Canadians are exhausted, embarrassed and existentially threatened by politics that feels like a shouting contest. It’s time to talk about the centre again.
Frank Graves has been tracking the disappearing middle for some time—the middle has been disappearing from Canadian politics for many years and really no longer exists. What has replaced it is, on the one hand, a commitment to traditional “small l” liberal values of openness, inclusivity, and future focus and a belief that government is mostly a positive in terms of the services provided and intent, and on the other an “ordered populism” that is characterized by a distrust of government, science, is anti-immigration and pro “traditional family values” and all that goes with that.
There is a great paper Frank wrote in 2020 that you can find here:
The “red Tories” of the Joe Clark era and prior would have held to those “liberal” characteristics but with a commitment to fiscal conservatism.
The demise of the federal PCs ended any commitment to “liberal” values in first the “Conservative Reform Alliance Party” (the appropriately named CRAP) which became the Conservative Party of Canada CPC—with all references to Progressive erased.
So, we don’t have a left/middle/right anymore—what we have is ordered populism on one side and various flavours of “open liberalism “ on the other.
Over a third of current CPC supporters *like* Trump and Musk, and almost none of the Green, NDP, or Liberal supporters do.
Now the Liberals have elected as a leader (and, full disclosure I voted for him) a guy in Carney who is a bit of a throwback to the red Tory type of leader. I suspect Joe Clark and Mark Carney would agree on quite a lot.
This election is going to be interesting to say the least. It is a test of how committed the Canadian electorate is, as a whole, to those small “l” liberal values by supporting a guy who could easily have been a red Tory, vs voting for an ordered populist who wants to tear down all of the fences.
I don't think there's any need to wiggle people or parties into these 'red tory' or whatever categories. Parties are not identities. They are not chiseled from stone. They are just an ever-changing group of people coming together to run an election campaign.
I belive if there are any problems with parties stagnating it's because people, mostly their cynical critics, won't let them change.
Here’s the thing though—it really isn’t possible to imagine a return for a (labelled) Progressive Conservative Party. Harper killed it. And the current CPC base is absolutely not interested in any “progressive” party.
And it really doesn’t have anything to do with parties stagnating… what happened with the demise of the PCs at the hands of Stephen Harper/Reform was absolutely an ideologically motivated change.
What is important to me about Frank Graves’ work is that he documents the changes that a global trend toward populism made to Canadian politics.
Consider that Harper is Chair of the International Democratic Union (that supports autocrats around the world like Orban and others). Poilievre is the Chair of the Canadian chapter.
I live in Nova Scotia. But if you live in Ontario, Manitoba, PEI, or Nfld, it's not hard to imagine it at all. It's as simple as imagining progress, prosperity, and purpose in Canada.
We might be talking about different things here… but a national Progressive + Conservative Party labelled as such does not have a national base. The PCs were killed by Harper.
Now could the CPC reinvent itself? Maybe, but I doubt it because a substantial part of the CPC base are the “ordered populists” who reject what would be in a “progressive” party.
It is a peculiarity of provincial politics in Canada where a province often votes differently at the provincial level than they do federally. But the existence of provincial PC parties doesn’t translate into a base for a federal party.
I wish your inclusion of Nova Scotia’s Conservative Party in the list of old-style moderate conservative parties were accurate. Unfortunately, with a supermajority and under cover of Trump’s tariff threat, Tim Houston has made a hard right turn. He is now using the divisive rhetoric and reckless embrace of extraction — frack, baby, frack — typical of the federal Conservatives. His assault on democratic oversight is positively Trumpian. I wonder if he was counting on having an ally in power federally. I very much hope he will not.
I think it’s fair to question government decisions - that’s part of a healthy democracy. But the idea that Tim Houston’s government has taken a “hard right turn” or is somehow mimicking MAGA politics simply doesn’t hold up to a review of their actual record. If anything, the facts show the opposite.
Since taking office, and even more so since their 2024 re-election with a supermajority, the PCs have pursued a policy agenda that, in many ways, is more aligned with traditional social democratic governments than any kind of right-wing shift.
They’ve:
Created Canada’s first Department of Addictions and Mental Health.
Made the largest investment in senior's care in Nova Scotia history.
Implemented the biggest minimum wage increase the province has ever seen.
Maintained and expanded rent control and tenant protections.
Directly funded new public housing builds across the province.
Increased funding to arts organizations and cultural programs.
Supported wildlife rehabilitation and land conservation efforts.
Protected and expanded provincial parks and special ecological areas.
