Greenist Sociopaths

Unable to Separate Science Fiction From Fantasy

A sociopath is someone who is interested only in his own concerns or desires, without care or thought to the effects of their views or actions upon others. It would appear that the ranks of the greenist hardcore are replete with sociopaths.

This is not to say that a card carrying greenist sociopath does not have logic on his side. The argument is cogent (if you are gullible enough to accept the premises): the entire planet is about to be destroyed. Human activity, specifically economic activity, is causing this threat. To prevent the destruction of the planet, the cause needs to be destroyed or removed--which is to say economic activity needs to stop or be vastly reduced. The fact that this will likely result in the suffering and death of billions of people is an irrelevance, insofar as it is necessary collateral damage if the planet is to survive.

A suppressed premise is that if the planet is destroyed, all human beings will die. An implication is that it is better to have several billion die than the entire race. It is a simple matter of calculus of suffering. People have to die to save the planet. Too bad. It's all for the good.

No doubt some of our readers will think us extreme to aver that the greenist movement harbours sociopaths. Well, then, let greenists speak for themselves. Paul Kingsnorth was published in The Guardian recently.

The writing is on the wall for industrial society, and no amount of ethical shopping or determined protesting is going to change that now. Take a civilisation built on the myth of human exceptionalism and a deeply embedded cultural attitude to "nature"; add a blind belief in technological and material progress; then fuel the whole thing with a power source that is discovered to be disastrously destructive only after we have used it to inflate our numbers and appetites beyond the point of no return. What do you get? We are starting to find out.

We need to get real. Climate change is teetering on the point of no return while our leaders bang the drum for more growth. The economic system we rely upon cannot be tamed without collapsing, for it relies upon that growth to function. And who wants it tamed anyway? Most people in the rich world won't be giving up their cars or holidays without a fight. . . .

The challenge is not how to shore up a crumbling empire with wave machines and global summits, but to start thinking about how we are going to live through its fall, and what we can learn from its collapse.

George Monbiot, the regular greenist columnist for The Guardian, responds wishing that the coming collapse were not inevitable, but fearing that it is. But, hoping against hope, we must fight on, he says.

No, retorts Kingsnorth, the collapse is inevitable and it will bring a dire world:

We face what John Michael Greer, in his book of the same name, calls a "long descent": a series of ongoing crises brought about by the factors I talked of in my first letter that will bring an end to the all-consuming culture we have imposed upon the Earth. I'm sure "some good will come" from this, for that culture is a weapon of planetary mass destruction.

Our civilisation will not survive in anything like its present form, but we can at least aim for a managed retreat to a saner world. Your alternative – to hold on to nurse for fear of finding something worse – is in any case a century too late. When empires begin to fall, they build their own momentum.

Monbiot calls the changes on this bleak apocalyptic view.

If I have understood you correctly, you are proposing to do nothing to prevent the likely collapse of industrial civilisation. You believe that instead of trying to replace fossil fuels with other energy sources, we should let the system slide. You go on to say that we should not fear this outcome.

How many people do you believe the world could support without either fossil fuels or an equivalent investment in alternative energy? How many would survive without modern industrial civilisation? Two billion? One billion? Under your vision several billion perish. And you tell me we have nothing to fear. . . .

You would purge the planet of industrial civilisation, at the cost of billions of lives, only to discover that you have not invoked "a saner world" but just another phase of destruction.

What is startling is not only that this discussion could actually be taking place but that it would be published in a national newspaper as a serious rather than farcical discourse. Kingsnorth says that economic growth has to collapse and agrees that billions will die. He has become, however, a survivalist and is now focused upon what he must do to survive the calamity. Monbiot agrees that this is the most likely outcome, but thinks it is better to struggle on to do "something".

So, within the greenist frame we have the realist (Kingsnorth, arguing collapse is inevitable, billions will have to perish, let's try to be survivors), and the wishful thinker (Monbiot, arguing that such devastation is the most likely outcome, but let's keep hoping not). Both agree that economic growth as we know it has to stop, and that likely billions will die as a result. Monbiot hopes that he can help prevent some deaths; Kingsnorth hopes that he can survive amidst death.

Greenism is a macabre religion. One can hear the echoes of Caiaphas: it is expedient that one should die rather than the nation. But for some in greenism, Caiaphas has a new garb: it is expedient that the nation should die for the enlightened few.