Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Naomi Klein has claimed that the reason Americans, British, Australians and Canadians are the world’s leading “climate deniers”, is that we share a “frontier mentality”.
According to Klein;
Klein said the denial of climate science was prevalent in English-speaking countries such as Australia, Canada, the US and the UK because of a “colonial settler mentality”.
“Countries founded on a powerful frontier mentality have this idea of limitless nature than can be endlessly extracted,” she said.
“Climate change is threatening to that because there are limits and you have to respect those limits. Where that frontier narrative is strongest is where denialism is strongest.
“The rest of Europe has a keener sense of boundaries – they’ve lived against the limits of nature for longer.”
For once Naomi has a point. People who reject climate alarmism, in my experience, tend to be people who think for themselves.
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“for themselves” is unnecessary.
+1000
Check out the “Wiki” entry for Naomi Klein and you’ll find she’s blood-line hive-royalty. And if you wonder what her type just might be saying behind our backs, Google: “youtube Larry Grathwohl Ayers”.
Curious, how the hive’s agit-prop machinery is, at the moment, giving Naomi Klein the “star treatment” (apparently at the expense of the less “photogenic” Naomi Oreskes, who must be really bummed-out and steamed-up by this whole, probably unexpected turn of events–though she, Oreskes, did get a Harvard professorship as her “first runner-up”, hive-heroine, golden-trough, lifetime-achievement, get-lost consolation prize, so it’s hard to feel too sorry for her). And you just know sumptin’s cookin’ when the hive deploys a Fox-News, hot-babe knock-off, like Naomi Klein, to push their hellish, dystopian designs, given our betters’ usual, famous preference for women of the “Madame Defarge”, beady-eyed, shrill-and-cranky, proto-commissar persuasion. So, like, maybe the “hive-bozos” are pullin’ out “all the stops”, as a part of some sort of “big-move”, in the near-term offing, I’m thinkin’.
And, finally, I mean, like, I recommend that the “precautionary principle” requires, as a matter of prudence, and very likely self-preservation, as well, that us lovers of liberty and ethical science regard Naomi (not you, Orkeses!–quite tryin’ to crash the party, you non-person nobody!) as a nasty, dangerous, ruthless, and cull-crazy, sex-reassignment re-incarnation of Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin, and not casually dismiss her as some sort of “air-head” big-joke who just happens to suffer from “episodes” of goofy, “Pol Pot”-obsessed, stalker-“crush” hysterics.
Mike: that’s some sell you got there. Why not just call her a marxoid crank? She’s just trading one pseudo-scientific tradition for another, bringing over some of the old baggage, but this time on Wall Street’s side. Tag her Princess Carbon Credits.
“Think for themselves”, can actually be interpreted as a badge of honor here. The context describes people like me who think independently – as a opposed to those in the CAGW camp who rely on others to do the thinking for them. No?
Nobody will be thinking for themselves with this planned new curriculum in middle schools around “Climate Science”. http://www.middleweb.com/24513/teach-climate-change-through-positive-action/
We have to stop letting these warmistas use phrases like ” denialism” without objecting loudly.
I do not practice denialism, whatever the hell that is.
Which is the worst part of such s phrase… it means whatever they want it to mean, and the definition is fluid and infinitely morphable.
And, as well, same goes for her insinuation that it is those who are skeptical of CAGW alarmism are the ones who feel ” threatened by climate change”!
They are the fools who feel threatened by boogeymen, and who have decided that all sorts of normal events are instead portents of doom.
fluid and morphable, just like the science they practice.
We had a poster on this site yesterday who kept insisting that everything must be banned, until it can be proven to be completely safe in all conceivable circumstances.
“Denialism” in their meaning must be a kind of obsessive-compulsive-neurosis, because as true believers, they simply cannot understand why “normal people”, who are not paid by evil “Big Oil”, do not accept their infallible (and by Gaia herself blessed) teachings for saving mankind from great satan CO2 … 😉
That is of course the same line of thinking as in the old Soviet Union where all dissidents who couldn’t enjoy the likewise infallible doctrine of Communism were declared to be insane and treated accordingly…
Well, the point is, the orthodox CAGW believers are partly right: We climate realists are really not quite “normal”. Otherwise we would just join the “righteous flock” of the conformist majority of humans and accept the ruling green religion. But we are not conformist people. We prefer to think and check the facts for ourselves. Thus we are not normal. But are we insane then? No, in spheres of totalitarian thinking and cult-like religions, “Denialism” is the only healthy thing to do.
