Barrel Strength

As the science behind global warming evaporates, it becomes necessary to increase the vilification of opposition, while changing the subject. Pull back from any concrete assertions of fact, and sling shit at your opponents from the high ground of self-declared moral superiority.

George Mobiot’s vapourings in this week’s Groniad are a case in point. Observe how he eliminates any middle ground:

“‘Humanity is no longer split between conservatives and liberals, reactionaries and progressives, though both sides are informed by the older politics. Today the battle lines are drawn between expanders and restrainers; those who believe that there should be no impedimentsand those who believe that we must live within limits. The vicious battles we have seen so far between greens and climate change deniers, road safety campaigners and speed freaks, real grassroots groups and corporate-sponsored astroturfers are just the beginning. This war will become much uglier as people kick against the limits that decency demands.”

Notice two distortions by which Monbiot frames the debate. First, those who oppose are inherently unreasonable:

“Those who believe there should be no impediments” is one school. It is a null set. Can you think of a person who has ever lived who does not think we must live within limits? I have not met such a person.

Second, those who oppose us are “deniers”, “speed freaks”, and “corporate- sponsored astroturfers”. (Incidentally, where is my monthly stipend from the Galactic Anti-People Headquarters for writing this stuff?) Personally, I find the vast majority of those who believe all this stuff are bed-wetters, hand-wringers, and public scolds. But I am generally too polite to say so.

Now, watch this passage in Monbiot, as he shifts the discussion away from the untenable (CO2 causes global warming), to the grander themes of pure Leftism:

“Through economic growth we are borrowing time at punitive rates of interest. It ensures that any cuts agreed at Copenhagen will eventually be outstripped. Even if we manage to prevent climate breakdown, growth means that it’s only a matter of time before we hit a new constraint, which demands a new global response: oil, water, phosphate, soil. We will lurch from crisis to existential crisis unless we address the underlying cause: perpetual growth cannot be accommodated on a finite planet.”

“Even if we manage to prevent climate breakdown” is code for: prepare yourselves for the fact that the CO2 game is up, we must retreat to the grander heights of self-importance, to the self-evident truth that perpetual growth cannot be accommodated on an finite  planet.

Except that it is by no means self-evident that we must live under the command and control philosophy of George Monbiot in  order to avoid running into limits to growth. There are far more efficient ways of controlling growth, while engendering wealth.  These ways are collectively referred to as the market.

If you had said in 1550 that within 400 years, every British Isles dweller would have acess to a shower or a bathtub, and that 50 million people would then be living on the British Isles, you might have been dismissed as a lunatic. If you had said that, within 400 years, farmers would number no more than 2% of the population, you would have been taken for mad. If you had said that we would draw upon the forces of nature to generate and control lightning to power our tools and homes, you might have been accused of witchcraft. Yet all this has come to pass because we got rid of the power of archbishops, bishops, prelates, priests, deacons and clergy to control the economy.

George Monbiot is just the recurrence of a clergyman bleating for a “living” – a monthly, perpetual stipend from the Holy Church of Gaia, which seeks to replace Christianity as the State Religion of England.