John Burn-Murdoch writes in the FT, Europe’s green movement is in a strange place.

Our Take, With Doug Sheridan

John Burn-Murdoch writes in the FT, Europe’s green movement is in a strange place. In Germany, the Greens have been hemorrhaging votes and currently poll at just 10%, their lowest level of support in seven years. In the UK, the Green party hit a record high in last month’s general election, winning four seats in the Commons, up from the single seat it has held since 2010. But within weeks, the new MPs were fighting accusations of hypocrisy on net zero policy and scrambling to see off internal dissent.

Alongside the mixed electoral picture, the policy stances can look a little odd, too. In Germany, carbon emissions from power generation rose sharply in 2022, as Green ministers accelerated the shutdown of nuclear plants. In the UK, only days after the Greens’ electoral success, the party’s co-leader was criticized by figures in the wind power industry after he came out in opposition to new clean energy infrastructure.

Meanwhile, there's the risk that, as is already the case in the US, environmental campaign groups start to stop huge blocks of new solar power, offshore wind and transmission lines on conservation grounds.

All these contradictions are caused by the increasingly diverse nature of Green voter coalitions, which today draw support from several distinct groups—older and more conservative environmentalists, younger proponents of decarbonization, and deeply progressive protest voters. Stack them together, and these groups add up to a significant vote... but not a durable coalition.

When Greens are out of power, these dividing lines are masked—all three segments vote for their own idea of what the Greens represent. Once the party is a parliamentary grouping that must put out statements and or take actions in government, one or more segments tend to discover that the real Greens look quite different from their imagined ideal.

Our Take 1: This is an insightful piece by Burn-Murdoch, even if he likely wrote it as a lament of the current state of the environmental and climate movement. Regardless, it hits directly on a truth that we suspect will remain in place for many years. In abstract, the modern green movement is whatever those on the left want it to be. In reality, it's an unworkable hodge-podge of suspect political, social, economic and environmental ideologies working at cross purposes.

Our Take 2: Like many movements based on shaky principles, once reality can no longer be ignored, the green cause loses momentum—only to be resurrected down the road by the next wave of believers too young (or blinkered) to understand (or admit) how things turned out previously. In many respects, it's a cause with a need to continually reinvent itself... mostly to escape the failings of the past