Finagles’ Factor reborn!
That’s the problem in a nutshell. We allow the nutcases to define our language.
“Climate Realists” are the premiere denialists – just like the “Progressives” are the premiere back to aristocrat and peasant social regressives.
Exactly so and when it happens that scientific principles of testing others’ theories is also being prevented then it is clear those that can think are leading the argument. Interesting that this – yet again – brings together the English speaking peoples. Daniel Hannan’s book “How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World” is valid again.
Who or what is Naomi Klein; and what is her official title as spokesman for people who are basically a product of the former British Colonial Empire.
So we are a diverse group of peoples who live, or have lived over perhaps a larger portion of the earth’s inhabitable environment, than anyone else in Historical times.
So we are well educated people who are observant, and resourceful.
Hey Naomi, maybe we all learned our basic concepts of freedom and liberty, from the same mother.
And despite our diversity, we get along well with each other; divided mainly by space, and a common language.
And just what did you mean by ” the rest of Europe ” ?
Europe; by far the smallest ” continent ” ; perhaps should like Pluto, be re-classified as a Dwarf Continent, and as far as I know, there are NO English speaking countries, on that dwarf continent.
And they certainly have learned well how to live in harmony with nature and each other; having given us the two greatest world wars, that were so destructive of the natural environment.
How can you even fit so many tower of Babel languages in such a small area ??
Well it is probably true, that it is the peoples of Africa, the second largest real continent, who best live in harmony with nature; so I’m sure they would be the most informed about global warming, and sea level rise, and ocean acidification, and the other clearly apparent consequences of climate change.
We DON’T deny climate science Naomi; we follow it studiously, wherever its evidence leads us.
And we aren’t impressed with the kind of psycho-babble rationalizations that you have dreamed up.
And yes basically ALL of us DO believe in climate change, and few of us have denied that.
g
Great comment, George.
George, as for English-speaking countries in Europe, have you forgotten the Grand Duchy of Fenwick?
One small point–you will find English not only spoken in all of the European countries as a lingua franca for world commerce and diplomacy, but in many of those countries English is also a required second language in schools, for obvious reasons. The English language is not spoken on only one side of the Climate Threat wars, and mention of English-speaking countries is really silly in this context, except to say that our ordinary [and incidentally English-speaking] citizens are trying to lead our leaders to enlightenment. And, disappointing I realize, I speak English and live in the twenty-first century, and I doubt (deny? really!) a lot of warmist nonsense even makes sense to English-speaking warmists; but even San Diego, where I grew up, though on a border, is not any sort of frontier town, and I doubt I could muster up a frontier mentality if I tried.
If Ms. Klein wishes to find a “mentality” in common among those who strive against institutional foolishness, she will have to find a real one.
george e smith – unfortunately for canadians, Naomi is one of our high profile, whiny liberals. Naomi is quick to share her opinions, but not anything else she’s garnered out of the free-market, capitalist system. We still call those types – pink cadillac communists. She drives several.
We have more people parking in my favorite MacDonalds parking lot, than there are in the Grand Duchy of Fenwick.
But I will grant that the GDF may have more people who speak fluent English, than MacDonalds parking lot does.
se habla espanol.
I didn’t say nobody in dwarf continental Europe could speak English. The French won’t ever admit it though.
g
and for Don Newkirk, it was not I who listed the principal English speaking former colonies of the British Empire, as her chief denialists.
That was Madame Klein. She didn’t say fluency in English was her metric; just non European Colonial residues.
Does the name Naomi mean guru or something like that; there seems to be a disproportionate number of them blowing their horns ??
Long live Grand Duchess Gloriana XII! (She loves Big Macs, I hear.)
G
Gibraltar
Auto
reorge – re: McDonalds.
I don’t think I’ve passed a McDonald’s in quite awhile where there weren’t far more cars idling in the takeout line than were parked with patrons inside. Isn’t that an indicator of denialism, spewing all that “carbon pollution” while waiting for the Big Mac and fries? Interesting that McDonald’s parking lots are where “that frontier narrative is strongest”.
+1
@Don Newkirk:
Good points… I would only add that India has the most English speakers, the most English newspapers, and their own recognized dialect (preservig some old British forms now absent from Britain…)
You don’t know who Naomi Klein is?! This the Paris Hilton of the AGW movement.
