The green agenda

“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”
Vaclav Klaus
Blue Planet in Green Shackles

Sometimes - at least here in Europe - one feels that all people support "green values". Who would not want to protect the environment and and enjoy a healthy life style? There is an ever growing flood of "green" articles and programmes in the media. The greens are now an important political force in many European countries, with Germany as a prime example. And most of the traditional parties have adopted much of the green agenda at least in their rhetoric. The entire global warming/climate change movement is based on the green/environmentalist ideology - or religion - which seems to be filling the vacuum left by the weakening role of the church.

Kevin Andrews, Australian shadow minister for Families, Housing and Human Services is one of the few politicians who has thoroughly studied the green agenda. His scholarly article in the Quadrant magazine is recommended reading for all people who still value Western Civilisation.

What most people do not realise, is that the green movement has its roots in the Marxist  totalitarian tradition.

Here are some of the highlights in the Quadrant article:

Many descriptions could be applied to the Greens, but none seems more accurate than Jack Mundey’s own description of “ecological Marxism”, which sums up the two core beliefs of the Greens. First, the environment or the ecology is to be placed before all else. This is spelt out in the first principle in the Greens Global Charter, to which the Australian Greens are subscribers: “We acknowledge that human beings are part of the natural world and we respect the specific values of all forms of life, including non-human species.”[34]
Second, the Greens are Marxist in their philosophy, and display the same totalitarian tendencies of all previous forms of Marxism as a political movement. By totalitarian, I mean the subordination of the individual in the impulse to rid society of all elements that, in the eyes of the adherent, mar its perfection.
Let me expand. According to the Greens’ ideology, human dignity is neither inherent nor absolute, but relative.[35] Humans are only one species amongst others. As Brown and Singer write: “We hold that the dominant ethic is indefensible because it focuses only on human beings and on human beings who are living now, leaving out the interests of others who are not of our species, or not of our generation.”[36] Elsewhere, they equate humans with animals:

The revolutionary element in Green ethics is its challenge to us to see ourselves in universal terms ... I must take into account the interests of others, on the same footing as my own. This is true, whether these others are Victorians or Queenslanders, Australians or Rwandans, or even the nonhuman animals whose habitat is destroyed when a forest is destroyed.[37]

What is revolutionary about this statement is not that the interests of another should be considered in an ethical judgment. Judeo-Christian belief extols consideration of others, as does Kant’s Golden Rule. Burke wrote of society being a compact across generations. What is revolutionary is the equation of humans and animals.
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For many Greens supporters, environmentalism is ultimately an article of faith and belief. This is no better illustrated that in the controversy surrounding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It has become increasingly clear that the process of “establishing” human-caused global warming has been manipulated by a small group of people, using mutual peer-review processes, and claiming to speak for many more scientists who had little input and no real opportunity to review the final documents. The closed-shop nature of the process is counter the scientific empiricism of the enlightenment, and marks another significant break with traditional Western culture.
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For the Greens, a pristine global environment represents earthly perfection. It underpins their “ecological wisdom”[41] and is at the core of the new ethic.[42] It is to be protected and promoted at all costs. Hence, all old growth forests are to be locked up;[43] logging is to be prohibited; wealth is to be scorned;[44] economic growth is opposed;[45] exclusive ownership of property is questioned;[46] there should be a moratorium of fossil fuels exploration;[47] dam construction should be discouraged;[48] genetic engineering and agricultural monoculture is rejected;[49] world trade should be reduced;[50] and a barter economy encouraged.[51]
It explains why the Greens believe the world’s population is excessive and should be reduced,[52] and why human consumption should be cut.[5
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What is at stake in the Greens’ “revolution” is the heart and soul of Western civilisation, built on the Judeo-Christian/Enlightenment synthesis that upholds the individual—with obligations and responsibilities to others, but ultimately judged on his or her own conscience and actions—as the possessor of an inherent dignity and inalienable rights. What is also at stake is the economic system that has resulted in the creation of wealth and prosperity for the most people in human history.

Read the entire article here.