Two little bits of green craziness from yesterday’s Ethical Living section of the Guardian. Interesting that it is no longer Environment Guardian, which I think is a hint that greenery is more a system of morals than a mode of scientific policy formation.
First, can’t add. Bibi van der Zee addresses a reader’s ethical dilemma:
Well, yes, cotton hankies, obviously. It’s not like disposable nappies versus reusables, where the disposable bunch can defend themselves on the grounds of the powere used to launder reusables. Because, really, how much electricity does it take to wash a handkerchief?
If Ms van der Zee could take some time off from expostulation – really – to think, she might spot that if you use a machine rather than bashing it on rocks at the riverside, laundering a piece of cloth takes pretty much the same amount of energy until it is too big to get in the machine, and the likelihood is greater that a handkerchief gets more energy (water, detergent…) used on it than strictly necessary than for any other item you might launder, precisely because it is smaller.
Second, won’t add. Caroline Lucas MEP answers the question, “Do you know your carbon footprint?”
Yes. It’s about seven tonnes of carbon a year, at least three times the global average but a little below the UK mean. That doesn’t include the essential travel in my work as an MEP – or the other carbon costs associated with running busy offices in Brussels and London. Measuring one’s carbon footprint is difficult, because differing systems calculate it differently. Mine includes an estimate for the carbon dioxide embedded in the clothes I wear, the food I eat and the goods I buy, for which I am responsible. So policy on reducing emissions can be based on actual or worst case figures, rather than the wishful thinking engendered by those who consider only travel and household fuel.
… but cosily ignoring the wishful thinking involved in excluding from consideration that MEPs spend more time on jets than many people who own one.
Oh Caroline! (She was a friend of mine, though I have not seen her for years.) What was wrong with saying the European government is insanely wasteful and you are trying to reduce that at the same time as contributing? Frightened of losing the moral high ground? Or such a believer in the value of more “essential” government that you exempt it from a calculation that purports to weigh every other human activity?
Those greens who favour carbon allowances tracked and enforced by government – very many of them – usually fall into the won’t add category. I have yet to see any of them attempt to quantify, or even acknowledge the existence of, the “carbon footprint” of the fabs and server farms, the bureaucrats and analysts, the data infrastructure and policing, needed to monitor and control everyone else’s lifestyle. Your personal carbon is a sooty sin consumed of private desire. That expended by the good state managing you is essential, virtuous, too cheap to meter. The divine Ms Lucas has internalised that distinction, it seems.
While I wholly agree with the won’t add part, I have to take issue with the can’t add.
I think you’ll find that no-one washes dirty nappies with the rest of their clothes. They therefore require an entire wash cycle (and with very high temperature) all to themselves. Whereas anyone can fit a couple of tiny cotton hankies into their normal clothes wash, thereby cleaning them at essentially no energy cost (the increase in mass of the drum as a result of the hankies would be a really, really, small increase in current draw by the machine).
At the dawn of the C21st we are seriously discussing the morality of handkerchiefs!
Well, bugger me sideways with a fish fork.
I just want to add something abiout carbon footprints before I go… Did you know that a car consumes vastly more energy in manufacture than it will use in petrol for a nominal 150,000 mile life? So what does that mean to the greens. If they’re serious about saving the planet they’d all be driving Mercedes and Lexuses because they last and in the case of the Merc, Germany has extremely strict recycling laws so large parts of that car have already done a little more than the delivery mileage if you see what I mean. And they will do again.
I just wish the greens would try and sell their (sometimes) sensible schemes in sensible ways. Most recycling is pyrrhic but Al cans aren’t. I mean, what do you see tramps scavenging in bins for? I once met a very polite gentleman of the road at Leeds station. He relieved me of an empty coke can. He was collecting them to raise money for a scanner appeal at the neurology unit that saved his life. He’d been an HGV driver and taken a fence post to the forehead. I saw no reason not to believe him. Not least because I offered him a fiver for the appeal but all he wanted was the empty coke can. Said it was worth a penny as scrap.
