Why Greens Don’t Want To Solve Climate Change
October 31st, 2007
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Environmentalists instinctively reject or ignore technological solutions to global warming because they are bent on making people atone for their sins. Their ridicule of geo-engineering reveals that, for them, climate change is a moral tale about humanity’s greed and arrogance, where the happy ending is a much-reduced human population where everyone lives simply and meekly. As one contributor to Climatic Change puts it: ‘I feel we would be taking on the ultimate state of hubris to believe we can control Earth.’ (9) However, even without inadvertent, man-made climate change, and even without complete knowledge of how the Earth’s climate works, the aspiration to control the weather consciously, for the betterment of humanity, is a noble one. Moreover though technological experiments – of any sort – can always be dangerous, they will be required if climate control is ever to get anywhere.[link]
That certainly is quite plausible. Greens would like people to go back to an era where everyone allegedly lived in with harmony with nature. Technological changes which attempt to address the problem rather than ‘’solve” the ”root cause” are naturally unappealing. After all, global poverty keeps many many people in business!
(Link via Gulzar who has a long commentary here)
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
4 Responses to “Why Greens Don’t Want To Solve Climate Change”
Amit November 1st, 2007 at 4:03 pm #
I don’t know if one opinion (or the opinion of a few) can be used to discredit the entire environmental movement. From what I know, a lot of engineers are experimenting with houses, construction etc. to reduce the energy use/CO2 output and using more of renewable energy. And they all are using modern technology to achieve this. Check out the magazine Northeast Sun: http://www.nesea.org/publications/NESun/.
Could it be that you’re already prejudiced against environmental movement, so looking for the slightest evidence of extremism? Not unlike how Hinduism gets discredited because of certain violence, or caste system etc. Or Stalin’s purges for another popular ideology.
Any movement or ideology has its fair share of people who take an extremist position. That doesn’t necessarily mean the entire ideology is suspect or useless. After all, I’d bet that you still believe in medical science and go see a doctor when you’re sick even though Dr. Joseph Mengele did lots of crazy things under science.
Amit November 1st, 2007 at 4:09 pm #
Greens would like people to go back to an era where everyone allegedly lived in with harmony with nature.
The word I’d use is “sustainability.” Look it up.
Rohit November 3rd, 2007 at 5:03 pm #
Amit,
That’s unfair. i am certainly not against the environmental movement. I also recognize that climate change is real and ‘’something” must be done. Nevertheless, I also believe that whatever has to be done must take into account human progress. There are many greens who say the world has everything and it needs to stop ”growing”. That is against nature.
In other words, economic development must take environment issues into account but so should the latter.
Amit November 3rd, 2007 at 11:45 pm #
Fair enough Rohit.
I do believe in sustainable development, because IMO that’s the sanest way forward. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on another post, the world needs something like green economics theory/model. I’m not against development per se, nor am I a Luddite.