Friday 10 February 2012

Scratch green, find red

Lord Summerisle demonstrates an effective environmental policy
Gernot Wagner the go-ahead economist of the Environmental Defence Fund says that things like recycling and using your own bags isn't pleasing enough in the eyes of Blessed Gaia:

Environmentalists, all too often, think that the best way to go about solving the problem is to get everyone to do as they--we, I included--do. I don’t eat meat. I don’t drive. But individual do-gooderism won’t solve global warming. 
And it may actually be counter-productive, for two reasons. First, there’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon called “single-action bias.” You do one thing, and you move on. You carry your groceries home by foot, in a cotton canvas bag, and you think that single act of environmental kindness makes up for other sins.
So, does this mean he'd prefer a no-growth Socialist state complete with a command economy? According to Wagner,

No! It means moving to a smart growth economy. We know that infinite material growth on a finite planet isn’t possible. By some measures, we are already using 1.5 planets or more to support our current lifestyles--and that’s in a world where billions still live in abject poverty. So yes, dematerialization is the word of the day.

Translation: "Yes, absolutely; right down to building wicker men.  But none of this will apply to me or the Elite, of course."  And why is he a would-be green commissar?
I just never grew up.
Thought so.

2 comments:

eon said...

And like all too many six-year-olds, he's a spoiled brat would-be tyrant.

An article just this week in The Independent (Kevin Myers- "An energy policy based on renewables will win hearts but won't protect their owners from frostbite and death due to exposure") shows that what Wagner defines as "Europe doing it right" is only "right" if the ultimate objective is culling the human herd.

Naturally, Wagnwer & Co. are convinced it will never touch them.

It all comes back to my standard rejoinder to the "smart growth/low CO2" types; "You want energy without CO2 output? Fine. Support nuclear and hydroelectric power. Holy Wind and Holy Sun won't cut it."

The fact that they uniformly want to lynch me for my apostasy tells me that, at heart, they make Lord Summersisle look like a piker.

cheers

eon

Cambias said...

We should just ask them: how do you want to kill off all the people who don't fit into your green utopia? Are you going to stab them yourself, strangle them, or shoot them?