God, I hate the use of “ethical” like this. You live ethically when you sign (or agree verbally) to contracts and then keep your word, not when you make politically correct indulgences to the environmentalist gods. It’s one of those words like “progressive” and “liberal” and “justice” which have been rendered into newspeak dirty words.
The whole anthropogenic global warming schtick is so preposterous. It is all about the need for some sense of religious purpose in the (thankfully) post-spiritual western world.
Have to dash, I need to go find ways to maximize my “carbon footprint”.
It would seem that the tide is starting to turn. A number of climatologists who were once supporters of the man-made CO2 global warming hypothesis have changed their opinion and become AGW sceptics. A partial list of names/qualifications together with a brief comment on the reasons for their change of view is at:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=c5e16731-3c64-481c-9a36-d702baea2a42
At the dawn of the C21st we are seriously discussing the morality of handkerchiefs!
Well I hope we aren’t. I hope we are discussing the vacuity of moralising everyday life. For those who would prefer this stuff merely satirised, Spiked has a spoof column “Ask Ethan” – currently discussing is it ethical to buy a house?
Michael,
Quite. The usage is as a socio-religious signifier of who (not necessarily what) is acceptable: the “ethical” are the saved, and everyone else damned. The left do this by reflex, and so do some (particularly some religious) conservatives.
Dismissal via labelling saves you having to grapple with the arguments. Always handy for the hard of thinking.
Interesting that it is no longer Environment Guardian, which I think is a hint that greenery is more a system of morals than a mode of scientific policy formation.
I don’ think the “moral” aspect to the global warming debate is hidden now. It was broadly proclaimed as such at this past Oscars by the makers of An Inconvenient Truth (which by use of Truth connotes a moral suasion anyway). These blowhards pontificated during their acceptance, and the Hollywood nabobs nodded in unison like a congregation.
This is indeed a moral issue, and is by all measures a religion. The Orthodox Scientists are closer to The Truth and must lead us sinners away from the sure hell to a new, glorious day.
I’m not nuts about using “scientific policy formation” as an alternative to some sort of moral construction. Perhaps too sensitive on my part, but it evokes Peace Gas and “Dictatorship of the Air” a la H.G. Wells.
I take issue with your use of the word ‘moral’… I think ‘religious’ would be more accurate, sometimes overtly with the whole risible Gaia thing.
It is more religious than moral because it is bizarrely rule-following. I probably have a pretty small carbon-footprint especially compared to Al Gore and I fix things for a living. I frequently fix things which would otherwise be thrown out. But the last holiday I took involved six flights and did I offset my carbon. Did I hell!
Now Mr Gore’s TN mansion uses apparently 20 times as much energy as the average US home. Is this an inconvenient truth for the Goreacle? No, because the grounds are so extensive he gets a monster carbon offset for owning a bloody forest whereas muggins here is made to feel evil for leaving my computer on standby (BTW it runs Folding@Home on standby) because I’ve just got a terraced house with no room for significant arborocultural activities.
There is a huge amount of snake-oil around the environment.
Perry,
It is all about the need for some sense of religious purpose in the (thankfully) post-spiritual western world.
I’m not sure that the Western World being post-spiritual is such a good thing if it means that a gap is opened up for quasi-religions. I’m not a religious man but, to be honest, I have a hell of a lot more time for the sensible religions of the world than I have for the cod-spirituality of eco-freaks, scientologists, alternative medicine wackos and all the rest. Who would you rather be trapped in a lift with – Pope Benedict or Al Gore?
And there’s another thing here. I’ve had Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses etc banging on the door. I find a polite, but firm, “Sorry, not interested” works fine because afterall, it is my soul I’m risking. This does not work with the eco-freaks because it’s Mother Earth herself I’m playing fast and loose with.
Perry, I think you should’ve bought that MiG-21 you saw on Ebay. It was only $20K and I can’t think of a better way of increasing your carbon foot-print than owning a fighter plane.
Europeans are way ahead of Americans in their discussions over the environment. Very few here intelligently discuss the enviroment in the public forum; we’re still battling cromagnons who refuse to even acknowledge man’s impact on the Earth.
