Popular French philosopher Pascal Bruckner is in hot water with fellow left-leaning French intellectuals.
Bruckner doesn’t hate humanity and doesn’t want to unplug all the life-promoting conveniences of industrial civilization. He intimates as much in a controversial new book entitled The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings, available only in French for now, but soon in English translation as well.
The book assails ludicrous and nihilistic environmentalist pronouncements of the Left. As the title suggests, the author believes that these are based more in religious fervor than in carefully reasoned science. He stipulates that he does not object to ecology as such but rather to the “greenwashing” notions that the “planet is sick. Man is guilty of having destroyed it. He must pay.”
After all, what is the “carbon footprint that we all leave behind us [but] the gaseous equivalent of original sin, of the stain that we inflict on our Mother Gaia by the simple fact of being present and breathing?” A baleful implication of such views is that peoples in developing countries should forget about improving their economic and technological circumstances. The earth has suffered enough, n’est-ce pas?
Bruckner’s observations underscore how radical environmentalism is largely a convenient hook for anti-capitalism. Long before anybody fretted about our chronic exhaling of carbon dioxide, certain anti-capitalists urged the extinguishing of industrial civilization and a return to the blissful Tupperware-free, iPhone-free, hunting-and-gathering way of life.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
9 replies on “Philosophic Anti-Fanaticism”
The greenies always seem willing to compromise for their OWN laptops, iPhones, and Ecco’s. Reminiscent of when Marx was laying out the plan for his glorious revolution and a naysayer told him that it would never happen because the modern workers were to comfortable.“Then we must educate them about their discomfiture.” Marx was then living in such abject poverty himself that he could barely afford his cleaning lady on the pittance that he was able to sponge off his relatives.
Oh so true. We dreadful sinful
human beings dhould not be allowed to live on poor Mother Earth. Give me a break!!!!
Doom’s Day always looms for short sighted and those lacking hope (and faith).
The desire to return to the past is equally myopic as it is only selective recollection which can make the past more desirable than the present.
My own humble opinion is the Oil Cartel buys more scientists than the universities and engenders a) massive denial of reality regarding fossil fuel fouling of the human nest AND b) (surreptitiously) stampeding the populace into collectivist ‘environmentalist’ solutions… which require greater centralization of political power, hence greater oil-cartel power. As for the imminence of catastrophe, it is directly proportional to fouling and its denial. [Just because collapse won’t happen tomorrow – and I fully agree with the author that scare tactics are rampant – doesn’t mean environmental science is wrong.]
What is more likely and more dangerous than a possible environmental collapse is the pending definite economic collapse that is resulting from the presumptuous attempts to control for the former. No repeatable experiments, which are necessary to call it science, have shown that climate change is a)due to us, b)inherently bad, or c)something that we can have any more than a negligible effect on. Until at least one of those has been definitively shown, it is no more than tyranny that anyone is forced to fork over cash to be spent on any of this.
“… radical environmentalism is largely a convenient hook for anti-capitalism…”
Radical environmentalists mostly are comprised of two groups:
Nihilists who crave the extinction of mankind but pretend that they care about planet Earth. They don’t; they just want people to die.
Luddites who hate progress and technological changes but pretend that they care about planet Earth. They don’t; they just believe life will be simpler if we revert to hunter-gatherers.
There also are the pseudoenvironmentalists (such as those mentioned by Drik above) who pretend they care about planet Earth. They don’t; they just want to feel good about themselves. They consume more than the average person but drive a Prius, install compact fluorescent bulbs, and use recycle bins.
Brian, I disagree. Big Green also “buys” scientists. Or more accurately both Big Green and Big Oil fund studies with environmental scientists who show they lean the specified way.
However, power really resides with politicians, not corporations. Politicians can force us to do (or not do) things via legislation/regulation. Big Oil can’t force us to do anything. Though we do buy their gasoline for our cars, but we have a choice who we buy from. We don’t get much of a choice regarding our politicians. A vote isn’t as effective in getting what you want, compared to the choices you have regarding your purchases.
To be fair, in your favor, many politicians take campaign cash from corporations and provide them government favors in return.
While Big Oil wants certain favors from government (tax breaks, competitive environment regulations that don’t drive up their costs, drilling permits, etc.) getting in bed with government is dangerous. It’s like taking a favor from the Mafia — they usually ask for a favor in return, or they may decide to “protect” you at a price of course.
Radical environmentalism is also a convenient hook for government control of our lives. This allows the elite to extract more of the fruits of our labor for their purposes of staying the elite.
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