"Thus, the forces and value systems that are most threatened by this shift are becoming the most coherent and are rising to the top as minority or plurality powers. But they do not represent either the shift, the change, or the future"
About this Quote
Hawken is naming a pattern that feels perversely familiar in climate politics: the more an old order senses it is losing, the more disciplined and loud it becomes. He’s not describing a majority awakening; he’s describing a rear-guard consolidation. Threatened “forces and value systems” tighten their narratives, fund their messengers, and learn to win attention in a fragmented media environment. Coherence, in this frame, isn’t moral clarity. It’s strategic alignment born from fear.
The line “rising to the top as minority or plurality powers” lands like a warning about how modern democracies actually operate. You don’t need broad legitimacy to steer outcomes; you need intensity, organization, and chokepoints - primaries, lobbying, courts, regulatory agencies, information channels. Hawken’s subtext is that the loudest actors are often those most invested in keeping the carbon economy intact, and that their ascendancy can be mistaken for historical momentum. He’s pushing back against the demoralizing illusion that backlash equals destiny.
Context matters: Hawken has long argued that the real environmental shift is decentralized - millions of local actions, businesses, communities, and cultural norms quietly retooling what “normal” means. His intent here is to keep readers from reading headlines as a weather vane for the future. The threatened minority may look like the “top,” but Hawken is betting that the deeper current is elsewhere: structural change that doesn’t always look coherent until it’s already irreversible.
The line “rising to the top as minority or plurality powers” lands like a warning about how modern democracies actually operate. You don’t need broad legitimacy to steer outcomes; you need intensity, organization, and chokepoints - primaries, lobbying, courts, regulatory agencies, information channels. Hawken’s subtext is that the loudest actors are often those most invested in keeping the carbon economy intact, and that their ascendancy can be mistaken for historical momentum. He’s pushing back against the demoralizing illusion that backlash equals destiny.
Context matters: Hawken has long argued that the real environmental shift is decentralized - millions of local actions, businesses, communities, and cultural norms quietly retooling what “normal” means. His intent here is to keep readers from reading headlines as a weather vane for the future. The threatened minority may look like the “top,” but Hawken is betting that the deeper current is elsewhere: structural change that doesn’t always look coherent until it’s already irreversible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Change |
|---|
More Quotes by Paul
Add to List
