An interesting essay written by “Zombie” of Zombietime fame has a climate change component worth noting. I don’t agree with all of it, but it does explain some behavior we have seen in the past decade.
“Zombie” writes:
I recently wrote an essay called “Progressive Racism: The Hidden Motive Driving Modern Politics”, and in the essay I had a section about “climate change” with a thesis you might find intriguing.
CLIMATE CHANGE
- Progressive position:
- Institute a variety of penalties, taxes and incentives all designed to discourage production and use of carbon-derived energy by industrialized nations.
- False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:
- This is not a political position: it’s simply a scientific fact that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels then the resulting greenhouse gases will render the planet uninhabitable.
- Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent:
- This so-called “crisis” is just the latest in a long series of fabricated environmental pseudo-crises not based on fact but on an irrational Luddite loathing of civilization; your wildly exaggerated hysteria about “global warming” is merely a mechanism to manipulate and control the citizenry and cripple the economy.
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Viewed globally, the real long-term consequence of all the “climate change”-related policy proposals is to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the First World developed nations to the Third World underdeveloped nations, while simultaneously crippling the ability of the developed world to maintain its economic dominance.
What could motivate this seemingly suicidal economic policy by First-World progressives? In a word: Guilt. Specifically, “white guilt” by Europeans (and those descended from Europeans) for having unfairly exploited backward regions and non-white peoples over the last few centuries to establish white economic hegemony over the rest of the world.
This rationale is openly discussed at the annual United Nations Climate Change Conferences, where representatives of Third World nations demand payback and reparations for colonialist exploitation, and where the descendants of those colonialists grovel in abject apology for the wrongdoings of their ancestors.
But deeply embedded in those apologies and guilt is a racism that far surpasses even the naive racism of yesteryear.
If you enter into competition with a rival you deem approximately equal in skill to yourself, and then you win fair and square, then it would never occur to you to apologize for winning nor would you feel guilty about it — because it was a fair fight. On the other hand, if you compete against and then easily defeat an opponent whose very nature you believe makes them inescapably inferior to you — for example, getting in a fistfight with a small child — then afterwards you might very well feel guilty and apologize for taking advantage of a lesser opponent who had no chance against you due to their inherent inadequacy.
So when a modern progressive apologizes for his ancestors’ past colonialist dominance, he is really saying: “I’m so sorry that we smart organized aggressive white people took advantage of you lesser peoples whose inherent cultural and intellectual shortcomings made you incapable of fending us off: it wasn’t a fair fight, and I apologize.”
In other words: Apologizing is an unconscious backhanded way of declaring your innate superiority.
If these modern progressives felt that their ancestors had achieved global dominance by defeating rivals of equal stature, then there’d be nothing to feel guilty about, and thus no need to pay reparations and hence no need to devise the “climate change” crisis and attendant suicidal economic policies.
Full essay here:
http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2014/03/10/progressive-racism-the-hidden-motive-driving-modern-politics/
Too complicated. Throw out all that cultural marxist talk, it was only designed as a memetic weapon in the first place.
Control freaks love to plunder the taxpayer while telling him it’s for a worthy goal. That’s all.
There is no society as unequal as perfect socialism – because the state owns everything – and at the top of the socialist state is the socialist leader.
And the worlds 2nd largest economy and world’s largest polluter isn’t a “white” nation…….
I believe there is a big component of this in the Climate (and other “Progressive” issues) discussion.
The real problem is that we in the “Thirld World” need that the “First World” succeeds. In a globalized economy, your success is our success. We need a strong US / Europe economy to import the goods we export. US / Europe failure will doom first under-developed countries like mine (Brazil). This guilt / shame thinking / behavior is infantile and the net result is more poverty to “non-western” populations.
I disagree. There are two ways to not “fight fair” – one is by fighting someone inferior to you like a small child, the other is by fighting someone who is your equal but with an unfair advantage of weapons, or deception by breaking promises, etc. By intrinsically assuming that First World apologies must be of the former kind and not the latter, the author betrays a severe misunderstanding of the Third World critiques, which renders the assumptions about guilt rather useless, in my opinion. Let’s get back to discussing the data…
“white guilt” by Europeans. I agree that’s a big part of current thinking on CAGW. However it’s not as common as the elites like to think it is, which is why, as a goad, it’s not working. A lot of those people who are descended from poor or non English ancestors are getting pretty sick of it as an argument. I suppose a new Scotland, free of the UK might demand reparation too? At such a point I might compose my typed reply with my middle finger.
“Guilt”
Not so much. My take is the need to prove their moral superiority…their essential “goodness. This is a universal human impulse leading when given full rein, to all sorts of mischief down through the ages…
“It’s always the good men who do the most harm in the world.”.
Henry Adams
Pascal Bruckner has two interesting books on that topic:
The Tyranny of Guilt
And
The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings
What he is missing is that in the process of that wealth transfer, goverments and banks will be taking most of it. Guilt is being used as an excuse to allow them to try to control the world’s economy by controlling the use of fossil fuel.
Data, “discussing the data”… Would we presume that much of Africa had been exposed to many aspects of modern culture, by WWII?
Now, I’m not grinding an AXE here, but the 1953 “King Solomon’s Mines” is a MARVELOUS perspective. The producers went to almost all regions of Africa, south of the North African countries to film “tribal life as it had been for “thousands” of years.
You go to Nirobi, Cairo, even Entebee (Uganda) and you find relatively MODERN cities, with cars, good houses, electricity, and even internet. And that came about because “we” stopped “oppressing” them? NONSENSE. It came about BECAUSE, the elevation in standards, the production, the improvements in: USA, Europe, China, and even India…have all “spread”..as the world evens out. No tawdry “Marxist theories” needed (May he rot in Hades!! And his intellectual followers!)
However, I agree..the ENVIROMENTAL/GREEN movement, is a “self imposed” (I don’t have it!) guilt trip, and..in many ways, a LUDITE reaction (at heart) to keep the “STATUS QUO”.
For that, the promoters of such…deserve the highest condemnation.
It has been an act of indulgence cf the old catholic indulgences to expiate guilt over success. When it was just lip service and didn’t actually hurt it was fine and people engaged in it. But as the costs of the indulgences actually start pinching you see more and more people who no longer feel the need for it.
Basically it was a luxury that you could for mouthing the right things feel good about yourself. Now of course the price tag of that is coming due and pinching and people do not actually want any part of it.
Sure for some portion of these pushing CAGW I suspect Zombie’s arguement is valid but then the reasons people go along with it have been complex and generally come back to when it didn’t hurt them it was fine to take that position. Or when it wasn’t flying in the face of what people where experiencing.
This is retarded.
There never was any intent to transfer wealth to the third world.
There were only empty promises designed to allow domestic political space for corrupt third world despots so they could go along with the genocidal AGW agenda.
Carbon taxes, cap and trade, you name it, the proposals all result in rationing energy by price. Eugenics in disguise.
Skeptics need to quit being so gullible as to fall for PJmedia’s ideologically driven disinformation.
This is a link to a paper that came out this week with Ford Foundation financing announcing “The Progressive Potential of a Race-Conscious Society: Addressing Racial/Ethnic Inequality and Embracing the New Racial Order.” http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/seeing-past-the-colorblind-myth
From the National Education Policy Center it also emphasizes the potential of the new Common Core Standards to push desired beliefs on both race and the environment. The environmental false beliefs get created via simulations that are also assessments for a grade. Do students have the desired ecological beliefs and values?
Remember Van Jones also hyped the ability of Green Energy to allow governments to dictate who gets what jobs, where they get located, and how much they pay. Green Energy needs the CAGW hype as justification, but the real goal is redistribution to favored groups within the developed world and to developing countries.
Race and the environment–the two dominant themes of virtually every classroom going forward in the 21st century. “Lenses’ is the term used in the actual frameworks. Themes that guide perception of the world and how it works.
Influential on future behavior and voting patterns even if demonstrably false.
Zombie just explained John Kerry.
This also explains why there is no fight against Russia and China as they take over superpower status from the USA. They are seen as equals and therefore beating us fair and square.
Simpler version of this thesis:
1. Ordinary atheist socialists (a.k.a. liberals) feel a spiritual void and fill it with pagan belief in mother nature. Like all religious beliefs, it requires penance to earn salvation. The penance is a carbon tax, the salvation is saving the goddess Earth from death by evil capitalists.
2. Smarter socialists collect the carbon tax from the naive masses and transfer it to African kleptocrats in order to pocket their 5% in a discreet bank account in Dubai.
And I entirely agree that conservatives do not understand the motivations behind this humongous fraud.
