increases in military spending, whilst the fiscal conservatives within the coalition were urging the President to decisively reduce the size of the federal government.

The coalition which delivered Reagan into office in 1980, therefore, was one of seemingly insurmountable contradictions and competing interests, with the ‘Reagan Revolution’ meaning a vast number of different things to different people. It set out to restore American self-confidence in the federal government whilst substantially reducing its capabilities, cutting the budget whilst seeking to outspend the Soviet Union in arms on a scale with which they could not possibly compete. Social conservatives sough to restore American morality whilst competing with those who wished to remove restrictions on business and media activity.Reaganite rhetoric emphasised individual liberties whilst condemning federal activism to prevent corporate abuses at home and supported authoritarian regimes in Argentina and Nicaragua.

Though broad electoral coalitions of the sort which delivered Franklin Roosevelt victory remained a constant and necessary feature of the bipolar American political system, the Reagan coalition was unique in that it contained not just diverse groups, but those with explicitly contradictory political objectives. In light of this fact, it seems rather unsurprising that the ‘Reagan Revolution’ failed to satisfy any of these groups in their entirety and that the programme, whilst clear in its headline objectives, lacked the coherence necessary to fully deliver upon them.

In many respects, therefore, Reagan’s ability to bring together such diverse groups is clear evidence of his political skill, and attributes as a leader. Leuchtenberg has made much of Reagan’s stylistic parallels with FDR and the way in which he used the warmth of his personality in order to inspire confidence amongst his fellow citizens . Reagan’s 1980 campaign began with Reagan proclaiming “”a troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading with us to keep our rendezvous with destiny ” , drawing clear parallels to FDR’s appeal to the inner strength of the American people in the days of the Great Depression, and earning him the headline “Franklin Delano Reagan” from the New York Times.

Reagan’s 1984 campaign became known for the ‘Morning in America’ advert, which announced that America was “prouder and stronger and better” , at the end of Reagan’s first term in office. Through a mastery of the medium of television learned during his Hollywood career, meticulous planning of public appearances (Donald Regan, his Chief of Staff remembered how “every place where Reagan was expected to stand was chalked with toe marks”) and warm personality, he succeeded in achieving levels of personal popularity not seen since the days of Roosevelt, which, in many respects transcended the success or failure of his policies. Dallek has made much of Reagan’s “extraordinary mastery of public symbols that resonated so effectively with millions of Americans”.

The value of such skills to the success of the ‘Reagan Revolution’ is put into clear relief by a comparison with Barry Goldwater, who foreshadowing Reagan, had in 1964 railed against “the encroachment of individual freedom by Big Government”. The aggressiveness and perceived instability of a Goldwater presidency turned out to be fatal, gifting Johnson a resounding victory in the 1964 election. In contrast, Dallek notes that Reagan’s gift was to articulate similar objectives “not by being a loud and threatening figure but by making wisecracks or poking fun at his enemies”.

To at least some degree, therefore, Reagan must personally be credited for taking broadly similar ideas and presenting them in a way which was appealing to the electorate.

Just as Reagan himself was central to the successes achieved by the ‘Reagan revolution’, however, many of its shortcomings and the struggle to implement it can be attributed both to his personality and style of government. Gareth Davies has referred to him as a “a pragmatic ideologue, willing to compromise and accept partial victories”, a judgement evidenced by the ease with which he compromised on the centrepiece of his first term, the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act, which sought to restore growth to the American economy through tax cuts and reductions in federal spending.

Through such willingness to compromise in his first term in office, Reagan harmed the overall coherence and weakened the prospects of success of the Reagan revolution. Whilst delivering cuts in regulations for business and taxation, for example, he shied away from substantial attacks on Great Society and New Deal programmes such as Medicare and Social Security, which between them accounted for almost half of the federal budget.

