{"id":10372,"date":"2011-07-22T09:28:13","date_gmt":"2011-07-22T13:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10372"},"modified":"2012-06-26T21:11:58","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T02:11:58","slug":"mark-lynas-goes-from-green-activist-to-denier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/07\/22\/mark-lynas-goes-from-green-activist-to-denier\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Lynas goes from green activist to “denier”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Pile<\/a> reviews Mark Lynas’s new book:<\/p>\n

\n

Since becoming an advocate of genetic modification (GM) and nuclear power, Mark Lynas has drawn increasingly hostile criticism from his erstwhile comrades in the green movement. In turn, he has sharpened his criticism of environmentalists for their hostility to technological and economic development. In his new book, The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans<\/em>, he attempts to reformulate environmentalism to overcome the excesses that have so far prevented it from saving the planet. This book will no doubt provoke debate, but what is this transformation really about, and is it really based on new ideas or merely the revision of old ones?<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

As a result, there is much to agree with in The God Species<\/em>. Most importantly, Lynas makes a clean break from deep ecology — the idea that \u2018nature\u2019 has intrinsic moral value and a \u2018right\u2019 to be protected from our ambitions. He rebukes the environmentalism that imagines a return to a pristine nature, and that shows contempt for development as an attempt to \u2018play god\u2019 over nature. We should<\/em> \u2018play god\u2019, he says, for the planet\u2019s sake as well as our own comfort. There is a convincing criticism of green demands for austerity and environmentalists\u2019 unrealistic expectations that people should make do with \u2018happiness\u2019 rather than material progress. These are the conceits of well-off, middle-class and self-indulgent whingers, Lynas explains. Some of us have been making similar arguments for a very long time.<\/p>\n

In spite of some of his accurate criticisms, Lynas fails to get to the substance of environmentalism. We do not find out what takes environmentalists to their bleak view of the world and their low view of humanity. This is a shame, because Lynas is in a unique position to reflect on it, having once thrust a custard pie into Bjorn Lomborg\u2019s face, with the words: \u2018That\u2019s for everything you say about the environment which is complete bullshit. That\u2019s for lying about climate change. That\u2019s what you deserve for being smug about everything to do with the environment.\u2019<\/p>\n

A decade on, Lynas now emphasises science and pragmatism rather than\u2026 erm\u2026 pies. It\u2019s worth remembering that Lomborg started out on mission similar to Lynas\u2019s: as an environmentalist, keen to establish the sensible limits of our interaction with the natural world. Before writing The Skeptical Environmentalist<\/em>, Lomborg aimed to debunk the works of the economist, Julian Simon, but ended up sympathetic to many of his arguments. Lynas, too, now finds himself sympathetic to many of the ideas from the economic right (he calls for the privatisation of all publicly owned water companies, for instance). And like Lynas, Lomborg never ended up \u2018denying\u2019 climate change, but instead sought to bring a sense of proportion to the problem, and to put it into context with other problems in the world. That is all it takes to find oneself called a \u2018denier\u2019: merely seeking a sense of proportion about environmental problems will put you in the lowest moral category, as Lynas, the \u2018Chernobyl death denier\u2019, has now discovered.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Pile reviews Mark Lynas’s new book: Since becoming an advocate of genetic modification (GM) and nuclear power, Mark Lynas has drawn increasingly hostile criticism from his erstwhile comrades in the green movement. In turn, he has sharpened his criticism of environmentalists for their hostility to technological and economic development. In his new book, The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,65,28,53],"tags":[245,827,240,39],"class_list":["post-10372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-environment","category-media","category-politics","tag-climatechange","tag-genetics","tag-globalwarming","tag-junkscience"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2Hi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15684,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10372\/revisions\/15684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}