Anyway, a personal peeve moment here: Environmentalism is not a Religion. Religion is accurately defined as
Environmentalism promotes practices ; ‘we live here, so don’t crap where you eat’ kind of thing. There’s no need for a God to create a morality and green is supported by observable facts not some faith based theology (admittedly some promoters are worse than the Sunday morning Watchtower trolls) .
I find the green=religion (at least in the US) an attempt by the right to dilute green behavior with what they percieve as a left bias against religion (i.e. faith = fantasy so you’re living in a fantasy). I think it’s more of a psychological projection and intellectual self gratification thing than a real debate point {end of rant}
Guy said: “Dismissal via labelling saves you having to grapple with the arguments.”
Unfortunately that applies here too – probably to at least 50% of the comments on any post…
Dave1-
A religion, from my point of view as an atheist, is an axiomatic set of principals and rules by which the mass is supposed to live by. It is an expected behavioral pattern that if not adhered to will supposedly cause an extreme negative on oneself or others (a Hell). It gets worse when such principals, so enamored by the adherents, seek to force others to live by those principals.
So when I have a bunch of folks trying to persuade the power brokers to screw with my “carbon footprint” based on a speculative, axiomatic, and highly inducted set of beliefs, to force me to change my behaviors based on their beliefs with no clear and present cause and effect, I not only call that a religion, I call that a theocracy.
Another take on it is that all religions, again from my point of view, owe their existence to some root “common sense”. Eating hog will make you sick. Multiple sex partners will too. Observing what caused physical conflicts among men revealed desires for someone else property, or were borne from greed. Religions, at the beginning, were hatched from simple observations, and created programs for people to live by, to make everyone’s life easier. But it isn’t long before dogma creeps in, as you can’t labor to show every last person the why’s and wherefore’s. It should just be accepted on faith. Religion then becomes a social order, regardless if there is some sort of diety or not. Soon, the most popular set of dogmatic beliefs will seek the power to force nonadherents into the fold, or at least act the part.
So from my libertarian point of view, most of those who seek the power of the State belong either to an already recognized religion or a quasi-religion, as it is most likely that he who is seeking to impose on you is doing based on some set of axiomatic beliefs, ones, that if pressed, will be revealed to highly circular and based in some sort of superstitious “do ________, or else….. Hell”.
And to say environmentalism promotes ‘we live here, so don’t crap where you eat’, is all well and fine. But that’s precisely the point, that there are so many folk who go well beyond that and see man as a cancer. There are those who were part of the proto-movements of the 70’s who see “the cause” as have been hijacked by nutters. For these folk it’s not simply about environmental causes, it is the desire to invade the private affairs of individuals at the most basic levels, and compel them to behave is the zealots wish. Again, such desires are theocratic.
Also, this is Wikipedia’s take on religion.
An abstract-
Sociologists and anthropologists tend to see religion as an abstract set of ideas, values, or experiences developed as part of a cultural matrix. For example, in Lindbeck’s Nature of Doctrine, religion does not refer to belief in “God” or a transcendent Absolute. Instead, Lindbeck defines religion as, “a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought… it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments.”[3] According to this definition, religion refers to one’s primary worldview and how this dictates one’s thoughts and actions.
Are you going to tell me that my thoughts and actions are not under fire?
Brad,
You are, of course, welcome to your own definition of religion. However, redfining it to a broader interpretation (in your examples when sociologists phrase it in such a way to enable beliefs discussions and ignoring the mythical component) simply turns it into a polemic. So, to stay in thread, amd rather than debate from such disparate positions, let’s focus on the ‘mythical,’ and try Socrates:
In any case, most of your argument is concerning the evolution of social power and against autocracy. I can certainly agree with that element.
And you are welcome to yours. If you desire to say that religion only includes a diety (of course which doesn’t exist and is fanciful) and should never be equated with the new-wave environmentalists, steeped in “hard science”, who have proven beyond all debate that mowing my lawn with a gas mower and owning a refrigerator is ushering the apocolypse of sand dunes, surrounded by dead oceans, inhabited by pastoral cannibals, fine.
