Sigh.
I run into many conservatives claiming that environmentalism is a "communist thing." Worse, some of those conservatives are old enough to actually remember the Cold War, and thus old enough to know why this argument is nonsense.
The Cold War was mostly a propaganda war. Each side hurled platitude-filled propaganda at each other. Most of the world ignored most of it because the rhetoric was so over-the-top. Even as a gullible child, I remember wondering who either side thought was going to fall for those bad arguments.
One thing you youngsters might not understand is that information was strictly controlled in communist countries back in those days. We in the West had very little idea what was actually going on behind the Iron Curtain.
Despite strict control of information by communist governments, China and the Soviet Union were polluting so egregiously that it was patently obvious to scientists who never set foot in communist countries and who could not get any information about pollution from anyone in those communist countries. So much pollution poured over their borders that we could make pretty good guesses about how bad things were over there, and it was really awful.
Our side scored a lot of rhetorical points over the communists thanks to their rampant pollution. We argued that the world should turn away from communism, or else their grandchildren would be poisoned by the land itself.
You can tell that our environmental arguments were having a real effect on a lot of people around the world because Soviet diplomats complained that environmentalism was a "capitalist plot against the economy of the workers' paradise." I read that in a newspaper or magazine as a child. I don't remember which one, and I'm probably remembering the exact wording of the quote wrong.
Anyone from Generation X or older (including Boomers) who was paying even a little attention knows that America scored rhetorical points on the Chinese and the Soviets by going after them for their abuses of the environment. Anyone from Generation X claiming that environmentalism is "a communist thing" is completely out of their minds and trying to rewrite history. I see people on the right and the left trying to rewrite history in this way, and it is complete nonsense.
Edit: added paragraph below on 31 August, 2021
No matter what economic system you have implemented, we are all going to have to waste time and energy convincing stupid people in power that science is a real thing that they have to pay attention to. Environmentalism is far from the only scientific matter capitalists or socialists have chosen to ignore or disregard.
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