Climate Change: A Flawed Perception
In light of current events, it feels another epoch between ourselves and the climate change debate, which raged so heatedly and with such passions just two months ago. It will, inevitably, resurface as the defining issue of our times before long, which is fundamentally positive. Yet, what we witness in this debate is a distinct lack of sound perspective on behalf of the loudest climate protesters, which often betrays their flawed ambitions and worldview underpinning their motivations for activism. It represents a frustrating conundrum for sincere environmentalists, who see through the charlatans and their motives yet wish to support the essential message nonetheless; the diagnosis, namely that the planet is dying and we are killing it, is scientifically sound, yet the framework within which this is then extrapolated to remedies and the aesthetic of the "final product", so to speak, is so shockingly flawed it understandably acts as a barrier to those sincere believers who would otherwise engage.
It is beyond the scope of this article to thoroughly examine existing scientific consensus on the perils facing our climate, but it is worth repeating, regardless, the claims often made by activists. The primary points produced include, but are not limited to; burning of fossil fuels (unsustainable energy sources) which, in turn, contributes to the greenhouse effect and respiratory problems amongst the human population; the raising of livestock which itself is a source of emissions, and; from the first point as source, rising sea levels and temperatures creating greater uninhabitable areas on earth. What is common amongst these and other points raised by the self-styled leaders of environmental activism? Clearly, they place man - in the collective - and his needs as their central focus; their entire model, if one can call it such, is solely concerned with the wellbeing of "humanity" and the ability to "liberate" man from these self-inflicted evils brought about by way of climate change.
This, then, unfortunately leads to incorrect conclusions being drawn from broadly accurate diagnoses. The climate activists who follow the Greta Thunburg model of propaganda are invariably content with the structure, aesthetic and fundamental premise upon which the world operates. They care not for green spaces, nor for the myriad species of flora and fauna that do not walk on two legs; their sole concern is for themselves and, perhaps, their "fellow man", from which an indifference to nature and wholehearted support of the concrete jungle naturally proceeds. Thus, their conclusions involve changing little-to-nothing, on a fundamental level, about the societies in which we live, instead preferring to retain this urban poison provided it operates through solar power or HEP.
This worldview is perhaps a product of their political grounding more broadly, liberalism, which itself derives its core morals and values from the dominant Christian outlook that the West adopted within the last 2,000 years. It seeks to portray the natural world as something happening "over there" and apart from man, man's place being above and detached from it. The actualité of the situation couldn't be more different, yet more alien, to the present mindset in Europe and the Americas. Man is not divorced from, above or otherwise separate to, the natural world. He is not exempt from its laws and processes, nor is his wisdom and deductive ability something that places his existence on a superior moral plain relative to the other entities imbued with the breath of life on this earth. His flaw is in allowing himself to be convinced otherwise, through a combination of self-serving religious dogma masquerading as altruism and secular philosophies essentially providing the same thing.
If the dominant climate narrative succeeds, we may envision a world almost entirely covered in concrete, save for the monstrosities that provide us with sustainable energy; a world full to the brim with billions of humans covering every corner of the planet like a parasitic disease.
This is where the present narrative leads, but another way is possible. To fully engage in the environmental debate and, crucially, to do so with sincerity, is to totally abandon the man-centred lens through which we presently approach it. Our ability to reason does not permit us to bend nature to our Will, it only gives us additional responsibility to complement the natural process. If we take that to be our starting point, we draw entirely different conclusions to those outlined above.
Firstly, we do not consider pursuing the false prophets of veganism, whose ideas would do nothing except engender a chain reaction of extinction effects. Instead, consider that we have artificially increased the number of animals bred for meat consumption, the logical conclusion of which is the requirement for depopulation. Furthermore, why tamper with the natural process in order to sustain the existence of unsustainable lifestyles? In the natural setting, the oxygenating effects of plant life counterbalances the pollutants of mammals; our solution, then, is to plant more trees. And that's not intended to suggest paying lip-service to the showmanship of present planting initiatives, but rather to advocate reforestation on a massive scale. The European continent, for instance, has been stripped to around 10% or less of its Bronze Age forestry levels, something that the true environmentalist seeks to redress.
We have not even mentioned yet, as mainstream climate activists rarely do, the extinction events that are totally unrelated to climate change. For instance, the species we've hunted to extinction for "sport", or the habitats we mercilessly destroy in the name of "human progress" when we obtain the notion of grand building projects to house an increasingly unsustainable human population. The answer to these problems complements our drive to reduce emissions, whilst taking a life-centred approach to environmental issues that realises humans represent a cog, not master switch. The answer, which again will never be uttered from the television climate folk, is to destroy large areas of concrete and urbanised zones which act as barriers to the sustainability of natural life. The vast majority of human cities should be torn down and re-wilded as far as possible.
These are just some suggestions amongst a litany of others that mainstream climate activists wouldn't even countenance, let alone campaign for. Indeed, they would find almost every single one of them repulsive and unpalatable, because their ambition is to sustain the unsustainable and they are possessed by an irrational reverence for their fellow man which is wholly undeserved. They fail to see, because of this, that the causes of pollution and environmental degradation are merely symptoms of a wider problem, which is, in a way, unsurprising considering they belong to the species which embodies it.