Funny they always call on us “frontier types” when there’s a terrorist to be captured or someone needs a handout.
I like self reliance. Less socialist interference and control.
Climate science is about control not science.
Amen!
Self reliance is definitely one of the forces that pushes people into independent thought – and thus the chance that they’ll be a climate skeptic.
There are a few other forces that can push someone towards climate skepticism:
Expectation of loss. If a theory results in you losing, then you’ll approach it more skeptically.
Perception of nature. People who grow up in urban areas are more likely to perceive nature as a small fragile thing and people as a big problem because it is true where they live. People from rural areas see nature as large and resilient and people as a small issue because it is true where they live.
I think these are two important drivers, but don’t know how to separate them. Many, if not most rural economies are tied to oil, gas, or coal or resource intensive industries like farming. And there tend to be religious and political influences that are hard to unmuddle. Maybe self-reliance is another important characteristic that is influenced by the population density of where you grew up.
In any case, it is easy to observe a correlation between how rural a place is and their level of skepticism about climate science, at least in the US:
http://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/
“People who grow up in urban areas are more likely to perceive nature as a small fragile thing and people as a big problem because it is true where they live. People from rural areas see nature as large and resilient and people as a small issue because it is true where they live.”
A very good counter-point to the article’s “frontier mentality” claim.
Growing up in an urban area, I believe that the environment is a lot more resilient than a lot of other urbanites think.
Ditto for Australasia
A someone who has worked in some of the most hostile areas in the US and Africa, I learned long ago that you can live with nature but never, never, think nature is friendly or even benign.
@vboring
I would add that a decent education in a tecnical field also predisposes to seeing all the gaping holes and bogosities in the Global Warming speculation (it really doesn’t rate being called a theory…).
Over represented among skeptics are geologists, engineers, business managers, computer programmers, economists, meteorologists. .. people who do analysis for aliving…
Thank you John.
Self-reliance, freedom of thought and body, equal justice under law, belief in Constitutional government, abhorrence of socialism and communism and totalitarianism of any kind do seem to be part of the pioneer/frontier beliefs. Freedom of religion, the right to own property, equal opportunity, patriotism, good citizenship, and responsibility for our own actions also seem to thrive in the frontier “mentality”; as do charity, love of neighbors, and love of work and accomplishment.
I am old enough and had the good fortune to be raised in a place and time where real pioneers were very much part of my life. You and Naomi Klein are both wrong. Pioneers had various reasons for settling the unplowed frontier. They brought their attitudes and behaviors from wherever they were born. As a group, I would say that their main common characteristic is that they tended to be much more in touch with reality than their university educated grandchildren. Otherwise, forget trying to paint them with any particular brush. eg. “… Yes, there were socialists in South Dakota in its earliest days …”
Yep we know what sheep are really like.
All that stuff in bible about flocks is just not that interesting once you have been at a shearing shed for a few months.
Even if this CAGW is a fresh new religion
I don’t think anybody sane denies that climate change happens. The issue on the table is how much man is causing it, and what if anything man can do about it.
While I’m at it, I wonder if the people who want to stop/control warming, which is what they’re really alarmed about, have given a thought to the law of unintended consequences. What if they somehow DO manage to corral CAGW, and in the process launch another ice-age? Maybe one they can’t stop? Now you’d have something to be alarmed about as glaciers once again envelop a third or more of the planet.
(See— I can put together as credible an alarmist theory as they can— and based on stuff pulled from the same location they got their stuff.)
We affect local weather but climate? I do not think so. Local weather reverts to “norm” when left alone.
Actually, it is the climate-alarmists who tend to believe that “climate change” is something new. I.e. we never had this problem before until these flatulent humans started to increase their spewing of carbon dioxide in the 20th century.
Skeptics tend to believe that “climate change” has always been around. And it has been worse in the past.
She comes off as a political Luddite. ‘Climate Change’ in the past before human historical records have been much more dramatic than anything we’ve experienced. I would add that urbanites tend to view themselves as somehow separate from nature, as an anomaly that does not belong(self loathing?), whereas rural dwellers tend more to see themselves as an integral part of nature and working in harmony with it. Directly relative to the artificiality of their environment. mjmsprt40 says, “The issue on the table is how much man is causing it…,” and this directly relates to why she is using the term ‘Climate Change’, and not the now seemingly discarded term ‘AGW’. With ‘Climate Change’, the alarmists have the bases covered no matter which way the climate goes.
