I wrote in my ebook, The War on Humans, that the environmental movement is being hijacked by anti-humanists who not only disdain the human race–we are “cancers” or “maggots” on the earth, etc.–but who intend to force us into an impoverished lifestyle in the name of “saving the planet.”
Some see these Green misanthropes as the radical fringe. Twenty years ago, they were. But the radicals have chewed to the center, mutating healthy environmentalism into an increasingly anti-human and anti-freedom movement.
Case in point: Christopher Hayes has his own television show on MSNBC and writes for the lefty wingy The Nation. He just penned an opus demanding that we only use 20% of known fossil fuel reserves to stop global warming. Not only that, but he claims that the global warming fighters are akin to the brave abolitionists who struggled so heroically against slavery!
With more than a whiff of authoritarianism, Hayes begins by citing a piece by global warming hysteric Bill McKibben, and then asserts that we will have to prevent oil, gas, etc. from being taken out of the ground. From, “The New Abolitionism” (my emphasis):
…the work of the climate movement is to find a way to force the powers that be, from the government of Saudi Arabia to the board and shareholders of ExxonMobil, to leave 80 percent of the carbon they have claims on in the ground. That stuff you own, that property you’re counting on and pricing into your stocks? You can’t have it.
Please understand: These anti-humans believe this meme with their whole hearts. Witness the “nature rights movement” that would permit anyone to sue to stop human enterprise whenever it supposedly interferes with the rights of nature to “exist and persist.”
Witness the “ecocide movement” that seeks to criminalize such resource extraction as a crime akin to genocide, most particularly the Alberta Tar Sands that has the potential to free us dependence on Middle East oil, creating tremendous prosperity in the process.
And lest you think these misanthropes have no power, how much work has been done on building the Keystone Pipeline? Ask the farmers in the Central Valley in California how much water they are going to get this year to irrigate their crops.
Here’s where the slavery part comes in:
…the parallel I want to highlight is between the opponents of slavery and the opponents of fossil fuels. Because the abolitionists were ultimately successful, it’s all too easy to lose sight of just how radical their demand was at the time: that some of the wealthiest people in the country would have to give up their wealth…
It is an audacious demand, and those making it should be clear-eyed about just what they’re asking. They should also recognize that, like the abolitionists of yore, their task may be as much instigation and disruption as it is persuasion. There is no way around conflict with this much money on the line, no available solution that makes everyone happy. No use trying to persuade people otherwise.
Doing that would drive us into poverty and misery–and prevent those in the developing world from ever escaping their destitution. But never mind, there’s a planet to save!
If I’ve done my job so far, you should, right about now, be feeling despair. If, indeed, what we need to save the earth is to forcibly pry trillions of dollars of wealth out of the hands of its owners, and if the only precedent for that is the liberation of the slaves—well, then you wouldn’t be crazy if you concluded that we’re doomed, since that result was achieved only through the most brutal extended war in our nation’s history.
Hayes says that he’s not really comparing Exxon to slave holders–but he really is. After all, the odious slave holders weren’t killing a planet.
Hayes believes that the kind of violence required to end slavery won’t be necessary because government policy and selfless acts of investors can make oil, gas, etc. too expensive to extract from the ground:
…fossil fuel companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars looking for new reserves—reserves that would be sold and emitted only in some distant postapocalyptic future in which we’ve already burned enough fossil fuel to warm the planet past even the most horrific projections.
This means that fossil fuel companies are taking their investors’ money and spending it on this extremely expensive suicide mission. Every single day. If investors say, “Stop it—we want that money back as dividends rather than being spent on exploration,” then, according to this industry insider, “what that means is, literally, the oil and gas companies don’t have a viable business model. If all your investors say that, and all the analysts start saying that, they can no longer grow as businesses.”
And where would that leave food prices? Skyrocketing! And our ability to freely travel? Gone. The generation of electricity? Hello brownouts! And prosperity generally? Collapsed!
But so what?
As the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” What the climate justice movement is demanding is the ultimate abolition of fossil fuels. And our fates all depend on whether they succeed.
The stakes are not what Hayes believes. But the green anti-humanists truly believe they are! So what happens if the investors refuse to accept the expropriation of $10 trillion?
Follow the logic: I worry that some will abandon Frederick Douglas and bring out their inner John Brown.