City Journal has a wonderful piece from Pascal Bruckner on “climate change” as the left-wing version of the Apocalypse: a dogma, anti-technology, impervious to reason, wherein Gaia (the new left-wing God) rains destruction upon humanity as punishment for its sin of not living by leftism.
Around the turn of the twenty-first century, a paradigm shift in our thinking took place: we decided that the era of revolutions was over and that the era of catastrophes had begun…
How did this change happen? Over the last half-century, leftist intellectuals have identified two great scapegoats for the world’s woes. First, Marxism designated capitalism as responsible for human misery. Second, “Third World” ideology, disappointed by the bourgeois indulgences of the working class, targeted the West… The guilty party that environmentalism now accuses—mankind itself, in its will to dominate the planet—is essentially a composite of the previous two, a capitalism invented by a West that oppresses peoples and destroys the earth…“There are only two solutions,” Bolivian president Evo Morales declared in 2009. “Either capitalism dies, or Mother Earth dies.”
So the planet has become the new proletariat that must be saved from exploitation—if necessary, by reducing the number of human beings…
There’s more.
Via NRO (Stanley Kurtz), who delves into a different angle: how left-wing environmentalism lets rich, white college kids join the ranks of the oppressed. “Global warming allows the upper-middle-class to join the proletariat, cloaking erstwhile oppressors in the mantle of righteous victimhood.”
One advantage of radical environmentalism over previous forms of political extremism is that unlike people the planet will never stand up and say “hey, you silly leftist, you don’t speak for me, and what’s more you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Designated victim groups have this annoying tendency to now and then produce individuals who think for themselves and who publicly disagree with the Kommissars who are boldly and confidently leading humanity into the glorious Progressive future.
pst314: WELL SAID. Brilliant.
Meanwhile these rich elites raise the price of energy so that only they can afford it.
To my understanding the science is pretty clear. The climate is changing. I’ve not seen any serious folks who would dispute that. So I’m not sure why you are calling it a “left wing apocalypse.” So “climate change” is happening….
The science is NOT clear its due to human activities…but the one thing everyone should worry about is ocean acidification….yikes! That’s scary stuff.
That’s like saying, “To my understanding the science is pretty clear. The sun is shining.” In other words, you haven’t said much yet, because it’s fairly obvious that climate has always changed and will always change.
Thank you. And that is why Global Warmism / Climate Change is the Left Wing Apocalypse. They are impervious to science, on that one. They cling to a dogmatic belief that it must be due to human activities. As part of their larger dogmatic belief that Gaia is going to rain deserved destruction upon humanity unless it immediately accepts leftism: i.e., Big Government, economic regimentation, radical population control, etc. (Note how they never propose small-government or pro-individual solutions to anything.) They are, to use words currently in vogue, a “radical” and “extremist” bunch.
As in all other aspects of gaining great power through demagoguery, being on the “wrong side” of man-made global warming brings the political bombast of being a Neanderthal earth pillager and endangered specie mass murderer.
Demoningrats only care about positioning their political enemies as blatant violators of purity of feelings and the pathway to Utopia.
So, along comes a natural disaster and the Republican president is automatically keeping FEMA from acting and, consequentially, letting the victims fend for themselves and blah, blah, blah.
It is the MSM which chooses the narratives and the pictures (which are worth a thousand words) and the political fallout.
Certainly, if we had the environmentalist of today working on the DoDo problem or yesteryear, we would all have one as a pet and the world would be all that much better off as a result.
As the chi-chi environmentalists sit down to sate their appetite for ahi and give up a little thanks to Gaia, do they also note that they are only engaging in sustainable, organic, g-e free, unadulterated flesh which was caught and transported and prepared using only solar and/or wind power?
Exactly. It isn’t about science at all; if it were, they would be open to considering any possible solution. Instead, the only solution is to increase the size of the government. Which, by the way, isn’t guaranteed to even work. On the other hand, people want to be environmentally conscious, and thus voluntarily reward companies that reduce their impact on the environment. Furthermore, newer, more environmentally-friendly technologies will continue to be developed in the free market, provided the free market is allowed to function. If you want to protect the environment, the free market is probably the best way to go.
And they completely overlook the fact that increased CO2 is making the planet greener with increased plant growth.