A common sense response to Green religion non-sense.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.p..._article/7860/

Hands off the human footprint!
spiked's Alternative Copenhagen Deal

#1: Hands off the human footprint

From Genesis to the Enlightenment, mankind was seen as the master of the planet. We have 'dominion
over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and every other living thing that moves on the
Earth', said the Bible. Let's put 'nature on the rack' and 'extract her secrets', said
Enlightenment thinkers. Now we're described as a malignant tumour, a 'serious planetary malady', in
the words of one leading green, and our achievements - industry, cities, skyscrapers - are
disparaged as the 'human footprint'. The goal of environmentalism is to shrink this 'footprint',
speaking to a view of humans as ultimately destructive and of our breakthroughs as gigantic follies
that must be decommissioned. No way. We have not poisoned the planet; we have humanised it. And far
from being shrunk, our 'footprint' - our 5,000-year project of taming and transforming this wild
ball of gas and water - must be expanded further.

#2: Ditch the carbon calculators

Every human activity is now judged according to how much carbon it emits. Flying, working, eating,
development and even reproducing - people's decision to create new human life - are measured in
'tonnes of CO2 emitted'. A baby is another 10 tonnes of carbon a year, we're told; more fridges in
China will add too much CO2 to the atmosphere, it is claimed. But human activity is not reducible
to the number of toxins it allegedly creates. The carbon judgment on our daily activities has
replaced God's judgement - except where the God squad at least distinguished between 'good' and
'bad' activities, under the morality-lite, toxins-obsessed tyranny of original carbon sin,
everything is potentially harmful. Stop carbon-calculating our lives, and let us celebrate people's
activities in human terms, recognising them as good, creative, explorative, industrious, or simply
as making people happy.

#3: Demand more economic growth

Creating plenty - plenty of food, homes and things - was the overarching aim of most human
societies. From the toiling Israelites' vision of a 'land of milk and honey' to Socialists such as
Sylvia Pankhurst's dream of 'a great production that will supply more than all the people can
consume', we recognised that plenty would make us more comfortable and more free, allowing us to
spend less time toiling and more time talking, thinking, experimenting, living. Yet in the eco-era,
thinkers demonise 'plenty' and celebrate 'enoughism', to use one green writer's word: but whose
idea of 'enough'? Economic growth is denounced as polluting, and people's desire for wealth is
redefined as a mental illness: 'affluenza'. The sin of gluttony has been rehabilitated in
pseudo-scientific terms. We should insist that 'growth is good' - in fact, it's essential if we are
to satisfy people's needs, and liberate their time and their minds so that they can realise their
desires.

#4: Don't sustain sustainable development

The only kind of development bigged up today is 'sustainable development'. It sounds nice:
development is a good thing, and who wants to do things in an UNsustainable fashion? Yet the cult
of sustainability, of pursuing only small-scale projects that can be sustained into the distant
future without causing too much eco-stress, speaks to a lack of human daring. The idea is that we
should only build and create things that can be held together or remade without too much effort,
and that we should never, ever think of overhauling society, of making techno- or industrious leaps
forward, of discarding the homes, towns and vehicles we have now in favour of better versions. The
demand to do only That Which Can Be Sustained is really a warning against rethinking, reimagining
and remaking our world. It's an intellectual straitjacket for progress. We should wriggle free from
it.

#5: No limits on population growth

Progressives once argued that unemployment, poverty and hunger were social problems susceptible to
social solutions. Today the orthodoxy is that they are natural or demographic problems springing
from humanity's failure to respect Mother Nature's limits. Nowhere is this clearer than in the rise
of eco-Malthusianism and the notion that the planet is overpopulated by 'too many mouths to feed'.
Society's failure to create a world fit for people, a world of plenty, is redefined as individuals'
failure to control their reckless fecundity and limit the number of new 'resource-users' (formerly
known as 'bundles of joy'). When problems were understood in social terms, the solution was seen as
more debate and more progress; when problems are understood in natural terms, the solution is seen
as curbs on people's nature-transgressing behaviour and the use of eco-blackmail to curtail
fecundity. Population growth is not the problem - the lack of social imagination is.

