Some Thoughts On Preventing Eco-fascism

From James Delingpole comes this note on James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia hypothesis. My comments below.

"Here is the kindly, distinguished inventor of the Gaia hypothesis interviewed in the Guardian, when asked how humans will ever manage to tackle ‘climate change’.

We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.

But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

“It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.” Hmm. I’m sure he said it in a gentle, quavery, tentative voice, but even so, don’t phrases like that tend to make the blood run cold – especially when spoken by the man viewed by many of the world’s eco-loons as the ultimate environmental guru?"

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Fascist tyranny has gripped several otherwise normal countries in the past 100 years and not all the people in those countries were fascists. It is no good to mentally scroll down one's list of friends and to say "I don't think any of them are fascists or would fall for fascism." That does not prove that fascism could not come to seem attractive to many or most people in our country under the right conditions.

Ah, but what conditions you say? Emergency conditions. There has to be some looming catastrophe, some on-going seemingly intractable chaos, a crisis that only strong leadership from above can deal with. It would seem to me that this is the real danger of the whole global warming phenomenon. It becomes such an obsession and overwhelming crisis in the minds of scientists that they begin to fudge data. It becomes such a powerful narrative that it begins to sap the resistance of politicians to doing enormously harmful things to mitigate it. And it becomes enough of a fright to the general population that they cry out for action - any action - no matter the cost or the implications.

Is it rational? No, but rationality is not the point. Is it likely? No, but it is possible. Is it inevitable? Absolutely not. Cooler heads must prevail and public panic must be avoided. That cuts off the oxygen on which fascism lives.