I have been using the phrase “Wicker Man Economics” to describe the policies proposed by climate change alarmists for a while now.
When reduced to its basics, their thesis is that the gods are angry at the hubris of the more successful members of the human race, and those people must be humbled in order to appease the gods and avert their wrath.
They’ve changed their language somewhat since pre-Christian Europe, but the basics haven’t changed. That’s why populations who are obviously already suffering under their rulers are exempt from the Kyoto protocols–the goal isn’t reducing emissions, the goal is reducing wealth.
The thin veneer of pseudo-science is simply an appeal to the new priesthood of the white labcoat. Arguing the facts won’t change the minds of the believers, what they know in their hearts is that prosperity will make the sky fall and the sin of pride must be punished.
Climate change alarmism is a purely emotional doctrine. Those who have more than me must have cheated to get it and I have a right to destroy what they have built to make us even. Reason has nothing to do with it.
To actually feel “guilt” requires one acknowledges what they did was wrong and actually care about it.
To try to make people feel guilt for a wrong, real or perceived, that someone else did years or centuries before they were born is itself wrong and a ploy.
Those who use that ploy and feel no guilt in doing so are the ones to be wary of. They are “The end justifies the means” practitioners.
No ethics that don’t stem from their own selfish desires. (Gleick and Heartland come to mind.)
Like a hand in a rubber glove.. Lets promise 2/3s of the planet welfare for a little climate song and dance.. Quiet a bit of support there I would imagine.. Which can be worked to keep the money flowing into the right pockets here in the western democracies.. Nice little take and take with the rest of us locked out..
If we bankrupt ourselves by paying silly money to build inefficient power sources then there won’t be any money, “spare” or otherwise, left to “distribute” to anyone else.
Guilt is not the vehicle that can explain the CAGW ideology’s motivation. Dependence is the necessary and sufficient vehicle to explain the GAGW ideology’s motivation.
John
Anyone who believes that the U.S. became rich and powerful thru the exploitation of others
simply doesn’t know our history. For most of our history, we were a second class power and the object of exploitation, if anything. We were the low priced labor pool that China and Southeast Asia have now become (And China can probably buy and sell the U.S. : So much for being exploited)
The U.S. status as a top tier nation came about by accident – called WWI. And the U.S supremacy in wealth by another accident – WWII. Wealth creation seldom is the result of “exploitation” (often the exploited are actually raised in their SOL) but usually the result of advances in technology
and scientific knowledge. in reality, “exploitation” is the only way for lower labor rate nations to raise their standard of living, as their low labor rates are their biggest advantages in a world of competitive commerce.
“White Guilt” is deliberately manufactured by the Marxist created “Critical Race Theory” as a vehicle to undermine western civilization. Students have been indoctrinated with this for the last 50 years. Therefore Zombies conjecture actually supports the viewpoint he calls inaccurate.
The hubris (or stupidity) is evident when you point out all of the historical disasters stemming from socialist/communist attempts in the past and they reply that “those people” just didn’t do it correctly. (The idea being that “today’s socialists” will do it right.) Since when has even a small percentage civilized society evolved to the point of overcoming its ability to be corrupted by any (and every) means possible? If we cannot even achieve such a thing in OURSELVES, it is illogical and completely bat crap crazy to think it can be achieved on a worldwide basis.
Humanity’s misdeeds was what caused the biblical flood and our crimes against nature is what it is causing global warming, or climate change, or whatevah
Yep, It is gilt, It has been always gilt. That is the way occidental religions have been controlling us during the last 6000 years. Ecologism is just the new flavor.
He who argues we should not judge people by their race, gets called a racist.
Stolen from Jo Nova blog site.
My mantra is “Trade not aid”. Giving charity money to African and other countries stops them from building up an industry and developing themselves out of their poverty. Trade barriers also hinder this.
What we should be doing is exploiting them. We should be using their cheap labour because in the long term it means that they can grow businesses and factories and all the other things that we in the west have already gone through.
China has done this and the wages of the workers are growing at 25%/year, so much so that China is now looking at Africa for it’s cheap labour. The Chinese don’t have this guilt trip to worry about and can exploit the Africans.
I remember seeing on Top Gear all the roads that Chinese money is helping to build. That’s what we should be doing, not giving money that force subsistence farmers to stay subsistence farmers eking out a living and depending on not having droughts and disease.
We should be kicking them off their land so that they work in factories and allowing big farms to make maximum economic use of the land. The workers can then earn enough to get consistent good food and health and living accommodation.
Sarc on/
Be patient comrade. Soon Germany and the other EU countries industries will be hamstrung and we can take it all and they would have done it to themselves…..!!
‘Guilt’ – may be some in the mix. Then perhaps the Babylonian Syndrome – an arrogance and over estimation of not only our impact but our abilities, a delusion fed and pumped by the progressive Green left in the name of ‘save the planet’. The goal – the installation of global socialist governance in the hands of UN Agenda 21 funded by growing environmental taxes and levies. You’ll be deluded you have democratic influence, but this will be strictly limited to the election local community governance. Few will be privileged to even glimpse let alone be part of an unelected progressive bureaucratic monster at the centre of the world. No one will see the tiny handful of elite at the pinnacle.
Spurn this as you would a rabid dog.
Manny nailed it. Props to you, friend.
It feels like a religious belief because it is. Left liberals are just as human as the rest of us. This means they have a “belief” center in their brain, something that tells them there is something bigger and more important than their individual distance. For some, left or right, it is stronger than others. Righties gravitate towards a more traditionalist haven to express it, while lefties see that omnipotent power that being fulfilled by the State.
I believe in a God, but take a very deist approach to the issue. What grinds my gears about liberals is how they not only refuse to believe that they are akin to hard-core Evangelists, but also that they have the advantage in our society. These days, religion has a diminished voice and is easy to avoid the influence of if you so choose, but the power of the government over my life only grows and it matters not if I choose to believe.
While the separation of church and State is vital to a free society, the separation of State and individual is getting narrower everyday and few seem to care; many, no doubt the Greenies, rather welcome with open arms. I do fear for the future.
Karl Popper capped off his seminal development of falsification as the criterion of demarcation with the equally powerful Open Society and Its Enemies, and The Poverty of Historicism. ‘Open Society’ is a powerful critique of the dialectic as syllogism leading to historicist prophesy.
In my eyes there are a few types of people driving CAGW – those that are making the money, guys who are grabbing power and/or prestige and the useful idiots. In the first category you have the green energy companies, oil companies, guys like Al Gore and Elon Musk; the second contains the IPCC, Michael Mann (although he falls in Category 3 as well) and other scientists, and Obama; the final category is filled with every guy on the internet who says we have to do something (while not doing anything themselves).
It’s a cause that fulfills the needs of a lot of people in a lot of ways, trying to pigeon-hole it into white guilt doesn’t come close to being complete.
Can our sins become absolved by renouncing CO2 and saying three Our Fathers? (our father being AL Gore, that is)
Yup … HK being an example of “white guilt”. What were we thinking?
It’s a false premise, though. Imagine Africa, for instance, had never seen Europeans. Would living standards be higher or lower than today? This is an extremely easy question to answer.
The real foundational error of progressivism is pretty simple: incentives. By rewarding economic incompetence, progressivism becomes a cultural mechanism that advocates for dysfunction. Culpability for economic incompetence (where progressivism spends so much of its time) is irrelevant. Behavioral reality knows only one iron law: Whatever is subsidized is promoted.
When the First World nations have de-industrialized, and our civilization lies in ruins, what wealth will be left to transfer?
The fundamental error of progressivism are its unintended consequences.
“God helps those who help themselves!”
Hezekiah 6:1
This verse, of course, is not in the Bible. Hezekiah sounds plausible enough, but is not a real book of scripture. “Yeah! That’s from the book of Hezekiah, isn’t it?” is the code-word for these kinds of phantom texts.
This would seem old news by now, but just recently a friend of ours was scandalized when we told her this “verse” did not exist.
More important, this “verse” is unbiblical in its meaning. It is exactly the opposite of the message of scripture.
Jer 17:5 (NIV) This is what the LORD says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD.”
Prov 28:26 (NIV) He who trusts in himself is a fool…
Per:
http://www.acts17-11.com/cows_helps.html
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New news to me.
Does it negate the meaning ?
Could you break that s##t down into some English language version that we can all share?
“God helps those who help themselves!”
Hezekiah 6:1
The shoplifter’s charter !
