Yet high-tech statism still needs an overarching narrative. In the new school of panoptic fiction—such as John Twelve Hawks’s recently completed Fourth Realm trilogy—the justification for round-the-clock surveillance is usually “security.” But the “security state” is a tough sell: if you tell people the government is compiling data on them for national security purposes, the left instinctively recoils. But, if you explain that you’re doing it to “lower emissions,” starry-eyed coeds across the land will coo their approval. And the middle-class masochists of the developed world will whimper in orgasmic ecstasy as you tighten the screws, pausing only to demand that you do it to them harder and faster.
Consider a recent British plan for each citizen to be given an official travel allowance. If you take one flight a year, you’ll pay just the standard amount of tax on the journey. But, if you travel more frequently, if you take a second or third flight, you’ll be subject to additional levies—all in the interest of saving the planet for Al Gore’s polar bear documentaries and that carbon-offset palace he lives in in Tennessee. The Soviets restricted freedom of movement through the bureaucratic apparatus of “exit visas.” The British favoured the bureaucratic apparatus of exit taxes: the movement’s still free; it’s just that there’ll be a government processing fee of £412.95. And, in a revealing glimpse of the universal belief in enviro-statism, this proposal came not from Gordon Brown’s Labour Party but from the allegedly Conservative Party.
At their Monday night poker game in hell, I’ll bet Stalin, Hitler and Mao are kicking themselves: “ ‘It’s about leaving a better planet to our children?’ Why didn’t I think of that?” This is Two-Ply Totalitarianism—no jackboots, no goose steps, just soft and gentle all the way. Nevertheless, occasionally the mask drops and the totalitarian underpinnings become explicit. Take Elizabeth May’s latest promotional poster: “Your parents f*cked up the planet. It’s time to do something about it. Live Green. Vote Green.” As Saskatchewan blogger Kate McMillan pointed out, the tactic of “convincing youth to reject their parents in favour of The Party” is a time-honoured tradition.
The problem, alas, is that, for the moment, there’s still more than one party. But why? Last year, David Suzuki suggested that denialist politicians should be thrown in jail. And only last month the New York Times’s Great Thinker Thomas Friedman channelled his inner Walter Duranty and decided that democracy has f*cked up the planet. Why, in Beijing, where they don’t have that disadvantage, they banned the environmentally destructive plastic bag! In one day! Just like that! “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks,” wrote Friedman. “But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”
Forward to where?
Well, fortunately the Copenhagen convention’s embryo “government” appears immune to such outmoded concepts as democratic accountability.
Don’t take my word. Listen to what the activists are saying: it’s about every aspect of your life.
PS: Just to be safe, after reading this column, tear into pieces and flush down your toilet.
Oh, no, wait, don’t…
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PS: IT'S THE SUN, STUPID.
Explain why every planet in the solar-system is warming at about the same rate as Earth?
Guess it's all those SUVs the martians are driving, huh?
Morons and liars and dictators (Oh MY!)
God help us…
DD
How is a 5 year average more accurate than a 10 year average?
Chris O
You keep referencing this website:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2005/04/gwsbingo….
To refute a lot of the arguments here. Why are you referencing a blog post written by a computer scientist in 2005? You should really find something more recent.
The World Government is coming! The World Government is coming! We'll be ruled by German technocrats! Quick get your long guns!!!
This article is very well-written, but I would like to see substantiation of what Setyn asserts about property rights. Congressman Courtney (CD2) specifically states on his website "As passed by the House, the [ACES] bill does not require current or future homeowners to conduct energy audits, or make energy efficiency improvements on their existing homes."__http://courtney.house.gov/cleanenergy/ __One of you has to be wrong, or else I'm missing something. Do you have a reference for your assertion??
I think your article is long on scare and short on reality. As stated by Thomas Friedman, most of the world and all of your examples are countries that are not one-party autocracies. This means Big Government cannot simply restrict and monitor our lives in the name of Green. Perhaps the only good thing your article does is incite people to take notice of the upcoming climate change talks. Let’s begin a constructive dialogue on positive change for the environment and ourselves; it doesn’t have to be so scary.
Government restricts and monitors our lives in the name of security, is it really that big a stretch that they'll do it for something else?
Agree with most of this article. There isn't enough critical thinking in this area. High profile egos jump on the bandwagon & enjoy the limelight. For example, do electric cars make sense- not by a long-shot. Should we be scarring our landscape with wind turbines when we have to build the equivalent gas-turbine capacity? It's all about what is fashionable, not what makes sense.
Mark Steyn claims that: “In the name of ‘the environment,’ the state gets to regulate everything you do. The cap-and-trade bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, for example, is a bold assault on property rights: in order to sell your home—whether built in 2006 or 1772—you would have to bring it into compliance with whimsical, eternally evolving national ‘energy efficiency’ standards, starting with a 50 per cent reduction in energy use by 2018. Fail to do so and it would be illegal for you to enter into a private contract with a willing buyer”.
This claim is false, and has already been debunked by Factcheck.org. From their website (June 20, 2009):
Q: Does the House energy bill subject owners of existing homes to an energy efficiency audit before they can sell?
A: Rep. Boehner and Rush Limbaugh got this wrong. The Realtors and home builders associations say there’s no such requirement in the bill, as do we.
It’s true that the bill sets new national efficiency standards for new residential and commercial buildings. It calls for buildings to be 30 percent more efficient by 2012, and 50 percent more efficient beginning in 2014. It ultimately calls for buildings to be 75 percent more efficient by 2029. But those efficiency benchmarks apply only to homes constructed after the bill becomes law, not currently existing ones. We found no requirement for energy audits or energy-efficiency inspections in the bill.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/07/energy-bill-and-...
Mr. Steyn’s conspiratorial claims that environmental concerns will result in world government are based on faulty information. Readers of Canada’s national newsmagazine deserve better.
Is Friedman out of his mind??? “But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages."
Reasonably enlightened?? Do reasonably enlightened leaders continue to jail dissidents, impose strict restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly, use mega-surveillance on internet use, blocking many sites, and employ a host of decidedly oppressive measures to control the population?? Also, capitalism in China means the government owns half of every enterprise, last I heard…