More Straight Thought-- about Climate Change

In yesterday’s post-- Time for Some Straight Thought-- I offered up some comments on a theory proposed by Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh.

Some people took exception to the remarks because they did not show sufficient hatred for China, but such is the right of all citizens.

For today, I recommend that we examine Ganesh’s thesis and apply it to another contemporary hot-button issue-- the so-called climate crisis.

Ganesh proposed that many of our leading politicians are denouncing the China policies of several American presidents because they want to feel that they are still all-powerful, thus that they are still pulling the strings. By their lights China would never have succeeded in the world if we had not lost China to Mao in 1949, if Nixon had not gone to China in 1972, and if we had not allowed China to join the World Trade Organization in 2001. 

According to Ganesh, these developments were more complex than people imagine. And besides, he added, China under Deng Xiaoping had become too important in world trade and commerce to be excluded for very long.

Such was his argument. He added that we are blaming ourselves for China’s progress because we would rather feel guilty than impotent. Dare I say, it makes us feel more potent. I will pass on the implications.

Take the same concept, now, and apply it to the climate crisis. According to the climate change hysterics out there, it is not enough to recognize that the climate is changing. We must recognize that we are responsible for the change. That aims at the Western world, especially, the Industrial Revolution foisted on the world by Angl0-Saxon culture. 

Now if only we can repeal the Industrial Revolution and pay reparations to the rest of the world for having victimized them with a change that they have not adopted, things will be better, the climate will start to heal and the oceans will rise again-- or some such nonsense.

Most serious climate scientists accept that the climate changes. Blaming ourselves, blaming our culture and civilization, calling for draconian self-punishing measures amounts to nothing more than asserting our guilt in order not to make us feel impotent.

Keep in mind, the City Council of the city of New York has just banned natural gas from new construction. The fuel that burns the most cleanly has been banned from new buildings, including restaurants. The chefs who insist that it is better to use gas have been informed that the City Council knows best. Besides, the state of New York recently closed down the nuclear power plant that supplies New York City with much of its electricity.

We understand that the NY City council is a band of fools, but still, does their behavior not lend some credence to the Ganesh concept, about pretending that you are responsible for something you had little power over, the better to punish yourself, and, by punishing yourself imagining that the gods you offended will come to your rescue.

This unnatural love for the Goddess of the Environment is pagan idolatry writ large-- in a culture that supposedly overcame paganism around the time of Moses.