Let me hear an AMEN here!
Amen, Brother Dawtgtomis!
* Sorry if I pronounced your name wrong :-)*
It would be pretty damn funny if alarmists some how found a way to lower Co2 concentrations within the atmosphere only to lose control and drop it to dangerously low levels which would effectively choke to death all plant life which in turn would choke the rest of life to death. I know that’s never gonna happen but the irony would be uncanny!
Yeah, hilarious.
cooeee
Clutching at straws doesn’t begin to describe it! She though, being of superior intellect, is immune.
Probably lives alone with 2 cats
…with 2 gender-neutral cats…
More like 20 cats.
Toxoplasma gondii from the cats…..
What have you guys got against cats?
Actually, I was thinking she is far less hideous looking than most warmistas.
This title might explain the problem and also what I’ve got against cats:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cat-parasite-toxoplasma-gondii-linked-to-mental-illness-schizophrenia/
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/toxoplasmosis/basics/causes/con-20025859
http://www.health24.com/Medical/Diseases/Diseases-from-cats-Client-20120721
Of course if you need a good barn mouser then they might be more fun than rat traps.
BFL,
Top each his own. You don’t have to like cats; just say so. You don’t need links harvested from the internet. You can find similar links that apply to every domesticated animal.
DB: I didn’t say I didn’t like cats (I actually do), I said this is what I’ve got against them. They do seem to have more virile nasties that transfer to humans than dogs. And I mostly avoid them for the same reason that I wouldn’t ride a motorcycle in Dallas, especially during rush hour. Just a personal risk issue.
And her Ouija board
Indeed, but now we are being accused of cat-denial. The enormity if it.
Actually, she’s got a young child. But, one mask ask the question as to who’s the child and who’s the parent.
Alex what’s wrong with you? I live alone with two cats. They know enough about climate to stay in when it rains and never get as wet as a cat. That takes them more intelligent than warmists who think they know the future. Here is a hint for these warmists: some people are just smarter than others and can see through the lies of their pseudo-scientific prognosticators who have their hands in my pocket to fight an imaginary warming that might or might not happen after I am dead.
Interestingly, I also live with two cats.
But mine are not the least bit afraid of rain or getting wet.
They do get a little freaked out by thunder though.
Except Tallulah, since she went deaf from black skink neurotoxin last spring.
Not even afraid of thunder anymore…’cause she can’t hear it.
Least she can walk again.
Cats are slick and cool and anyone who hates ’em is all misguided or sumptin’.
But that doesn’t mean we should let cats take over the internet.
And Mark?
Mark And Two Cats Mark?
It’s odd then that the majority of people pushing the catastrophic global warming message also derive from the same ‘colonialist mentality’ stock. I have a theory: warmists despise and are utterly ashamed of their own capitalist, formerly colonialist culture and its undeniable achievement of stable democracies that have nurtured scientific and technological progress and achievement for the past 200 odd years. That scientific progress and expansion of free enterprise and democracy has, in their opinion, only brought the world to the brink of destruction. It is also evidence of the profoundly racist and culturally insensitive dark heart that beats at the centre of the major industrialised western nations – in their left wing liberal opinion. So they seek to make amends for the ‘sins’ of their forebears by destroying Western capitalist free enterprise culture and science itself, replacing the former with a One World quasi-socialist/environmentalist government and the latter with a dumbed down pastiche of its former self (so called ‘post normal’ science whose chief purpose is to legitimise and reinforce political interventionism.
Simpler than that. Just interfering busybodies who like to tell others what to do.
As the remarkably astute social philosopher Eric Hoffer said: “A man who’s own business isn’t worth minding will console himself by trying to mind yours.” Describes these kinds of self important busybodies perfectly.
Busybodies is perfect description. Progressives are truly the washwomen of the political spectrum. Her writings are like listening to somebody gossip.
Yes. Most noisy, pushy and persistent activists (of all kinds) are just that: interfering busybodies who find a “cause” to justify their totalitarian tendencies. Because being noisy and pushy are not virtuous. Great post by Severian mentioning Hoffer.
Jacques Barzun notes how the Left demands the destruction of the West because the West is sexist, racist, homophobe, et cetera. The ironing is in that it is only the West that considers these bad. Should they succeed in destroying the West, women’s rights will be determined by Muslims, Hindus, or Chinese.
Beware of Libs denigrating the West with Western values.
