Posted on 06/02/2004 7:07:46 PM PDT by Libloather
The roots of enviro-hysteria
Peter Foster
Financial Post
June 2, 2004
Some of the environmentally concerned are not happy with The Day After Tomorrow. They worry that the Mother of all Disaster Movies, in which the Earth's climate shifts into a new Ice Age over a long weekend, will feed skepticism about global warming. As an antidote, the mediasphere is about to be hit with a shower of new and recycled disaster books.
I learned all this in last Sunday's New York Times. Recently, we have been treated to yet another of the Times's bouts of editorial soul-searching, this time over its Iraq coverage. But while The Times can fret about nuances in Middle East news, it obviously does not blush at printing environmental alarmism as irrefutable fact. According to Verlyn Klinkenborg, an editorial writer at the Times who reviewed the forthcoming deluge, "We are well past the threshold of inevitable change and on the cusp of climate destabilization."
Put it this way. Which of the Times's reports is more plausible: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, or that we are on the brink of massive climate destabilization?
Nor does Mr. Klinkenborg express the slightest trace of skepticism toward the books he reviews, even though they are penned by a group of UN time-servers, cranks and professional alarmists.
Can it be that The Limits to Growth, one of the wrongest books of all time, is to be updated yet again? The 1972 tome claimed -- among myriad ominous predictions -- that we would run out of gold in 1981, mercury in 1985 and zinc in 1990. In 1992, it was revised to suggest that, OK, we were a little out, but now we know when the needles will go to empty.
And can we really treat seriously yet another Jeremiad from Paul Ehrlich, the man who gave us that 1968 mega-bestseller, The Population Bomb? That book warned of global famine and megadeath well before the last century was out. It should have been called The Prediction Bomb.
Instead of pointing to these authors' dubious track records, Mr. Klinkenborg suggests any doom-doubters are suitable cases for treatment. They are merely "in denial," or part of a conspiracy. "Short-term self-interest is a powerful buffer against reality," he writes. "So is the lobbying of the fossil fuel industries and the complacency of an administration that lives in thrall to them."
I would humbly suggest it is Mr. K and his ilk who might spend a little time on the couch.
Environmental alarmism/hysteria is a fascinating psychological phenomenon. It bears many traces of ancient myth and similarities to religious mania. It also has close ties with that most powerful, and delusive, of all political religions: socialism.
Many Biblical myths have a powerful environmental element: the rain of fire and brimstone that fell on Sodom and Gomorrah; the plagues of Egypt; Noah's Ark. Indeed, the story of The Flood bears remarkably similarity to current concerns about Climate Change. Bad behaviour (in the form of crass materialism and attendant greenhouse gas emissions) will lead to an inundation (caused by man-made global warming and a the melting of the ice caps) which requires an appointed custodian to preserve species (guarding "biodiversity" by fighting economic growth/selfishness, and building policy arks such as Kyoto).
Such myths in turn may have their roots in the evolved human mind, most of whose development occurred when the physical environment and the possibility of hunting "resources" to at least local extinction were very real concerns.
As for the religious element, there is certainly a good deal of primitive "animism" in worries about "damaging Mother Earth," as if landfills were somehow equivalent to leaving a swab in a surgical patient.
Concerns based on alleged "greed" and the notion that developed nations consume more than their "fair share" of resources are examples of hunter-gatherer economics, which lie behind the mushy but appealing concept of "sustainability."
While allegedly based on a sophisticated concern for future generations, sustainability is likely rooted in fears of either missing out on your chunk of carcass and/or hunting-to-extinction. It betrays no comprehension of the processes whereby property rights, human ingenuity and extensive markets combine to perform the seeming miracle of not merely increasing the supply of "non-renewable" resources, but constantly finding new and better resources and methods. That's because hunter-gatherers had slim property rights, little ingenuity, and absolutely no extensive markets. That's why the fundamentals of modern economics are counterintuitive and/or unacceptable to most minds, including those of many popular economists.
Meanwhile another key psychological attraction of environmental activism is its political potential: the wealth and influence that flows to those who can successfully claim to be speaking for that tyrannical but voiceless majority "The Environment."
