The Tyranny of Environmentalism
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 12:46 pm by Neal(Hat tip: Andrew Stuttaford)
Brendan O’Neill, writing in The Guardian, makes the case that environmentalism is — at its essence — an authoritarian movement opposed to liberty and freedom. Our comments follow. Greens are the enemies of liberty:
Imagine a society where simply speaking out of turn or saying the “wrong thing” was openly discussed as a crime against humanity, and where sceptics or deniers of the truth were publicly labelled “criminals”, hauled before the press and accused of endangering humanity with their grotesque untruths.
Imagine a society where even some liberals demanded severe restrictions on freedom of movement; where people campaigned for travelling overseas to be made prohibitively expensive in order to force people to stay at home; and where immigration was frowned upon as “toxic” and “destructive”.
Imagine a society so illiberal that columnists felt no qualms about demanding government legislation to force us to change our behaviour; where the public was continually implored to feel guilty about everything from driving to shopping – and where those who refused to feel guilty were said to be suffering from a “psychological” disorder or some other species of mental illness“.
Surely no one would put up with such a society? Yet today, all of the above things are happening – under what we might call the tyranny of environmentalism – and people are putting up with it. …
It is the mark of shrieking authoritarianism to look upon dissenting views not simply as wrong or foolish, but as criminal. Throughout history inquisitors and censors have sought to silence sections of society by labelling their words as “dangerous” and a threat to safety and stability; now environmentalists are doing the same. Their demonisation of sceptics as “deniers” has had a chilling effect on public debate. The environmentalist ethos is hostile to free movement, too. Behind the greens’ attacks on road-building and cheap flights there lurks an agenda of enforced localism. What most of us experience as a liberty – the ability to drive great distances or to travel overseas, something our forebears only dreamt of as they spent their entire lives in the same town – has been relabelled under the tyranny of environmentalism as a “threat to the planet”. …
But perhaps the main way that environmentalism undermines the culture of freedom is by its ceaseless promotion of guilt. In the environmentalist era, we are no longer really free citizens, so much as potential polluters. We are continually told – by government, by commentators, by radical activists – that everything we do, from wearing disposable nappies to using deodorant to allowing ourselves to be cremated, is harmful to our surroundings.
Liberty – true liberty – requires that people see themselves as self-respecting, self-determining subjects, capable of making free choices and pursuing the “good life” as they see fit. Today, by contrast, we are warned that we are toxic, loaded, dangerous specimens, who must always restrain our instincts and aspire to austerity. This is not conducive to a culture of liberty; indeed, it represents a dangerous historic shift, from the Enlightenment era of free citizenship to a new dark age where individuals are depicted as meek in the face of more powerful, unpredictable forces: the gods of the sea, sky and ozone layer.
And what of those individuals who say “to hell with environmentalism” and continue living the way they want to? Apparently, in the words of the Ecologist, they have a disordered “psychology”; they are victims of “self-deception and mass denial”.
Some greens openly admit they are on the side of illiberalism. George Monbiot describes environmentalism as “a campaign not for more freedom but for less”. Environmentalism is instinctively and relentlessly illiberal, and it is doing more to inculcate people with fear, self-loathing and a religious-style sense of meekness than any piece of anti-terror legislation ever could. If you believe in freedom, you must reject it.
The last two sentences sum it up. Of course, as the author notes, environmentalists aren’t interested in freedom at all because they believe that individuals must be compelled to “do what’s right” for the environment. Free people cannot be forced to submit to the will of the environmentalists, so freedom must be curtailed for “the greater good.” If you are a true environmentalist, then you know that you believe this. You’re wrong, of course, but as lovers of freedom, we respect your right to believe as you want. All we ask is that you be honest about the nature and consequences of your beliefs. Quit denying that environmentalism isn’t an authoritarian movement. After all, we know better.