This oversight appears to go to the core of the flaws in Reagan’s style of leadership. Whilst his predecessor Carter had become known for his pessimism and appeals to frugality, the ebullient Reagan’s appeal lay in the fact that he made so few demands upon the electorate. New York Times reporter Bill Keller remarked that, “Reagan asked Americans to dream great dreams, but he rarely asked them to give up anything”.

By espousing a populist agenda which lay the nation’s ills at the foot of a mythical ‘big government’, the Reagan Presidency engineered a situation in which aspects of federal activity which had relatively few vocal advocates, such as business regulation, were easily overturned, while more popular and substantially more expensive aspects of the great Society, such as Social Security and Medicare were left largely untouched. The Reagan Revolution’s progress was curtailed by the President’s unwillingness to make difficult decisions, and by his lack of a mandate to do it.

The most substantial constraints on the wholesale implementation of the Reagan Revolution, however, were political and structural. As activist presidents throughout American history have discovered, the US Constitution established a system of government which was, quite intentionally, resistant to rapid political change, and even less so to change initiated by the Executive. Reagan’s efforts to use presidential leadership to cut back federal programmes differed from Roosevelt and Johnson’s efforts to extend them not just in intent, but also in the fact that he never enjoyed the support of both houses of Congress.

Whilst Roosevelt and Johnson could rely on significant majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate in order to pass their legislative agendas, Reagan faced Democratic majorities in the House and, from 1987 onwards, in the Senate as well. Even beyond such structural political obstacles, the very nature of the president’s agenda of cuts provoked Congressional opposition from Republicans and Democrats alike. Democratic Majority Leader Tip O’Niel called the President’s proposals to penalize those who opted for early retirement as “despicable”, whilst bipartisan majorities overturned attempts to reduce school meal sizes and to classify ketchup as a vegetable.

In broader terms, therefore, the representative and pluralistic nature of the US federal government, with features such as the Connecticut Compromise giving smaller, rural states a greater voice, made it extremely problematic for the Reagan administration to overturn federal programmes or revoke programmes upon which, through their popularity, had become retrenched. Had the President maintained a more direct and assertive style of Congressional leadership rather than the delegation of authority to a small circle of confidants as he did, the odds of overcoming such obstacles would undoubtedly been greater. Nonetheless, the structural opposition to any retrenchment of the federal government was always bound to be broad and bipartisan.

With these philosophical, personal, political and structural considerations in mind, we should be impressed that Reagan achieved as much of his so-called ‘revolution’ as he did. Whilst its success in reversing the expansion of the federal government and freeing a greater share of the economy for private enterprise is highly dubious, Reagan’s period in office nonetheless saw a serious takeover of the instruments of government by conservatism for the first time since the middle of the century.

Religious fundamentalists such as James Watt inhabited Theodore Roosevelt’s Department of the Interior, and soon set to work dismantling much of what it sought to achieve. Economic policy fell into the hands of men such as David Stockman who was ideologically committed to bankrupting the federal government. Nonetheless, the damage that such figures were able to inflict was restrained by Reagan’s failure to capture Congress, and by the responsiveness of Congressmen to the interests of their constituents.

In these respects, therefore, the Reagan Administrations brought about a transformation, rather than revolution. The real revolution was an electoral one. Through his rhetoric, personal appeal and the electoral coalition he created, Reagan has transformed the terms of American political discourse to the present day, forcing Democratic and Republican presidents alike to pay lip service to the rhetoric of ‘small government’ and social conservatism. This remarkable achievement meant that although the Reagan Revolution did not achieve its goals within the lifetime of Reagan’s time in office, they would be adopted and continued by his successors of both parties in the years to come.

As a legislative programme which sought to deploy the power of the federal government to create a ‘Great Society’ in which even the most marginalised had the ability to prosper, Johnson’s programme fulfilled all of the above characteristics. It was self-consciously modelled on the New Deal with its emphasis on Presidential leadership and the use of government regulation and agencies as drivers of relief for the disadvantaged and of reform. Indeed, in private Johnson routinely admitted a desire for the acclaim that Roosevelt had gained amongst the marginalised.

