It never ceases to amaze me that people who say we can “save the planet” by wearing a jumper or growing our own veg are treated with the utmost seriousness, while those who argue that tackling climate change might require some larger-scale projects — such as geo-engineering the Earth — are treated as sci-fi freaks who should stick to reading Philip K Dick novels and stop polluting public debate with their insane ideas.
When it comes to climate change, the only acceptable debate, it seems, is how we can encourage ordinary people to do less, consume less and fly less. Bigger and more far-reaching ideas about how we might offset the impact of climate change are elbowed off the agenda.
This reveals something profound about environmentalism: it is not really a campaign to find solutions to the practical problem of climate change, but rather has become a semi-religious, almost medieval demonisation of human behaviour as dirty and destructive. This is really a priestly, ideological effort to lower people’s horizons and expectations, rather than a focused attempt to create a less polluted planet.
Brendan O’Neill, “Wearing thermals won’t save the planet: Why is the 10:10 campaign, with its pledges to turn off lights and grow more veg, taken more seriously than geo-engineering?”, The Guardian, 2009-09-02
September 7, 2009
QotD: Environmentalism as religion-replacement
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Pingback by COACHEP » Blog Archive » Posts about Junk Science as of September 7, 2009 — September 8, 2009 @ 00:08
The same for nuclear power, the only reason they really oppose it is that it would allow us to continue living our sinful lives.
Global Warming is Sin, it is not a natural phenomenon.
Comment by anon — September 8, 2009 @ 03:32