A previous parallel, when Weepy Bill McKibben tried to become Irish so he could partake in IRA hunger strikes and become a genuine part of the “victimhood”.
Brought to you by this very site …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/17/the-global-warming-cause-one-mans-substitute-for-victimhood/
Leftists are driven by two thoughts. First, the fact that there are people who have more than they do is somehow evil and that they need govt to get for them what they haven’t been able to get on their own.
Second that the fact that they have so much while others have so little is evil and that they must constantly pay penance for this crime.
The dichotomy between these two poles of their ideology slowly drives them all crazy.
Someone posted this on the WUWT facebook page.
http://blog.heartland.org/2015/08/naomi-klein-admits-in-her-climate-change-screed-that-global-warming-is-all-about-anti-capitalist-polemics-and-has-nothing-to-do-really-with-science/
People who understand the history of Marxism are deeply annoyed that Klein claims deep green is somehow Marxist.
I’ve sometimes wondered if climate alarmism is the political creed of Marxists who don’t like the working class… 🙂
A comment from Reagan’s time was liberals are people who’ve read Marx, conservatives are people who read and understood Marx. Marxism is an entire political ideology based on envy and hatred of those better off than you are, and the masses allow themselves to be manipulated by people who care nothing for them other than the fact they can be used to support a leader’s vault into power. After which they invariably turn on the very people who put them in power with sad but predictable tyranny and death. And yet, what we constantly seem to hear is that the only reason Marxism hasn’t worked (and racked up a body count approaching 100 million in the last century) is it hasn’t been the “right” kind of people in charge. Any system that allows that kind of outcome, massive tyranny and death, cannot ever be done “right” because it is tailor made for abuse. The only govt that actually halfway works is one that limits the power of govt, not magnifies it.
The point is not that deep green is somehow Marxist, but rather that many of the so-called “green” advocates of Global Warming prevention let slip once in a while their literal belief that side-effects of capitalism are somehow what is causing the climate to be chaotic where we don’t desire it to be, and to have somehow gotten out of control–as if it were ever under human control. However, the meme that we run into again and again in the communications from warmists is that “capitalism is nature’s worst enemy”; the number of references in the documented writings of these Climate Science luminaries, movers, and shakers, to Agenda 21, Club of Rome, and other apparently open conspiracies (yes, /snark,/sarc) against the very idea of The Market as a global, cultural institution in its own right. Of course, even the Marxist-derived experiments in the USSR and elsewhere didn’t trust Marx the economist much at all, so, while Greens, as Soviets, are not good Marxists, they are often noisy [loud, messy, sometimes petulant] anti-capitalists, which many Americans have grown to call “Marxists”, even though most of us wouldn’t care to read Marx to determine the difference. Cheers.
Gulags anybody!
John law – Already been proposed by the Alarmists. Everything from re-education to prison to being shot.
“The more we come to know about the gnosis of antiquity, the more it becomes certain that modern movements of thought, such as progressivism, positivism, Hegelianism, and Marxism, are variants of gnosticism.”
— Eric Voegelin, Science Politics and Gnosticism, Two Essays, 1968.
Gnoticism teaches that human spirit was God, was cast to earth as a million points of light and is now trapped in the evil material. Only through the sufficient knowledge, can we return to be God. The process of being removed from God is called “alienation”, a theme that should be familiar to students of Marx, even as he put a secular interpretation on it. Humanity could return to God when it achieved the perfect socialist condition. The foundational ideas of Gnosticism go back to the time of Plato. And thus those who claim to be “secular” are far more pagan than they every could imagine.
Oh, yes — and what type of environmental record have Marxist Leninist nations have produced over the last century? The worst polluters on the face of the planet! Yet Marxist Leninism is touted as the savior of the earth!
It is a crime against the state to report on any of that pollution internally in a Marxist Leninist nation — and in the West a crime against humanity to besmirch Marxist Leninism. All Marxist Leninist know the truth but none will speak it.
Any day now I expect the Western Left to tout Stalin as a pioneering environmentalist.
Eugene WR Gallun
Naomi Klein is the Church Lady of Climate Science. And a Commie Rat B*st*rd.
:large
“The rest of Europe has a keener sense of boundaries, because they fallow broken window economics and love government pay checks.
Continental Europe has lived for a long time under the Napoleonic Code. One of the differences between that and the British Common Law tradition is that under Common Law you can do anything so long as it’s not forbidden, while under the Napoleonic Code you can’t do anything unless it’s allowed.
