Climate Change is Not For Kids
The Perverse Psychology of Passing the Buck
Late last March, Senator Mike Lee of Utah addressed the Green New Deal. His speech roundly received the same level of derision he shares for the proposition. Stephen Colbert, for example, dismantled Lee’s performance with his typical satiric clarity. But Lee’s message nonetheless deserves some psychoanalytic clarity (which Colbert has yet to offer).
The ostensible purpose of the floor speech was to refute the resolution as a mere “token of elite tribal identity” for the “chic and woke.” (By the way, “woke” should probably be reserved for the people it describes.) Armed with both props and sarcasm, the Senator treated this critical issue with the seriousness he believes it deserves — in other words, none at all. The key phrase for my purposes (and Colbert’s) is contained in Lee’s “solution” to the challenge of climate change:
You know where the solution can be found? In churches, wedding chapels, and maternity wards across the country and around the world… Climate change is an engineering problem — not social engineering, but the real kind. It’s a challenge of creativity, ingenuity, and technological invention. And problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, but by more humans! More people mean bigger markets for innovation. More babies mean more…
