House of Eratosthenes

For all the talk of apocalypse and melting poles, the environmentalists really only care about your economic activity. Buy or don’t buy. But preferably buy, so long as you’re buying green, or buying carbon credits along with whatever you’re buying.

The sinner fills up on paper towels, but the righteous man buys paper towels with a green stamp on the box. The man of little faith may drive an SUV, and the faithful may also drive an SUV, but the faithful man’s SUV has a bumper sticker warning everyone to conserve something or other. Such hypocrisies are constant, pervasive and little commented on.

What began as a movement for the responsible stewardship of the earth has been corrupted from the ethical to the fanatical. Conservationism kept humanity in the picture. Environmentalism rages at humanity. Behind its colorful drawings and its dolphin key chains is the vision of a world in which humanity and its fire sticks are the original sin.

That primal rage has been channeled and diluted into a million businesses, into countless regulations and profitable ventures. The new environmentalists are regulatory robber barons like Al Gore, green rent seeking tycoons looking to use cap and trade, and a thousand mandatory revenue streams to fleece both the faithful and the unfaithful. [emphasis mine]

Nobody ever actually says buying a different kind of light bulb and unplugging your cell phone will make the difference between the planet’s continuing survival and its imminent doom. They just use these generalized topic-label terms — “global warming,” “climate change,” “green energy” and others — to link the extinction-level-event concern, with the meaningless but profitable things we’re supposed to be doing about it.

In doing so, they exploit a dry rot that has been setting in to our thinking, for decades: We have been losing, and are continuing to lose, our ability to form effective solutions to defined problems. We’ve lost the instinct to circle back around after a solution has been proposed, and ask that annoying but purposeful question: “Okay, and this changes the likely outcome toward something more appealing to our preferences and more fitting to our vision…how?”

We’ve stopped doing this. And someone has seen a way to make big piles of money from that. It’s pretty smart of them.

You’re missing the forest for the trees. This is the natural endpoint of liberal debate. It is the ultimate Godwin’s law violation. They gave up the label “liberal” when is was too damaged to use. So they switched to “progressive”. After all, who isn’t for “progress”? It’s right there in the name! They have stopped trying to convince people they are right and have a better/smarter way of running the show. They have resorted to “IF YOU DON’T DO AS WE SAY WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!eleventy”. Seriously, they know they’ve lost the argument now they’re just trying to create for themselves a permanent political class (c.f. European parliment) that is unelected and unaccountable.
- Duffy | 06/25/2013 @ 11:27
You know, I honestly can’t blame Al Gore for this, any more than I can blame Phil Knight (or whoever runs Nike now) for charging $300 for a pair of sneakers it cost $1.50 to make. If people are dumb enough to buy your bullshit, go ahead and fleece ’em. Most toddlers are smart enough to feel the heat from a few inches away and refrain from touching the stove, but some of ’em just have to slap a palm down to make sure. Pain is stupidity leaving the body.

I save my ire for Gore’s willing stooges. Look, dudes: there hasn’t been any “global warming” for fifteen years. On that score, at least, the science really IS settled, and despite the media’s best efforts, that fact isn’t really that hard to discover. Continued belief in global warming is a psychological defense mechanism — they realize nobody gives a crap about them unless forced to, so they compensate by exaggeratedly “caring” about the entire Earth. Which, not coincidentally, forces people to care about them. Our 400+ post go-rounds with the Cuttlefish Collective were probably the only meaningful human interactions they’d had in months.
- Severian | 06/25/2013 @ 12:58
Just looked through the slides of a presentation by John Christy (Alabama State Climatologist, University of Alabama, Huntsville) dated May 30, 2013, and the best one was:

Law of Sustainability
If it’s not economically
sustainable,
it’s not sustainable.

I work in the building industry and have never understood if things are green and renewable why they are so expensive.

The real environmentalists are those of us that wore hand me downs as kids, recycled clothes for our own kids, eat left overs, feed our pets leftovers too, bought second hand items, etc. Our kids don’t each have their own bedroom/bathroom and garage space.

Most people are easily scared into trying to survive. As Michael Crichton said in his lecture on complexity theory, it is the fear that is instilled in the victims that is the most damaging, not the event itself. The catch phrases are basically the same whether global warming, y2k, global cooling. Having to act now is a big one. Hurry up, time is short, etc.
- Becky | 06/25/2013 @ 20:34
Math question:
How many luments/dollar of light can I get if I replace ALL my “waste” heat generating (considered a feature as nights get longer, and colder ’round here)incandescent light bulbs with whale oil lamps, serviced solely by wind powered ships
“harvesting” a totally “renewable” source?
Mindful that the carbon energy “rent” tax would be eliminated as a political “operating expenses resource”, with no petro oil, coal, nuclear, gas… what could go wrong? It’s for the children! and JOBS!

Where does the phosphorus,, mercury, glass, porcelin, and “junk” metal ballast/starter stuff go when the flourescents are “used up”?
How much water is used for each CFL -cradle to grave?
How about “electric” cars?
How about for the cooling system for Al Gore’s diesel yacht docked off his lakefront “second” home? (including the lifetime of SS “security” guards he’s “entitled” to have protect it?)
How come he used an electric “man hoist” to present his “hockey stick” error, rather than a ladder, or a solar/wind charged lithium battery powered laser pointer?
- CaptDMO | 06/26/2013 @ 16:19
[…] ERATOSTHENES– “What Would Happen If You Gave a Gun to a Slave?”; Think Apocalyptically and Act Locally … […]
- Steynian 477nd | Free Canuckistan! | 06/29/2013 @ 07:04

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Think Apocalyptically and Act LocallyTuesday, June 25th, 2013

Think Apocalyptically and Act Locally
Tuesday, June 25th, 2013