Treachery and greenery

"Environmentalism has begun to splinter"

writes "The Economist" online. The article presents the journal's usual delusionary views. The authors - always anonymous (sic!) obviously belong the the older generation, with ossified and crystalised brain structures, blockheads unable to adapt to the realities of today.

The Economist world is still flat and limitless. This extremist journal applies the tobacco industry's infamous strategies: casting doubts, as many as possible, discrediting serious science and scientists, publicizing doubtful "results" of so-called environmentalists. The infamous Bjørn Lomborg is a case in point. This self-proclaimed "scepticist" is a pseudo-scientific cheat, as has been demonstrated in numerous publications. Nevertheless this same Mr Lomborg is The Economist's star.

The Economist is still against the Environment, for the simple reason that the monetarist economy is incompatible with environmental protection. An unbridled and ever-growing economy is the Economist's goal. Water carrier and paid propagandist for the world's haves, the insatiable.

The Economist represents that class of ideologists who live and work in their thought bunkers, safely insulated from environmental realities. People who religiously believe in endless growth, limitless resources, omnipotent technology to solve any and all problems, the market, Ricardo's comparative advantage and more. Unshaken believer in a discipline that is based on two axioms from textbook Chapter One, Page One - axioms that have been falsified in practice but still very useful for deluding the public in the interest of the accumulation of wealth irrespective of the environmental and social consequences.

The Economist is correct in writing that greens are frequently left. Because environmental damage frequently goes hand in hand with social harm to the masses. Old-fashioned Manchester Capitalism clashes again with social responsibility.

The Economist is wrong when it presents "schisms" in the environmental movement because of one man, James Lovelock, who wrongly claims that the planet can only be saved by atomic power. If the Economist would do some serious investigation instead of cheap journalism, the Economist could also reach the conclusion that atomic power cannot help solving the greenhouse gas problem. Too many nuclear power stations would have to be built for a minimal superficial reduction of GHG emissions.

The splintering of environmentalism is The Economist's wishful thinking. Ecologist know that resources are finite, including atomic power.

The Economist is certainly not dependent on telephone booths.

"The Association of British Insurers estimates the cost of the flood damage is likely to run into hundreds of millions of pounds, and has called on the government to spend more on flood defences" (BBC online 27 June 2007).

Comes the day that The Economist will also see the causal links between economic activity and environmental damage.
When?

For us "The Economist" are still the same blockheads as in 1997.

Your comment or question

home | a-z site map | write

halt

| ecostory | feedback

ecoglobe

since1997

7625-7629

Copyright notice We transcribed this article for reference purposes only.

Treachery and greenery

Jun 25th 2007 From The Economist print edition By an anonymous author Environmentalism has begun to splinter

Get article background

AMONG the many targets of “The Life of Brian”, a satirical Monty Python film, is the tendency of radical left-wing political movements to splinter. The film’s would-be revolutionaries of the People’s Front of Judea, the Judean People’s Front and the Popular Front of Judea are too busy quibbling and accusing each other of treachery to cause much trouble for the occupying Romans.

The environmental movement—which, at least at first, shared many of its members with the far left—had until recently managed to avoid a similar fate. Over issues ranging from acid rain to deforestation, nuclear power to air pollution, the greens presented a unified front, arguing for better regulation of the various industries and human activities that damage the planet.

But that unity has started to crack. The first big doctrinal dispute was over the publication in 1998 by Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and self-described green, of “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. Mr Lomborg argued that environmentalists were exaggerating many of the problems the planet faced. Irate green loyalists demanded that Cambridge University refrain from publishing the book, and Mr Lomborg had a pie thrown in his face as he was giving a reading in an Oxford bookshop.

There have been several more schisms since then. Sometimes the disagreements are over priorities. In 2005 Britons saw David Bellamy, a noted naturalist and wildlife enthusiast, threaten to chain himself to a wind turbine to protest against plans to build a wind farm in Cumbria, a remote and unspoilt part of England. Mr Bellamy objected on the grounds that the turbines would ruin the natural beauty of the moorland. At other times, global problems are cast against local concerns. Diesel engines produce less carbon dioxide than do petrol ones, so some greens want to see the use of diesel fuel encouraged. But diesel also emits more carcinogenic particles, earning the ire of campaigners for cleaner urban air. Finally, there are arguments over basic facts. There is much debate among environmentalists as to whether plant-derived biofuels are a good thing (since they emit no extra carbon into the air) or a bad thing (since producing them can involve deforestation).

