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May 2, 2022 - March 2, 2023
after World War II, Malthusianism switched sides and became a left-wing political movement in the form of environmentalism, while anti-Malthusianism became a right-wing political movement in the form of libertarian, pro-business, free market conservatism.
Danish economist Ester Boserup, working for the FAO, did historical research finding that as the human population increased, people had long found ways to increase food production. Malthus had been wrong even about the preindustrial era, she found.94 In 1981, the Indian economist Amartya Sen published a book showing that famines occur not because of lack of food but due to war, political oppression, and the collapse of food distribution, not production, systems.
Malthus was never wrong.
Nuclear energy not only meant infinite fertilizer, freshwater, and food but also zero pollution and a radically reduced environmental footprint. Nuclear energy thus created a serious problem for Malthusians and anyone else who wanted to argue that energy, fertilizer, and food were scarce.
Where just a few years earlier, Malthusians had demanded limits on energy consumption by claiming fossil fuels were scarce, now they demanded limits by claiming the atmosphere was scarce.
“Look at the food crisis last year,” said Briscoe in 2011. “There were many voices bemoaning the crisis, with press coverage dominated by NGOs, and aid agencies who immediately called for greater support for agriculture in the developing world. What they did not mention was what their roles had been in precipitating this crisis.
One of the groups opposing the construction of the Grand Inga Dam in the Congo is is a little-known but influential environmental NGO called International Rivers, based in Berkeley, California. While few people have heard of the organization, it has, since its founding in 1985, helped stop 217 dams from being built, mostly in poor nations.
But the reason so many poor nations begin the process of urbanization, industrialization, and development by building large dams is that they produce inexpensive and reliable power, are simple to build and operate, and can last for a century or longer.
The proposed Inga Dam would have power densities three times that of dams in Switzerland.120 And yet International Rivers is not seeking to remove dams in Switzerland nor in California, where for one hundred years they have provided the state with cheap, reliable, and abundant electricity, freshwater for drinking and agriculture, and flood control.
Economic growth is necessary for creating the infrastructure required for protecting people from natural disasters, climate-related or not. And economic growth created Sweden’s wealth, including that of Thunberg’s own family. It is fair to say that without economic growth, the person who is Greta Thunberg would not exist.
Harvard historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, in their influential 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt. The book is one of the most-cited sources as proof that political inaction on climate change is due to climate science skepticism promoted by right-wing think tanks funded by fossil fuel interests.
Merchants of doubt.
While scientists borrowed from cybernetics to describe nature as a self-regulating system, the notion of nature existing in a delicate balance is Neoplatonism, and ungrounded in empirical reality.
Environmentalism today is the dominant secular religion of the educated, upper-middle-class elite in most developed and many developing nations. It provides a new story about our collective and individual purpose. It designates good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. And it does so in the language of science, which provides it with legitimacy.
Environmentalism is the secular religion of the elites.
In the apocalyptic environmental tradition, human problems stem from our failure to adjust ourselves to nature. In some Judeo-Christian traditions, priests play the role of interpreting God’s will or laws, including discerning right from wrong. In the apocalyptic environmentalist tradition, scientists play that role.
Perhaps it is a coincidence, but it is notable that the spike in environmental alarmism comes at a time when anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising within the general population, especially among adolescents, in both the United States and Europe.
Depression, anxiety and environmentalism
Because addressing our personal lives is painful and difficult, suggests Becker, we often look for external demons to conquer. Doing so makes us feel heroic, and creates a feeling of immortality through the recognition, validation, and love we receive from others.
Saving the planet is easier than fixing ourselves.
Climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, and species extinction are not, fundamentally, consequences of greed and hubris but rather side effects of economic development motivated by a humanistic desire to improve people’s lives.
A core ethic of environmental humanism is that rich nations must support, not deny, development to poor nations. Specifically, rich nations should lift the various restrictions on development aid for energy production in poor and developing nations. It is hypocritical and unethical to demand that poor nations follow a more expensive and thus slower path to prosperity than the West followed.
Developed nations prevent adoption of cheap energy in poor countries.
Happily, nobody saves mountain gorillas, yellow-eyed penguins, and sea turtles because they believe human civilization depends on it. We save them for a simpler reason: we love them.
Today’s nuclear plants can easily operate for eighty years and might run for one hundred if they are well maintained and parts are replaced when necessary.
