By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
You would think the Washington Post should be able to distinguish between a handful of protesting school kids and millions of grown up voters!
In recent months, massive demonstrations over climate change have rocked European capitals, dwarfing the mobilizations of the continent’s far right. Fridays for Future — a movement inspired by Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg — has seen countless European teenagers walk out of school to protest climate inaction. It underscores a growing consensus among the next generation of voters that governments must do more to mitigate environmental disaster, and an impatience with political parties that refuse to recognize the urgency of the situation.
Climate change, said an editorial in France’s Liberation newspaper, “has become the principal criteria of judging political action in the European Union.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/28/climate-change-threatens-wests-far-right/
Meanwhile back in the real world, the Green Party is slated to hold just 73 seats out of the total of 765 in the European Parliament, having slightly increased their number of seats by 23 since 2014:
https://europeelects.eu/ep2019/
Their gains appear to have come from other left wing parties, which have similar policies.
In total, the left wing has gained only 12 seats, while right wing parties have gained 40 seats.
Although the party groupings are a bit of a mixed bag, it is fair to say that the right wing groupings are generally sceptical of the sort of unilateral climate policies pursued by the EU.
They now hold 195 seats.
The Washington Post points out that the Greens scored strongly amongst the under 25s, but forget that children grow up!
More to the point they note that:
To be sure, their (Greens) appeal remains limited now mostly to Western and Northern Europe’s more affluent societies
And this sums matters up neatly. It is all well and good voting for climate action when your jobs and income are unaffected by it.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
May 28, 2019 at 12:21PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 