The French writer and philosopher Pascal Bruckner´s analysis of Al Gore´s and all the other doomsday scaremongers´ tactics is very much to the point:
My point is not to minimize our dangers. Rather, it is to understand why
apocalyptic fear has gripped so many of our leaders, scientists and
intellectuals, who insist on reasoning and arguing as though they were following
the scripts of mediocre Hollywood disaster movies.
Over the last half-century, leftist intellectuals have identified two great
scapegoats for the world's woes. First, Marxism designated capitalism as
responsible for human misery. Second, "Third World" ideology, disappointed by
the bourgeois indulgences of the working class, targeted the West, supposedly
the inventor of slavery, colonialism and imperialism.
Environmentalism sees itself as the fulfillment of all earlier critiques.
"There are only two solutions," Bolivian president Evo Morales declared in 2009.
"Either capitalism dies, or Mother Earth dies."
"Our house is burning, but we are not paying attention," said Jacques Chirac,
then president of France, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
2002. "Nature, mutilated, overexploited, cannot recover, and we refuse to admit
it."
Sir Martin Rees, a British astrophysicist and former president of the Royal
Society, gives humanity a 50% chance of surviving beyond the 21st century.
Oncologists and toxicologists predict that the end of mankind should arrive even
earlier, around 2060, thanks to a general sterilization of sperm.
One could cite such quotations forever, given the spread of apocalyptic
literature. Authors, journalists, politicians and scientists compete in their
portrayal of abomination and claim for themselves a hyperlucidity: They alone
see the future clearly while others vegetate in the darkness.
--
The fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the press reporting, as
though it were a surprise, that young people are haunted by the very concerns
about global warming that the media continually broadcast. As in an echo
chamber, opinion polls reflect the views promulgated by the media.
---
These are not great souls who alert us to troubles but tiny minds who wish us
suffering if we have the presumption to refuse to listen to them. Catastrophe is
not their fear but their joy. It is a short distance from lucidity to
bitterness, from prediction to anathema.
Read the entire article here
"These are not great souls who alert us to troubles but tiny minds who wish us suffering"
ReplyDeleteI like that.