Time for another Earth Day, the holy day of the official state religion America isn’t supposed to have. It’s not a holiday observed out of deference to a great religious tradition, as is Christimas, which the Left has been striving mightily to shear of its theological significance and hijack as a generic year-end celebration. Everywhere from media to public education, Earth Day is venerated as part of a mandatory faith, which no one is permitted to doubt or oppose.
Like feminism, racialist theories, and now trans-gender politics, modern State-sponsored environmentalism legitimizes hatred for people who have been taught hate and “intolerance” are the ultimate sins. Our herbivorous herd of obedient, sensitivity-trained, increasingly neurotic youth lets off a great deal of steam this way.
It’s almost like the wild Festival of the classic Star Trek episode “Return of the Archons,” or the recent series of “Purge” horror films. You have to be hyper-sensitive to every misplaced syllable in most social contexts these days, perpetually Checking Your Privilege and granting Safe Spaces to anyone you might inadvertently offend without issuing a Trigger Warning ahead of time. But when it comes to “enemies of the Earth” (or enemies of feminism, or gay marriage) you can let your hair down, take the gloves off, and let fly with the worst invective that comes to mind.
Wish all sorts of misfortune and bodily harm upon them, even unto death; destroy their livelihoods with wild abandon; take time away from fashionable anti-bullying crusades to bully the hell out of them on social media; it’s all fair play when dealing with “climate change deniers.” Movie director Joss Whedon observed Earth Day 2015 by suggesting that climate change deniers should be denied access to penicillin, condemning them to terrible deaths from preventable diseases.
Radical environmentalism is the last crusade modern youth can dedicate themselves to absolutely and ferociously. All talk of tolerance, nuance, empathy, and shades of grey goes out the window, replaced by a Manichean struggle of good versus evil, angels versus devils, the wise and concerned against the blind and selfish. That kind of moral certainty is exhilarating. People who have been raised not to seek it in most other areas of their lives desperately need a hit.
Climate change mythology has crowded out most of the environmentalist concerns from previous generations, in part because industrial technology has done such an amazing job of addressing them. There’s always room for improvement, and there are some other environmental issues pop up on the radar screen from time to time, but it’s remarkable how much Green energy (of the political variety) has been pumped into the climate change movement. It gives people an easy way to assume intellectual superiority with virtually zero effort. It’s the eternal crusade, the insoluble problem, the hypothesis that can never be falsified, so it provides sustainable fuel for countless rallies and political power grabs.
That sustainable political fuel is refined from the limitless power source of guilt. Punitive political ideologies in the Western world tend to be guilt-based, with coercive power wielded by a morally superior Ruling Class to punish the wicked populace for its sins. Just as the centrifuges of Iran are spinning to produce nuclear material, so classrooms across America are spinning to refine guilt. People who feel guilty will accept tremendous punishment, and grasp at any possibility of redemption.
Climate-change environmentalism is perfectly compatible with post-colonialism and anti-capitalism – in fact, much of what the global warming movement says comes right out of post-colonial theories about evil white Europeans and their descendants robbing the world to enrich themselves. Nothing makes a global-warming militant angrier than pointing out that the developing world, which emits so much of the “greenhouse gas” they claim to be worried about, has no intention of following their suicidal prohibitions against fossil fuel and industrial development. The First World has to show “leadership” by crippling itself, you see… just as every military, political, diplomatic, and social action of the world is portrayed as a reaction to whatever America and Europe are doing, or have done historically. Only the First World has agency, and we’re supposed to be crushed by the burden of guilt.
There’s a redemption narrative in environmentalist theology… and boy, is it easy to follow! All you have to do is make a few symbolic gestures, like saying the right things on social media, turning off your electric lights and burning a few candles during Earth Hour, maybe buy an electric car (or talk about how much you’d like to buy one) and of course vote for the right people. The titanic carbon footprints of global-warming “heroes” are never held against them; not even the most wildly extravagant lifestyle prevents a celebrity or politician from declaring himself an Earth Warrior and claiming redemption. No religion has ever sold absolution at such discount prices.
TV personality Bill Nye saw nothing even slightly incongruous about boasting that he’d celebrate Earth Day by flying to Washington so he could hop aboard the carbon-blasting Air Force One and flying down to the Florida Everglades with President Obama, a trip upon which he’ll pump more carbon into the atmosphere than most ordinary people are responsible for in an an entire year. Climate change mythology puts a seal of moralistic approval on aristocratic elitism – the high and mighty will have every comfort they can imagine, they wouldn’t even consider canceling a single luxury excursion to “save the Earth,” but you grubby little proles had better get used to moving around less and sacrificing your comforts.
Radical environmentalism is a celebration of collectivist power, which always has an aristocratic element – despite all the talk of ruling in the name of The People, the rulers and their sycophants always live much, much better than The People do. Of course the Ruling Class loves environmentalist theology that portrays government as the savior of the Earth, and dissent from its agenda as sinful. The private ownership of capital is relentlessly attacked by radical Greens. It’s hardly surprising that the politicians who would end up owning all that capital, if private ownership were abolished, applaud their efforts.
Not that there aren’t plenty of capitalists willing to play along, of course – they trust their political connections to protect them from the worst punitive measures of politicized environmentalism, they can profit from the beating delivered to their less savvy competitors, and they enjoy a huge return on their advertising investment from portraying themselves as “green” companies. As we’ve seen throughout the Obama years, green crony capitalism pays out huge amounts of cold, hard cash in taxpayer subsidies, too. Who needs to spend all the time and effort working up viable business plans when you can live as a sainted parasite, congratulated for your public spirit and bold vision while you hoover millions from the Treasury with crackpot business plans that collapse as soon as the taxpayer dollars stop flowing?
This is all so lucrative that it’s never going to stop. We really ought to take some time on Earth Day to salute the incredible improvements in our standard of living, and the vast amount of human suffering that has been alleviated, by capitalism and industrial technology. The free-market industrialized world has redefined the meaning of terms like “poverty” and “hunger,” in a remarkably short period of time. We’ll need that tech more than ever, if the natural climate variation is leading us toward another Ice Age. Instead, our young people are taught to take technology and industry for granted, and peddled fantasies about how an agrarian lifestyle defined by the shifting of the wind and motion of the sun would be more pure and noble.