I don’t happen to know that man is causing Global Climate Change in any way, whether it be carbon or water vapor or methane or whatever. I also don’t know for absolute certainty that a Hell does not exist and my lack of belief in God doesn’t already have me on a one way trip come my demise. There certainly is a small possibility that one of these swelteringly hot days I’m going to go outside, be incinerated by UV rays, and dispatched to Hell. But I doubt it.
And it certainly is not disparate. It is a simple quotient. There are many many people with many many beliefs. They have passed all sorts of laws and regulations that are nonsensical and many times contradictory. But they all have one thing in common. They have all used the power of the State to tell me what to do. And that is the unifying feature. Any axiomatic set of principals not clearly and presently demonstrable as provable or not provable, that seeks to force me to do something or not do something, when there is no proven risk or results, is all one in the same to me. So we can call it religion or Science or rugamarmuffin. It doesn’t matter. It equates to forcing people otherwise living their quiet and unabtrusive lives as they see fit, not directly hurting anyone or their property, to abide by some ascetic set of principals. Every generation has had their share of Puritans and the hyper-environmentalists are ours. It’s not the huge polemic, semantical journey you seem to make it.
All this needs is for Cheryl Crow to vow to use only one tissue per head cold.
Or perhaps the environmentally responsible thing is to wipe your nose on your sleeve. Hey, you were going to wash the shirt anyway, so it adds nothing to your carbon footprint.
Are Brad and Dave1 the same bloke maybe?
Isn’t the missing spiritual entity Gaia?
If the Guardian was really caring then surely they might take into account the feelings of those thousands of slaughtered trees that are murdered each day to feed their readers with information that many readers might be able to access so much more “ethically” through online access?
Then again I suppose it is a far, far better thing that 10,000 trees die than that one Hampstead Labour voter be denied their daily dose of Doonesbury …
It’s a scam. It’s a scam. It’s all a scam.
Financially, politically, ethically, morally, socially, economically, and in ever other way, the entire, whole, complete, every-bit-of-it is a con game.
No matter what you do, it’s not enough.
No matter what you give up, it’s not enough.
No matter how much it all costs, it’s not enough.
This attempt to define everything in life by its “green” quotient is an attempt by a few, comparatively, to claim for themselves the right to pronounce judgement on the lives, jobs, homes, hobbies, interests, and families of everyone else.
Is it green enough? That question will soon determine if your job disappears, if you can have your own home, if you can travel, what products you can buy, what opinions you can express, how many children you may have, and so on.
The green movement is a bonanza for the very same collectivists who couldn’t get these kinds of controls in any other way barring violent, revolutionary action.
But, now, they can put on their holier-than-thou faces, make the appropriate noises about wasteful, greedy corporations, excessive lifestyles, polluting industries, and uninformed citizens, and have carte blanche to remold society any way they damn well please.
If you object, you’re a denier, in the pay of the corporations, ignorant, unthinking, careless, immoral, and, worst of all, ready to cast your polluting, wasteful, careless, damaging mistakes onto future generations.
After all, everything is for the children, no?
And if you don’t agree, they’ll just fly some international experts into your town to stage a media event to demonstrate the seriousness of it all, before they fly on to the next stop on the travelling circus to do it all over again. (No fair counting carbon tons!)
MP’s Flying Circus wasn’t nearly as farcical, or as dangerous.
Nick M,
… the sensible religions of the world …
Which ones would those be? There are plenty of sensible religious people, sure, but I doubt many of them are made sensible by their religion.
Guy,
No, I very much doubt that too. But by the same token it is possible to hold certain religious beliefs without being a complete fruit-loop. I don’t think it’s possible to be a deep-ecologist or a wahabbi or a member of Fred Phelps flock and still be playing with a full deck. I perhaps should have said “religions compatibile with reason”.
Of course, I’m betraying a certain bias. I find the Judaeo-Christian religious traditions more comprehensible than Falun Gong or Zen Buddhism or Shaminism. I very much doubt (and certainly would struggle to advance much of an argument) for their greater plausibility but the fact remains that the at least seem more plausible to me, or at least not absolutely refutable.