I suggest that, if no one has ‘allowed’ people to think that AGW might be wrong, then a typical European will not think that it is….
Very good point, in my duscussions witj colleagues it’s always the French who respobd by asking “Who are you to question the authority of the UN”, rather than actually taking in what is being said.
Naomi Klein darling. Mann-made alarm is turning increasingly unfashionable also elsewhere.
The first English settlers in Australia would have lived against what they saw as the limits of nature, as would have been the case in North America. Not sure what Klein means by a keen sense of boundaries. Did this keen sense develope before or after they left their homeland. How does Britain get a different perspective than all the other Colonial Powers, like the French, The Dutch, Portuguese and so on.
Just more Kleinsien bollocks for the boofheads.
Britain has the best defined boundaries of all, the sea surrounds the UK! European boundaries have been fluid until very recent times.
But these days they are liquid.all over again with that bloated piece of work in Brussels called the EU which actually stands for Economic Union or European Undoing and not European Union. Klein statement also leads to what is happening all the world with all the immigration problems every where which the main goal of the people behind AGW and “CC”, disruption and destruction of the “Frontier Spirit”. Led and stirred up by people of her ilk.
It seems to me that the borders between Russia and 1) Georgia, 2) Ukraine, and 3) the rest of the world in the Arctic region are still ‘fluid’ to this day…. and Putin is working that the Russian borders ‘flow’ outward (in the direction of Russia taking everything).
I beg to differ. New Zealand (NZ) is the global leader of defined boundaries and global isolation and the ‘youngest’ of the democracies Klein referred to in her reference to ‘colonial settler mentality’. There may be a number of reasons for her omission. She may be an ardent admirer the UN work of the NZ former notable left wing Prime Minister Ms. Helen Clarke, Chair of the United Nations Development Group, or is it that New Zealand is considered ‘on-message’ with its array of eco-marxist zealots and Green-pus advocates? Maybe and here’s hoping, she may never have heard of New Zealand.
We see evidence of the ice age and know climate changes apart from man. We also look up and see the wonderful thermostat God has made in the form of clouds. We will get another ice age, but we will never overheat.
In the peak years of the eugenics obsession people who questioned the scientific soundness of forced sterilization, race-based marriage limitations, race-based population control, and so much more were called “individualists” and such. Naomi, the historically illiterate historian, is following a script she knows as little about as the focus of her obsession.
Good point, hunter.
Those who forget (or ignore) History are doomed to repeat it. And Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Welcome to modern progressism. >¿<
Ideology may be a factor in natural selection.
She’s hit the nail
Right on the head,
English speakers can think,
No more to be said!
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/they-call-me-a-denier/
No more needs to be said because you said it so well. ^¿^
A problem with AGW movement is that it does not recognize the importance of empirical data in science. The model has to conform to the data and not the opposite. Here we have a classic example – Naomi Klein makes a hypothesis without collecting any information at all on which to base her claim.
Even political analysts know better than this – they actually go out and ask people what they believe and why they believe it.
Incidentally, people in the Czech Republic do not believe in AGW either.
I suspect she only reads English, so she has absofreakinlutely no idea what anyone outside of these English speaking countries think or believe.
If “frontier mentality” means you have done the hard yards and see no point in returning to this impoverished state, particularly when there is nothing happening outside natural climate variability, then I agree:
http://www.gettyimages.in/detail/photo/worker-carries-a-bundle-of-wood-outside-high-res-stock-photography/158924931
What did Ms Klein expect? Even the few alarmists among the pioneers are perceived celebrating an authoritarian Chinese machinery – not only fueling the Western consumerism but with undeterred CO2 emissions.
Which begs the question, exactly how does Klein stand to benefit from such an empty analysis?
…..
I’m banging my head on my desk right now and no, I’m not enjoying it, thanks Naomi!
You’ll end up with a frontier mentality. if you bang to hard.
Naomi Klein comes up with a catchy meme, e.g., nologo, Shock Doctrine, and then massages the narrative accordingly. Now where have I seen that before?
She’s not wrong that sceptics and warmists think differently and there is something to the pioneer idea. We are self reliant types who think that problems can be solved if we really want to. It’s no accident that many of us are engineers – the pioneers of technology. The very success of the human race is built on the pioneering spirit. We’ve used the very tiny windows between glaciations to colonise the planet and even space.
