Contra Earth Day

It is fairly commonplace that environmentalism, particularly the environmentalism of global warming,  serves as a  refuge for many on the authoritarian left. With Marxism’s and fascism’s claims and predictions refuted in theory and repeatedly disproved in practice, many such leftists  now find themselves left with the assertion that if given enough power, they will make the weather nicer. The colloquial term for such a person is watermelon – green on the outside and red on the inside.

Such people are dangerous, to be sure, particularly since conservatives often do such poor jobs of opposing them.  It does no good for conservatives to deny that the much of the earth has gotten warmer in  the last hundred and fifty or so years since the end of the Little Ice Age or to deny that carbon dioxide produced by the combustion of fuels contributes to warming. They should accept the facts and instead focus on the valid question of how much such combustion  has contributed to the warming, on the gross exaggerations or absurdity of many of the apocalyptic screeds, and on the fact that nothing in global warming or any other environmental problem justifies or requires the creation of an authoritarian state.  

However these ordinary leftists are not the most significant  threat. They are acting  mainly opportunistically and likely will move on to the next crisis or attempt at justification as soon as anything looking like a better opportunity comes along. The really serious threat comes from the true believers, the people to whom environmentalism has become a religion with a doctrine immune to fact and refutation and with spreading its faith a holy crusade.  They see the unrestrained and comfortable lives enjoyed by Americans as sinful and hope and plan to reduce Americans to lower standards of living and far lower levels of liberty and opportunity. They may seem comical and hard to take seriously as a threat with their demands that people  do such things as stop raising farm animals,   taking showers,  and  washing their clothes, but there is ample evidence that the absurdity of its doctrine or program of action  is no impediment to the success of a fanatical movement. They should be taken seriously. They have already had their successes,  including wielding a fairly large amount of influence with  the present administration in Washington.

Zealous, crusading fanatics are always dangerous, and people who value freedom, civilization, progress, and lives well lived should be aware of what these people want and are trying to do and take action to stop them. 

Celebrate Earth Day. Burn a Tire.

Today is earth day, surely a phony holiday if ever there was one – phony in the same sense that Kwanza is phony, created for a one purpose, claiming to serve another, and foisted on the public by an adoring media. Its ostensible purpose is to promote the laudable goal of conservation. Its actual purpose is to promote left wing politics and expanding government control over people’s lives.

However, perhaps one should not be too cynical about it. After all, every other religion gets its holidays , so why not this one? That eco-worship is a religion should by now be so obvious as to not be particularly controversial. Indeed it provides the same sort of ready and familiar replacement for traditional religion that overt Marxism did for the disillusioned of earlier generations. It offers similar spiritual satisfaction and a similar mythology. It posits a former ideal state of harmony and grace, a fall from that state brought about by humanity’s sins and disobedience, a chance for redemption through renunciation and obedience, a certainty based on unshakable faith, Manichean contempt for the non-believer, a looming apocalypse, and, most important of all, opportunity for an easy sense of virtue and cosmic righteousness based solely on holding the correct opinions. No wonder it is so popular.

It is also quite dangerous, because it is a crusading faith, resembling the Islam of the early caliphate more than the tired and emptily ritualistic Church of England of the present century. It is a mass movement, not as large a one as its cheerleaders in the traditional media would have one believe, but a mass movement nonetheless. Such mass movements of humorless, self-righteous fanatics rarely end well and should be view suspiciously by sensible people, irrespective of their goals. After all, you can’t make an omelet or save the planet without breaking a few eggs. One wouldn’t want himself or his property or his children’s future to be one of those eggs.

So all the heretics should be as heretical as possible on this the holiest holiday of the eco faith. For myself, I’d celebrate the day by burning a tire in the front yard, if I had one and if it wouldn’t smell so bad and if it weren’t illegal in my town. So instead I suggest a healthy horselaugh at the expense of the faithful and a renewed commitment not to be railroaded by them.