Green is the New Red
For many of them, green is the new red. And those who wish to order us how to run our lives, faced with the uncomfortable evidence that economic prosperity is more likely to be achieved by less government intervention rather than more, naturally welcome the emergence of a new licence to intrude, to interfere, to tax and to regulate: all in the great cause of saving the planet from the alleged horrors of global warming.But there is something much more fundamental at work. I suspect that it is no accident that it is in Europe that eco-fundamentalism in general and global warming absolutism in particular has found its most fertile soil. For it is Europe that has become the most secular society in the world, where the traditional religions have the weakest hold.
Yet people still feel the need for the comfort and higher values that religion can provide; and it is the quasi-religion of green alarmism, of which the global warming issue is the most striking example, which has filled the vacuum, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as little short of sacrilege. nigel lawson, daily mail
This is, I think, the most basic explanation for the warmist hysteria gripping the bien pensant. And what is fascinating and a little scary is that as the science – and dare I say it, the climate – shifts the true believers just carry on lobbying for more sacrifices the the Green God which, likely as not, does not exist.
(Nigel Lawson was and is one of the cleverest men in England and has been a warming skeptic for years.)
April 8th, 2008 at 5:11 am
Actually Green politics is kleptocractic politics posing as moral authority.
The entire “green” political movement revolves around private property and finding ways to collectivize it so it can be centrally regulated…Marxist economics certainly….but dressed up in fraudulent moral and scientific urgency.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Crypto-Commies – I can smell em a mile away.
April 8th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Well, the left has certainly bought into this completely, although they are by no means the only ones. But I’m not sure old Karl would know what to make of them. Every day I see the postmodern left as inspired less by “Chuckles” Marx and more by the medieval Church with its theories of order, authority (the HRCs are the bishops), zero-sum economics and general adversity to change. They hardly bear any resemblance to their great grandfathers who fought the good fight from the mid-1800s to the 60s. Consider the contrasts:
Old: Believed in progress, trade and growth. Cheered when they threw the switch to turn the lights on (electrification);
New: anti-growth, anti-consumption, autarchic. Cheers when the lights are turned off;
Old: wanted to cure poverty by redistributing wealth;
New: wants to cure poverty by keeping the poor from being born;
Old: saw nationalism as a war-mongering tool of capitalist exploitation;
New: supports any damn nationalist movement or regime, however bloodthirsty or tyrannical;
Old: saw a universalist future based on scientific rationalism;
New: fights for cultural diversity and against uniformity. Likes new-age paganism.
Old: Saw the family as the bedrock of the movement. Was angry because the poor ones had no meat;
New: Sees the family as inherently oppressive. Is angry because the poor ones eat too much meat;
Old: Saw taxation and their fiscal policies as a route to plenty;
New: Sees taxation their fiscal policies as a route to undoing plenty.
I could go on all day. I first sensed this syndrome in 2003. Surfing a blogosphere all agitated about the war in Iraq, it seemed to me the left’s mains objections were that the war: a) violated international law; b) imposed alien political values on a people culturally unprepared for them; and c) was destroying their cultural heritage. I remember thinking: “What a bunch of hopeless old reactionary toadies!”
I haven’t worked all this out but it would help explain their counterintuitive (and extremely dangerous) tolerance of Islamicism.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Yes indeed, you have to watch out for the watermelons. I love how they plan to save the world by raising taxes and sending us back to dark ages. There is no reason or logic to what they say or do. It’s all about what they ‘feel’.
Turning off our lights for one hour the other week was perfect example. Lets all sit around in the dark and cold while burning candles and show how much we ‘care’ about environment. I like electricity, it’s a good thing and one candle produces more ‘pollution’ than one light bulb does.
However, the Europeans are also leading the charge against biofuels and for that I have to give them credit. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that biofuels do more harm than good and most of the studies proving it are being done in Europe.