Right Wingers on the Attack, Fearing Socialism of Environmental Policies
I am such a sucker for responding to the right wing blitz that seems to be occurring right now. I assume that they are trying to influence action with the upcoming Administration’s attempt to address a range of market failures that have resulted in the wholesale destruction of our planet. C-Span had a lengthy interview with the author, C. Horner of “Red, Hot Lies” and Lou Doubs had a slew of nuts speaking on the next Ice Age, and my email box is full of links to Libertarian and right wing think tanks. My God, do we need help.
The good news is that the fallacies they use are so obvious, and the rhetoric has shifted from complete denial, to the range of arguments, including scientists are bad, scientific data is bad, suppression of information, “environmentalist are socialists” or “liberal fascists” (ad Hominem), “they are undermining our Constitution,” etc. Granted, they have a point on some issues, but they are becoming better at articulating counter arguments that blur the issue and will keep us from acting. Fortunately, one does not have to make a stand on whether or not the climate is warming. Fundamentally, it is about process and the process of living our lives is full of impacts, externalities that keep us from properly valuing the world around us, and that are causing massive loss of ecological integrity necessary for survival.
What is so consistent with these right wingers is their fear of losing their lifestyles, and particularly, their ideologies. Sadly, they are losing them not because of the environmentalists and scientists who work with little to no resources to make their case, (as particularly compared to the lobbying, marketing and junk science of corporate status quo), but to that very hyper consumptive “free market” model that has entrapped us. Perceptually, we are blind and desperately need experiential learning- to know is to understand, to understand is to care.
What are they afraid of? That we are going to save energy, by promoting energy efficiency, new technologies and jobs and reduce reliance on foreign fossil fuel? We will always use fossil fuel, to that there is no doubt because is so much of it, but we should be using it like the precious resource that it is. Are they worried about the cost? My God, the costs of burning fossil fuels have been and will be enormous, check out the childhood asthma data, talk about costs!!?? How about an aircraft carrier tooling around the Persian Gulf, that is a steep bill we don’t pay for at the pump. Right wingers should be loving environmentalists for the work we do. Our societies will be stronger, more healthy, more community oriented and create more sustainable wealth than the globalized system brought to you by the corporate elite and “right wing philosophers.” We even may be able at some point to increase freedoms, access to natural areas, hunting and fishing, etc. once we get on the right path. Right now we are killing our planet, death by a thousand cuts.
As much as I love Libertarians and strict Constitutionalists (love The Federalist Papers), there are some serious problems with the rhetoric on these websites.
Case in point:
www.thomasbrewton.com/
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Inquisition or Scientific Investigation?
This is full of fallacious arguments. I could take the time to pull apart each of the false statements, but prefer a more general discourse.
Embedded in these blogs are truths, but the arguments are made as if the environmental community is a bunch of socialists, fascists or communists, and want to take away our “freedoms.”
There are strengths and weaknesses to all forms of governance and political philosophy. The Founding Fathers, as beautiful as their legacy and work are, were oblivious to the intricacies of our natural world. The Scientific Revolution was just beginning and was dominated by the seeming power of Newtonian-Cartesian thinking and reductionism. Today we know that the world is amazingly complex and we have to understand that it is more governed predominately by quantum mechanics. That means everything is connected, the air you breath, the water you drink, the minerals you exchange in food and waste, all circulates. I breath in the same air you exhale, drink the water you pee (ideally after it has been recharged by nature). These resources exhibit certain renewable characteristics but energetically their flow reduces due to entropy, loss of order. All of these resources become available to us with sun’s energy (or from internal energy within the planet), and with the sun food is grown, or we supplement energy from other sources, like fossil fuels which are stored energy from the sun, to make the food we use to eat. Wind, water, solar all require the Sun. Geothermal, uses heat from the planets’ core.
Environmentalists and scientists espouse socialist ideas only because they reflect the natural world, and solutions that may work for problems from which we suffer. What we know of free market capitalism is that it has very social Darwinistic outcomes. Darwin was right about a lot of things, but humans and many other highly successful creatures exhibit higher social structures influenced by compassion and care that have evolved as best adaptive strategies. Capitalism, left unregulated, externalizes costs on people and the environment, because we are uneducated, spiritually vacuous, greedy, power hunger, etc. Capitalism also causes huge disparities in wealth, which we don’t correct because we like to keep our money and power, and feel we can spend it better. Sadly, we think Americans are generous lot, but we are not, dead last in the western world for percent GDP given to development. Marx was right on this, but was wrong on our motivations.
We can do better, that’s why we create institutions to better govern ourselves and create equity. We can argue on how to do so, but if we don’t, expect the poor to arm themselves and take what they can’t get by other means. Of course the wealthy, arm themselves too and the growth in the military and security industries are testament to that. But what the hell are we fighting for?
If we were all enlightened we would realize that working in our self-interest would mean that we would work for and with each other. This particularly so as the resources of the planet are depleted and population increases. What the Right is so worried about is loosing their liberty. But you mistake liberty for freedom, and we are not free, but defined by our genes and the laws of physics and ecology. With whatever freedom we have, comes a great deal of responsibility and that has been severely lacking in this generation. We are over-consuming the planet’s natural resources at a rate which they can not be replenished, drugged by the abundance that has come from this destruction of the natural capital of the planet, and blinded by the greed and power that this conversion of wealth has caused.
The environmentalists see the natural world for the real value it provides us and scientists should be honored for their contributions in this understanding. We have to learn the natural world’s laws and live by them. Human economy is a subset of those laws. Until we understand this and change our actions and institutions to better reflect these truths, we are on the road to ruin, and those guns that sit in my closet that those First Amendment nut cases fight for may sadly be needed to defend myself from the insanity that is this human predicament. How ironic!