I CAN understand the conservative, elitist and aristocrat love for environmentalism – they’ve always had a problem with mass society and the masses. But the “progressive” embrace of all things environmental is one of the strangest developments in recent times. As the judge’s decision to ban the Heathrow expansion shows it has massive implications for limiting economic growth.
It is strange that environmentally conscious people are often the same ones who can be found screaming about “Tory Austerity”, expressing outrage about food banks, or wage cuts, or the desperate wages and conditions of workers in China or Africa. One wonders if these people think money grows on the trees they want to save from just about every major attempt to develop the economy.
In the real world, the starting point for overcoming poverty and transforming low income economies is economic growth – even Karl Marx knew this. But current environmental thinking, as the Heathrow debacle demonstrates, is the biggest threat to growth. Indeed, no sooner had the verdict been announced than every major road development was thrown into the mixer. Following this logic, we should stop all major areas of growth.
There is little serious discussion about the ethos of current environmental thinking and its anti-industrial, anti-growth philosophy. The opposite is in fact the case, and even where environmental policies are developed our progressive friends will always be heard denouncing them for “not going far enough”. But doesn’t this ultimately mean more food banks, more low pay and more impoverishment for less developed countries?
The current penchant for environmentalism is anti-human, it is logically anti-human because it developed out of the Small is Beautiful miserablism of the 1970s, a time when faith in both capitalist and importantly, socialist, development policies was collapsing. Despite what people may think, environmentalism has never simply been about The Science, but has always had a negative political and moralistic dimension.
As the elites themselves lost belief in mass industrial progress and the possibility of human ingenuity resolving society's problems, it wasn’t long before austerity environmentalism became the new religion. Consequently, small economies and small minds began to dominate public discussions about the future.
But what we need is not less industrialism and technological growth but more. Nuclear power, for example, could solve much of the carbon emissions problem but the technophobic miserabilists appear unable to countenance this modernist approach, just as they refuse to believe we can continue to grow while also resolving the problems we face.
So let’s stop hiding behind meaningless moralising about “Tory austerity”, let’s have a real public debate and be a bit more honest about where our austerity environmentalism is taking us. Then we can let the public, rather than unelected judges make decisions about our future.
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