On the other hand, in its political consequences, the Great Society shared little in common with its 1930s or late 19^th century predecessors. Whilst these reform movements marked incremental advances in the tide of reformism, built lasting political coalitions and set precedents to be built upon, it is tempting to see, as figures such as Steigerwald have, the Great Society era as the climax of America liberalism, with much of American politics since characterised by efforts to reverse or at least repudiate its legacy. Whilst the reforms of New Deal liberalism brought Franklin Roosevelt lasting recognition and gratitude from the millions who mourned his death in 1945, Johnson unhappily remarked that “I tried to make it possible for every child of every color to grow up in a nice house, eat a solid breakfast, to attend a decent school…but look at what I got instead. Riots in 1975 cities. Looting. Burning. Shooting”[1]. Whilst attempting to create a stronger society, the Johnson presidency ended with Americans more divided than at any time since the Civil War. It oversaw the collapse (and, claim opponents, actively facilitated) the replacement of racial integrationism with racial militancy, and sowed the seeds for the rise of a New Republicanism in the 40 years that followed.

To understand why the consequences of the Great Society era were so radically different to that of the New Deal, it is necessary to consider the relationship of both to the broader liberal tradition in American politics, the opportunities and limitations inherent within it, as well as the ways in which the Great Society departed from it.

In its approach towards poverty, the Great Society shared much of the New Deal’s enthusiasm for experimentation and, more broadly, the progressive faith in using academic ideas to drive policy. Much of the Great Society’s approach to poverty, for example, was informed by the belief that it was at least as much a political and cultural problem as an economic one. The anthropologist Oscar Lewis had coined the term ‘the culture of poverty’ in 1959, whilst David Hackett, head of the Office for Juvenile Delinquency, whose work the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 built on, drew heavily from the work of Ohlin and Cloward at the University of Chicago, who argued that “delinquency was misguided energy that could be rechanneled into respectable paths if only opportunities were there”[2].

Influenced by the work of such men, and provided with just $2.1m to spend, Hackett piloted Community Action Programs, initiatives through which urban poor were provided with support from the federal government to politically organise themselves in order to improve their situation. In many respects, such pragmatism and openness to the latest ideas shared much in common with the Roosevelt years. He too had been informed by a ‘Brains Trust’ of academics and experts in their field, whilst seasoned progressives such as Harry Hopkins and Frances Perkins were given considerable freedom within their departments to pilot new schemes and fund pioneering approaches to social problems, as seen through seemingly obscure projects such as Hopkins’ Federal Theatre Project. Whilst such potentially risky initiatives operated with Roosevelt’s tacit support, however, he was careful not to become overcommitted to any single one until it had been proven a success.

Where Johnson’s Great Society departed from its predecessors was in the haste with which the experimental policies of figures such as Hackett were recklessly embraced and publicly committed to. Matusow writes how “in one stroke Johnson escalated community action from an experimental program to precede the War on Poverty into the very war itself”. The Economic Opportunity Act famously guaranteed the poor “maximum feasible participation” in local government, with Johnson breathlessly promising that “the days of the dole in our country are numbered”. The results of the sudden and unexpected expansion of community action programmes were soon felt. Democrats such as San Francisco mayor John Shelly complained that the community action was “undermining integrity of local government” after militants had stormed the mayor’s office and extorted $45,000 for Summer youth employment, and there were numerous examples of community action being used as a federally-sponsored platform for black and left-wing radical attacks on often Democratic local government machines.

The consequences of the hastily-expanded Community Action Programs are a good example of the ways in which the Great Society, whilst sharing structural similarities with previous American reform movements, was also a significant departure. Whilst the Progressives and New Dealers had both shared a technocratic streak and an understanding of education, they were also deeply practical and incrementalist in their approach. In contrast to Johnson, Roosevelt never dared promise that poverty could be eliminated overnight, nor was he prone to narrowing his policy options by saying such things as education being “the only valid passport from poverty”.

