Reposted by the American Institute for Economic Research
Robert L. Bradley Jr. – April 2, 2021
At an environmental forum, Julian Simon once asked: “How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are exhausted?”
After a room full of hands shot up, Simon asked, “Is there any evidence to stop you?” When met with silence, he continued, “Is there any evidence I could give you – anything – that would make you reconsider these assumptions?”
After more silence, Simon replied, “Well, excuse me. I’m not dressed for the church. “
Today’s Climate Church has three resolute convictions:
- The human influence on the climate is pronounced and controlling
- This influence cannot be positive or benign, it can only be catastrophic
- Global governance can and must solve this problem
Compare that to the impressive, even breathtaking statistics on human improvement since the industrial revolution, especially over the past 75 years. One would think that these parishioners should be relieved, even happy. But their philosophy is anti-humanistic and should not be discussed, but worshiped. It is a creed that sees nature as optimal and must not be harmed by humanity. It is deeply pessimistic about the deep ecological worldview.
Optimal nature
Optimal nature is hidden behind the current climate debate. As Yale climate economist Robert Mendelsohn noted in The Greening of Global Warming (1999: 12):
There is an unspoken myth in ecology that natural conditions must be optimal. That means we have to be up on the hill now.
As early as the 1970s, a new ice age was feared due to sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, the global cooling fear. Even opposing forces were rejected by Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich and John Holdren (Ecoscience: 1977, p. 686):
The idea that an artificial warming trend could cancel out a natural cooling trend can hardly be comforting. Since the different factors that create the two trends affect different parts of the Earth’s complicated climate machinery, it is highly unlikely that the associated effects on circulation patterns will cancel each other out.
The planet was delivered to the members of the Climate Church “in perfect condition and cannot be exchanged for a new one”. In an issue of the World Watch magazine “God play with the climate” people were insulted for interfering with the standard state of the earth.
Deep ecology
A radical wing of the modern environmental movement rejects an anthropocentric (people-centered) view of the world in favor of an ecocentric view.
In contrast to the flat ecology, which deals with environmental pollution and resource scarcity in industrialized countries, the deep ecology defends the “equal right” of the lower animals and plants to “live and bloom”. Deep ecology rejects a master-slave relationship between human and non-human life. States Arne Næss (in Peter List, Radical Environmental Protection: Philosophy and Tactics, 1993: p. 19):
The deep ecology emphasizes the interrelationship of all life systems on earth and affects the centeredness of the human being. Man must respect nature as an end in itself and not treat it as a human tool. The human ego and concern for family and other loved ones must be linked to a similar emotional attachment to animals, trees, plants, and the rest of the ecosphere.
So hurting the planet is the same as harming yourself. “In the broadest sense,” said Bill Devall and George Sessions (Deep Ecology, 1985, p. Ix), “we must accept the invitation to dance – the dance of the unity of humans, plants, animals and the earth.” To get to this point, we need to “empathize with the revival of nature” (p. 10).
The platform of the Foundation for Deep Ecology (“a voice for wild nature”) formulated by Arne Næss and George Sessions condemns the current interaction between man and nature and calls for a population decline and a lower standard of living. In his words:
- The well-being and prosperity of human and non-human life on earth has intrinsic value … regardless of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.
- The wealth and diversity of ways of life contribute to the realization of these values and are values in themselves.
- Man has no right to reduce this wealth and diversity except to meet vital needs.
- The current human interference in the non-human world is exaggerated and the situation is rapidly deteriorating.
- The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a significant decline in human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decline.
- Therefore, guidelines need to be changed. The changes in politics affect basic economic, technological and ideological structures. You will be very different from the present.
The platform goes on to say that radical changes are necessary “to appreciate the quality of life … instead of sticking to an ever higher standard of living”.
From Al Gore …
Al Gore’s fear of a “dysfunctional civilization” transitions into the metaphysics of deep ecology. “Our civilization is practically addicted to consuming the earth itself,” Gore explained in Earth in the Balance (1992):
This addicting relationship distracts us from the pain of what we have lost: a direct experience of our connection with the vibrancy, vibrancy, and vibrancy of the rest of the natural world. The foam and frenzy of industrial civilization mask our deep solitude for communion with the world that can lift our spirits and fill our senses with the richness and immediacy of life itself.
Gore renounced incrementalism and called for “bold and unambiguous” global action, in which “saving the environment” is “the central organizational principle for civilization”.
Ludwig von Mises and FA Hayek could not have imagined this “central organizational principle”: global central planning in which every economy with 196 sovereignties over taxes, customs duties (“border adjustments”) and efficiency mandates for reduction must be coordinated. and even vice versa, the emissions of the greenhouse gas, especially carbon dioxide (CO2).
… To Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature (1989: 216) fingered the “mortal sin” of changing human nature and complained that “the greenhouse effect is the first environmental problem we cannot escape when we go into the forest pull”. He complained that “the cheap labor from oil” makes it difficult to fathom the “deep ecology model”, let alone implement it “(p. 200).
McKibben recently put more of his climate maps on the table in a New York column: “If you wanted a basic rule of thumb for dealing with the climate crisis, it would be: stop burning things.” The age of combustion must come to a “quick end”, regardless of whether it is oil for transportation, natural gas or coal for electricity, wood fires in the home or outdoor barbecues. Don’t light a match either.
Humanistic alternative
The philosopher Alex Epstein reminds people that untamed nature is not only useful but also dangerous. “When good and evil are measured by the yardstick of human well-being and human progress,” he explains, “we must conclude that the fossil fuel industry is not a necessary evil to be restrained, but a superior good to be liberated to become.” In this context: “We don’t need green energy – we need humanitarian energy.”
Epstein then reverses the climate narrative:
Nature does not give us a stable, safe climate that we make dangerous. It gives us an ever changing, dangerous climate that we need to keep safe. And the driver behind sturdy buildings, affordable heating and air conditioning, drought assistance, and everything else that protects us from the climate is cheap, abundant, reliable energy, mostly made up of fossil fuels.
In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel warns of the stasis mentality – the belief that “a good future must be static; either the product of detailed, technocratic blueprints, or the return to an idealized, stable past ”(1998: xii) – versus dynamics that encompass“ a world of constant creation, discovery and competition ”(xiv).
Philosophy, not just economics and political economy, plays a role in the global warming / climate change debate. First, check your premises – and that of your intellectual opponents.
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