If I have to choose between the pioneer or the fraidy cat hiding in their cave, I’ll be out with the pioneer… especially as that spirit of adventure has brought me hot and cold running water, central heating and broadband to my own little cave.
That said, I don’t think that the pioneering spirit or even sceptical spirit is unique to the white, English speaking world.
In Ayn Rand’s world she called the 2 types of people active man and passive man. Active man is the individualist who goes out and does stuff. Passive man is the collectivist who pretends to do stuff whilst stealing from the active man. Does this sound familiar?
Who is John Galt?
“I pledge by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” (John Galt, Atlas Shurgged)
Ha! I think there’s a third type – whiney man – who is not content with just stealing from active man, he demands that active man gives whiney man what whiney man thinks he deserves and active man should consider himself lucky to have been part of the deal.
Now THAT is funny!
Tiny, I agree and disagree. People that are self-reliant don’t always think that problems can be solved, self-reliant people are usually realists, we don’t joust with windmills. We pick the problems that we can solve, and work to make things better instead of blindly pushing a narrative. Warmists have an idealized view of the world, and, they incorrectly, believe that the ideal can be achieved if we “just pull together.”
and “pulling together” is collectivism. 🙂
…and then the idealists wake up in their 30’s and realize the government tied their hands with the rope they thought was used to “pull together”
Humanity is a very social race with a wanderlust. We are geared for social and group interaction. It is who we are. But we thrive best if the groups can intake new ideas and technologies from others.
People can’t to be too self-reliant. You will have individuals survive, but the species itself will all but die out.
People as a group also can’t be isolated to themselves. In almost all cases, the group dies out because they are less able to internally adapt without the input of new ideas, techniques, and technology. (Also: inbreeding. 😉 )
So, I have to disagree. We as a society need to nurture both individualism and group identity in a beneficial way. The individuals will strike out on their own. When they fail, they can fall back to their group. When they succeed, they can bring their group with them into the success. It is how we have survived for so long, and have been so adaptable to all manner of environments this world has to throw at us. We wouldn’t have had the technology we do today if someone couldn’t sit on their butt for a few days leeching off the group to think up the cotton gin instead of performing back breaking labor to raise and sow, and then cull and reap his own personal food needs.
The problem, in my opinion, is that we are currently striving for an extreme to each side. Some want us to be a socialist/collectivist blob that exists to service itself while some want us to all be pioneers striking out on our own as if we need no one and nothing to back us in any way, shape or form. Both are ridiculous. There are examples of both individualist and socialist/collectivist ideas that have turned out very bad. There are also examples of both that turned out very good. The best idea is to draw things as an engineer and use the most suitable tool for the job. International roadways? Socialist approach. Employment? Individualist approach. Climate change? It’s clearly an individualist solution – assuming that it is actually an issue to be confronted.
“Countries founded on a powerful frontier mentality have this idea of limitless nature than can be endlessly extracted,” she said.
Surely she seems to be confusing two different things, i.e. alleged “climate change” and the finite nature of resources such as fossil fuels, as well as others, when the two are separate issues.
I don’t believe in (man made) “climate change” but I never-the-less, think that it would be unwise to go on using resources at an exponential rate until they run out,
without finding economic alternatives, whether it causes “climate change” or not.
“it would be unwise to go on using resources at an exponential rate until they run out”
Would they not be self-limiting? As scarcity drives up prices, the next best alternative(s) will fill the void. Trade in a whale oil lamp for an LED bulb. Hmm, was whale oil considered a renewable?
I also said “without finding economic alternatives”.
But I don’t think it can be assumed that market forces will find alternatives quickly enough.
There probably needs to be some forward planning.
Market forces CAN be forward planning. We didn’t need to run out of oil (or even go over the ‘peak’) before people started looking into alternatives. One of the most ridiculous beliefs of the peak oilers was that we would run short of oil so quickly that we wouldn’t have time to change our infrastructure. This despite the fact that more then half the vehicles on the road are replaced every decade. The only reason we aren’t changing them to electric, propane, whatever right now is because gas is still the cheapest. Once (IF) that changes the market will change swiftly with it. That’s what markets DO.
For years now, diesel fuel has been a dollar or more per gallon more costly than gasoline. But recently, I have noted that it is actually the same price or less than regular unleaded.