Both Roosevelt and the Progressives understood that, in order to be politically viable, efforts to alleviate poverty had to be highly visible and deliver fast results to the broadest section of the country. Community action failed on both counts. A focus on addressing poverty by helping the politically disenfranchised in the inner cities by the mid 1960s meant, in reality, focusing on blacks and ethnic minorities whilst neglecting the working class and lower-middle class whites who, through taxation, paid for it nonetheless. These groups would form the basis of Regan’s electoral coalition 15 years later.

Secondly, by choosing to fight the ‘War on poverty’ at a cultural, rather than economic level, Johnson forsook the practicality of the New Dealers in favour of an open-ended commitment to political organisation amongst the marginalised whose practical effects would, in any case, have been a long time coming and highly unpredictable. In place of highly visible (if economically questionable) initiatives such as the TVA, young men planting trees as part of the CCC, or even the Progressives efforts to eliminate child labour, all Johnson had to show for his efforts and expenditure in the short term was the highly embarrassing images of Black Panthers taking on local government machines from his own party, leaving these programmes highly vulnerable to conservative attacks in years to come.

To understand just how much of a departure Johnson’s approach to the War on Poverty was, we might contrast it against the kind of plans being put forward by Civil Rights leaders such as Bayard Rustin, and Philip Randolph. In 1966, they proposed a ‘Freedom Budget’, drafted by Leon Keyserling, Truman’s Chief Economic Advisor. In place of the abstract, long-termist approach of the tactics advocated by men such as Ohlin and Cloward, the Freedom budget aimed to bring about full employment by 1975.

It criticised the Johnson administration’s tendency to “place excessive emphasis on the personal characteristics of the poor” and recognised that projects such as the community action programs threatened to “generate resentment and reaction by lifting expectations much more rapidly than they are being fulfilled”[3]. Theirs was a plan that seems to fit much more comfortably with the legacy of the New Deal, investing in areas where the effects would much more quickly be felt such as low-cost housing, education and health services, as well as providing jobs which would benefit not just minorities, but the economy as a whole.

The problems raised by the War on Poverty and the Community Action experiment are symptomatic of the ways in which the Great Society departed from previous American reform movements, often to its detriment. Whilst incrementalism and pragmatism had traditionally been offered, Johnson was prone to overselling his policies, and failed to sufficiently focus on delivering immediate, politically symbolic improvements to the lives of enough Americans. There were occasions where he did venture down this path, such as in the provision of school lunches and food stamps, but all too often such measures were afterthoughts, underfunded and, thanks to Johnson’s inability to manage expectations, disappointments. Whereas progressivism had historically emphasised poverty alleviation as a tool for bringing the nation closer together and understood the political risk in alienating the white middle class, all too often the Great Society delivered benefits such as healthcare to select groups whilst neglecting the majority, and undermined the city machines which, for good or ill, had historically formed the bedrock of the Democratic Party’s grassroots support in urban areas.

On the other hand, it is perhaps too tempting to blame the Great Society’s shortcomings on Johnson’s deviance from the American progressive tradition when, in truth, many were long-term features of it. American liberalism, writes Hugh Brogan,  had since the beginning been driven by a spirit of ‘do goodism’ amongst the educated middle and upper classes, driven by their own sense of idealism and morality rather than being necessarily representative of those they purported to help.  This meant that, in the longer term, the American liberal tradition was always going to be vulnerable at times where the interests of these intellectual elites diverged with those of the majority working class- as it did over the race issue.

Once the rhetoric of the elites fell out of step with the scale of the changes they were capable of bringing about, as occurred with the War on Poverty, it was always likely that many of these poor and marginalised groups would seek a voice of their own. Similarly, many of the limitations of the Great Society’s programmes were faults inherited from the American reform tradition itself. Johnson inherited their aversion to radical economic change and their commitment to American capitalism, which in turn made him unwilling and unable to challenge vested interests such as the American Medical Association and made him too willing to compromise on projects such as Medicare.