#6: Stop demonising 'deniers'

Serious debate about humanity and its future is continually curtailed. Anyone who questions the
science or politics of global warming is written off as a 'Flat Earther', a phrase used by Gordon
Brown on the eve of Copenhagen. Some label 'climate change denial' as a psychological disorder and
claim these 'evil words' will literally bring about death and destruction. From Torquemada on,
censors have always painted their enemies not only as wrong but as morally warped, and their
utterances as a threat to the social fabric. The idea of 'denial', meanwhile, suggests there is an
already established Truth that we must either Accept or Deny - no challenge to it can be tolerated.
We should defend scepticism, not because climate sceptics always have something interesting to say,
but because every breakthrough in history has sprung from at least a willingness to ask awkward,
agitating questions about accepted truths.

#7: No to eco-protectionism

In the past even Marxists sang the praises of capitalism's tendency to internationalise production
and trade. The 'rapid improvement of all instruments of production, [and] the immensely facilitated
means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation', wrote Marx
and Engels in 1848. By contrast ours is the era of the 'locavore' - people who only eat food
produced within 100 miles of where they live - and green lobby groups deploy the pseudo-science of
'food miles' to argue against the CO2-emitting import of foreign foodstuffs. In their infinite
miserabilism they've even invented the category of 'love miles' to measure the pollution caused by,
for example, importing Valentine's Day flowers from Kenya. This is the resurrection of
protectionism in eco-language, and is causing people in the Third World to lose their jobs and
homes. We need more, and more meaningful, links between the North and the South, not fewer.

#8: Make energy the solution, not the problem

Whether we're digging for coal or extracting uranium, man's use of the Earth's resources to create
energy is frowned upon these days. We're 'destroying the planet', apparently, by draining its
fuels. Such panic over the Earth's allegedly dwindling resources is not based on hard evidence that
this stuff is running out, but on a conviction that we shouldn't really be using it in the first
place. Even our use of water is now problematised: green charities talk about our 'water footprint'
and encourage us to live 'water-neutral lives'. This speaks to a new view of people as merely
consumers rather than producers, destroyers rather than creators. The Earth has been relabelled a
'warehouse of resources' and our role is apparently to tiptoe through it and borrow only what we
really, really need. We should see the creation of energy not as the problem but as the solution,
allowing us to power industry, light up whole cities, and improve human existence. All kinds of
energy can be explored - even wind and waves - just so long as the principle of expanding energy to
meet our needs is accepted first.

#9: Address the democratic deficit

Our leaders were drawn to Copenhagen in the hope that it would provide them with a sense purpose
and historic momentum that is sorely lacking in everyday politics. Unable to inspire voters with
anything like a grand vision of a future Good Life, they instead play at 'making history',
depicting themselves as the sole defenders of basic human existence from the coming eco-Armageddon.
Yet rather than resolving the crisis of political vision, Copenhagen exposed it: on one side our
leaders expressed their disappointment with we the public's lack of 'urgency and drive and
animation' about climate change (in David Miliband's words), and on the other side everyday people
sensibly switched off, seeing Copenhagen as a waste of time and money and telling pollsters that
they don't think climate change is the biggest problem facing the world. Today's democratic
deficit, the gulf between the rulers and the ruled, will not be fixed by the displacement activity
of pseudo-historic international conferences - we need openness, honesty and debate.

#10: Humans before polar bears

In the past many thought there was a white, hairy being in the clouds who was judging our behaviour
harshly. Today many believe that another white, hairy being - the polar bear - is a barometer of
human hubris. Everything we do is measured according to its alleged impact on the ice floes,
polar-bear habitats, and other natural phenomena. This represents the creation of a new and
backward morality, one which seeks to control human behaviour and lower humanity's horizons through
mythical tales of our eco-destructiveness; the idea of limits, harm and polar-bear vulnerability
are used to hector and cow the public. We need to rediscover a sense of human morality, of judging
our behaviour in its own terms rather than the terms set by miserabilist misanthropes and cynically
externalised as Concern For Polar Bears. When it comes to political decision-making, progress and
development, only one question should ever be asked: will it or will it not benefit humankind?