Invested heavily in rural healthcare, schools, broadband, and workforce training.
Championed immigration as a cornerstone of provincial growth.
Raised wages for early childhood educators and healthcare workers.
Demonstrated a consistent pattern of consultation and course correction — listening to citizens and adjusting direction on issues from zoning to education to health.
Even on the more controversial recent legislation, including energy and oversight reforms, what’s happening isn’t a sudden break from democracy. It’s an effort to open public conversation — not to close it. The moratorium on fracking and uranium exploration hasn’t been replaced by active development; it’s been replaced by the possibility of public engagement and long-term exploration. They're asking Nova Scotians to have a balanced, fact-based conversation about energy, security, and the environment — and to trust in our own provincial stewardship.
If the concern is simply that you don’t trust this government to manage the economy or protect the environment, that’s a personal judgment, and it’s your right. But it’s not accurate to say this government is behaving like some far-right or American-style political machine. The actual record shows a moderate, centrist government with a big-government approach to healthcare, housing, wages, and care.
Progress doesn’t mean agreeing with everything — but it does mean engaging in good faith. For Nova Scotia to move forward, we need to trust our institutions, trust each other, and keep working to improve what we’ve built — together.
Good point about some of this government’s record. The moderate centrist tone and record is what they ran on in the recent election. However, once they had won their supermajority, the tone changed completely. I fail to see how creating a group of Nova Scotians — the 2%, ‘Special Interests’ — whose concerns will be dismissed constitutes ‘an effort to open public conversation’ as you put it.
Similarly, flooding the legislature with poorly considered legislation, including multiple efforts to reduce democratic oversight, is not behaviour consistent with a moderate government seeking public engagement. Then there was the attempt to limit media’s ability to monitor what is happening in the legislature and ask politicians questions by requiring journalists to go to a different building.
I agree that trust is needed for us to move forward together as a province. That is why the pugilistic hard-right tone of this government, a tone the government has doubled down on, has been so disturbing. Please, before claiming that no such tone exists, reread the government’s letter to Nova Scotians published on the front page of the Chronicle Herald.
A compelling read! I would vote for that! But sometimes you can't undo something, like atomic bombs, no matter how much you want to. You just have to live and work with the new normal.
Gabor Mate 's new book is called the Myth of Normal.- about top to bottom trauma warping our world view. Maybe when that changes then the Conservative Party will just naturally return to a "Progressive" thing?
Let’s get rid of party politics altogether . And adopt a system closer to municipal politics. Where the public has more immediate inputs and people are voted in for what they can bring to the table rather than political affiliation!
I generally like the idea but the implementation would be difficult. One of the main problems is that you'd have to educate the population really well on all the ideas being presented in order for them to make good choices in their voting. The other strategy that might work would be limiting most votes to local issues and still you'd need to increase education/news on these issues. It's not impossible but given all the distractions and clamour for attention just in daily life I can see issues with implementation.
I completely agree with this assessment. Canada lost something in the transition to the CPC, away from the old Tories. I actually bought a membership -- for the first time -- during the last CPC leadership vote, so i could vote for Jean Charest, hoping he could mount a win against Poilievre. I do think that O'Toole was the best of the list in the past 20 years: thoughtful, credible, reasonable, centrist, experienced in law and military. His momentum and near election got derailed by Trudeau and the Liberals' ability to create a wedge issue around the trucker convoy. So we got four more years of the condescending, insufferable virtue signalling, and yes, eco-theocracy, of Trudeau.
Another commenter takes issue with the term "eco-theocracy". I would suggest that his reply is biased, misleading and inflammatory, to use his words. To say nothing is being done by anyone, especially business, is just wrong and uninformed. Even so, to have a sole focus on climate change as the ONLY issue facing the world is very narrow minded. And people who insist that there's only one main issue facing the world, and won't listen to or accept possible discussion otherwise, are engaged in religion and belief, and so it's certainly a theocracy. Politics and economics are about trade-offs and we need pragmatism. It was all fine and dandy for the Liberals to push an eco plan, until Canada got punched in the mouth. Suddenly geopolitics and getting our natural resources to market are the most pressing issue, and eco-theocracy will take a much needed slide to the back burner.
