The tenacious cult of global warming

AWOL Civilization has some thoughts on the death-cult of global warming:

An exchange of opinions with a commenter on a previous post regarding Global Warming has moved me to examine the roots of this tenacious cult. Where did it come from? Did it actually appear several years ago out of nowhere? I believe the answer is much more complex. Like most collectivist ideology, Global Warming has a distinguished pedigree reaching deep into the 19th century, if not earlier.

After examining the intellectual bases of Global Warming, I can point to some uncanny similarity to classic Hegelian totalitarian thought. Consider these four shared fundamental traits:
1. God has no power. Global Warming transcends the simpler atheism of Hegel and Marx. Weather and macro-level shifts in the earth’s behavior are seen as primarily caused by humans, some of whom are invested with unprecedented, demonic powers. Not even “nature” is allowed into the calculation, let alone God.

2. Society can be perfected. Once upon a time, it was the New Soviet Man. Today, it’s the New Ecological Person, living in the New Sustainable Society. The new person is perfect because he consumes nothing.

3. Man is just an animal. Global Warming adds a new twist to the classic totalitarian reduction of the individual to an amorphous member of a herd. In the old collectivist scheme, we belonged to a herd, but it was a superior herd. Now, the human being is ranked even lower than the animals, and he has no special rights vis-à-vis the earth. Man must be harnessed to the needs of nature.

4. Everything is inevitable. Reminiscent of the Hegelian “inexorable march of history,” Global Warming is upon us and there is nothing we can do to stop it—short of the most drastic measures. No unforeseen event can alter its path. The inevitability can be expressed as a double condition: If we undertake the drastic measures, the world will pass into a new, golden era; if we do not undertake the drastic measures, the world will end.

The totalitarian impulse is with us in full force. Lowly man, allowed for too long to wildly express his egotistical impulses, must be controlled and repackaged under a planned ecological solution that will bring about the reign of perfection.

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