Hazards of environmentalism: climate change

Lately, the debate over climate change has heated up, and it has also raised questions about the nature of the environmental movement. Ayn Rand had said the following on the underlying philosophy of the green movement,

"Ecology as a social principle condemns cities, culture, industry, technology, the intellect, and advocates men’s return to “nature,” to the state of grunting subanimals digging the soil with their bare hands." (The Ayn Rand Letter)

The immediate goal is obvious: the destruction of the remnants of capitalism in today’s mixed economy, and the establishment of a global dictatorship. This goal does not have to be inferred—many speeches and books on the subject state explicitly that the ecological crusade is a means to that end. (The Return of the Primitive)

In an article titled "India should support a toothless IPCC", published in the Wall Street Journal Asia, on Feb 9, 2010, I had looked at the politics of climate change, and wrote that,

The IPCC was created as a way to make the world, particularly the poor, fall in line and support expensive climate-change initiatives by overwhelming them with the apparent authority of the world’s leading technical body on the subject, backed by alleged scientific consensus. This attempt was doomed to fail, primarily because scientific inquiry does not respect consensus, and orthodoxy is anathema to scientific progress. So the fall of IPCC was inevitable, and that seed was laid at the time of its conception, in the very nature in which IPCC was sought to be built... ... ...

The IPCC has been checkmated, as have so many other U.N. institutions before it. This is the inevitable consequence of the desire for global government under the misguided belief that ordinary people may not know what is in their own interest and for their own future. With the deepening of democratic ideals, people power can no longer be overturned so easily. The failure of the IPCC shows that sovereignty still lies with the people, not with the aspirants for global government.

Liberty Institute is co-hosting a discussion on the challenging climate post Copenhagen summit, at the India International Centre, New Delhi, on February 23, 2010, from 5.30 pm to 8 pm. The two key speakers are Dr S Fred Singer and Dr Benny Peiser. Dr Singer is an eminent scientist from the US, who coordinated a group of international scientists and prepared a report on the science of climate change. Dr Peiser is an astro-physicist who has a minor planet named after him, and now heads a new organisation dedicated to climate policies in UK.

All are welcome to this event. For more information please visit the Challenging Climate blog - http://challengingclimate.blogspot.com