Oh well. It’s a neat little theory but that’s all it is. It reminds of the equally unsubstantiated theories of Lewandowsky. (On a side note, I always pronounce his name “Levandovski” – it seems more fitting for one so rooted in the USSR school of psychology.)
Anyone who imagines that “wealth redistribution” via a non mandated body with no accountability and safely outside of all jurisdictions in the world will result in anything other than total corruption obviously did not get the recommended slap on the arse when they were born. They are still in some foetal dream.
The only wealth redistribution that will happen will be in favour of bankers, bureaucrats and third world cleptocratic dictators.
The religious suggestions fit my opinion. As a life-long democrat, and a Christian for a bit over ten years, and as a scientist, and someone who has worked as a paid environmentalist, with many friends in these camps, I can see all of this well.
My view is this: The Judeo-Christian God is genuine, as, generally, is the theology.
Each of us can either fall in line with this reality, or we are doomed to re-create it.
The ways that either the materialistic/intellectual educated class, or the socially-savvy educated class, attempt to re-create, or parallel, the God-determined human experience, are many.
The Tower of Babel story is the most obvious example: let’s build a building that gets us up so high, we see from God’s perspective – and so don’t need to listen to God.
Adam/Eve eating the forbidden fruit in order to have the view of God is yet another straight-forward example.
There are numerous examples. The climate models emerge from prophets – those who can foresee the future. The disasters to befall us are very similar to those noted in Revelation – specifically, upon the opening of the seventh seal. The one disaster NOT predicted by Revelation, but predicted by the AGW scare-mongers, is this: death by flood. Curiously, God promises we won’t die this way ever again after the Flood.
We are trying to re-define the family, we are trying to re-define where life comes from, we are trying to re-define virtue and guilt. God wants us to multiply and fill the earth, but we believe we need to control population. God gives us stewardship over animals, and we believe we should not eat meat. God places us in a special role above other animals, and Pete Singer makes us equal, or less than equal to animals, giving animal rights precedence above us. Words are very important and powerful in God’s eyes, having spoken the world into existence and identifying Jesus as the Word, yet the speech od us liberals is filled with “you know,” imprecise terms, and well-peppered with curse words that should be accepted, not frowned-upon. God acknowledged and recognized ethnicities and nations, and we have decided there should be none. God produced on people/nation out of one person – Abram, and we have upped God by making a people and nation out of none: the manufacture of the Palestinian people/nation. I could go on and on, since this is a pet topic of mine. But this type of virtue-structure between Judeo-Christianity, and those who are so educated to know better, is uncanny.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Thanks, A. An interesting article.
I do agree there is a sick psychological component to the belief. And the perception of guilt has been successfully used as a driver by religions and cults since man appeared on Earth.
Now I understand why I don’t understand ‘progressives’.
Well there are yeas and nays for the essay. I think it is a good mix of both and depends where you are in the scheme of things. There is the “Gee, look what we are doing to the planet”. as a motivation for soci_alist ideology to garner control in a New World Order (the prominent places of such as Maurice Strong and Soros in all this stuff is clear). With it goes the desire to destroy wealth and capitalism – they look at the underpinnings of prosperity and the chief one is cheap abundant energy – down with Nuclear, coal, fossil fuels – they are now getting shrill on fracking because this revolution promises to usher in a new era of properity even if they have killed off coal (temporarily). Progressives lefties are opportunists of the worst kind. They know CAGW is looking more and more ridiculous but it represents too big a taxing opportunity to let go of.
Now the guilt of the ra_cist. It is definitely getting a lot of action, only partly for a dishonest rationale for massive “redistribution” (and therefore utter destruction of wealth). I have worked in Africa at various periods between 1964 and 2000 – not as an NGO which is no small part of the New World Order crew – and I have seen this in operation. The attitude in aid programs is all very feel good, but it does engender the notion of inferiority of the recipients and they feel it and state it. In a discussion with a Nigerian intellectual, he marveled that Europeans (by which he meant also North Americans) didn’t understand how the black man could take their money with one hand and slap them in the face with the other. The worst example which is thought to be clever from, I believe the UN, is: (something like) “You can give a hungry man a fish a day or you can teach him how to fish so he can feed himself each day.” Teach him how to fish!!! When I first heard that piece of hubris, I was amazed at its blatant racism. Yeah, it’s there.
Gary Pearse says:
March 22, 2014 at 2:29 pm
I believe the UN, is: (something like) “You can give a hungry man a fish a day or you can teach him how to fish so he can feed himself each day.” Teach him how to fish!!! When I first heard that piece of hubris, I was amazed at its blatant racism. Yeah, it’s there.
You think that phrase is from the UN? WTF!
It’s actually an ancient Chinese proverb.
Still worked up over its “blatant racism”? Sheesh.
Nice theory and all, but wrong. Just read Agenda 21, it’s all there in black and white. CC is just a tool of Agenda 21 designed to limit our energy supply and as a result of that push us together in high rise concentration camps. Reducing the haves to the uninformed rabble of the have-nots, destroying the informed middle class, that in general opposes the socialist/communist agenda. The dumbing down of our schools with socialist busywork aids in the destruction of an informed populace, no socialist dictator wants an informed populace. We must fix our schools, we must restore competition within and amongst schools.
It’s about power, power to the unelected bureaucrats that dominate the UN bureaucracy, CC penance to the UN is the funding source for Agenda 21, guilt is just the way we are being manipulated to deliver power to them. If it were as zombie says then we would be building the third world power plants and distribution networks, not windmills, solar panels, and dung fireplaces.
Remember always, altruism is never the aim in politics, power is. In politics if anyone is behaving alruistically, then ask your self this question…
WHY?
3×2, In English: If you pay people not to work, and you tax people who do work to pay for it, then you are going to get more people who decide not to work and get paid, and fewer people who decide to work for less money.
Many commenters here given far more moral intent to those who espouse progressive ideology than it is due. A more Machiavellian model is far more accurate.
Commenters like Bob Johnston, Dirk H, Manny and others are strike far closer to the mark. No doubt many progressive/environmentalists are motivated from a self described “moral high ground”, but their narcissistic arrogance, in accordance with human nature, quickly eroded to base power politics.
History is replete with examples, one the most profound in human history was a progressive movement described quite succinctly by George Keenan a.k.a. “X” in 1947, in his essay the “The Sources Of Soviet Conduct,”
Which can be found at: http://www.historyguide.org/europe/kennan.html
Keenen illuminated the evolution of the USSR’s communist leaders ideals resulting in a pure struggle to consolidate power (and wealth) at the expense of the welfare of the people.
“They doubtless believed — and found it easy to believe — that they alone knew what was good for society and that they would accomplish that good once their power was secure and unchallengeable. But in seeking that security of their own rule they were prepared to recognize no restrictions, either of God or man, on the character of their methods. And until such time as that security might be achieved, they placed far down on their scale of operational priorities the comforts and happiness of the peoples entrusted to their care.”
This same description is eerily similar to the dynamics of the progressive/environmental movement affecting western nations today. Though there is a token movement of wealth to third world nations, the majority of the wealth finds its way only to a very select few, mostly those who are the elite progressives of western nations, such as Al Gore, George Soros etc..
The current efforts to redistribute money form the middle class and poor of the developed nations to the elite progressives aka Climate warmists, will last only until they find more effective methods. Yet whatever the party line, until their ends are achieved they will not tolerate decent, or debate of their political/environmental position. They demand profound credulity from their followers, and they seek to silence their opponents by belittling, pseudo-shaming, and persistent multidirectioal attacks.
If one were to replace “Communist” with “Progressive”, and “Soviet” with “Environmental” then Keenan’s words about the communists in 1947 are perfectly applicable today, revealing a dynamic that so frustrates global warming skeptics, that the progressives do not deal in objective reality bur rather pure relativism.
“On the principle of infallibility there rests the iron discipline of the Communist (Progressive) Party. In fact, the two concepts are mutually self-supporting. Perfect discipline requires recognition of infallibility. Infallibility requires the observance of discipline. And the two go far to determine the behaviorism of the entire Soviet (Environmental) apparatus of power. But their effect cannot be understood unless a third factor be taken into account: namely, the fact that the leadership is at liberty to put forward for tactical purposes any particular thesis which it finds useful to the cause at any particular moment and to require the faithful and unquestioning acceptance of that thesis by the members of the movement as a whole. This means that truth is not a constant but is actually created, for all intents and purposes, by the Soviet (Progressive) leaders themselves. It may vary from week to week, from month to month. It is nothing absolute and immutable — nothing which flows from objective reality. It is only the most recent manifestation of the wisdom of those in whom the ultimate wisdom is supposed to reside, because they represent the logic of history. The accumulative effect of these factors is to give to the whole subordinate apparatus of Soviet power an unshakable stubbornness and steadfastness in its orientation.”