I don't think climate crisis is the only issue. In fact there are plenty of interrelated issues as well as issues that have nothing to do with climate. Instead, there are no REAL tradeoffs being done. Everything up to this point has been mostly lip service. In fact, I think the carbon tax was exactly the type of lip service ineffectual "solution" that most political groups think might move the needle but never do. Where did that money really go anyway? Are we using less hydrocarbons today than when it was introduced? No, oil production rose in 2023 by 1.9% over 2022 (for instance). Are we using less concrete? No, use is expected to increase 3.5%. Are we even using less polluting methods to produce it? No, they're experimental or too expensive at scale. Are we producing less steel or aluminum? No. Are we more efficiently moving electricity? No, we still lose about 1/3 of that generated because we haven't upgraded grids yet. The list goes on. And to be fair, it goes on worldwide. Almost anything Canada does will be a drop in the bucket. But the actual science says there are hard limits on what the planetary systems can take. Once we go beyond 1.5ºC of warming (hint, we're already there) systems change AND CAN'T BE REVERTED BACK EASILY (or maybe at all). Once they go beyond 3.5ºC almost all bets are off. So the problem I see is that climate crisis is existential in nature whereas most of the other problems are not. Even as loathsome as I find Trump he's still mainly a political and economic problem and we've had those before. He's not an extinction problem, which we have never faced and are not facing now worldwide. There's a clock on that bomb and we have maybe 8 years left to do anything about it. Now the bomb doesn't really "go off" for maybe 75 or 100 years after that but it will be nuclear in nature and we'll start feeling major effects within 25 at the current rate. By then it will be too late to do anything. Anyone who wants to slide things to the back burner isn't paying attention and thinks it can be dealt with using business as usual methods. Those methods are so far proven to do nothing substantive whatsoever, including the carbon tax. Fool yourself if you want to. I'll be dead when most of the awful stuff really starts to happen so personally I don't really care. What I do care about is the human race as a whole and nurturing its potential.
Look, recycling or not using plastic forks or whatever are all nice little things but they have almost zero effect. The truth is there's approximately $3 trillion in just oil in the ground (worldwide) that has already been invested in and accounted for and just hasn't been extracted yet. Given human nature it's highly unlikely we'd leave that in the ground, but if we want there to be a future we need to. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of what we'd need to do to turn things around for our grandkids. Well, yours anyway. I'm not having any. If you want to roll the dice, go ahead. They're loaded and the game has been rigged for about 175 years and counting but sure, it's your call. Good luck, honestly but that's a bit like, "thoughts and prayers." so it's pretty useless.
So I have a huge problem with how you frame Conservatives because it's not how I've seen it work in practice.
In your parable(?) about the fence you cast the Liberal as the one who automatically wants to tear it down. In my experience it's been the Conservatives who actually serve that function. Brian Mulroney and Connaught Labs or even Diefenbaker and the Arvo Arrow. Whereas someone like Pierre Trudeau modernized Canada by allowing abortion, thus preventing the deaths of countless women in some dark-alley-abortion-by-wire-hanger chop shop despite the Catholic (and others) stance against it. On the other hand I like the meat of the parable generally and agree that you need to understand why the fence is there and what purpose it serves before you rip it down and/or change it into something else/repurpose it.
Second, "eco-theocracy"!? Biased, misleading and inflammatory labeling my friend. Misleading because plenty of actual science and millions of hours of computer simulation and modelling have gone into the problems we have with climate crisis. Tons of factual reports, which rarely make it into the mainstream (because corporate interests want it kept hidden) show us that things like fish catches and even fish/seafood viability in many areas are going down, wildfires and carbon are going up, plastics and other hydrocarbons are gumming up the arteries of the planet (or maybe causing cancer - I'm unsure which metaphor is best). And NOTHING is being done by business or government or God or anyone/thing else. I mean, sure things are being done but on nowhere near the scale (by several orders of magnitude) that it needs to be done. It's not theocratic AT ALL to say that there's a big huge honking problem. The "theocracy" comes in where it comes to market worship and the economic priesthood want to sweep under the rug all that yucky carbon mess and it's come to a point where the rug is no longer big enough to hide it. At this point I'd probably mention hookers and crack when it comes to economists and their market priesthood and how all the bit players are just hoodwinked but it seems superfluous to the main point and just as inflammatory as "eco-theocracy." Trust me, although I do, perhaps, still retain a bit of hippy-ish vibe I no more want to actually hug a tree than you do. But I do think trees are nice generally and we should probably not move/demolish/repurpose them without determining what they're there for.
Well, I will never defend economics so you can list its shortcomings all day long. The only reconciling thing I would add about politics is that I'm talking about conservativism and you are giving examples of Conservatives.
There is a lot to unpack here.