Visit spiked's After Copenhagen debate he
http://spiked-online.com/index.php/d...n_article/7864

Pretty good website. Thanks

"Eric Gisin" wrote in message
...
A common sense response to Green religion non-sense.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.p..._article/7860/

Hands off the human footprint!
spiked's Alternative Copenhagen Deal

#1: Hands off the human footprint

From Genesis to the Enlightenment, mankind was seen as the master of the
planet. We have 'dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the
air, and every other living thing that moves on the Earth', said the
Bible. Let's put 'nature on the rack' and 'extract her secrets', said
Enlightenment thinkers. Now we're described as a malignant tumour, a
'serious planetary malady', in the words of one leading green, and our
achievements - industry, cities, skyscrapers - are disparaged as the
'human footprint'. The goal of environmentalism is to shrink this
'footprint', speaking to a view of humans as ultimately destructive and of
our breakthroughs as gigantic follies that must be decommissioned. No way.
We have not poisoned the planet; we have humanised it. And far from being
shrunk, our 'footprint' - our 5,000-year project of taming and
transforming this wild ball of gas and water - must be expanded further.

#2: Ditch the carbon calculators

Every human activity is now judged according to how much carbon it emits.
Flying, working, eating, development and even reproducing - people's
decision to create new human life - are measured in 'tonnes of CO2
emitted'. A baby is another 10 tonnes of carbon a year, we're told; more
fridges in China will add too much CO2 to the atmosphere, it is claimed.
But human activity is not reducible to the number of toxins it allegedly
creates. The carbon judgment on our daily activities has replaced God's
judgement - except where the God squad at least distinguished between
'good' and 'bad' activities, under the morality-lite, toxins-obsessed
tyranny of original carbon sin, everything is potentially harmful. Stop
carbon-calculating our lives, and let us celebrate people's activities in
human terms, recognising them as good, creative, explorative, industrious,
or simply as making people happy.

#3: Demand more economic growth

Creating plenty - plenty of food, homes and things - was the overarching
aim of most human societies. From the toiling Israelites' vision of a
'land of milk and honey' to Socialists such as Sylvia Pankhurst's dream of
'a great production that will supply more than all the people can
consume', we recognised that plenty would make us more comfortable and
more free, allowing us to spend less time toiling and more time talking,
thinking, experimenting, living. Yet in the eco-era, thinkers demonise
'plenty' and celebrate 'enoughism', to use one green writer's word: but
whose idea of 'enough'? Economic growth is denounced as polluting, and
people's desire for wealth is redefined as a mental illness: 'affluenza'.
The sin of gluttony has been rehabilitated in pseudo-scientific terms. We
should insist that 'growth is good' - in fact, it's essential if we are to
satisfy people's needs, and liberate their time and their minds so that
they can realise their desires.

#4: Don't sustain sustainable development

The only kind of development bigged up today is 'sustainable development'.
It sounds nice: development is a good thing, and who wants to do things in
an UNsustainable fashion? Yet the cult of sustainability, of pursuing only
small-scale projects that can be sustained into the distant future without
causing too much eco-stress, speaks to a lack of human daring. The idea is
that we should only build and create things that can be held together or
remade without too much effort, and that we should never, ever think of
overhauling society, of making techno- or industrious leaps forward, of
discarding the homes, towns and vehicles we have now in favour of better
versions. The demand to do only That Which Can Be Sustained is really a
warning against rethinking, reimagining and remaking our world. It's an
intellectual straitjacket for progress. We should wriggle free from it.

#5: No limits on population growth

Progressives once argued that unemployment, poverty and hunger were social
problems susceptible to social solutions. Today the orthodoxy is that they
are natural or demographic problems springing from humanity's failure to
respect Mother Nature's limits. Nowhere is this clearer than in the rise
of eco-Malthusianism and the notion that the planet is overpopulated by
'too many mouths to feed'. Society's failure to create a world fit for
people, a world of plenty, is redefined as individuals' failure to control
their reckless fecundity and limit the number of new 'resource-users'
(formerly known as 'bundles of joy'). When problems were understood in
social terms, the solution was seen as more debate and more progress; when
problems are understood in natural terms, the solution is seen as curbs on
people's nature-transgressing behaviour and the use of eco-blackmail to
curtail fecundity. Population growth is not the problem - the lack of
social imagination is.