Keenen made many germane observations of human nature in a progressive movement and is worth reading for his profound insight. The context of his essay was a geopolitical conflict between the USSR and the western powers, namely the United States, but his insights are still relevant today.
Yo, “Zom” bee,
You know who here to say hi.
If “Lt. for life John F.Kerry says it true , then we all know it is a total made up fraud of an award and citation.
Now Europe took the lie “hook line and sinker” cut coal power, cut nukes, no fracking, no oil and gas drilling. Now they have to toe Putins line of freeze to death and not have any manufracutring aka stuff to sell.
You should be able to pull up some photos of the start of “Earth Frist” and trace the more radical of them straight to the “Commie Red Book Kooks”.
The U.N. is a lie and their number one lie is this Climate Change lie to tax and spend other peoples money.
Have a nice day.
ps I still have a sock active on lgf’s and Charles does talk to my sock direct on the blog and has no idea it is me.
sweet
David, UK says:
March 22, 2014 at 2:44 pm
Gary Pearse says:
March 22, 2014 at 2:29 pm
“I believe the UN, is: (something like) “You can give a hungry man a fish a day or you can teach him how to fish so he can feed himself each day.” Teach him how to fish!!! When I first heard that piece of hubris, I was amazed at its blatant racism. Yeah, it’s there.
(from David, UK)
You think that phrase is from the UN? WTF!
It’s actually an ancient Chinese proverb.
Still worked up over its “blatant racism”? Sheesh.”
Thanks David, I stand corrected on the source (an historical Chinese elite) but not the nitty gritty of my comment. If you were to say “Let them eat cake” to starving citizens, it wouldn’t exonerate you from disgrace because Marie Antoinette said it first.
José Tomás is right when he says:
March 22, 2014 at 10:39 am
“The real problem is that we in the “Thirld World” need that the “First World” to succeed. In a globalized economy, your success is our success.”
and especially so, when he adds:
“This guilt / shame thinking / behavior is infantile and the net result is more poverty to “non-western” populations.”
Together we win, and apart we lose. Conflict is the path to failure as the Second World War showed. CAGW belief and consequent action is extremely infantile.
Zombie needs to read up on the UN’s Agenda 21. The Green Agenda (green agenda.com) covers its content.
All of the climate change propaganda is designed to support the goals set forth by this long-term plan. It has nothing to do with guilt of any kind. It’s a socialist agenda designed by those who want a one-world government, which is the basic goal and reason for setting up the UN in the first place back in 1946.
They want to siphon funds from the First World Countries to the Third World with the specific aim of stunting and preventing Third World development. The governments of the Third World countries would not be motivated to use the funds to develop or improve the plight of their own people as, if they did so, the future money flow would dry up. Instead, the incentive would be to make the plight of the people worse in order to request ever more funding. The goal is to create nanny nations dependent of the UN teat.
I suspect that ‘guilt’ plays some role in motivating the ‘useful idiots’ but not in the leadership caste. THEY are all about power and moving the power nodes from those who currently control them (the nodes) to themselves, the leadership caste.
>I disagree. There are two ways to not “fight fair” – one is by fighting someone inferior to you like a small child, the other is by fighting someone who is your equal but with an unfair advantage of weapons, or deception by breaking promises, etc. By
But they not equal because one side is outgunning the other!
You assuming equal intelligence here and that is much a moot point.
The difference here one side make the efforts to build those weapons or learning how to deceive you. The fact that the west had more technology to win say some war begs the question as to this fact still makes the one side superior. We not talking smarts or morals. The fact of using institutions to educate people does not mean the loosing side had worse brains and the winning side had better brains. However a well organized society with education will beat the pants off of an ignorant and un-educated society.
So being superior is being superior and that quite much the end of it. If I have better guns then you then I am superior. We can get into a honest war and I will beat the pants off you. This begs the question how come you did not organize and get those better guns?
Your position and point changes little here.
If one side becomes wealthy – the other side will MOST certainly like and promote ideas to make you feel guilty.
Much of this essay is wrong. Developed nations like climate change policies as a way to keep developing nations DOWN through energy deprivation (no loans for coal fired power stations for example). Developing nations like climate change policies because they wrongly think they will get money for nothing. There is always a price to pay.
The guilt, which I used to believe in, is not really there. Their aim is even worse than the slave traders and colonialists. They want to drastically reduce the population of developing nations. Please don’t believe a word I have to say.
See here and here.
3×2 says:
March 22, 2014 at 12:57 pm
“Could you break that s##t down into some English language version that we can all share?”
Consequence of redistribution / subsidation: Reward failure and you get more of it.
I’m not saying let poor people starve, but maybe put a work requirement in welfare, that would be a start.
ntesdorf says:
March 22, 2014 at 3:16 pm
“Together we win, and apart we lose. Conflict is the path to failure as the Second World War showed. CAGW belief and consequent action is extremely infantile.”
America didn’t lose; America won the Empire. Violence can be extremely profitable, that’s why people are violent.
I have noticed a common theme in the progressive righteousness. Never use your own money or time to do good, always use someone else’s. I have yet to see a tatooed, nose-pierced, banner waving “activist” serving in a soup kitchen. They are invariably run by rather conservative people who perform deeds rather than words; do rather than feel. The AGWers want YOU to do something while THEY pontificate.
If ever we really are faced with a crisis where survival will be of the fittest the conservative types will be around long after the feel gooders have departed.
Gary Pearse says:
March 22, 2014 at 3:16 pm
“If you were to say “Let them eat cake” to starving citizens, it wouldn’t exonerate you from disgrace because Marie Antoinette said it first.”
You mean, telling a man how to become self-sufficient – which is the meaning of “teach him how to fish” – is mean and nasty? BTW, it was “Let them eat brioche”; and it was probably not Marie Antoinette but some 6 year old aristocrat daughter who said it; Marie Antoinette got killed by the enlightened noble socialists anyway, but then, they also killed each other, so fair’s fair.
Here is an example of the “white guilt” which I see above. There is so much guilt that this is the result.
What a great deal! The natives are ecstatic with joy!
How is this an action of guilt? What next, oil fired power stations? Gas?
PS I have said it before and I’ll say it again – massive deforestation will be the end result.
Here is another example of guilt from the EBRD
Since using wood pellet at Drax (UK) is OK I suppose developing countries will now turn their lush forests into wood pellets. It’s a win win situation dontcha know. 🙂
Jimbo says:
March 22, 2014 at 4:22 pm
The fake environmentalism of Watermelons is sickening. Forests must be chopped down, chipped & burned, & birds & bats must be massacred by windmills & fried by PVC farms to save the earth!
Climate change policies are not just about the developing world or reparations. I don’t want to dump a whole tonne of references here but some Germans have started stealing wood from forests for heating due to the high cost of power. People are dying in the UK and other countries due to high energy bills. Food to fuel is not helping to dampen food prices. Germany’s heavy industry is sweating buckets due to high energy bills. All driven by climate change policies. So even if “their ancestors had achieved global dominance by defeating rivals of equal stature” these people would still be screaming for action. It’s not so much about guilt of the past and more about guilt of the present. (iPads, nice homes, a sense of purpose, needing to feel important, something to do, nice 4×4 cars etc.) Focus here.
Prince Charles
Hollywood elite
Middle class kids with little drive or imagination
etc. etc.
All these people would go postal if you ever deprived them of energy. Absolutely postal.
Jimbo says:
March 22, 2014 at 4:34 pm
“All these people would go postal if you ever deprived them of energy. Absolutely postal.”
===============
That takes planning.
Anti DDT campaigns are a good example of guilt I suppose. The author of this piece needs to extend his thinking here I think. It was driven by progressives.
IMHO there are generally two types of progressive. The powerful and the less powerful. The less powerful progressives are naive, generally well meaning useful idiots. The powerful progressives are usually closet eco-fascists.
Jimbo says:
March 22, 2014 at 4:34 pm
If Apple board member Al Gore & CEO Tim Cook want to reduce everyone else’s carbon footprint (but not their own) so much, why then does the latest version of iOS 7 drain my iPhone battery so rapidly? I guess I should be happy that it doesn’t make batteries swell up like Samsung Galaxy S4’s. Maybe better batteries would have been developed if so much had not been wasted on CACA modeling & subsidizing windmills.
Here are the results of the guilt. And this isn’t even the developing world!!! Is this driven by guilt?
