There have always been busybodies who think they know how others ought to live — and who crave the power to dictate it.
In this AIER article, David Waugh looks at the latest argument such authoritarians have advanced for their need to control society — the apparent danger to the environment. He writes:
Two weeks ago, pundits seized on The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ updating its “Doomsday Clock,” a metaphor for how long we have until armageddon. The group responsible for the clock includes public policy professors, United Nations employees, and a staff writer for the New Yorker. This year, these experts moved the clock to its closest-ever to doomsday, citing the increased risk from climate change and war.
No doubt this will galvanize the millions of green zealots who are convinced that the only thing standing between human life and extinction is a raft of new government edicts on energy use, meat consumption, travel, and so on.
Waugh quotes the great H. L. Mencken: “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve.”