Frank Graves has been tracking the disappearing middle for some time—the middle has been disappearing from Canadian politics for many years and really no longer exists. What has replaced it is, on the one hand, a commitment to traditional “small l” liberal values of openness, inclusivity, and future focus and a belief that government is mostly a positive in terms of the services provided and intent, and on the other an “ordered populism” that is characterized by a distrust of government, science, is anti-immigration and pro “traditional family values” and all that goes with that.
There is a great paper Frank wrote in 2020 that you can find here:
https://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2020/07/northern-populism-2/
The “red Tories” of the Joe Clark era and prior would have held to those “liberal” characteristics but with a commitment to fiscal conservatism.
The demise of the federal PCs ended any commitment to “liberal” values in first the “Conservative Reform Alliance Party” (the appropriately named CRAP) which became the Conservative Party of Canada CPC—with all references to Progressive erased.
So, we don’t have a left/middle/right anymore—what we have is ordered populism on one side and various flavours of “open liberalism “ on the other.
Over a third of current CPC supporters *like* Trump and Musk, and almost none of the Green, NDP, or Liberal supporters do.
Now the Liberals have elected as a leader (and, full disclosure I voted for him) a guy in Carney who is a bit of a throwback to the red Tory type of leader. I suspect Joe Clark and Mark Carney would agree on quite a lot.
This election is going to be interesting to say the least. It is a test of how committed the Canadian electorate is, as a whole, to those small “l” liberal values by supporting a guy who could easily have been a red Tory, vs voting for an ordered populist who wants to tear down all of the fences.
Thanks for the notes.
I don't think there's any need to wiggle people or parties into these 'red tory' or whatever categories. Parties are not identities. They are not chiseled from stone. They are just an ever-changing group of people coming together to run an election campaign.
I belive if there are any problems with parties stagnating it's because people, mostly their cynical critics, won't let them change.
Here’s the thing though—it really isn’t possible to imagine a return for a (labelled) Progressive Conservative Party. Harper killed it. And the current CPC base is absolutely not interested in any “progressive” party.
And it really doesn’t have anything to do with parties stagnating… what happened with the demise of the PCs at the hands of Stephen Harper/Reform was absolutely an ideologically motivated change.
What is important to me about Frank Graves’ work is that he documents the changes that a global trend toward populism made to Canadian politics.
Consider that Harper is Chair of the International Democratic Union (that supports autocrats around the world like Orban and others). Poilievre is the Chair of the Canadian chapter.
I live in Nova Scotia. But if you live in Ontario, Manitoba, PEI, or Nfld, it's not hard to imagine it at all. It's as simple as imagining progress, prosperity, and purpose in Canada.
We might be talking about different things here… but a national Progressive + Conservative Party labelled as such does not have a national base. The PCs were killed by Harper.
Now could the CPC reinvent itself? Maybe, but I doubt it because a substantial part of the CPC base are the “ordered populists” who reject what would be in a “progressive” party.
It is a peculiarity of provincial politics in Canada where a province often votes differently at the provincial level than they do federally. But the existence of provincial PC parties doesn’t translate into a base for a federal party.
I wish your inclusion of Nova Scotia’s Conservative Party in the list of old-style moderate conservative parties were accurate. Unfortunately, with a supermajority and under cover of Trump’s tariff threat, Tim Houston has made a hard right turn. He is now using the divisive rhetoric and reckless embrace of extraction — frack, baby, frack — typical of the federal Conservatives. His assault on democratic oversight is positively Trumpian. I wonder if he was counting on having an ally in power federally. I very much hope he will not.
I think it’s fair to question government decisions - that’s part of a healthy democracy. But the idea that Tim Houston’s government has taken a “hard right turn” or is somehow mimicking MAGA politics simply doesn’t hold up to a review of their actual record. If anything, the facts show the opposite.
Since taking office, and even more so since their 2024 re-election with a supermajority, the PCs have pursued a policy agenda that, in many ways, is more aligned with traditional social democratic governments than any kind of right-wing shift.
They’ve:
Created Canada’s first Department of Addictions and Mental Health.
Made the largest investment in senior's care in Nova Scotia history.
Implemented the biggest minimum wage increase the province has ever seen.
Maintained and expanded rent control and tenant protections.
Directly funded new public housing builds across the province.
Increased funding to arts organizations and cultural programs.
Supported wildlife rehabilitation and land conservation efforts.
Protected and expanded provincial parks and special ecological areas.
Invested heavily in rural healthcare, schools, broadband, and workforce training.
