The recent Bud Light marketing disaster highlights how controversies around social Wokeism – aka the “S” in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) – become social media firestorms and consume news cycles. However, while lightning rod incidents are worthy of national attention on important issues, the destructive consequences of environmental policies pushed by the climate cult are too often ignored and overlooked.
Fortunately, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is helping to change this dynamic. As he campaigns across New Hampshire, he is exposing on the national stage how the climate cult is part and parcel with this broader Woke agenda. He eloquently explains how the “E” isn’t a well-intentioned effort to protect the environment. It’s about imposing a “climate religion” on America of identity politics, virtue signaling, and top-down control that threatens to “shackle” our economy. He’s been so effective in calling out this climate religion that he’s even now censored for it.
As Ramaswamy often articulates on the campaign stump, the environmental and social pillars of the ESG woke agenda share the same underlying philosophies. Both seek to dictate how society looks, thinks, acts, consumes, and behaves. Its goal is to bypass the consent of the governed and implement the whims of a small minority over every aspect of our lives, telling us what to drive, what to eat, and punishing businesses for failing to comply. Given this vast overlap, it’s unsurprising that activists can often be found attending other protests with their Woke comrades on their “off” days.
Like other purveyors of the Woke ideology, the climate cultists are willing to use any possible government use – whether through illegal executive overreach, legislative power in Washington and the states, or Soros-backed activist judges – to achieve their aims.
Another similarity is that their extreme goals cannot be tempered by evidence. Despite the demonstrable success of fossil fuels in uplifting humanity’s standard of living, climate cultists seek to eliminate fossil fuels and the human advancement that has resulted from them. This religious mindset explains why some climate cultists are even calling for Earth Day to be made a religious holiday.
However, climate cultists are even more dangerous in many ways than other aspects of Woke ideology.
First, their vision for our society is, in many ways, more regressive. These radicals would send us back to the early 20th century as far as our access to the goods, services, and technologies that we depend on to sustain and grow modern life. Imagine a world without aspirin or other time-release medications, contact lenses, food abundance, smartphones, or hand sanitizer.
Second, the naked hypocrisy of their goals is even harder to swallow. Take, for example, their fight against nuclear power. Though climate cultists claim to care most about reducing carbon dioxide use, they reject using this carbon-free and abundant energy source.
This disconnect between rhetoric and actions that Ramaswamy is skilled at bringing to light shows the true aim of the movement: eliminating freedom and human prosperity by sacrificing them to their golden idol – the Paris Climate Accords.
Suppose Ramaswamy keeps this message front and center during his presidential campaign. In that case, he can be expected to gather momentum as more and more Americans become disenchanted with the Woke ESG policies. But he cannot fight this battle alone. The same focus and energy that conservatives have applied to symbolic fights, like images on beer cans, must be applied to the actions of the climate cultists and their enablers in the media, government, and NGO space.
While it may have initially started with good intentions, ESG has been hijacked by the cults of climate and Wokeism. Ramaswamy has served our nation by warning how this movement will further erode the fabric of our American society. For that, we should all be grateful.