Mr. Klinkenborg is not shy of speaking up. What we need, he says, is "a new Manhattan Project to develop low-impact energy technology and a revolutionary commitment to global equity." But I think Al Gore already said that. So did Maurice Strong. In fact, so did pretty much everybody who shares the primitive belief that all the tribe really needs is a strong leader with a clear vision to guide us towards a Golden Age where our only task will be to do what we are told. And the first commandment shall be "consume less."
Perhaps the most significant psychological characteristic of doomsters is their unshakeable faith and their fundamental rejection of science. If something they predicted didn't happen, that simply means it is going to happen moreso in the future. The more wrong they have been in the past, the more right they will be from now on. And they are clad in the armour of righteousness. We have, says Mr. Klinkenborg, to "change our habits of consumption." We must eschew "custom, ignorance, sloth, greed and fear."
Or The Wrath of the Environmental Almighty will be upon us.
The author nails it.
I wish I had said that.
Any theory predicated on massive social change is doomed.
All these enviro-wacks rants usually start out with dictating some behavior change that MUST be adopted by the greater population.
They fail to realize simple facts of human nature:
1. People will only change their behaviors when it benefits them to do so.
2. Mandates on behavior are difficult to enforce (ask any cop)
3. Survival instincts compel some to consume and amass resources in excess.
Perhaps the most significant psychological characteristic of doomsters is their unshakeable faith and their fundamental rejection of science.
"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…. climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."
-- Christine Stewart, Canadian Environment Minister, Calgary Herald, December 14, 1998
"We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing"
(Tim Wirth 1990, former US Senator) as quoted in NCPA Brief 213; September 6, 1996
"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect"
(Richard Benedict, US Conservation Foundation)
"The data don't matter. We're not basing our recommendations [for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions] upon the data. We're basing them upon the climate models"
(Chris Folland, UK Meteorological Office)
"Because of imperfections in the coupled model which would cause surface temperatures to drift away from reality, calibrated seasonal flux adjustments are applied."
Hadley Centre GCM Description
"These models just don't handle processes like clouds, water vapor, and precipitation systems well enough to accurately predict how strong global warming will be, or how it will manifest itself at different heights in the atmosphere," remarked Spencer.
Is Earth's Temperature Up or Down or Both?; Feb 6, 1997 quoting Dr. Roy Spencer
"The trouble with this idea is that planting trees will not lead to the societal changes we want to achieve" (Kyoto Delegate, 05 December 1997)
"We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion -- guilt-free at last!"
-- Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue)
"We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects . . . We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land."
-- David Foreman, Earth First!
"Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed."
-- Pentti Linkola
"The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world"
-- John Shuttleworth
"Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs."
-- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
"The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing....This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run". -- Economist editorial
I think we need to rethink the cemetery thing. If we keep allocating a plot of land for every dead person, we are eventually going to run out of room for living people. This planet will turn into one very large cemetery.
Even now, think of all the valuable real estate that is occupied by cemeteries. Think of the golf courses, housing developments and shopping malls we could build if only we could reclaim the cemeteries for the use of living people.
I never realized how much land cemeteries took up until I started walking. Just walking around my hometown, there are nearly a dozen cemeteries, most of them taking up hundred and hundreds of acres. There is one massive cemetery about three towns over from me that has to be five miles in circumference. I kid you not. This is just crazy!
Thanks, I needed that to take the edge off a trying day. LOL
"...proliferation of cemeteries."
Solution: Two words - "Soylent Green"
You know, I think about that too.:) I think we should bury people feet first and upright. You could use a much narrower hole, and less space. See? I'm always thinking!
You slay me, Sam! How-the-hell are ya, pal?
The solution is simple - re-bury them vertical, instead of horizontal! Frees-up lotsa room...............FRegards
I guess this means I can dump all that zinc I've been hoarding. Dang!!
But even that would still take up considerable prime real estate here on Earth, being that billions of people have yet to die and be buried.
I would prefer that we move to a cremation system instead in which the ashes of family members could be either stored in an urn (traditional) in the family room or maybe scattered about the dead person's favorite area. For example, I would not mind having my ashes strewn in a nearby forest where I have taken a lot of pleasant walks over the years.
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