Championed immigration as a cornerstone of provincial growth.
Raised wages for early childhood educators and healthcare workers.
Demonstrated a consistent pattern of consultation and course correction — listening to citizens and adjusting direction on issues from zoning to education to health.
Even on the more controversial recent legislation, including energy and oversight reforms, what’s happening isn’t a sudden break from democracy. It’s an effort to open public conversation — not to close it. The moratorium on fracking and uranium exploration hasn’t been replaced by active development; it’s been replaced by the possibility of public engagement and long-term exploration. They're asking Nova Scotians to have a balanced, fact-based conversation about energy, security, and the environment — and to trust in our own provincial stewardship.
If the concern is simply that you don’t trust this government to manage the economy or protect the environment, that’s a personal judgment, and it’s your right. But it’s not accurate to say this government is behaving like some far-right or American-style political machine. The actual record shows a moderate, centrist government with a big-government approach to healthcare, housing, wages, and care.
Progress doesn’t mean agreeing with everything — but it does mean engaging in good faith. For Nova Scotia to move forward, we need to trust our institutions, trust each other, and keep working to improve what we’ve built — together.
Good point about some of this government’s record. The moderate centrist tone and record is what they ran on in the recent election. However, once they had won their supermajority, the tone changed completely. I fail to see how creating a group of Nova Scotians — the 2%, ‘Special Interests’ — whose concerns will be dismissed constitutes ‘an effort to open public conversation’ as you put it.
Similarly, flooding the legislature with poorly considered legislation, including multiple efforts to reduce democratic oversight, is not behaviour consistent with a moderate government seeking public engagement. Then there was the attempt to limit media’s ability to monitor what is happening in the legislature and ask politicians questions by requiring journalists to go to a different building.
I agree that trust is needed for us to move forward together as a province. That is why the pugilistic hard-right tone of this government, a tone the government has doubled down on, has been so disturbing. Please, before claiming that no such tone exists, reread the government’s letter to Nova Scotians published on the front page of the Chronicle Herald.
A compelling read! I would vote for that! But sometimes you can't undo something, like atomic bombs, no matter how much you want to. You just have to live and work with the new normal.
Gabor Mate 's new book is called the Myth of Normal.- about top to bottom trauma warping our world view. Maybe when that changes then the Conservative Party will just naturally return to a "Progressive" thing?
It reminds me of the movie where the guy says, "Somebody will come along..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Div0iP65aZo
Let’s get rid of party politics altogether . And adopt a system closer to municipal politics. Where the public has more immediate inputs and people are voted in for what they can bring to the table rather than political affiliation!
I generally like the idea but the implementation would be difficult. One of the main problems is that you'd have to educate the population really well on all the ideas being presented in order for them to make good choices in their voting. The other strategy that might work would be limiting most votes to local issues and still you'd need to increase education/news on these issues. It's not impossible but given all the distractions and clamour for attention just in daily life I can see issues with implementation.
I completely agree with this assessment. Canada lost something in the transition to the CPC, away from the old Tories. I actually bought a membership -- for the first time -- during the last CPC leadership vote, so i could vote for Jean Charest, hoping he could mount a win against Poilievre. I do think that O'Toole was the best of the list in the past 20 years: thoughtful, credible, reasonable, centrist, experienced in law and military. His momentum and near election got derailed by Trudeau and the Liberals' ability to create a wedge issue around the trucker convoy. So we got four more years of the condescending, insufferable virtue signalling, and yes, eco-theocracy, of Trudeau.
Another commenter takes issue with the term "eco-theocracy". I would suggest that his reply is biased, misleading and inflammatory, to use his words. To say nothing is being done by anyone, especially business, is just wrong and uninformed. Even so, to have a sole focus on climate change as the ONLY issue facing the world is very narrow minded. And people who insist that there's only one main issue facing the world, and won't listen to or accept possible discussion otherwise, are engaged in religion and belief, and so it's certainly a theocracy. Politics and economics are about trade-offs and we need pragmatism. It was all fine and dandy for the Liberals to push an eco plan, until Canada got punched in the mouth. Suddenly geopolitics and getting our natural resources to market are the most pressing issue, and eco-theocracy will take a much needed slide to the back burner.
