"THE BIG GREEN LIE EXPOSED" - 2
Walter Russell Mead writes on the problems with the green movement. An earlier post quoted one historical analogy - prohibition - and below is another quite appropriate analogy:
"The green movement’s strategic failure is also reminiscent of the Peace Movement of the 1920s. Chuckleheaded do-gooders correctly recognized the problem of war. In the conditions of the twentieth century, great power wars like World War One were radically unacceptable. Unless war could be stopped, scores of millions might brutally die. Whole nations would be devastated; millions of children would starve. Given the rise of aircraft, great cultural monuments would be destroyed as the world’s greatest cities were razed to the ground. New and more terrible weapons would be developed under wartime conditions, weapons that potentially could lead to the destruction of all human civilization or even of life on earth.
Again, the Peace Movement of the 1920s was completely right about this — we know to our sorrow today just how right they were. Yet the strategies they proposed — a treaty to ‘outlaw war’ in the 1920s, and appeasement of dictators and revisionist powers in the 193os — were utter disasters and made World War Two inevitable. The Nuclear Freeze movement in the 1980s repeated the mistake: confusing the identification of a problem (nuclear weapons) with a workable policy solution (a unilateral western freeze on nuclear weapons deployment that would have given the Soviets superiority in Europe). There are fewer nuclear weapons today than would have existed had the Nuclear Freeze people had their way; there almost certainly would have been fewer wars and fewer war deaths if the policy recommendations of the pre-World War Two peace movements had been greeted with the obloquy and contempt they deserved.
You can diagnose a disease but have no clue how to treat it. You can be an excellent climate scientist and a wretched social engineer. You can want to do good and end up furthering exactly the evils you most deplore.
That is where most of the organized green groups stand today."
Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it! (Wish I had said that first!!)
"The green movement’s strategic failure is also reminiscent of the Peace Movement of the 1920s. Chuckleheaded do-gooders correctly recognized the problem of war. In the conditions of the twentieth century, great power wars like World War One were radically unacceptable. Unless war could be stopped, scores of millions might brutally die. Whole nations would be devastated; millions of children would starve. Given the rise of aircraft, great cultural monuments would be destroyed as the world’s greatest cities were razed to the ground. New and more terrible weapons would be developed under wartime conditions, weapons that potentially could lead to the destruction of all human civilization or even of life on earth.
Again, the Peace Movement of the 1920s was completely right about this — we know to our sorrow today just how right they were. Yet the strategies they proposed — a treaty to ‘outlaw war’ in the 1920s, and appeasement of dictators and revisionist powers in the 193os — were utter disasters and made World War Two inevitable. The Nuclear Freeze movement in the 1980s repeated the mistake: confusing the identification of a problem (nuclear weapons) with a workable policy solution (a unilateral western freeze on nuclear weapons deployment that would have given the Soviets superiority in Europe). There are fewer nuclear weapons today than would have existed had the Nuclear Freeze people had their way; there almost certainly would have been fewer wars and fewer war deaths if the policy recommendations of the pre-World War Two peace movements had been greeted with the obloquy and contempt they deserved.
You can diagnose a disease but have no clue how to treat it. You can be an excellent climate scientist and a wretched social engineer. You can want to do good and end up furthering exactly the evils you most deplore.
That is where most of the organized green groups stand today."
Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it! (Wish I had said that first!!)
Labels: Global Warning, Green, Politics
posted by Jim | 11:33 AM
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