Is the Opposition to Climate Change Ecological or Technological?

by Thomas Cothran

Let's set aside the empirical question concerning climate change (i.e., is human activity causing dangerous weather patterns) for a moment and ask about what sort of politics under-girds the climate change movement.

I propose that the concealed political agenda behind much of climate change advocacy is, at bottom, anti-environmental. The reason behind the regulations issued in response to climate change warnings is precisely the desire to avoid real change; environmental regulations seek to preserve technological society. If we could find a new source of energy in nature, a cleaner fuel, and so on, we could maintain our environmental ideology--that nature exists primarily to be exploited by a form of industrial capitalism set free from the natural limits of human needs.

Climate change advocacy warns of an apocalypse that will end life as we know it, precisely because it seeks to protect life as we live it. As the global economy increasingly becomes driven not by the satisfactions of basic human desires but by profits abstracted from fundamental human needs, the natural limitations on industrial activity are increasingly abandoned; for profit, unlike human needs, has no upper limit.

The fundamentally violent relation of human beings to nature that regards nature primarily as a resource to be appropriated rather than as a creation that is good in itself, a thing to be safeguarded rather than assaulted, is not called into question by the climate change movement but rather sublated, concealed, made more sustainable.

Climate change advocacy therefore does not seek to end the assault on the earth, but to extend it, to make it more complete, to make it more cunning.

Your know your town is too big when ...

Okay, your town is officially too big if you have a "tree board."

Not that I am opposed to government fining people for cutting down poor innocent trees, but who is government to be getting down on other people for doing this? Has anyone noticed the worst perpetrators of tree destruction crimes?

How about those government road construction crews who, to the surprise of most people in the general vicinity, show up one day on some scenic Kentucky road and mow down all the vegetation in sight, include what appear to be centuries old trees so they can widen a road that never sees much traffic anyway just because some local politician got government money for so they could pay local workers (most of whom aren't local anyway) exorbitant prevailing wages.

Put me on a "tree board." I'll save some trees alright.

Freeman Dyson: Global Warming Heretic

Freeman Dyson, the famed physicist, knows dogmatism when he sees it:

Dyson is well aware that “most consider me wrong about global warming.” That educated Americans tend to agree with the conclusion about global warming reached earlier this month at the International Scientific Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (“inaction is inexcusable”) only increases Dyson’s resistance. Dyson may be an Obama-loving, Bush-loathing liberal who has spent his life opposing American wars and fighting for the protection of natural resources, but he brooks no ideology and has a withering aversion to scientific consensus.

Read the rest here.

Massive coal ash spill could affect water supplies of several states

According to Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, billions of gallons of highly toxic coal slurry broke through a dike at the TVA's Kingston County coal-fired plant in Harriman, TN. It has flowed into tributaries of the Tennessee River that supply water to Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky. The ash slide "covered as many as 400 acres as deep as 6 feet," said the Nashville Tennessean.

Unfortunately news about this latest environmental travesty is seeping out a lot slower than the coal ash in Tennessee.

An idea for KY's university presidents on energy self-sufficiency

Kentucky University presidents Lee T. Todd Jr., John A. Roush, Larry D. Shinn and James R. Ramsey opined in the Louisville Courier-Journal yesterday that we need to put greater emphasis on energy independence:

High crude oil prices and increasing dependence on foreign oil have sparked an intense discussion about energy diversification across the country.

And as America searches for responses to the energy independence riddle, Kentucky's energy and agriculture expertise will be more valuable than anyone could have imagined.

Hey, I've got an idea. There are some trees out there that could be used for firewood. Why don't the universities just allow logging on the forests that they are responsible for stewarding?

Oh. Whoops. Looks like Lee Todd already thought of that.