Throughout the next decade, it is the responsibility of true environmentalists to seize back control of the narrative and demonstrate the folly of viewing the issue through human self-interest. Furthermore, it challenges us to present a Grand Idea that shows what our envisioned aesthetic for the environmental world really is, in contrast to the undesirable one that represents the mainstream climate activist goal a priori, based upon their flawed reasoning.
Et natura non supra.
It is beyond the scope of this article to thoroughly examine existing scientific consensus on the perils facing our climate, but it is worth repeating, regardless, the claims often made by activists. The primary points produced include, but are not limited to; burning of fossil fuels (unsustainable energy sources) which, in turn, contributes to the greenhouse effect and respiratory problems amongst the human population; the raising of livestock which itself is a source of emissions, and; from the first point as source, rising sea levels and temperatures creating greater uninhabitable areas on earth. What is common amongst these and other points raised by the self-styled leaders of environmental activism? Clearly, they place man - in the collective - and his needs as their central focus; their entire model, if one can call it such, is solely concerned with the wellbeing of "humanity" and the ability to "liberate" man from these self-inflicted evils brought about by way of climate change.
This, then, unfortunately leads to incorrect conclusions being drawn from broadly accurate diagnoses. The climate activists who follow the Greta Thunburg model of propaganda are invariably content with the structure, aesthetic and fundamental premise upon which the world operates. They care not for green spaces, nor for the myriad species of flora and fauna that do not walk on two legs; their sole concern is for themselves and, perhaps, their "fellow man", from which an indifference to nature and wholehearted support of the concrete jungle naturally proceeds. Thus, their conclusions involve changing little-to-nothing, on a fundamental level, about the societies in which we live, instead preferring to retain this urban poison provided it operates through solar power or HEP.
This worldview is perhaps a product of their political grounding more broadly, liberalism, which itself derives its core morals and values from the dominant Christian outlook that the West adopted within the last 2,000 years. It seeks to portray the natural world as something happening "over there" and apart from man, man's place being above and detached from it. The actualité of the situation couldn't be more different, yet more alien, to the present mindset in Europe and the Americas. Man is not divorced from, above or otherwise separate to, the natural world. He is not exempt from its laws and processes, nor is his wisdom and deductive ability something that places his existence on a superior moral plain relative to the other entities imbued with the breath of life on this earth. His flaw is in allowing himself to be convinced otherwise, through a combination of self-serving religious dogma masquerading as altruism and secular philosophies essentially providing the same thing.
If the dominant climate narrative succeeds, we may envision a world almost entirely covered in concrete, save for the monstrosities that provide us with sustainable energy; a world full to the brim with billions of humans covering every corner of the planet like a parasitic disease.
This is where the present narrative leads, but another way is possible. To fully engage in the environmental debate and, crucially, to do so with sincerity, is to totally abandon the man-centred lens through which we presently approach it. Our ability to reason does not permit us to bend nature to our Will, it only gives us additional responsibility to complement the natural process. If we take that to be our starting point, we draw entirely different conclusions to those outlined above.
Firstly, we do not consider pursuing the false prophets of veganism, whose ideas would do nothing except engender a chain reaction of extinction effects. Instead, consider that we have artificially increased the number of animals bred for meat consumption, the logical conclusion of which is the requirement for depopulation. Furthermore, why tamper with the natural process in order to sustain the existence of unsustainable lifestyles? In the natural setting, the oxygenating effects of plant life counterbalances the pollutants of mammals; our solution, then, is to plant more trees. And that's not intended to suggest paying lip-service to the showmanship of present planting initiatives, but rather to advocate reforestation on a massive scale. The European continent, for instance, has been stripped to around 10% or less of its Bronze Age forestry levels, something that the true environmentalist seeks to redress.
We have not even mentioned yet, as mainstream climate activists rarely do, the extinction events that are totally unrelated to climate change. For instance, the species we've hunted to extinction for "sport", or the habitats we mercilessly destroy in the name of "human progress" when we obtain the notion of grand building projects to house an increasingly unsustainable human population. The answer to these problems complements our drive to reduce emissions, whilst taking a life-centred approach to environmental issues that realises humans represent a cog, not master switch. The answer, which again will never be uttered from the television climate folk, is to destroy large areas of concrete and urbanised zones which act as barriers to the sustainability of natural life. The vast majority of human cities should be torn down and re-wilded as far as possible.
These are just some suggestions amongst a litany of others that mainstream climate activists wouldn't even countenance, let alone campaign for. Indeed, they would find almost every single one of them repulsive and unpalatable, because their ambition is to sustain the unsustainable and they are possessed by an irrational reverence for their fellow man which is wholly undeserved. They fail to see, because of this, that the causes of pollution and environmental degradation are merely symptoms of a wider problem, which is, in a way, unsurprising considering they belong to the species which embodies it.
Throughout the next decade, it is the responsibility of true environmentalists to seize back control of the narrative and demonstrate the folly of viewing the issue through human self-interest. Furthermore, it challenges us to present a Grand Idea that shows what our envisioned aesthetic for the environmental world really is, in contrast to the undesirable one that represents the mainstream climate activist goal a priori, based upon their flawed reasoning.
Et natura non supra.
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