The coming alliance of populists and greens

THE first photographs of our planet from the moon made it look as finite and delicate as a glass ball. The images are credited in some quarters for the battery of environmental laws that passed the US Congress after 1969. Another theory behind the shift in consciousness cites a spate of earthlier events in the same year: an oil spill near Santa Barbara, a river fire in Ohio.

Whatever the emotional prodding for the green reforms, we can at least be sure of their formal enacter. It was Richard Nixon who founded the Environmental Protection Agency. It was Nixon who signed the Ocean Dumping Act and the Endangered Species Act. Elected as a populist, he authorised a tremendous growth in federal power. And he did it for a cause that even then (the era of Greenpeace's founding and the first Earth Day) had liberal connotations.

This was incongruous enough half a century ago. It is unthinkable now. On the face of it, populists and environmentalists are the two least reconcilable movements in world politics. One defines itself against transnational governance and the other counts on it to abate climate change. One electrifies the middle-aged and older while the other mobilises the young. The crossfire between US President Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg on Twitter last month captured the acrimony in miniature.