Congeries of cross connected concepts
Is there a link between modern environmentalism and Transnationalism? Deep Black has a post asking whether one can have “conservative environmentalism”. I can see his point that these are fundamentally incompatible values today, but I think that’s more of a hijacking of the meaning of “environmentalism” than an inherent conflict (just as “liberal” has been changed to be non-conservative and we have to say “classical liberalism”).
What struck me, though, was the parallel to my views on American foreign policy. In broad strokes, both views start with the view that our society is the thing of highest importance. We then attempt to arrange that which is outside to suit our society. In both cases, the long term view is like pays back like. In terms of environmentalism, one should be careful and conservative (in both senses of the word) because it is eventually damaging to our society to do otherwise. Similarily, our interests are not served by abusing and exploiting other nations, but by attempting to elevate them to our own level of liberty and prosperity (see here). The ends do not justify the means because the ends are inextricably affected by the means.
In contrast, for both modern environmentalism and transnationalism, the common countervailing ideology puts a higher value on something outside of our society, either “the environment” or “international law”, both of which are basically mystically received value sets that operate with little regard (if not outright disdain) for humans. I have a theory on why that is, but it will have to wait for the next post.
As a final note, isn’t it odd that an ideology (modern environmentalism) that so disdains humanity makes human judgement of what’s meaningful paramount? What makes a terrestial style ecosystem more meaningful than, say, the environment on Mars? This is also a root cause of one of the key flaws of modern environmentalism, that it worships stasis in a dynamic universe, by elevating what humans have seen and like to a universal preference. Gaia or Mars, the universe doesn’t care — only humans.
| cjm Sunday, 25 February 2007 at 16:31 |  |
what countries are the world’s worst polluters ? those with socialist forms of government. what form of government do “greens” support ? socialist forms of government. that tells you all you need to know about the situation.
| Annoying Old Guy Sunday, 25 February 2007 at 17:11 | |
So many of that type think of themselves as “brights”, especially compared to religious believers. But at least most religious beliefs are well designed enough to not be so trivially falsifiable.
| erp Sunday, 25 February 2007 at 17:15 | |
The left’s goal is world socialism and everything including our foreign policy and all the various moonbat movements, like environmentalism, feminism, etc. are merely weapons to be used to destroy our way of life.
I never thought I’d ever see our public servants actively trying to sabotage a president like Powell’s State Department had tried, and almost succeeded in doing.
| Robert Duquette Sunday, 25 February 2007 at 20:43 | |
I think you hit the nail on the head with one word: stasis. Environment worship is stasis worship. It’s a teleological viewpoint, that gives Nature some divine will that it just doesn’t have. Your distinction of what is internal and external is purely a human value distinction. Nature makes no distinction. A world with human beings spewing sulphurous smole into the atmosphere is no less natural than a world with no humans. We are natural, our evolution to technological mastery was natural, anything we do or don’t do to the planet will be natural. We never left Nature.
| David Cohen Monday, 26 February 2007 at 18:18 | |
Yeah, isn’t it an amazing coincidence that our current climate is history’s most perfect climate. Any warmer — disaster. Any cooler — disaster. Pretty amazing then that earth is populated all up and down the thermostat.
| Annoying Old Guy Monday, 26 February 2007 at 20:00 | |
Mr. Cohen;
It just slays me when I hear “warmest climate in 400 years”, as if that’s a significant amount of time with respect to global climate. It’s even funnier when the Gaia worshippers go on about how AGW is bad because it will all the coastal cities. Wouldn’t that be good, cleansing away all that artificial human created stuff?
| cjm Tuesday, 27 February 2007 at 09:08 | |
what are the chances that some kyoto like grand program actually ends up affecting weather for the worse ? somewhere around 100% i should think.
| cjm Tuesday, 27 February 2007 at 10:28 | |
anyone see where al gore’s mansion in tennessee is drawing over 20x the annual electricity for an average home ? and that doesn’t even begin to take into account all the flying and driving he does.