Such compromises would significantly harm the effectiveness of these programmes (such as by allowing medical costs to skyrocket), in turn damaging the reputation of liberal achievements and leaving them open to attack by the New Right in the years that followed. In its overall shape and objectives, therefore, the Great Society was not a fundamental departure from previous American reform movements.

However, in its political organisation and presentation, Johnson failed to borrow enough from the successes of previous programmes such as the New Deal, whilst replicating many of the Progressive tradition’s flaws which, amongst the changing social background of American society in the 1960s, were increasingly visible.

[1] Boyer, Clark, Kett The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People p901

[3] Quoted in Steigerwald, p56

However- there are some good reasons why the Tea Party shouldn’t be overestimated and may not hold together for the long-haul:

• Excellent article in Mother Jones on why it may well fall apart due to the average age of most of its members, now that healthcare’s gone through:

  http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/will-health-care-reform-kill-tea-party

• The movement is heavily dependent on anger and is a responsive, rather than proactive movement. It’s a mish-mash of groups who were united in their opposition to healthcare and to the (appallingly communicated) Recovery Act. Whether they’ll be similarly united in creating presenting an alternative agenda of their own is harder to judge.
• I’d imagine that it would need a strong, charismatic candidate that is capable of harnessing this energy to a policy programme rather than simply reactive movement- a Reagan or Obama. Democratic anger about Iraq in 2004 wasn’t enough to win the election- it took Obama to harness that anger and reorient it into positive action for it to be effective.
• White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPS) are demographically in decline and will be a minority by 2050. The Tea Party Movement does nothing to increase the Republican’s appeal to today’s ethnic minorities, and in 2012, we can assume Obama’s black support will remain extremely strong. If he can get some sort of immigration reform in before then and make some progress with Cuba, he’ll have the Latino vote sewn up too. A Palin candidacy would also galvanize white liberals in the same way Bush did.
• The movement itself is heavily divided http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-6143388-503544.html already, there’s tension between the corporate-sponsored, extremely wealthy leadership who think they can control this thing, and the genuine grassroots they’ve been trying to harness. Again, they’re united in opposition to Obama, but there’s lots of ideological incoherence.
• They’re the Republican’s worst nightmare, and may mean that the Republicans are hopelessly divided in 2012. Mitt Romney (clean shaven, all-American, establishment, relatively moderate billionaire) is 99% guaranteed to run (he’s kept his campaign running since 2008) and him vs. Palin would expose many of the contradictions within the party between the religious-right, paleo-conservatives, fiscal conservatives etc. We saw evidence of this in 2008, and there’s no reason to think these fissures are going to narrow. The Tea Party is continues to be linked to vigilante militias, 9/11 conspiracy nuts, ‘birthers’ (who dispute Obama’s citizenship) and other seedy groups- and thus are a bit of an embarrassment to the Republican leadership.
• Strong links to think-tanks and corporate lobbyists such as http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/09/lobbyists-planning-teaparties/ mean that it’s leadership isn’t as grassroots as many of its followers would like to think. All you need is another Oklahoma City Bombing or some other outrage by some right-wing nutjob linked to the Tea Party movement, and it’ll start to become seen as toxic- big backers will pull their money out.
• Because of thestructure of the US system itself and how American parties are organised, the two-party system is incredibly entrenched- it successfully held off similar change in the 1930s and 1960s from similar demagogues such as George Wallace and Huey Long. In order to get influence, groups like this have to first gain influence in, and take over one of the two existing parties. For reasons above, such division is more likely to benefit the Dems than hurt them.

While the Tea Party Movement itself isn’t a direct political threat, the anger that it represents is, and I believe presents us in the UK with important lessons. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whats-Matter-America-Resistable-American/dp/0436205394/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270332352&sr=8-1 is very, very useful reading.

