Tag: environmentalism

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

“Good” Civilization-​Destroying Intentions

Should we surrender our industrially fueled civilization the better to fuel fantasies of appeasing Gaia, goddess of the Earth?

The New York Times urges the Obama administration to block a much-​needed oil pipeline from Canada as a gesture toward deflecting the purported threat of anthropogenic global warming.

“In itself, the Keystone pipeline will not push the world into a climate apocalypse,” admits the editorial. “But it will continue to fuel our appetite for oil and add to the carbon load in the atmosphere. There is no need to accept it.” The oil drops add up. “At the very least, saying no to the Keystone XL will slow down plans to triple tar sands production from just under two million barrels a day now to six million barrels a day by 2030.”

That’s what we want, right? Less and less of the fuel we need to go places and do things?

But if government is justified in blocking the Keystone pipeline on such a basis, isn’t it also warranted in stopping existing oil production?

What offends the “greens” is every form of “raping of the earth” for mere human survival and comfort — including to protect ourselves against weather that has always been variable, often extremely so. By their logic, the only moral way to defend against the elements is to surrender to them. No more building houses, wearing coats, adding gas to heater tanks and car tanks. Shut everything down.

I can’t say I’m persuaded.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

Philosophic Anti-​Fanaticism

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.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Liberals Against Fracking

Fracking — not just for Battlestar Galactica nerds any longer.

Colloquial for “hydraulic fracturing,” fracking is a process of forcing water deep into oil shale to bring up natural gas. Combined with horizontal drilling (that is, and I’m not making any of this up, drilling somewhat sideways to avoid topside damage), fracking promises to be the next big breakthrough in energy development.

Just so long as government doesn’t mess it up.

Well, there’s debate about this. Gasland, a recent documentary, cited numerous examples of contaminated well water. And yet, last week Judge Nancy Freudenthal reversed federal government regulations against fracking, dismissing Gasland-promoted harms as “speculative.”

Anti-​factual? Anti-science?

Not according to science writer Ronald Bailey, who has argued that fracking itself is harmless. Things can go wrong in any industrial process, and in cases where substantial damage has occurred because of negligence or incompetence, major judgments against energy companies have been awarded to their victims.

Just as things are supposed to go, in a free society.

But folks leaning to the left prefer the “precautionary principle,” at least when it comes to business. “[T]he new reality,” according to a Washington Examiner editorial, is that “those who are now seeking to stop history — or at least the development of new energy technologies — are liberals, led by President Obama.”

Had the Examiner used “progressive” instead of “liberals,” the irony of today’s Progressives being against progress might have unearthed one of this age’s sadder political truths. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.