Global Warming: Selling Austerity to the Masses.

It’s one of the wonders of the global warming alarmists and the Malthusians that they’ve somehow managed to sell the idea of austerity as a step forward for people. As George Monbiot enthusiastically characterized the global warming movement:

“It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves”

George Monbiot. Heat. p. 215.

Isn’t that simply incredible? They’ve managed to come up with an ideology, in modern times, that actually bases itself on lowering living standards under the pretense that if we don’t do it, nature will. To campaign for less freedom for people because otherwise “Gaia” will curtail it at some future date. To ultimately, as Monbiot puts it, have people campaign against people themselves.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of the famous suffragette, anti-fascist and left-libertarian campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, who despised those who tried to make poverty sound noble and something to aspire to. You might not agree with her politics, but compare the goals of a genuine campaigner like her to the ones espoused by “four–bedrooms” Monbiot and you can’t help wonder how they’ve managed to get people campaigning for less and not more.

This is how Sylvia Pankhurst defined her campaign in 1923:

Socialism means plenty for all. We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance.

Our desire is not to make poor those who to-day are rich, in order to put the poor in the place where the rich now are. Our desire is not to pull down the present rulers to put other rulers in their places.

We wish to abolish poverty and to provide abundance for all.

We do not call for limitation of births, for penurious thrift, and self-denial. We call for a great production that will supply all, and more than all the people can consume.

Such a great production is already possible, with the knowledge already possessed by mankind.

To-day production is artificially checked, consumption still more so.

How is production checked?

Production is checked by private ownership of land, the means of production and transport. In Scotland large areas of agricultural land are turned into deer forests. In every English county numerous large private parks are kept for the pleasure of single families. Production on farms is limited because farmers lack capital to enable them to employ the labour and materials necessary to work their land fully. Landowners with capital find more profitable means of employing their capital in agriculture or stock raising. Country landowners refuse to build cottages on their estates in order to preserve their own privacy. Landowners in and about towns put up the price of land till it becomes prohibitive to the purpose of building houses for any but the rich.

Sylvia Pankhurst. Worker’s Dreadnought 1923.

Back then, when real poverty and desperation was a fact of life for most people, not just a few, people used to campaign for more. More people, more production, more wealth and more progress. Now they’ve managed to turn that around and get millions campaigning for less.

Instead of deer forests, we have green belts pushing up the price of land for wealthy landowners like Ted Turner and Al Gore. We have people demanding the artificial checking of both production and consumption, rather than demanding more production and more consumption. They believe that both of these are evil, and therefore, more people is ultimately an evil thing, as people produce and consume.

This is how the global warming movement is defined in our times:

“It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves”

A campaign against people, against freedom and against abundance. And they’ve persuaded millions to join them.

Madness.