We're not talking anymore about measures which require a little bit of tweaking here and there, or a little bit of political tweaking here and there. We're talking about measures which require global revolutionary change ...
And I'm afraid the second uncomfortable message I have to put out to you tonight is that when it comes to dealing with a problem of this scale, small is no longer beautiful. We have to start thinking on the biggest possible terms....
We have very very little time in which to act. We have very very little time in which to bring about the largest economical and political transformation the world has ever seen.
According to Mr Monbiot there is only one possible course of action and that is to accept a global transformation.
Is Mr Monbiot distressed by the thought of massive political and economic change? Well, no. In 2003 he published a book, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order. One sympathetic reviewer wrote of this manifesto:
Not for him any local, protectionist, small-focus reform initiatives ... Speaking for what he terms the "global justice movement", Monbiot argues for three macro reforms. He wants the establishment of a democratically elected world parliament, an international clearing union to discharge trade deficits and prevent the accumulation of debt, and a fair trade organisation "which restrains the rich while emancipating the poor" ...
He wants to change the way people act and think ("a metaphysical mutation"), and he understands quite clearly the dangerous exultation ("which Christians call joy") that accompanies such intense collective purpose concentrated by adversity.
Monbiot, in other words, believes in a New World Order as a matter of political morality. Little wonder then that he should conclude that global warming requires us to create ... a New World Order.
We need to be careful that global warming doesn't become a means of prising open society for the benefit of a transnational political elite.
Monbiot assumes that it will be the left-liberal elite who will benefit and that global governance will restrain the power of the large corporations. He doesn't seem to have noticed that the corporate elite has also eagerly signed on to the global warming movement. Laying the world open to a transnational elite is arguably just as appealing for them as for globalising leftists.
I'm not suggesting that concerns about the environment should be dismissed. If there is potentially a problem, then accurate data should be collected and the issue debated seriously and openly.
Let's understand, though, that there are those who have other motivations for promoting an alarmist view on the environment.
It is invariable that, when leftists proclaim the necessity of some all-encompassing regimentation, they assume that they will be the commissars. As a coal-carrier said to a bourgeois lady during the 1848 French revolution: "Yes, Madam, everything's going to be equal now. I'll go in silks and you'll carry coal."
ReplyDeleteAs I commented at another site earlier today, when the answer is always the same, you can be forgiven for thinking the question doesn't really matter.
It does seem that a lot of the Global Warming business has to do with a presumption that it's man who creates reality so we gotta get organized so the right people are in charge and it gets done in the right way. The presumption gets applied to everything, not just the world's climate. And there do seem to be indications that the supposed scientific consensus in favor of Doing Something Big Right Away is not all that strong.
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