Mere Ecologism

[Valin]

The Weekly Standard:

Is modern environmentalism science or faith?

STEVEN F. HAYWARD

Aug 5, 2013

 

Most critiques of environmentalism have become as dreary and predictable as environmentalism itself. Environmentalists, their critics (myself included) never tire of telling us, grossly exaggerate problems, promote endless bureaucracy, corrupt the law, and engage in relentless scaremongeringor at least insist on wearing Al Gore masks on Halloween. These criticisms are all true, all well deserved, and all .  .  . tediously familiar.

 

Here, the French author Pascal Bruckner deploys the eccentric and discursive style of French social commentary to break out of this rut in spectacular fashion. Bruckner, one of the left-leaning nouveaux philosophes who broke with Marxism in the 1970s, writes for Le Nouvel Observateur and delights in being a scourge of decadent European liberalism (see his splendid The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism). A major literary figure in France, Bruckner is largely unknown here in America, chiefly because the American left lacks a self-critical impulse.

 

(Snip)

 

He writes: In the wrong hands, the best of causes can degenerate into an abominationwhich is exactly what Bruckner thinks has happened to environmentalism.

 

 

Ecologism has become a global ideology that covers all of existence, modes of production as much as ways of life. In it are found all the faults of Marxism applied to the environment: the omnipresent scientism, the appalling visions of reality, the admonishment of those who are guilty of not understanding those who wish us well. All the foolishness of Bolshevism, Maoism, and Trotskyism are somehow reformulated exponentially in the name of saving the planet.

He notes that Marxism designated capitalism as responsible for human misery. .  .  . With ecologism, we move up a notch: the guilty party is humanity itself......(Snip)