True enlightenment on Climate Change:

Greens are a puny force by comparison to industrial lobby groups, the cowardice of governments and the natural human tendency to deny what we don't want to see. To compensate for our weakness, we indulged a fantasy of benign paternalistic power – acting, though the political mechanisms were inscrutable, in the wider interests of humankind. We allowed ourselves to believe that, with a little prompting and protest, somewhere, in a distant institutional sphere, compromised but decent people would take care of us. They won't. They weren't ever going to do so. So what do we do now?

I don't know. These failures have exposed not only familiar political problems, but deep-rooted human weakness. All I know is that we must stop dreaming about an institutional response that will never materialise and start facing a political reality we've sought to avoid. The conversation starts here.

Of course, he's wrong to believe that industries are willing to melt the ice caps and raise sea levels in order to keep making money, but at least he has come to realize that
benign paternalistic power is a fantasy. Nothing that seeks to deprive people of freedom is effective or benign. We have a lot of problems that have been demonstrated to harm society, such as drunk driving, drug abuse, pornography, sexual promiscuity, divorce, etc. that our laws have been unable to solve.

The "fantasy of benign paternalistic power" is at the core of all "progressive" thinking. The old truth is still true. Power, no matter how benign it sees itself, corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.