The long and short of my comments is this – white guilt for past actions / reparations is not what is driving the CAGW con job. Just like co2 it is simply an excuse to drive their ‘hidden’ agendas. De-industrialization for EVERYONE leading to global population reduction (but not them or their families and friends). That is their guilt.
Sorry for being such a cynic.
Jimbo says:
March 22, 2014 at 4:54 pm
“Sorry for being such a cynic.”
=================
I’m kinda afraid to release my cynicism, you seem to be doing pretty well.
Not far off the mark, but still too devious. The contribution of ‘white guilt’ is that it motivates those with more money that they actually need to live (the better-off-than-average Leftists) to adopt Progressive policies for redistribution of wealth to ease their guilt.
The fatal flaw of the concept of ‘redistribution of wealth’ is that, be design, it reduces the resources available to people who can manage them productively by giving them to people who cannot manage them productively and will only waste them.
After the end of the Cold War there was a lost purpose for many people. I mentioned above about the need for some people to have a feeling of doing something, having a purpose or being important. What were the people protesting on Greenham Common to do when the Americans packed up?
There was a quote from someone involved in this CAGW con job about the aim of a massive re-distribution of wealth. How can this happen when the US and China won’t allow it? It’s a silly dream, naive thinking, nuts. It will end in tears so please, please don’t worry about this. It’s not going to happen because elections will be lost in the US and China won’t even enter the pitch. European politicians are not yet completely mad and want to get elected too.
Sorry for my cynicism but this essay misses the mark.
Bert Walker says:
March 22, 2014 at 3:00 pm
“On the principle of infallibility there rests the iron discipline of the Communist (Progressive) Party.
=============
This is the same mechanism Cults use to maintain control of their followers. Unfortunately many children are taught to blindly follow their parents. This obedience training is then exploited to control the new adult when they leave home.
Cults exploit this by quickly weeding out individuals that will not blindly follow the leader. They then isolate the new recruits, so that they only hear the message from the infallible “god head” of the cult. The Supreme Leader.
Now look around and think of how many organizations operate in this fashion.
The panic amongst Warmists is very simple to understand. Global surface temps have ground to a halt for over 16 years (despite what the IPCC promised). Warmists thought that the setting up of carbon controlling institutions and regulations as well as the global alternative energy infrastructure would be much farther ahead than they are today. A continued temp standstill or declining temps would ruin their plans and it is. This has nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with green ideology, de-industrialization and the need to feel important. Co2, rising sea levels, Greenland meltdown, ocean acidification, coral reefs etc. are all a means to an end.
This is interesting, but hardly novel. I think that many readers would have explored this aspect to various depths.
Do remember that there has been much side tracking by those concerned with delivering the message.
In good science, the name of the game is to DELIVER THE GOODS.
Putting a person on the moon is delivering the goods. Writing a story about it is delivering the message.
Goods delivery is a more satisfying arena in which to work. Earn your keep by providing to society more than you ever take out. You can’t really do that well with theoretical words in essays.
And now, the Harvard Business Review, that bible of Capitalism, in its April issue (e-magazine made available today) has “Global Warming” as their cover-story…
Another slant on this issue is Paul Dreisser’s “Eco-Imperialism”. His documents many of the activities that are designed to hold the third world back, all in the name of saving the planet. However, his view is that it’s the neo-Malthusianism of the wealthy West, with its distrust of those “primitive” people breeding beyond the capacity of the planet to support them. Hence, all of these policies are designed to keep them in poverty, and make sure they don’t overrun the planet. I agree with Zombie that eco-guilt is part of the explanation, but I think there are other valid strands of activities involved, including Dreisser’s. You just have to read Paul Erlich’s response to being exposed to the teeming masses in India.
Being of German descent, I demand guilt be felt by the Russians for East Germany, the Ottoman Empire for driving my ancestors out, the French for Napoleon, the Huns, the Mongols, the Romans and whoever else enslaved my ancestors. I want my money and I want it NOW.
I was recently reading a new study that says, based on the mathematical models, that civilization will soon destroy itself unless we adopt global socialism. I’m not kidding.
Read about it for yourself.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasafunded-study-warns-of-collapse-of-civilisation-in-coming-decades-9195668.html
The headlines used “NASA” to get attention. NASA didn’t like that, so they issued a statement about it.
http://www.space.com/25160-nasa-statement-civilization-collapse-study.html
So you see, now the models prove that we must have global socialism.
What will the models show next, I wonder.
Fascinating discussion. I too struggle to understand the motivations and mindset of the CC crowd. I am sure the guilt issue is used in many situations but its not enough to explain the whole story. Agenda 21 is much closer to explaining the whole story.
Everyone should be alive to all aspects of this and resist. Like most people here. Its those who don’t come here that worry me…useful idiots.
LamontT says:
March 22, 2014 at 10:52 am
The first thing I searched for once I saw this headline was “Indulgences”. Congratulations! You beat me to it.
Back in 2006, “The Economist” described carbon offsets as indulgences that were sound in theory. Of course they were assuming that the externalities were negative.
http://www.economist.com/node/7252897
Well lets face it besides the ‘South sea bubble’ in the 18th Century, the carbon traders, clean energy and carbon credits have pulled another almost successful stunt. Would this have happened if Al Gore and the UNIPCC had not got the Nobel prize (and Academy Award). Now they are being challenged so we can understand their motives. Dare I say money?
It is amazing the power of the internet. What was in your wallet/back pocket 30 years ago. Ok, 20 years? 10? 100?
We demand much more in an immediate way today, no?
Climate doesn’t work that way.
Yep, the walls are not falling, but the dark clouds cast down upon us are there from the MSM.
When I think about it,,,,, it all seems familiar 》
http://youtu.be/qGYRbFY6QHY
If we choose to live in democratic countries, have supply of health, education, electricity or other energy sources, then we cop the cost. Most is affordable but in third world countries it is a God send if we have clean water and sanitation, let alone a culture that encourages free speech. If we cut out electricity it is the life blood of any country. And advanced countries are not going to let their standards drop. So emigrate Al Gore and Mikie and good riddens.
I think the quote a number of people upthread have been looking for is this one:
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
~ Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair, UN/IPCC WG-3
However, while that was the plan at the UN level, it has since been usurped, not by the left, but by capitalists themselves. Industry is adept at intercepting government funds and appropriating them for themselves. Instead of wealth transfers to poor countries so that they could improve their standard of living without industrializing, private enterprise has convinced governments that as much good can be done by spending the money “at home” instead. Hence we have wind farms and solar farms and carbon sequestration projects and electric cars and carbon credit trading. Wonder why the MSM is so pro CAGW? Think about who pays their bills. Advertisers. Capitalist advertisers.
For the record, I’m pretty far to the right politically, so don’t whack me over the head for being a left leaning loon. I’m just pointing out that the beneficiaries of the CAGW memeplex are just as much banks and manufacturing companies as they are lefty socialist research institutions.
Jimbo says:
March 22, 2014 at 5:25 pm
“European politicians are not yet completely mad and want to get elected too. ”
I see that you are not in the EU.
To be “one up,” IOW–which is a manifestation of the will to power.
David, I tend to agree with you and having worked for the tabloid media, 60% of the paper had to be from advertising, or the news element was reduced. It’s a catch 22 situation isn’t it? However, amazingly when the newspapers went on strike years ago, we got our news from the radio and TV. That’s before we had multi digital channels. But when the pilots went on strike in Qantas, the government had full page advertisements condemning them. All they wanted was work contracts, not extra pay. (The Vietnam war would see pilots moving on to commercial airlines, with more hours, so the pilots wanted seniority to protect their jobs) They got it eventually. It seemed that some pilots had other skills from which they could earn money. Others left and got jobs with other airlines. That was when QANTAS was fully owned by the government. So trying to bully intelligent people doesn’t work.
It’s possible that the developing/emerging economies play the guilt-card to ensure that the wealthy CAGW proponent countries either incur the costs themselves or put the nail in the coffin for a climate deal in Paris 2015.
The European commissioner for climate action Connie Hedegaard seems to prefer the latter option http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2308849/cop-19-connie-hedegaard-hails-us-support-for-paris-roadmap. Her mandate is running out and she needs a neat political escape route without angering her CAGW-electorate. The obvious second choice is to surf on the waves of a prominent CAGW leader, whose country hasn’t ratified the Kyoto protocol https://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/status_of_ratification/items/2613.php.
understanding people’s motives (like guilt) is harder than understanding the climate.
I’ve never read anything about other peoples motives (skeptics are oil shills, enviros are
guilt tripping racists) that wasnt utterly retarded.
why even waste time and bandwidth on this crap. It should be flushed like Lewandowsky’s crap
Being of English descent, I have 500-years worth of gripes about the Norman Yoke.