Which is odd really. I’m agnostic with respect to Christianity et al. whereas I’m downright atheist when it comes to “New Age” crap, Green occultism, leprechauns, the Loch Ness Monster…
very,
Not exactly. You see, they believe in it.
It’s madness. Sheer madness.
I work for an investment bank. I wonder if Ms Lucas and the Guardian would include my work related travel as “essential” in the way hers as an MEP is, and whether I would be allowed to exclude it when discussing my carbon footprint. I rather doubt it, although I know which of us is more economically useful.
And yes, I fly so much for non-work related reasons that my carbon footprint is probably enormous. (Or is it? I don’t own a car). In truth I don’t greatly care.
Carbon footprint in clothes?
I never pay full price; I imagine that my Armani jacket(dark green/grey, pure wool) is a high carbon footprint item, since it retailed for £527; since I only paid £100, can we define a new science/sport, that of ‘carbon leverage’, ie punching above ones weight?
As a modern cloth user I can tell you that you can wash nappies with clothes or towels if you wish. Washing machines do a good job of what they are meant to do – wash and clean.
And if you are not up to date on modern cloth you could do some research. It may just surprise you that cloth is much better for the environment than disposables. That old debate is now void.
Changing the section name to “Ethical Living” is not a hint, but clear evidence. It is also evidence as to how utterly hat-stand they are. However, it is not morals but dogma. Sociofascists are jumping like rats from the sinking Comintern ship onto (if I may mix metaphors) a new bandwagon from which they can make hay.
Congrats, TimC, if you could have gotten something about cooks, stew, and plumbing into that baby, it would have been a record breaker!
Jacob, no I don’t think they do, not really.
The ancient hermits who went into the desert, lived in a cave, and discarded everything but a loincloth, they believed. Hindu ascetics, Bhuddist monks who beg for their food, various orders of monks and nuns who observe a life of poverty and service, they believe in what they’re doing.
But, the travelling circus? The college kids who march around condemning the society that has given them a lifestyle ancient emperors would envy? The politicians who “discover” green-ness when it becomes trendy, hopping in their SUV motorcades to race between photo ops and media events?
I’m sorry, I have more respect for some pigeon drop “artist” who, at least, doesn’t pretend that stealing someone’s live savings is a moral act.
Jerry Falwell just died, and the media comments about his life and beliefs constantly zeroed in on his intolerance and wealthy lifestyle as evidence of his hypocrisy and lack of true spiritual depth.
It is a sign of the blindness of the green “true believers” that they don’t seem to realize the same criticisms apply in spades to Gore and his acolytes.
You must ask the obvious question—“If millions of normal, productive, reasonably rational and intelligient adults, who can somehow manage a multi-trillion dollar world economy, make astounding discoveries in the sciences, medicine, and computer applications, that have revolutionized life on earth, cannot be trusted to recognize and deal with an environmental challenge, in what alternate universe would politicians, collectivist ideologues, and academics be better suited to do so?”
And, the obvious corollary inquiry is—“Who benefits if the power and responsibility to make basic, socially determinist decisions about the future course of industry, manufacturing, food production, and every other significant human endeavor is taken away from individuals, and deposited in a select group of all powerful rulers who will decide the future of human civilization based on what they believe is good for everything but humanity?”
It’s a con, a power grab. That’s why everything has to be an emergency. That’s why the sky has to be falling—so no one will examine the whole shebang too closely, and see the guy behind the curtain.
vr,
The Greens failed the test.
They have rejected nuclear power (which doesn’t put CO2 into the atmosphere).
They have rejected GMO (which reduces the need for chemicals in agriculture).
They have their pantyhose in a twist over nanotech which promises (maybe) really efficienct manufacture.
They are a convergence of interests. They are the new socialists, they are weirdos, nutjobs, con-artistes, scammers, opportunists, control freaks, animal rights nutters and any number of other things.
The are not “progressive”. The one thing that unites them is deep “conservatism”.
