Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
~ G.K. Chesterton, 1930Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. . . . This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era.
~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, to the Harvard graduating class of 1978
ENVIRONMENTALISM’S POETIC LIE
No matter how superior modern man fancies himself over his ancestors, he still displays the overriding urge to believe an all-encompassing story of his place in the cosmos, to believe in myths. There is no shame in this need, for myths are not lies – myths are poetic truths. Shame should emerge only when a poetic lie overpowers the truth, as it did with the twentieth-century scourges of fascism, Nazism, and communism. Those lies gained ground because mankind had discarded the hereafter for the here, yearning to transport the kingdom of heaven to Earth. The defeat of those particular lies did not, unfortunately, defeat modern man’s ongoing hunger for a worldly religion that will save his body rather than his soul. Environmentalism feeds that hunger and counts as the poetic lie of the moment, reaching its zenith (or nadir) of late with the coronation of former Vice-President Al Gore as Nobel laureate for his malum opus, An Inconvenient Truth. As always, shame will have to wait until the moment has passed.
Environmentalism does not, of course, connote people who enjoy the countryside; who scrupulously avoid polluting; who disdain cruelty to animals; or who shun meat in favor of vegetables. Much more than a personal lifestyle choice, environmentalism prophesies the Earth’s death or irreversible degradation at mankind’s hands, an apocalyptic faith claiming dominion over other people’s lives and overshadowing all competing concerns for individual rights and justice. If this obsession with our material surroundings counts as modern man’s religion, then government undeniably counts as modern man’s church, possessing as it does authority over the things of this world. One catechism in the environmentalist creed has assumed primary status: government must reduce mankind’s carbon-dioxide footprint so as to combat climate change. Because the global climate is at issue, this catechism has proved most receptive to global governmental control, handing the political class an incredibly effective mechanism for crushing national sovereignty and individual freedom. Wagging his finger recently, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proclaimed that global warming is undeniable and that “only urgent, global action will do.” So the cynical government and the spiritually-starved governed find common cause here, even more so than with “democracy” or “human rights,” thus rendering any attempt at reasoned discussion supremely futile if not outright dangerous. For what it’s worth, I will present an opposing view on the global-warming hysteria, a view grounded on the universal reason available to anyone willing to use it.
No matter how superior modern man fancies himself over his ancestors, he still displays the overriding urge to believe an all-encompassing story of his place in the cosmos, to believe in myths. There is no shame in this need, for myths are not lies – myths are poetic truths. Shame should emerge only when a poetic lie overpowers the truth, as it did with the twentieth-century scourges of fascism, Nazism, and communism. Those lies gained ground because mankind had discarded the hereafter for the here, yearning to transport the kingdom of heaven to Earth. The defeat of those particular lies did not, unfortunately, defeat modern man’s ongoing hunger for a worldly religion that will save his body rather than his soul. Environmentalism feeds that hunger and counts as the poetic lie of the moment, reaching its zenith (or nadir) of late with the coronation of former Vice-President Al Gore as Nobel laureate for his malum opus, An Inconvenient Truth. As always, shame will have to wait until the moment has passed.
Environmentalism does not, of course, connote people who enjoy the countryside; who scrupulously avoid polluting; who disdain cruelty to animals; or who shun meat in favor of vegetables. Much more than a personal lifestyle choice, environmentalism prophesies the Earth’s death or irreversible degradation at mankind’s hands, an apocalyptic faith claiming dominion over other people’s lives and overshadowing all competing concerns for individual rights and justice. If this obsession with our material surroundings counts as modern man’s religion, then government undeniably counts as modern man’s church, possessing as it does authority over the things of this world. One catechism in the environmentalist creed has assumed primary status: government must reduce mankind’s carbon-dioxide footprint so as to combat climate change. Because the global climate is at issue, this catechism has proved most receptive to global governmental control, handing the political class an incredibly effective mechanism for crushing national sovereignty and individual freedom. Wagging his finger recently, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proclaimed that global warming is undeniable and that “only urgent, global action will do.” So the cynical government and the spiritually-starved governed find common cause here, even more so than with “democracy” or “human rights,” thus rendering any attempt at reasoned discussion supremely futile if not outright dangerous. For what it’s worth, I will present an opposing view on the global-warming hysteria, a view grounded on the universal reason available to anyone willing to use it.
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