Why envirommentalists are not tilting at windmills
The answer is simple. Because Ireland and the world needs electric power to sustain its energy needs at first world standards, but also needs to cut down on carbon fuel consumption, quickly. Make no mistake, global warming poses a greater threat to the future of civilisation, and indeed the planet’s eco-system, than global terrorism.
There can be no underestimating the threat posed by a shutdown in the Gulf Stream, such as a mini-ice age in northern Europe or famine across the equator. Or can there? Neo-conservatives in America, including their singularly moronic representative in the White House, have for some time now been disputing whether global warming exists — or whether it is man-made?
At least Nero only played the lyre while Rome burned. Not surprisingly, this perverse view converges with that of the oil multinationals well represented in Bush’s travesty of a government, which snubs the Kyoto accord while shoring up an unstable dictatorship in Saudi Arabia and turning a blind eye to genocide from Ogoni-land to Chechnya. Don’t even get me started on South America. More recently, Michael Crighton published his novel, The State of Fear, which has become a kind of bible for the neocons. The preposterous premise here is that Foucault was correct to see political power as constructed from language and information rather than material social relations that are ultimately rooted in class.
Ergo, even under capitalism, Crighton would tell us the environmental lobby has more power than the oil multinationals. This is poppycock, as is Crighton’s claim based on pseudo-science, that global warming doesn’t exist.
What Crighton actually represents is a secular version of end-time thinking. This is core to the belief system of born-again Christians whose network of survivalists and anti-abortion fanatics has played such an important role in the rise of Bush and the neocons. As it is the end of the world in any case, they reason, there is no point in preventing global warming. Just go down to your local church and wait for the rapture. Or dig in for Armageddon.
As an historian, Dr Etchingham presumably knows that end-time thinking is nothing new. It was there during the collapse of the Roman Empire when St John, high as a kite on magic mushrooms, wrote the Book of Revelations. It was there again during the 30 Years War in Europe, when Nostradamus wrote his ‘prophecies’.
The only difference under a decaying capitalist system of the early 21st century, where the productive forces have been transformed into their destructive opposites, is that end-time thinking in the hands of a ruling hegemony can become self-fulfilling prophecy.
The thing that annoyed me most about Crighton’s book was its cartoon portrayal of anyone concerned about the environment as a ridiculous tree- hugger, a mystic, an old hippy, an ill informed liberal actor, whatever.
Personally, I’m none of these. I’d even accept nuclear power over fossil fuels if I was convinced it was the only alternative. I’d certainly accept nuclear fusion.
But I also don’t think enough is being done to develop renewables — by which I mean wind, solar and tidal power. The Government is still building more roads when it should be investing more in public transport, including more bus lanes in Dublin. And speaking of Dublin, isn’t it high time we had a congestion charge plus double the standard rate for SUVs.
Roger Cottrell
School of English
Queens University
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