I have wondered how and why this would/could be, and believe it may be related to the large number of big rig trucks that have been switching to nat gas or propane. And possibly also people trading in heating oil furnaces for gas as well.
It does not take much to affect the price…just get demand below supply, even by a little, and watch the price fall.
Ten years ago, the huge spike up was due to demand exceeding production capacity by a few percent or less.
menicholas,
A lot of the price increase a decade ago (actually about 12/14 years ago) is because of the ramp up to update refineries to produce ultra-low-sulfur diesel. This affected worldwide costs because anything that might touch American shores had to be ULS diesel, causing a lot of American-targeted refineries to update outside of our borders.
Ten years later, diesel is dropping because they have been able to pay off those refinery updates with the increased cost over the last ten years, so they can afford to be more competitive again at the pumps. Before the restrictive ULS mandates, diesel was actually consistently cheaper than gas because it is easier to refine.
Much of he increase in diesel prices were driven by China. The Peoples Republic could not supply electricity to meet the manufacturing demand. So, many factories installed diesel generators and went ahead rather than waiting on the government.
Menicholas. Diesel fuel prices in my rather remote neck of the woods, went down significantly when Dakota Prairie refinery started producing diesel fuel from Bakken crude earlier this year. It is located near New Town ND and is on Tribal land, so no EPA of any other regulators to deal with. If someone from the US government shows up around New Town, the tribal police throw them out, or worse, if the rumors I hear are true. I think, but am not sure, it is the first new refinery to be built in the US in 40 years. So the local tribe now has a second large source of jobs and income, even more profitable than the Casino. I think it is a good example of the frontier spirit.
The only way to find economic alternatives is to get government out of the way and let the market work. When (and if) so-called renewable energy sources actually save money over the current choices then they will win out. There is no need for “forward planning” by anyone other than entrepreneurs trying to make a fortune with new ideas.
I too believe in markets, we have them to than for all of our wealth to date, but they are not perfect.
Sorry, I misspoke. The Fort Berthold tribal administrative center is in New Town, the refinery is SW of Dickenson. Plans were underway for two more refineries, but am not sure if that is still the case given the fall in oil prices.
Actually won’t that make building a refinery more profitable? Lower feedstock price but same wholesale/retail price. Don’t know, but it seems to me that may be a solution for some restrictions on shipping crude. Ship refined products. Then what will the obstructionists driving their SUV Crossovers say?
Clearly, Oz climate deniers are racist according to Klein because they show no consideration for their vulnerable Pacific ocean neighbours:
“Also, being a Pacific nation, your closest neighbours are facing a truly existential threat. So I find it even more shocking that Australia is a hotbed of climate denial.”
And climate change is about to make them even more racist:
“You see that in Australia where the treatment of migrants is a profound moral crisis,” she said. “It’s clear that as sea levels rise that this mean streak and open racism is going to become more extreme – climate change is an accelerant to all those other issues.”
Fits in well with the frontier mentality. This idea of ‘climate justice’ is becoming pervasive in climate ‘science’:
“Heat waves have become progressively more severe due to increasing relative humidity and nighttime temperatures, which increases the health risks of exposed communities, especially Latino farmworkers and other socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.”
Apparently, climatechange is not colour-blind, ergo ‘climate deniers’ must be racist – confirmed by the fact that they mostly derive from English speaking former colonies (of the British Empire). It’s all so obvious that scepticism about catastrophic man-made global warming is not rooted in scientific questioning but instead is driven by centuries old attitudes to other cultures and an opportunism based upon the belief that resources are infinite. So regressives should shut up and let progressives get on with the all-important job of saving the world.
What stands out to me is that people saying these things are oblivious to facts.
They take already disproven lies from years ago, and just run with them as facts…even years after a compleye debunking!
Many warmistas got their info so long ago, the crap they spout is not even wrong anymore.
Well said.
She spouts the leftist make believe history that America is a Colonial Regime. We have never taken anything and always turned any lands back while all other nations have always taken and still do. Exactly where are the Persians from and what were the names of those countries? Or why did human beings migrate out of Africa at the same time it turned into desert? Were they also climate change colonialists with frontier mentalities?
And, dearest Naomi, why is it that everyone wants to flee their countries and come to the US? Do they have frontier mentalities with a Colonialist disease?
What about China, Russia, the Middle East?
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Given that climate change was a propaganda tool developed by an American to fill his pockets and backed by British university profs who had little funding except that from oil companies, her fallacy fails from the start.