Rise of the Watermelon
6th June 2017
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, conservatives saw environmentalism as replacement for the bogeyman of communism—or at least that’s what FiftyThirtyEight science reporter Maggie Koerth-Baker declared on NPR’s Science Friday. In the ’90s, she noted, some conservatives started calling environmentalists “watermelons”: “green on the outside, red on the inside.” Host Ira Flatow chuckled disbelievingly.
But Koerth-Baker has her history backwards: Lots of reds did turn green in the 1990s. Unmoored socialists cast about for some other theory explaining how capitalism would destroy itself. They began adopting and expanding upon the arguments of radical environmentalists, who had been arguing that capitalism will collapse because the pollution produced by its heedless overconsumption will build to an ecological breaking point.
And that line of argument is still with us today. For example, activist Naomi Klein asserts that climate science is “the most powerful argument against unfettered capitalism” ever.
What they’re for wanders all over the map, but what they’re against is constant: Free minds and free markets.