I think that most ordinary supporters of AGW mean well, and that the motivation is a perennial one: the need to identify with something greater than ourselves, to have a cause in which there is good to be supported and evil to be abhorred.
In the past, orthodox religion filled the bill. With its decline, exaggerated environmentalism has become one of the surrogates. All over the place, people are becoming more and more preachy about issues they identify with: this even applies to evangelistic materialism, with people like Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne and Sam Harris: every bit as strident as any old-time revivalist.
So my take is that increasing atheism is a major contributory factor. I don’t say that because I think we should go back to old time religion–far from it because it has much to answer for, and I think it should be superseded–but we’re struggling to fill the ever-strengthening vacuum it has left behind.
It’s primarily a phenomenon of the developed nations: the majority of humanity is still inclined to orthodox forms of religion and not (yet) as easily beguiled by the surrogates. In the end, I think that’s what will stop these modern forms of evangelism (possibly prefigured by Marxism) succeeding, and give us enough time to see them for what they are: just tired old flesh in new clothes. I think we probably have to go through this phase before we transition to values genuinely worth identifying with. I have my own views what those might be, but I’m keeping them to myself. At any rate, I believe things will come out in the wash, and if those of us resisting all the nonsense have a fault, I think it’s being unduly pessimistic.
rogerknight, how about 1000 year yoke. LOL We British are a mixture of genetic homogenous DNA. Celt, Norman, Danish, German,(Anglo Saxon) Dutch, Vikings, Roman, Actually my ancient ancestors on my mother’s side came from France. But also Irish. Dad’s were most probably olde English. Now I am a naturalized Australian. Who cares really but fun to speculate whom your ancestors came from originally. I understand your gripe James the Elder, it was refreshing. If you have a blood group of O you come from a long line of English. B group you’re most probably from Scandinavia or Welsh. I wonder where Mann came from originally. Sounds German.
It’s not guilt. These people lack healthy guilt, but they know exactly how get you to use your compassion to do what they want. It is technique of domination, just plain old Cultural Marxism.
“The New Age will begin when a Net Covers the World!”
Welcome to the New Age.
The educated, connected Elite no longer controls the flow of information.
The U.N. “Agenda 21” use of the Ecoloons to gain control of the world politic is failing because of the Internet.
Free men can rule themselves, is the real “New World Order”.
Men of good will can find and work in concert with one another to thwart the GEBs and their NGOs. pg
p.g.sharrow. I ADMIRE your post. But the action of some countries seems to suggest, that they are supporting a false claim regarding CO2 being responsible for climate change universally.
I remember seeing an isolated Kenyan medical clinic that didn’t have electricity bar through some solar panels, they could not at night time run electricity to their small refrigerator or lighting. They chose the electricity for their refrigerator, a small one, that contained vaccines, etc. This has nothing to do with climate change has it?
Gary Pearse says:
March 22, 2014 at 3:16 pm
Sorry, but again, not correct about cake eating. The quotation, as attributed to Marie Antoinette, was claimed to have been uttered during one of the famines that occurred in France during the reign of her husband, Louis XVI. Upon being alerted that the people were suffering due to widespread bread shortages, the Queen is said to have replied, “Then let them eat brioche.”[5] Although this anecdote was never cited by opponents of the monarchy at the time of the French Revolution, it did acquire great symbolic importance in subsequent histories when pro-revolutionary historians sought to demonstrate the obliviousness and selfishness of the French upper-classes at that time.
Zhu Muzhi, president of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, asserts that Rousseau’s version is an alteration of a much older anecdote: “An ancient Chinese emperor who, being told that his subjects didn’t have enough rice to eat, replied, ‘Why don’t they eat meat?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
Cordially,
Perry
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Gary Pearse says:
March 22, 2014 at 3:16 pm
David, UK says:
March 22, 2014 at 2:44 pm
Gary Pearse says:
March 22, 2014 at 2:29 pm
“I believe the UN, is: (something like) “You can give a hungry man a fish a day or you can teach him how to fish so he can feed himself each day.” Teach him how to fish!!! When I first heard that piece of hubris, I was amazed at its blatant racism. Yeah, it’s there.
(from David, UK)
You think that phrase is from the UN? WTF!
It’s actually an ancient Chinese proverb.
Still worked up over its “blatant racism”? Sheesh.”
Thanks David, I stand corrected on the source (an historical Chinese elite) but not the nitty gritty of my comment. If you were to say “Let them eat cake” to starving citizens, it wouldn’t exonerate you from disgrace because Marie Antoinette said it first.
Gary, (I’m amazed this needs explaining) the proverb simply means it is better to teach someone how to be self-sufficient (e.g. to fish) than to dole out charity (e.g. give them a fish) leaving them dependent on hand-outs. What exactly is it about this that you find so blatantly racist? I note you added “Yeah, it’s there” – so where is it? Tell us.
p.g.sharrow says:
March 22, 2014 at 11:22 pm
Smart electricity meters will enable those who would silence us to selectively cut off off electricity & perhaps our broadband connections as well. In the meantime I would draw readers’ attention to a short heart warming message.
History of the low-fat ‘diet-heart’ hypothesis
The vilification of saturated fat by Ancel Keys began two decades before the seven countries study, where Keys showed a curvilinear association between fat calories as a percentage of total calories and death from degenerative heart disease from six countries. However, he excluded data from 16 countries that did not fit his hypothesis. Indeed, data were available at the time from 22 countries, and when all countries were looked at the association was greatly diminished.
Doesn’t that sound familiar? From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys#Seven_Countries_Study
KEYS WAS ALWAYS CONSIDERED AN INTERVENTIONIST.
The moral of the story is that not only has very recent research now shown that Keys was wrong, wrong, wrong, but that his dishonesty elevated mortality rates from heart disease & cancer. It’s all in this BMJ paper published 5th March 2104.
The cardiometabolic consequences of replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates or Ω-6 polyunsaturated fats: Do the dietary guidelines have it wrong?
http://openheart.bmj.com/content/1/1/e000032.full?sid=5e6b0cad-75ea-41a1-85e6-e5461d77846c
Read it.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
Oh let’s go to bed in the southern hemisphere, I seem to be protecting all over those who corrupt AGM debate. God I I am tired,.good luck to the Northern hemisphere posters. ( am going to bed.
Just in case the significance of the Keys saga is not blatantly obvious, M. Mann pulled the same trick with his hockey stick, although his dishonesty was discovered more quickly.
It took sixty years & countless early deaths to overthrow the Keys memoriam. May we not have to wait so long to reverse the vilification of Carbon Dioxide & we can breathe again without guilt.
It’s boys and girls that never grew up.
rogerknights says:
March 22, 2014 at 9:46 pm
James the Elder says:
March 22, 2014 at 6:37 pm
“Being of English descent, I have 500-years worth of gripes about the Norman Yoke”
Isn’t it 900 years? That is for the Saxon side of my family and for the Celtic side there is 1600 years of gripes against the Saxon’s!
Oops. Saxons not Saxon’s.
The author has a point.
Consequences of the progressive guilt trip are, of course, deeply intentional.
… a phenomenal opportunity for the nation with the world’s greatest capacity of corn production. All that was needed was a way to increase demand for corn. …
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-saturated-fat-scam-whats-the-real-story/
Though hot-buttons for guilt are certainly among others that will be pushed by cultural entities like CAGW, I largely disagree with this theory about ‘white guilt’ as a primary driver. But it’s sure prompted a really interesting range of views on the social aspects of CAGW. There are surveys about the level of ‘climate-change’ knowledge and perceptions in many nations other than just ‘the white West’, which ought to provide some evidence for or against theories of this kind.
Joshua is right the inequality was essentially from one side being tooled up (in the fullest sense – an industrial civilisation), not from racial inequality. The tooling up itself was a consequence of geogrpahy, nicely explained in ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’ by Jared Diamond.
I also believe that Mosher is right when he says that understanding motives is harder than understanding the climate, or at least if one wants to understand in the fuller sense of how these motives interact and aggregate in social movements such as religions, or secular ones such as CAGW. But various disciplines have made a great deal of progress on this stuff over many decades, and only a small portion of that is as valueless as Lew paper (a new standard?). Nothing about the fundamental drivers of CAGW appears to be different to many previous social movements, only the detail is unique, hence one can leverage much good work already achieved.
