Tuesday, June 03, 2008

The stasist prescription

  • Global warming has nothing to do with climate or science. What it is all about is the great, historic class struggle between working people and the ruling classes.

    Global warming is a great excuse for a massive expansion of government power. That, not science, is why the overlords, from the New York Times to the United Nations to Al Gore, so heartily embrace it.
From this post, here is an excellent article by Peter Ferrara who puts into words the feeling many of us have who reject the hysteria around AGW. Its not about the science. If it was, the discrediting of AGW would have seen widespread acceptance long ago. No, AGW is the latest, biggest and most sophisticated manifestation of environmentalism as a political ideology.

For a generation steeped in the mystique of Rachel Carson, the hopes of the Woodstock generation and the institutionalized acceptance of limits, small is beautiful and the culinary magnificence of tofu, AGW is the last bastion of anti-capitalism, over-consumption, first-world guilt and the inherent evil of anthropocentrism. Think of AGW as the environmental movement's Alamo (complete with leading apostle from Tennessee), all carefully and skillfully bundled in the rhetoric of moral authority and imperative for saving the planet. Its a lot to deny.

But, underneath, almost hidden at the very bottom of this axiomatic deck of cards, is the science. And when the science does not validate the prognosis of doom, all that is left is the same tired stasist prescription of centralized authority, constraint on individual freedom and elitism.