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/
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?
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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.