I think the various commenters pointing out the similarities to religion are on the right track too. And as with any investigation, separating cause and effect to find the full order of causation is a goal. There are many individual and organisational band-wagon jumpers (and hence mixed, and even contradictory, motives), but there had to be a bandwagon to join, and before that a buggy aspiring to be a bandwagon, plus an identifiable amplification mechanism. There are also many different interpretations of CAGW in different social strata and nations, but this doesn’t mean there aren’t solid and common causal factors that can be isolated. Noting the commonalities with similarly complex religions, begs the question of ‘how do religions work?’, on which there has been a lot of productive thought.
The clues to the modern “progressive” and “environmental-friendly” movements are found in some important sources:
1) The Judeo-Christian thought which shaped our “western” civilization;
2) Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality.
Rousseau states that it is civilization that creates unequality and that man in his nature state (unharmed by civilization) is free of “sin”. “Sin” came into the world as a result of human beings seeking together, thus shaping different roles and opportunities, thus creating inequality. Rousseau states that it is inequality that leads to sparetime and sparetime leads to “sin”. How to get rid of “sin”? Get rid of inequality. How to get rid of inequality? Answer: Socialism.
What is then “progress”? It is the path to equality which is found by practicing socialism.
Why then should one be environmental-friendly? Because nature is free of “sin” and humans have fallen from its natural state. As a consequence humans should strive to get back to its nature state, shun the developed society and learn from nature.
This is a simple example of how humans are led by dogma. Everybody take their actions from their dogma. Everybody has a sort of religion, which is a set of statements about man and the world around him, and those morals these statements lead to.
To make the statement about religion easier to swallow for those who have an aversion to the word, all religion stem from man’s need to create a “model” of the world in his head. This model is almost completely made by dogma uttered by “authorities”, whomever they might be. Man’s “authorities” are often chosen, but they are mostly adopted unconsciously.
An example of a common dogma followed by mostly al WUWT’s readers: “One should follow the scientific method.” Such a statement is not science, as science has nothing to do with the world “should”. It is a dogma and it is quite usual for believers in this dogma that they apply it unconsciously. It is a dogma like “Thou shall not tell a lie.” But however it is, many religions do not have a dogma about not telling a lie. And many progressive environmentalists will say: “Thou shall not let results from using the scientific method interfere with saving the environment from human activity.” and “Thou shall lie if it helps saving the environment from human activity.”
As simple as that.
Still to sit in cave.
Look to shadows
Do you see shadows of shadows.
Needs be light.
Not flickering but bright.
How about a revolutionary but very simple explanation for the AGW position and all that’s done in its name: most of those in influential positions within the movement BELIEVE their case to varying degrees, and belief of any kind once established drives all sorts of claims and activities, all kinds of blindness and tainted interpretations. . . . witness every major ideology/religion . . . . . cf 20th C.
The reason for being an AGW believer is that AGW fits with the “model” of the world in the head of the believer. If you accept the belief in “progress” (which is the belief in the world slowly becoming better), you will also believe that the world today is “not perfect” (for else, there would be no possiblity of progress), and when you look around you it isn’t perfect, “obviously”. So you will work for making a better world. The socialist belief in equality has created a tension between “vision” and “reality” where man is a “sinner”. AGW is “proof” for the AGW believer that man has sinned against nature. It fits with the model that where there is more civilization, there is more “sin”, quite in line with Rousseau (although many critics have voiced a doubt that Rousseau actually believed himself what he wrote). Consequently, the more civilized countries have “sinned” against the less developed countries. More civilized countries have more wealth than less civilized countries which make them unequal. As the goal is equality, transfer the wealth until all countries are equal and everybody will be happy in the end.
Many WUWT readers obviously can’t understand why the AGW believers can believe the AGW stupidity. It is however this simple. Humans are led by the model of the world they have formed in their heads. We all believe authorities as we cannot find out everything ourselves (with the possible exception of Willis E.).
The psychology here is as bad as Lewandowsky’s.
I’ve had dozens of people opine on my ‘true motives’ throughout my life. They’ve universally been wrong. If they’d accepted my motives exactly as declared, they’d have been correct. I’m not Robinson Crusoe; I’m sure many people here have had similar experiences.
There’s an old expression, ‘everybody has two motives, one that sounds good and the real reason’. But this old expression is a half-truth.
In most cases, what we have is our motive as it appears to us, and that same motive spun to sound good. Yes, there are some intentionally deceptive and fraudulent individuals. But as a rule, the person who contradicts someone on that other person’s motives is just plain foolish.
I think the extreme environmentalists are honest. I think they’re insane, but honest. My sister is one. Despite her Doctorate, she’s actually too dumb to have a hidden motive.
These speculations on other people’s motives make us look foolish.
How did Zombie get it so wrong? I suspect it’s because he’s trying to come up with some way that he could rationalise having an extreme green’s world view. But I can’t say for sure. The only one who can truly say what another person’s motives are is that person themself.
I never understood why western countries would want to divert their wealth to countries where the wealth redistribution is almost non-existent. Wealth redistribution to poor countries is actually wealth concentration amongst the elite. This is why capital cities in Africa are full of Mercedes and BMWs while people in the country-side still live in mud huts.
It would make sense for one politician from a western country (such as the US or Germany) to stand up and tell the poor countries that if they don’t redistribute their wealth more fairly (I almost wrote democratically but that would be worse) then they won’t get any more hand-outs.
I do believe in the concept of progressive racism and it’s easy to find people who feel guilty for colonialism. Just look at what the Ontario Government is doing with First Nations groups and the mining industry – and ruining the economy in the meantime.
Every time I hear about the Ottoman Empire I want to sit in a recliner and put my feet up.
Guilt is their stock in trade, but I doubt “white guilt” plays much part.
In the Warmunist religion, the original sin is that of being part of humanity, which is considered to be a blight on Earth. Warmunism encompasses all effects that man has on the environment, whether real or imagined. But manmade climate change is the pinnacle; it is man’s most deadly of all sins. In a word, we are murdering Gaia via our use of fossil fuels. But it gets worse for those who happen to live in Western and more advanced civilizations, for they are the ones wielding the means of said murder. That is the major source of the guilt, which they exploit and strive to increase. If you want to make someone do something which goes against their self-interests, you can’t get much better than guilt or fear as motivators.
The propaganda game played by the lobbyists on the AGW front is played with such subtlety that they have left us confused about seasonal temperatures, due to the so called chaos of the “man made climate change” conjecture. In fact there is very little abnormal or chaotic about today’s climate, weather or temperatures.
It’s as though they have gone to New York Bay, dipped their feet in the water, and since they couldn’t feel the Titanic under their feet at that particular location, they conclude that entire ocean is a vast sea of acid that dissolves anything that in engulfs, and then issue press releases about how alarming and in turmoil the seas are, and that they need to be studied in depth… When really they are what they have always been.
Progressers looking for Micro-Racism everywhere and screaming about it. That’s the kind of racism you need a microscope to find.
Man-Made Climate Changers obsessing over a non issue to keep us distracted from the real problems.
If only they could figure out, according to the BLS, why there are 92 million unemployed Americans of working age not collecting a paycheck from working.
David, UK says:
March 23, 2014 at 1:44 am
Gary Pearse says:
March 22, 2014 at 3:16 pm etc.
David, my not realizing it is an ancient and worthy Chinese proverb would appear to accord me more subtlety than I deserve. Notwithstanding your sensible interpretation of the proverb, I’m sure you can see that too zealous and all encompassing application of it does say something about how the giver judges the receiver (and vice versa – hence my slap-in-the-face comment above). The UN (and other aid organizations) were preceded by, and took their early cues from well-meaning missionaries – preachers anachronous in their own countries accompanied by pleasant virgin middle-aged ladies in white ankle socks, there to save the heathen from continuing to go to the devil (ironically, I learned from a Tanzanian who had studied in China, that the name for his race in Chinese is “black devils”).
I hadn’t planned to go too deeply into all this but how you teach the person is also an important part of how the actors are perceived. The most respectful and effective method is exchange. I will invest in development of your copper, train and pay your countrymen to assist us and pay taxes and royalties for your sovereign mineral resources. NGOs have put up a lot of resistance to this scheme mainly because it is powerful competition to their safari lifestyles and controls (UN, World Bank, etc.).
I read a critique on your system about a dozen years ago essentially saying that too little has been achieved at a cost of over 50 trillion dollars since independence. Depending on your reply, I will know if my effort has been worthwhile or not.
