From Environmentalism to Climate Catastrophism

Why are so many humans fond of apocalypse and fatalism for thousands of years? Why are so many humans very slow to learn and overcome their wildly exaggerated fears!

When human reasoning succumbs to medieval superstition!

Then there are those humans and businesses who exploit this catastrophism!

"Key Points

1. The environmental movement has always had an apocalyptic strain, going back to William Vogt’s 1948 bestseller, Road to Survival [sounds eerily like Road to Serfdom published 1944. What a copycat!], which foresaw civilizational collapse unless economic growth and population were curtailed.
2. That apocalyptic strain was submerged during modern environmentalism’s rise in the 1960s, sparked by the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; the movement’s rise prompted a raft of legislation in subsequent administrations to clean up the country’s air and water.
3. The apocalyptic strain resurfaced amid the anti–nuclear movement in the 1970s and ’80s, and ... in the 1990s that greenhouse gases were steadily warming the earth kicked off the climate change movement, which became radicalized ... and lurid scenarios of the scale and rapidity of climate change effects entered the mainstream.
4. The Obama administration’s “all-of-the-above” approach to energy policy was rejected by Democrats who deemed the approach inadequate in averting the impending apocalypse, leading to a policy that is neither politically popular nor technically feasible—but which now dominates the Democratic Party and alienates working class voters."

From Environmentalism to Climate Catastrophism: A Democratic Story | American Enterprise Institute - AEI