Dangerous
Climate Change:
Eco-Fascism
By Bill Henderson
14 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Eco-fascism
- is it possible that soon a government will introduce Draconian regulations
in an effort to avert dangerous (runaway or abrupt) climate change against
the wishes of the majority of the population?
Concern about climate change
and to a lessor extent about local pollution, ecosystem degradation
and species extinction has raised a very strong environmental high tide,
but in my neck of the woods, Canada, there is now a backlash from those
who feel their lifestyles, identities or wealth threatened.
For example, Buzz Hargrove,
head of the Canadian autoworkers union, has complained that we're suffering
from 'green
insanity'; that 'politicians are trying to "out-green"
each other with insane environmental proposals and the result will be
his members out on the street'.
Due to language in the 60's
era auto pact and subsequent North America car making evolution, the
members of his union specialize in building big trucks and cars and
Buzz is very concerned that nine out of ten vehicles made in Canada
will be prohibited dinos if California-style emission standards are
enacted North America wide. (By the way Buzz considers himself to be
a reasonable environmentalist.)
In my local CanWest newspaper
this week there we're two more examples of this backlash. In a column
entitled Environmentalism the new totalitarianism,
George Jonas
worries out loud that environmentalism and feminism might
be the new 21st century tyrannies, comparing them to communism and fascism.
And in a Van
Sun let to ed another
worried reactionary comments :
"Turning climate
science into a religion and the burning of fossil fuels, to date a concomitant
to modern prosperity, into the western world's "original sin"
does nothing to produce an objective exploration and intelligent debate
on an extraordinarily complex issue.
We are proposing to give
our governments unlimited powers to interfere, tax and prohibit commercial
activity in the name of something no one understands."
What a joke. God save us
from the tyranny of the stupid, spoiled boomer-led consumers worried
that somebody might question their right to consume in ways they've
become accustomed to or that totalitarian governments might interfere
with their right to fly to Cancun whenever or tax their second or third
resort property or threaten their investments in fish farms, forestry
or the oil sands.
But, of course, this is the
backlash that we should expect. In an excellent
WashPost review
of Benjamin Barber's CONSUMED: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize
Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole and Eric Clark's THE REAL TOY STORY,
Barry Schwartz describes how the present crop of consumption addicts,
the present citizens of most of our democracies, was created, how they
behave, and the escalating hedonism of future crops as they mature.
Like tomatoes engineered to travel thousands of miles, these citizens
shouldn't be expected to have any taste. They shouldn't be expected
to care about anybody but themselves or even understand that their consumption
is creating global-scale problems that threaten humanity as a species
and nature as we know it on this small blue planet.
Furthermore, the serious
dangers of climate change and the present sixth extinction event are
most easily understood by those who share the scientific world view:
man as a species nested within an evolving nature, nested within life's
three billion year history on a four and a half billion year old Earth
in a thirteen odd billion year universe. Most global citizens do not
share this worldview; most religious worldviews do not have any room
for human caused environmental catastrophe or even the capacity to consider
possible
accidental self-extinction.
And most people get their
news (understanding of what is going on in this global village) not
through reading where evaluating reality can be done in more or less
a scientific way, but through hot media like television where fragments
of what is happening bombard the citizen without context - polar bears
and hurricanes, gas prices and terrorists; where quantification, scale,
and ordered, nested understanding is difficult.
Most citizens have not read
E.O. Wilson's 21st century defining Bottleneck
metaphor or William Catton Jr.'s OVERSHOOT.
They have a vague TV knowledge of something called climate change and
maybe the IPCC, probably now mostly forgotten, another inconvenient
truth pushed aside by today's news.
And, of course, knowledge
of climate change and the spectrum of mitigating options has been and
continues to be forceably contained by lobbying interests well positioned
to spend a small percentage of increasing returns from fossil fuel business
as usual in compliant media to seed denial and fear of possible 'economy
threatening' governmental action. Green-lite campaigns by well meaning
but co-opted ENGOs feed right into this growing misrepresention of climate
change as just another minor peripheral problem requiring only recycling-style,
green consumption solutions.
So for all of these reasons
don't expect a knowledgeable public pushing government for change.
And don't expect Draconian
regulation from our present governments.
Service sector economy governments
have very constrained regulatory powers. They are constrained by what
Thomas Friedman accurately describes as putting on the golden
straightjacket and more insidiously by path dependence
engendered by the wondrous degree of complexity of businesses and lifestyles
totally dependent upon continuing economic stability. Can any such government
introduce regulatory legislation that would negatively effect the whole
economy by even minor percentage points? By even one percent of GDP?
Too many people's livelyhoods, investments and passions would be endangered.
So as state of the art science
overwhelming makes the case that our introduction of greenhouse gases
(GHGs) from burning fossil fuels is raising temperatures to a degree
where dangerous climate change (runaway temperature rise from latent
positive feedbacks or abrupt climate discontinuity of a scale such as
a rapid new ice age in Europe and the North Atlantic) becomes a demonstrable
probability, governments we're always going to be between a rock and
a hard place.
The majority of their citizens
neither completely understand the danger nor will many be in any mood
to give up their lifestyles, present niche in the economy, or even consider
any (what they will regard as radical) reconfiguration of this present
economy.
Awareness of the climate
change danger has created a growing momentum for financial instruments
such as carbon taxes and trading (within continuing business as usual,
of course), but implementation globally is problematic, these instruments
are easily subverted, and this attempt at acceptable regulation looks
to be too little too late anyway.
We are close to the panic
point now given decades of inaction, exponentially increasing global
economic activity with ever increasing carbon emissions, full carbon
sinks now beginning to contribute previously safely sequestered carbon,
and, given time lags within the carbon cycle, we have to act immediately
(actually decades ago) to keep GHGs
under
450ppm.
So consider an informed government
presented with undeniable evidence and a scientifically quantifiable
risk assessment of the full spectrum of climate change threat. (Actually
the combined threat from the Bottleneck global-scale problems: climate
change, species extinction and severe resource depletion.)
There is a significant threat
to our present prosperity. There is a rising probability of future catastrophic
societal dislocation and loss of life; going over 450ppm risks potentially
massive dieoff, or even human extinction within the extinction of almost
every lifeform with which we share present creation.
The imperative - hit the
brakes hard on carbon emissions NOW.
It must be the US government
given America's overwhelmingly large footprint and Americas predominant
leadership position. Now the US government will probably do nothing
even if it means future extinction but wishing and hoping:
Do you think that Americans
could be educated or otherwise persuaded given this evidence of danger
to accept a rapid, radical reconfiguration of their socio-economy? Legislation
constraining their lifestyles? Stiff carbon taxes or rationing?
Or do you think that Americans
faced with this present serious danger would need government innovation
like Lester
Brown's Plan
B, a present day equivalent of the wartime coalition government
that defeated Hitler, so that socio-economic and lifestyle reconfiguration
necessary to defeat the climate change enemy would be possible?
Or do you think that gun
toting enviros are going to seize control in Washington and force through
laws making it illegal to have fun? Illegal to drive cars and eat burgers?
Or, more realistically, couldn't
the eco-fascists be even now planning the only
real present solution to overshoot, the only solution to
too many people armed with potent technologies making far too heavy
demands upon a shredding biosphere on this small blue planet?
Bill (at) pacificfringe.net
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