But perhaps the biggest rift is over nuclear power. Here, disagreements reach the most rarefied levels. James Lovelock, a chemist who invented the Gaia hypothesis (the earth is a balance of interdependent mechanisms) and is godfather to a generation of greens, provoked much anger and soul-searching in 2004 when he declared that nuclear power offered the only credible solution to climate change. Opposition to atomic energy, said Mr Lovelock, was based on “irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media”. Equally influential organisations such as Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace preach the traditional anti-atomic doctrine.

Life of Brian, 1979

"What have the greens ever done for us?"

Caught in the crossfire, many of the green movement’s foot-soldiers are tormented by doubts. Many will tell you that their own attitudes have shifted from outright opposition to nuclear power a few years ago to grudging acquiescence as the scale of the climate-change problem has become apparent.

But while heresies, schisms and factions offer an amusing parallel between environmental politics and radical ones, green “splittism” is fundamentally different from the doctrinal disagreements that plague the far left. Henry Kissinger’s remark about student politics—that they are so vicious because the stakes are so small—applies equally well to hardcore Marxists. With little chance of ever achieving political power, they can afford internecine warfare.

Today’s greens have the opposite problem. Environmentalism has moved from a kooky obsession of beardy left-wingers to something that even George Bush, an oilman-turned-president, must at least pay lip-service to. Global warming dominates the news. The subject tops the G8’s agenda; a legion of economists and policy experts are grappling with questions of cost and viability while politicians polish their green credentials.

But politics is a dirty business, and getting things done often requires compromising high principles for the sake of practicality. The hard left was fractious because, fundamentally, their bickering didn’t matter. The environmental movement is becoming fractious because it does.

<(http://www.economist.com/background/displayBackground.cfm?story_id=9390797) Global warming Mar 14th 2007 From Economist.com
Global temperatures and sea levels seem to be rising, but whether this is mankind's or nature's fault is unclear. Environmentalists point to a build-up of greenhouse gases caused by the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, dairy farming and other human activities. The result is that a growing number of governments and businesses are becoming more environment-minded. Scientists are meanwhile exploring ways to counteract climate change. The future of climate negotiations may lie in controversial new markets developed to commoditise both clean air and the right to pollute it.
In 1997, 39 of the world's richest countries agreed to curb greenhouse-gas emissions at the Kyoto Climate Change Conference. But the resulting Kyoto protocol, enacted in 2005, will have little impact because it does not require developing countries to cut their emissions, and America is not a party to it. The biggest contributor to global warming, the United States, is belatedly embracing environmentalism.
Return to article » | More backgrounders »

On James Lovelock in Wikipedia (29.06.2007) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock#Nuclear_power)
Nuclear power
Lovelock has become concerned about the threat of global warming from the greenhouse effect. In 2004 he caused a media sensation when he broke with many fellow environmentalists by pronouncing that "only nuclear power can now halt global warming". In his view, nuclear energy is the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels that has the capacity to both fulfill the large scale energy needs of mankind while also reducing greenhouse emissions.
In 2005, against the backdrop of renewed UK government interest in nuclear power, Lovelock again publicly announced his support for nuclear energy, stating, "I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy". [1]
Although Lovelock's interventions in the public debate on nuclear power are recent, his views on it are longstanding. In his 1988 book The Ages Of Gaia he states:
"I have never regarded nuclear radiation or nuclear power as anything other than a normal and inevitable part of the environment. Our prokaryotic forebears evolved on a planet-sized lump of fallout from a star-sized nuclear explosion, a supernova that synthesised the elements that go to make our planet and ourselves."
[edit] Mass human extinction
Writing in the British newspaper The Independent in January 2006, Lovelock argues that, as a result of global warming, "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st century. [2]

ecoglobe comments:
on nuclear power: see linked pages above.
on survival in the artic: that's wishful thinking with no understanding of the wider implications of climate change and the environmental and societal changes it will engender.