Davidicke.com

THE CURRENT elite-driven narrative that ‘there are too many people on the planet’ is really just another iteration and implementation of centuries of rule, coercion and control by a few aristocratic families, forged through close ties with corporations, institutions, and the military. Where ancient slave economies were characterised by the use of direct force, Eddie Hobbs has pointed out that ‘the global elite now maintain control through economic and political means rather than through direct hereditary rule’. Similarly, the American political scientist Joseph Nye coined the term ‘soft power’ to describe the use of cooperation rather than coercion to explain the broader nuances of contemporary political influence. Whilst one might be rightly cynical of the perspective of a man who actively served in the State Department, Pentagon and intelligence communities under the Carter and Clinton presidencies, there is a clear sense that modern governance, particularly in the West, has been increasingly about shaping the views of the majority through more complex and multifaceted demonstrations of power. Until recently, the evolution of climate change governance was a great example of the use of soft power by political leaders. As Jacob Nordangård has documented, the group of people who originally sought to establish the climate agenda in mainstream politics did so patiently over a long period of time. The guiding narrative itself has shifted and changed a great deal from the time of the first Rockefeller-funded research in the 1950s. In the UK, for example, the way that this unfolded can be tracked through three distinct phases: firstly, market-oriented policies were mobilised through the deployment of economic instruments; secondly, the roll out of a third way state-market hybrid incorporating a large scale programme of cultural nudging and social engineering; and finally, a Net Zero top-down programme, characterised by direct state enforcement, the restriction of choice