#6: Stop demonising 'deniers'

Serious debate about humanity and its future is continually curtailed.
Anyone who questions the science or politics of global warming is written
off as a 'Flat Earther', a phrase used by Gordon Brown on the eve of
Copenhagen. Some label 'climate change denial' as a psychological disorder
and claim these 'evil words' will literally bring about death and
destruction. From Torquemada on, censors have always painted their enemies
not only as wrong but as morally warped, and their utterances as a threat
to the social fabric. The idea of 'denial', meanwhile, suggests there is
an already established Truth that we must either Accept or Deny - no
challenge to it can be tolerated. We should defend scepticism, not because
climate sceptics always have something interesting to say, but because
every breakthrough in history has sprung from at least a willingness to
ask awkward, agitating questions about accepted truths.

#7: No to eco-protectionism

In the past even Marxists sang the praises of capitalism's tendency to
internationalise production and trade. The 'rapid improvement of all
instruments of production, [and] the immensely facilitated means of
communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into
civilisation', wrote Marx and Engels in 1848. By contrast ours is the era
of the 'locavore' - people who only eat food produced within 100 miles of
where they live - and green lobby groups deploy the pseudo-science of
'food miles' to argue against the CO2-emitting import of foreign
foodstuffs. In their infinite miserabilism they've even invented the
category of 'love miles' to measure the pollution caused by, for example,
importing Valentine's Day flowers from Kenya. This is the resurrection of
protectionism in eco-language, and is causing people in the Third World to
lose their jobs and homes. We need more, and more meaningful, links
between the North and the South, not fewer.

#8: Make energy the solution, not the problem

Whether we're digging for coal or extracting uranium, man's use of the
Earth's resources to create energy is frowned upon these days. We're
'destroying the planet', apparently, by draining its fuels. Such panic
over the Earth's allegedly dwindling resources is not based on hard
evidence that this stuff is running out, but on a conviction that we
shouldn't really be using it in the first place. Even our use of water is
now problematised: green charities talk about our 'water footprint' and
encourage us to live 'water-neutral lives'. This speaks to a new view of
people as merely consumers rather than producers, destroyers rather than
creators. The Earth has been relabelled a 'warehouse of resources' and our
role is apparently to tiptoe through it and borrow only what we really,
really need. We should see the creation of energy not as the problem but
as the solution, allowing us to power industry, light up whole cities, and
improve human existence. All kinds of energy can be explored - even wind
and waves - just so long as the principle of expanding energy to meet our
needs is accepted first.

#9: Address the democratic deficit

Our leaders were drawn to Copenhagen in the hope that it would provide
them with a sense purpose and historic momentum that is sorely lacking in
everyday politics. Unable to inspire voters with anything like a grand
vision of a future Good Life, they instead play at 'making history',
depicting themselves as the sole defenders of basic human existence from
the coming eco-Armageddon. Yet rather than resolving the crisis of
political vision, Copenhagen exposed it: on one side our leaders expressed
their disappointment with we the public's lack of 'urgency and drive and
animation' about climate change (in David Miliband's words), and on the
other side everyday people sensibly switched off, seeing Copenhagen as a
waste of time and money and telling pollsters that they don't think
climate change is the biggest problem facing the world. Today's democratic
deficit, the gulf between the rulers and the ruled, will not be fixed by
the displacement activity of pseudo-historic international conferences -
we need openness, honesty and debate.

#10: Humans before polar bears

In the past many thought there was a white, hairy being in the clouds who
was judging our behaviour harshly. Today many believe that another white,
hairy being - the polar bear - is a barometer of human hubris. Everything
we do is measured according to its alleged impact on the ice floes,
polar-bear habitats, and other natural phenomena. This represents the
creation of a new and backward morality, one which seeks to control human
behaviour and lower humanity's horizons through mythical tales of our
eco-destructiveness; the idea of limits, harm and polar-bear vulnerability
are used to hector and cow the public. We need to rediscover a sense of
human morality, of judging our behaviour in its own terms rather than the
terms set by miserabilist misanthropes and cynically externalised as
Concern For Polar Bears. When it comes to political decision-making,
progress and development, only one question should ever be asked: will it
or will it not benefit humankind?

Visit spiked's After Copenhagen debate he
http://spiked-online.com/index.php/d...n_article/7864