The Tea Party Movement is fuelled by anger and a sense of marginalisation- a sense of not being listened to by the ‘latte drinking liberal elites’, far off in Washington. It’s a backlash against political correctness- the sense that the country is being pushed and manipulated against the will of the majority by a small number of elites with their own moral and social agenda. As much as I wholly agree with what it accomplished, the means through which abortion rights were established through Roe vs. Wade in 1973 exemplifies this. The right of an American woman to have an abortion wasn’t enshrined by popular pressure or even a democratic process legislation, but rather by the actions of a handful of liberal judges on the Supreme Court. Whilst such actions may be technically and politically (and even morally) legitimate, that doesn’t mean they’re seen to be legitimate.

Time and time again, great progressive causes have failed to carry working class Americans with them. Too many of the movements for gender, LGBTQ and racial equality, environmentalism and secular government have been seen to have been driven by a small, influential, affluent, predominately white elite allied to ethnic minority groups and based in the North East and on the West Coast. Remember the photos of John Kerry jetskiing on the Kennedy family estate in the ultra-exclusive Martha’s Vinyard? They’re seen as culturally and politically disconnected, somehow more ‘European’ than American and out of touch with the white, working class, predominately religious American heartland.

The Tea Party Movement is what happens when a small, motivated (and well-intentioned) minority try to impose change without carrying a broad section of society with them. I’m afraid we’re beginning to see it happen here- just go to Barking or Dagenham, or speak to many taxi drivers or read many of the articles of The Sun, or the Mail’s latest outrage of ‘political correctness gone mad’. It’s also got lessons for our climate movement and demonstrates that real diversity and inclusivity – along socioeconomic, as well as ethnic lines- is an absolute imperative.

If we want change to last, it’s not enough for us to believe we’re right and for us to try to impose it from the top down- we’ve got to make others believe it too.

So what should those of us who give a damn do? Well for starters, don’t lose your head. The numbers of people driving this climate sceptic twaddle are relatively small. Nasty, cynical, vocal, below-the-belt, but small. And between you and me, they don’t tend to be very clever either- most of them are definitely not climate scientists themselves.

And the good news? Scientists can generally be trusted. Whether it’s monitoring the safety of your food or ensuring that those flu tablets won’t kill you, these guys don’t lie for a living. They earn their money (and their reputations) by getting it right most of the time, and being honest about when they don’t. So, emails or no emails, when tens of thousands of scientists across the world tell you something, sensible people take notice.

What’s interesting though is that when you speak to the people peddling the anti-climate change rubbish, it’s not really the science that they’re interested in. They drive cars and take medicine like the rest of us. It’s not the scientists or the science that they dislike, it’s us. The ‘bossy environmentalists’. The ‘alarmists’ with their heads in the clouds. The ‘dangerous lefties’. The ‘political correctness brigade’ trying to tell people how to live their lives. If ‘climate-gate’ teaches us anything, it’s that environmentalists have got a serious image problem, and that if a few emails or doubts about the science give people an excuse to stop listening or caring, many will.

But here’s thing. When you look at the things that need to be done to tackle climate change, they’re things which any sane person would agree with. You don’t have to be an environmentalist to think that the trains or buses should be cheaper and more reliable so that the roads are less blocked up with polluting cars. You don’t have to be a raging leftie to be sick of yo-yoing petrol prices or extortionate heating bills to want a cleaner alternative. Green industries are booming. $200bn was spent on renewable energy last year- that’s double what was spent in 2006. At times like these, you don’t have to be an activist to want a secure, well-paying job that just happens to be green.

The point is, the best way to get action on climate change may well be to stop talking about it as a scientific or environmental problem. For years, we’ve banged on about polar bears, whinged about ice caps, waved our placards and shouted slogans. Although it’s got us some of the way, huge sections of ordinary people have been left out in the cold.

Don’t get me wrong- the polar bears matter, but if you want to engage people and convince them of the need to act, then we need a new, diverse, inclusive climate movement that is able to connect with people’s ordinary lives and concerns. A post-carbon World isn’t just good for the environment, it’s good for our health, our wallets and our quality of life. It’s an opportunity for all of us, and you don’t have to be an environmentalist to want to be a part of it.