Lachlan Markay of the Washington Free Beacon probes the political philosophy that buttresses the work of this year’s top political donor.

Does Tom Steyer want Americans to live more like Ethiopians? His ideological mentor and the man responsible for his political ascendance does.

Middlebury professor and environmentalist radical Bill McKibben recruited Steyer into the national green political apparatus in 2012. Steyer has since become the nation’s single largest Super PAC donor, giving $55 million to outside spending groups.

Ostensibly a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist, Steyer actually made his fortune at a hedge fund that invested heavily in the types of fossil fuel resources he now decries. The details of his ideological views are still being teased out.

McKibben’s views, spelled out in books and essays over the last 25 years, are far more explicit: de-industrialize the United States (and the developed world in general) and learn to accept a dramatically lower standard of living.

Given McKibben’s friendship with Steyer and close involvement in his political efforts, an examination of his proposed solutions to what he sees as a global energy and climate crisis might provide some insight into the intellectual tenor surrounding arguably the most powerful political financier in the country. …

… For McKibben, the [Keystone] pipeline represented an energy-intensive economy he has long opposed not simply as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but as part of a longer campaign to alter Americans’ way of life.

He has spelled out his vision for a less energy-dependent economy in numerous writings. His vision for the world is, he tacitly admits, well outside of the political mainstream, if for no other reason than Americans are not eager to cede their historically unprecedented standard of living.

“My point throughout this book has been that we’ll need to change to cope with the new Eaarth we’ve created,” McKibben wrote in his 2010 book Earth.

“We’ll need, chief among all things, to get smaller and less centralized, to focus not on growth but on maintenance, on a controlled decline from the perilous heights to which we’ve climbed.”

That sort of “controlled decline” would require real sacrifices on the parts of Americans, he said the next year.

“I don’t think everyone can live a middle class American lifestyle all over the world, including middle class Americans,” he told a student publication at Ohio State University in 2011.