I don't think climate crisis is the only issue. In fact there are plenty of interrelated issues as well as issues that have nothing to do with climate. Instead, there are no REAL tradeoffs being done. Everything up to this point has been mostly lip service. In fact, I think the carbon tax was exactly the type of lip service ineffectual "solution" that most political groups think might move the needle but never do. Where did that money really go anyway? Are we using less hydrocarbons today than when it was introduced? No, oil production rose in 2023 by 1.9% over 2022 (for instance). Are we using less concrete? No, use is expected to increase 3.5%. Are we even using less polluting methods to produce it? No, they're experimental or too expensive at scale. Are we producing less steel or aluminum? No. Are we more efficiently moving electricity? No, we still lose about 1/3 of that generated because we haven't upgraded grids yet. The list goes on. And to be fair, it goes on worldwide. Almost anything Canada does will be a drop in the bucket. But the actual science says there are hard limits on what the planetary systems can take. Once we go beyond 1.5ºC of warming (hint, we're already there) systems change AND CAN'T BE REVERTED BACK EASILY (or maybe at all). Once they go beyond 3.5ºC almost all bets are off. So the problem I see is that climate crisis is existential in nature whereas most of the other problems are not. Even as loathsome as I find Trump he's still mainly a political and economic problem and we've had those before. He's not an extinction problem, which we have never faced and are not facing now worldwide. There's a clock on that bomb and we have maybe 8 years left to do anything about it. Now the bomb doesn't really "go off" for maybe 75 or 100 years after that but it will be nuclear in nature and we'll start feeling major effects within 25 at the current rate. By then it will be too late to do anything. Anyone who wants to slide things to the back burner isn't paying attention and thinks it can be dealt with using business as usual methods. Those methods are so far proven to do nothing substantive whatsoever, including the carbon tax. Fool yourself if you want to. I'll be dead when most of the awful stuff really starts to happen so personally I don't really care. What I do care about is the human race as a whole and nurturing its potential.
Look, recycling or not using plastic forks or whatever are all nice little things but they have almost zero effect. The truth is there's approximately $3 trillion in just oil in the ground (worldwide) that has already been invested in and accounted for and just hasn't been extracted yet. Given human nature it's highly unlikely we'd leave that in the ground, but if we want there to be a future we need to. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of what we'd need to do to turn things around for our grandkids. Well, yours anyway. I'm not having any. If you want to roll the dice, go ahead. They're loaded and the game has been rigged for about 175 years and counting but sure, it's your call. Good luck, honestly but that's a bit like, "thoughts and prayers." so it's pretty useless.
Totally.
So I have a huge problem with how you frame Conservatives because it's not how I've seen it work in practice.
In your parable(?) about the fence you cast the Liberal as the one who automatically wants to tear it down. In my experience it's been the Conservatives who actually serve that function. Brian Mulroney and Connaught Labs or even Diefenbaker and the Arvo Arrow. Whereas someone like Pierre Trudeau modernized Canada by allowing abortion, thus preventing the deaths of countless women in some dark-alley-abortion-by-wire-hanger chop shop despite the Catholic (and others) stance against it. On the other hand I like the meat of the parable generally and agree that you need to understand why the fence is there and what purpose it serves before you rip it down and/or change it into something else/repurpose it.
Second, "eco-theocracy"!? Biased, misleading and inflammatory labeling my friend. Misleading because plenty of actual science and millions of hours of computer simulation and modelling have gone into the problems we have with climate crisis. Tons of factual reports, which rarely make it into the mainstream (because corporate interests want it kept hidden) show us that things like fish catches and even fish/seafood viability in many areas are going down, wildfires and carbon are going up, plastics and other hydrocarbons are gumming up the arteries of the planet (or maybe causing cancer - I'm unsure which metaphor is best). And NOTHING is being done by business or government or God or anyone/thing else. I mean, sure things are being done but on nowhere near the scale (by several orders of magnitude) that it needs to be done. It's not theocratic AT ALL to say that there's a big huge honking problem. The "theocracy" comes in where it comes to market worship and the economic priesthood want to sweep under the rug all that yucky carbon mess and it's come to a point where the rug is no longer big enough to hide it. At this point I'd probably mention hookers and crack when it comes to economists and their market priesthood and how all the bit players are just hoodwinked but it seems superfluous to the main point and just as inflammatory as "eco-theocracy." Trust me, although I do, perhaps, still retain a bit of hippy-ish vibe I no more want to actually hug a tree than you do. But I do think trees are nice generally and we should probably not move/demolish/repurpose them without determining what they're there for.
Well, I will never defend economics so you can list its shortcomings all day long. The only reconciling thing I would add about politics is that I'm talking about conservativism and you are giving examples of Conservatives.