Seen 300? The money line in that movie is right at the end: “Today we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny and usher in a future brighter than any of us can imagine”.
Well, I want a future brighter than I can imagine. I want to be awestruck by what H. sapiens sapiens can achieve. But it’s just a little bit scary isn’t it? We have over-reached ourselves. We can imagine truly world changing things and the greens want to stop them because they believe in a precautionary principle. I want those things though. I want starships and cures for cancer and animated billboards and electricity too cheap to meter and virtual reality and mile-high cities and computers getting faster every year ad infinitum. I want a future which is a constant challenge. I don’t want Hobbiton. I don’t want a retreat into a cosy past which wasn’t really cosy or a totalitarian eco-tyranny.
The Greens are the greatest threat posed to the advance of civilisation. Socialism, Religious Nutcasery (primarily Islamic) & NuLabour are passing fads but a fear of the future… Oh, that’s got legs… And, yes, they do combine mysticism and tyranny.
NickM, 300 had some great lines, but I do think it dropped the ball in setting the scene of WHY they fought.
As for H.Sapiens Sapiens:
Raymond Passworthy: Oh, God, is there ever to be any age of happiness? Is there never to be any rest?
Oswald Cabal: Rest enough for the individual man – too much, and too soon – and we call it death. But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.
Raymond Passworthy: But… we’re such little creatures. Poor humanity’s so fragile, so weak. Little… little animals.
Oswald Cabal: Little animals. If we’re no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness and live and suffer and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done. Is it this? Or that? All the universe? Or nothingness? Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
It is not a “gas of peace” we need, eminating from the behinds of the Greens, but a “Provisional Civilian Organisation Against Gas”, as in hot air from the Theotocopuloses of this world. As with, I feel(Link), the incorrect blend of Eloi vs Morlock, the Theotocopulos character harks back to a more brutal world, but the flat-earthers now expect a world where all risk is avoided, wrapped up in bio-degradeable cotton wool from a sustainable source naturally irrigated and picked by fairtrade ethnically diverse union represented with heath and dental etc.
veryretired,
I just can’t let this go by:
‘I’m sorry, I have more respect for some pigeon drop “artist” who, at least, doesn’t pretend that stealing someone’s live savings is a moral act.’
Very well-said. I immediately thought of our own wonderful Sen. T. Kennedy of Mass., and all of his redistributionist thieving kith & kin of all kinds of political stripes who have any number of Causes which I am way too immoral or stupid or Evangelical/Fundamentalist/Christian (even though I thought I was an atheist!) to care about.
***
And this is absolutely breathtaking:
“It’s a scam. It’s a scam. It’s all a scam.
“Financially, politically, ethically, morally, socially, economically, and in ever other way, the entire, whole, complete, every-bit-of-it is a con game.
“No matter what you do, it’s not enough.
“No matter what you give up, it’s not enough.
“No matter how much it all costs, it’s not enough.”
OF COURSE it’s Never Enough.
If you’d Done Enough, then you’d have proven your right to exist.
That would mean that nobody had any right to any sort of power over you.
It would amount to a carte-blanche right of self-determination AND SELF-DEFENSE.
Kennedy et al. don’t like that for the same reason Osama et al. don’t like it.
Where’s the spice, where’s the very point in living if you don’t have control over people–and the more absolute the power & control, the better. Actually, by taking the initiative to FORCE people to Live Right, you justify your own right to live. (Sure, I’m psychologizing & usually I hate that, but the people I’m talking about do it to others all the time and they deserve every venom-soaked word I can come up with–that’s fit for mixed company, of course.)
Anyway, the absolute need to be psychologically capable of self-defense is why it is SO IMPORTANT to do our best to bring our children up so that they value themselves (in the healthy way). Because that is the only thing that protects them from becoming slaves via moralistic blackmail–slaves, or slavemasters.
Julie
Julie,
It’s been a long time since any nice young woman told me I took her breath away. I truly appreciate the thought. Made my whole day, and maybe the rest of the week, too.
vr,
Meant every word of it! ;>))
Julie