So, apparently even the Greens are too industrialised these days:
So: what next? One increasingly fashionable answer is offered by a coalescing group which we might call \”neo-environmentalists\”. The resemblance between this group and the neoliberals of the early 70s is intriguing. Like the neoliberals, the neo-environmentalists are attempting to break through the lines of an old orthodoxy which is visibly exhausted and confused. Like the neoliberals, they speak the language of money and power. Like the neoliberals, they cluster around a few key thinktanks: then, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Cato Institute and the Adam Smith Institute; now, the Breakthrough Institute, the Long Now Foundation and the Copenhagen Consensus. Like the neoliberals, they think they have radical solutions.
Neo-environmentalism is a progressive, business-friendly, postmodern take on the environmental dilemma. It dismisses traditional green thinking, with its emphasis on limits and transforming societal values, as naive. New technologies, global capitalism and western-style development are not the problem but the solution. The future lies in enthusiastically embracing biotechnology, synthetic biology, nuclear power, nanotechnology, geo-engineering and anything else new and complex that annoys Greenpeace.
Apparently the solution is that we should all stand in muddy fields and smell the rain. What we might call the neopeasantry movement. With Kingsnorth as its Wat Tyler perhaps.
Actually, it\’s straight William Morris arts and crafts movement. Perhaps we should have a word with the Chancellor and see if the family firm has room for a wallpaper designer? Might be where Kingsnorth is happiest.
Am I stupid, because I seem to have read that extract in the opposit way to you.
I’m stupid too.
It reads like a lefty attempt to assume the sheep’s clothing of traditional conservationism. Mind you, on the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, anything that annoys Greenpeace and all the other neo-Malthusian peddlers of the CAGW scam can’t be bad.
He is dissing the “neo-environmentalists” not praising them.
Anyone that doesn’t think like worstall wants everyone to live in mud huts.
Is wot i bin toll my holl life by brane tipes like timsy. he big man with bolls
Agree with cjcjc. You have to read it from the Deep Green perspective it’s written. It’s a tract against heresy.
Do you aspire to a mud hut Arnald? Your affordable, housing association, paid for by other people, pad lacking in something?
In favour of anything annoying Greenpeace..
There’s one thing that Delingpole is right about and it’s that traditional greens are anti-capitalist hate mongers.
Stereotypical deep green tosser. “No, we can’t have nice things and still cut carbon, because LOOK OVER THERE, THE NEOLIBERALS ARE COMING!!!”
Must piss the bloke off that he shares a name with the UK’s dirtiest power station…
Hell, the real nutters are out in the comments.
I presume that if these people have ever had a job, it has either been in the local vegan commune’s soup cafe or they’ve kept their eyes shut and their (hideously capitalist consumerist) iPod on full blast.
From off-stage: distant sound of Jockanese engineer banging head against desk.
1st Fool: As a Marxist, I still believe that if capitalism is not overthrown and replaced by genuine democratic mass socialism, nothing will work, and if capitalism is overthrown and genuine democratic socialism is established, things (including the environmental issue) will almost automatically fall into place. There is no need to direct deal with environmentalism anymore.
2nd Fool: I don’t even want to read the whole piece, because it’s depressing enough to think of it, and it would just make me swear. ‘science and business will provide while nature can adapt’, so there you have it in a nutshell then, this human fuckery roadhsow can carry on, some morons will clear the way, rest assured. honestly, why is it still called ‘human’, this über-pest.
1st Fool: The key here is class consciousness. Believe it or not, humanity isn’t all in it together. The super-elites can escape from environmental catastrophe, but the masses can’t. The issue here is not the intrinsic survival of humanity, but who will survive and prosper.
I dunno about you lot but it’s late enough here for me to have access to booze without disapproving looks from Mrs S-E. Aaaargh!
The stupidity!