Green Dreams, Inflationary Realities
Like Medieval Catholicism, the green faith foresees impending doom caused by human activity....
For my latest article with Joel Kotkin,
Like Medieval Catholicism, the green faith foresees impending doom caused by human activity. In the Middle Ages, wrote Barbara Tuchman, “apocalypse was in the air.” The Final Judgement, brought about by human sin, was not only real but imminent. St. Norbert in the 12th century predicted that the event would occur within the lifetime of his contemporaries. Fueled by the same certainty, the greens have no more desire to debate policy than Medieval clerics.
The oft-repeated notion that “the science is settled” is profoundly unscientific, but endlessly reported. This seems a poor way to tackle a complex scientific issue in which open inquiry and debate are essential, observes Steve Koonin, President Obama’s undersecretary of energy for science. Koonin, remains skeptical about the ability to scale up “green energy” in the short run, and suggests accelerating “the development of other low-emissions technologies and in cost-effective energy-efficiency measures.” He argues that well-informed public discussions on policy “should not be sidelined.” In any complex system, serious concerns, such as sea-level increases due to rising temperatures, need to be studied in the context of complex weather cycles, the fluctuations of which may not be as extreme as the more sensational reports have suggested.
The bleak worldview of the climate activists seems to owe more to Medievalism than to the Enlightenment. As much as 15 percent of the population in preindustrial Europe is estimated to have been permanently celibate. Like the sex-hating Christian militants, today’s greens tend to be hostile to the idea of procreation, particularly in wealthy countries. Family-oriented people may also object to Ecotopia-like calls for restrictions on having children due to their “carbon legacy,” a proposal already endorsed by climate researchers at Sweden’s Lund University and Oregon State University in the US.
Clearly, the future being offered is not better for most—it is a future marked by downward mobility, less travel, and more crowded living conditions under perpetual greenflation. Eric Heymann, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank Research, may be an advocate of the “Great Reset” (or something like it), but he still warns that Europe’s Green Deal and its goal of climate neutrality by 2050 threaten a European mega-crisis which may well lead to a “noticeable loss of welfare and jobs.” We will even need to change how we eat: Some scientists suggest we will have to shift from hamburgers to such delightful concoctions as “maggot sausages.” Another has suggested that we recycle ourselves and discover the finer points of cannibalism.