Geir in Norway says: March 23, 2014 at 7:00 am
Models of the world in folks’ heads, and the promoting of such by authorities, are a good path to progress in searching for explanations. But then ascribing root cause to *particular* models, such as ‘progress’, socialism, or the thoughts of Rousseau, veers away again from ultimate cause. Remember that cultural entities of this kind, religions especially, existed with similar characteristics before any of those particular models existed. Hence the particular models are not what is most important, but the mechanisms that support all of them.
Leo Morgan says: March 23, 2014 at 7:04 am
Yes, I agree the vast majority of the environmenatalists are honest, even most of the elite, though there will be bad apples in every human enterprise. No other assumption can really accomodate the fact that a great majority of some societies are swayed. But neither are they insane, unless one proposes that *all* formal religious believers, all ‘spiritual’ believers, as well as all believers in both past and present secular entities like passionate Nationalism and CAGW and so on, are also insane. This would amount to pretty much everyone who’s ever lived and probably 95%+ of everyone alive now, so by definition they are not insane. It may be more uncomfortable to acknowledge, but ‘belief’ is a normal social process, and we’d be better off figuring how and why it works than labelling folks insane. There’s a great deal of work done on this already, and fortunately much of it doesn’t simply try to second guess people’s motives, which I agree is very unproductive, instead looking at how motivations of any kind gain traction.
andywest2012 says:
March 23, 2014 at 8:43 am
“But neither are they insane, unless one proposes that *all* formal religious believers, all ‘spiritual’ believers, as well as all believers in both past and present secular entities like passionate Nationalism and CAGW and so on, are also insane. ”
Spiritual movements vary wildly concerning their sanity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
The insanity of the Malthusian movement, for which Warmism is only the latest vehicle, lies in their refusal to even look at data; or if they absolutely have to, only look at data that their own “scientists” have already fornicated. (Gavin Schmidt, NASA’s very own GISS).
DirkH says: March 23, 2014 at 8:51 am
Some (typically tiny) cults at the fringes challenge our understanding of where belief crosses over to insanity. In percentage terms, this barely registers. Blindness to outside aspects that challenge mainstream belief-systems, including a range of particular mechanisms like noble-cause corruption, confirmation bias, motivated reasoning etc, are absolutely standard features of any belief system, plus analogue in nature (we may all have a little bit of it in some dimension of our lives), and even where more marked, is sizeable in percentage terms. Like I said, we’d be better off figuring out how this works than labelling big swathes of the population insane (and variable swathes too, depending on which particular belief system is being challenged).
Motivation.
Why a person does something is one of the most important questions to answer. It will give you the starting premises of a person’s reasoning. Also, it predicts where their ultimate intellectual destination will be, if they are logically consistent over time and also consistent within their reasoning.
The motivation of the fundamentalist / radicals who are significant part of the CAGW culture is, I think, to achieve anti-reason dominance through coercion over reason. The motivation is hatred for mankind’s nature which distinguishes humans from all other animals on Earth; hatred for applied reasoning.
Those who doubt it is hate should think about what they are seeing. The hard core CAGW activists who are very loud supporters of the IPCC process are suggesting jail, disfigurement and capital punishment against those who are exercising open and free applied reasoning in climate science. That is hate.
If open and free applied reasoning is prevented by force, the motivational goal is achieved to stop mankind from using his fundamental nature . . . stopping mankind from using free and open applied reasoning.
NOTE: If you are prevented by force from using applied reasoning then you are dependent on those preventing you from using it. You are dependent on the haters of applied reasoning. The darkest of dark ages . . . .
John
Emotional blackmail.
Works real good for conning insecure individuals.
You didn’t build that?
============================================================
I think the point is not so much to understand people’s motives but to recognize that “guilt” is one of the levers being applied to move those susceptible in the desired direction.
Kind of like knowing which hand of the magicians of manipulation to keep an eye on so as not to fooled.
AGW is a device to guilt-trip educated people and straightforwardly manipulate low-information sheeple into going along with a tyrannical kleptocratic agenda.
It is NOT ultimately about climate or the environment but rather about the greed and lust for power of leftist elitists.
Since the ideological foundation of AGW is Marxist, it is inherently racist. The Marxist doctrine of class warfare is racist insofar as social strata in nearly every society on Earth correlate to ethnic divisions.
The racism of AGW is acted out in practical terms by such schemes as pushing black farmers in Uganda and Brazil off their land so billionaires can plant trees and make money selling carbon credits.
“This saying was coined by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919) in her novel, Mrs. Dymond (1885):”
Guilt. If you want a better word SIN is an essential component of every Leftist worldview.
We need to understand that GUILT is an essential tool to achieve power over other people.
Without GUILT is very difficult to dominate others like the LEFT needs.
Marxism and its control over others can’t survive without implying Guilt.
Most leftist automatically assume that if someone prosper it at expense of someone else.
That is a world vision made in guilt. And it is essential for its power needs
That is why is essential for a Leftist: failure, victimhood and poverty.
Without them there is no reason for them to be preachers. Their reason of existence would vanish. So they have to invent problems and turn those that exist 10 fold in size, at same time blocking any fix or even adding to them.
I’m sure Zombie can support his ideas with empirical evidence and solid reasoning. After all, no reader on this site would accept a claim simply because it sounds “truthy”, or appeals to their political inclinations, or is in some way what they want to believe, would they?
@ sadbutmadlad: Why should I be forced to live the lifestyle YOU like? Who made you the arbiter of what living a good life means?
Your right to swing your fist ends several inches short of my nose. I won’t try to take your factories away from YOU — not UNTIL you try forcing ME to work in them. Kick me off my land and I might not work in your factory. I might join up with the crazy-fanatic guerrillas instead. Capiche?
” I won’t try to take your factories away from YOU — not UNTIL you try forcing ME to work in them. ”
Does “force” mean offer to pay money or are talking about working in a Russian Gulag for the good of the State?
@ RoHa
March 23, 2014 at 4:18 pm
You said: “I’m sure Zombie can support his ideas with empirical evidence and solid reasoning. After all, no reader on this site would accept a claim simply because it sounds “truthy”, or appeals to their political inclinations, or is in some way what they want to believe, would they?”
You say that as if it’s a bad thing.
Of course some reader would.
That’s a natural human tendency. Anthony’s commenting policy is open to all the world except for specific reasonable exceptions, stated ahead of time.
This means that fools can comment.
This also means that everyone else can point out their mistakes. Steve Mosher preceded me in pointing out the problems of this opinion article. I myself critiqued it.
Unlike other Climate Blogs where any sort of nonsense that adheres to the dogma gets published while corrections are censored.
Error thrives in secrecy. It withers when exposed to free comment.
“I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
I doubt the looters have one iota of guilt, but they play on the guilt of others to their advantage.
Gary Pearse says:
March 23, 2014 at 8:37 am
David, my not realizing it is an ancient and worthy Chinese proverb would appear to accord me more subtlety than I deserve. Notwithstanding your sensible interpretation of the proverb, I’m sure you can see that too zealous and all encompassing application of it does say something about how the giver judges the receiver (and vice versa – hence my slap-in-the-face comment above). The UN (and other aid organizations) were preceded by, and took their early cues from well-meaning missionaries – preachers anachronous in their own countries accompanied by pleasant virgin middle-aged ladies in white ankle socks, there to save the heathen from continuing to go to the devil (ironically, I learned from a Tanzanian who had studied in China, that the name for his race in Chinese is “black devils”).
I hadn’t planned to go too deeply into all this but how you teach the person is also an important part of how the actors are perceived. The most respectful and effective method is exchange. I will invest in development of your copper, train and pay your countrymen to assist us and pay taxes and royalties for your sovereign mineral resources. NGOs have put up a lot of resistance to this scheme mainly because it is powerful competition to their safari lifestyles and controls (UN, World Bank, etc.).
I read a critique on your system about a dozen years ago essentially saying that too little has been achieved at a cost of over 50 trillion dollars since independence. Depending on your reply, I will know if my effort has been worthwhile or not.
Gary, you’re waffling now. There is absolutely nothing racist in the proverb “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he feeds himself for life.” To quote you: “When I first heard that piece of hubris, I was amazed at its blatant racism. Yeah, it’s there.” So I hope you are able to tell us where in that proverb the racism is, or else admit you were talking nonsense.
Although racism is one possible explanation for a need to apologize for past colonialism, it is not the only one.
Another explanation is a belief that it is wrong for one group of people to initiate force against another, or to subjugate another. That aggressive expansion is wrong, regardless of race.
To add to the comment I just made….
Really, I find the presumption of racism quite offensive. Usually it’s liberals doing it, now some conservatives are on a race to the bottom.
If you’re going to accuse an entire group of people of racism, you need a heck of a lot better evidence than this.