Panic, fear, and loathing concerning atmospheric warming and the “existential” threat alarmists claim it to be have failed so far to encourage a reconsideration of modern man’s relationship with the natural world and the Promethean attitude toward it that has prevailed in Western civilization since the 16th century. The current project to replace fossil fuels with “green” energy signals merely a change of technique in the effort to manage, adapt, control, and repurpose nature to humanity’s material ends, rather than an early attempt at reimagining our relationship with nature and the way in which we think about it.
All that has changed in mainstream thought is a greater attention to how the human race might learn to be less wasteful, destructive, and irresponsible in its exploitation of nature, while maintaining the West’s historically unprecedented levels of production, consumption, comfort, and profit and at the same time “leveling up,” in current British jargon, the non-Western nations by encouraging them to substitute “clean” energy for the dirty kinds.
The green movement—the scientific and governmental parts of it, anyway—is not proposing to replace human arrogance vis-à-vis nature with humility, as environmentalists have been urging for a century or more. Rather, it is raising arrogance to a higher level by assuming that humans are capable of dominating and controlling nature even more completely in the future than they did in the past, repairing the damage already done while simultaneously preventing further harm in future centuries by their quasi-divine powers of imagination, invention, manipulation, and control.
In short, the new project is one of dominating nature by healing it, instead of by continuing to injure it.
But this aim, too, is impossible. Homo sapiens, as the dominant species on earth, cannot survive and flourish according to his nature without affecting, in harmful ways as well as in good ones, the natural environment, the atmosphere included, he shares with all living creatures. This was true many millennia before the advent of the industrial age and fossil fuels, beginning with humanity’s earliest attempts at agriculture and the creation of agricultural societies and continuing through the rise of the great trading and commercial civilizations.
And it will continue to be so after all existing fossil reserves are either exhausted or replaced by other resources, which are certain to discovered—sooner or later and in one respect or another—to be as ”dirty,” or otherwise harmful and unpleasant, as fossil ones. Unsightly wind farms, which do significant damage to the raptor population of the American West while replacing scarce agricultural land with concrete pads, pylons, and access roads, are a case in point.
It is only natural that “climate change” should be perceived as a “crisis,” whether real or imagined, prompting us to reconsider our place in the natural world and our responsibility for it as well as for our own future. But reconsideration needs to go much deeper, and much further beyond, mere scientific, technological, and economic policy. The search for “clean” energy must be accompanied by a philosophical renewal of the kind envisioned by Richard Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences (1948), where he lamented the decline of piety, defined as “a discipline of the will through respect” resting upon a “proper relationship to nature” and a “superior philosophic resignation to the order of things.” The absence of piety, Weaver asserted, is manifested by the prevalence of “pride” and “impatience” in the modern world that leaves man in his metaphysical confusion a “creature who does not fully comprehend his creation.” This spiritual distemper proved, he believed, the indispensability of the “appeal to religion.” Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, poet, novelist, and philosopher, has been arguing much the same thing since the late 1960s.
Such a reformation in public thought and feeling is, for the moment, difficult to imagine. It can cannot be created by educational institutions, much less by government programs; it can occur only as the natural emanation of a growing and generalized consciousness aroused by intelligent and informed public debate and discussion and resulting in an interest and awareness incited by apprehension and even fear. Yet it is hardly more unimaginable than the re-imagination, redesign, and reconstruction—in historical perspective, overnight—of the global economy and the creation of non-pollutive systems of energy production, trade, and consumption.
And all of this dependent upon the necessary replacement of free and individualistic societies by unfree ones consisting of tightly controlled and sternly regimented masses directed by unrepresentative and dictatorial governments of which our present overbearing elites are only the forerunners. As history demonstrates, such engineered societies can never be realized according to the plans of their designers, while attempts to do so have been, without exception, calamitous and inhuman.
Thus any “solution” to the “problem” of atmospheric warming must be a clear, realistic, non-ideological, non-utopian effort. This should resemble as little as possible any sort of crusade such as the “net-zero” movement has become, on the part of cooperating national governments freely elected by free peoples to consider the question of which historical periods have come closest to achieving something like a balance between—on the one hand—civilizational flourishing and human happiness, and—on the other—the health and general wellbeing of the natural ecosystems on which all biological life depends.
Meanwhile, “net-zero” must be recognized as a technical solution to what, in fact, is an existential problem. Not in the sense that it threatens the future of life on earth, but that it is ultimately concerned with modern man’s alienation from nature, from himself, and from the Divine, an alienation due to own metaphysical blindness, unrestrained materialism, Promethean delusions, and reckless folly. Only by treating “climate change” as a profoundly theological issue can we discover—in part by rediscovering—a better understanding and appreciation of nature and ourselves, while strengthening our weakened relationship with the Creator.
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A theme both simple and complex—urgent, existential, problematic, calling for prudential judgment at least—inconspicuously cropping up in many contributions to the Catholic Social [read societal] Teaching. Such as this from St. John Paul II:
“It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed toward ‘having’ rather than ‘being,’ and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself [citing Gaudium et Spes, n. 35, and Populorum Progressio, n. 19]. It is therefore necessary to create lifestyles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments…” (Centesimus Annus, 1991, n.36).
In graduate school in the early 1970s yours truly paused over Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” (1968)–even musing whether the Luddites might have been right in the long run. Finally moved on to things less beyond my reach, but not before finding the following:
“A wise man may grasp how ghastly it shall be
When all this world’s wealth standeth waste
“Even as now, in many places over the earth
Walls stand wind beaten,
Heavy with hoar frost, ruined habitations…
The maker of men has so marred this dwelling
That human laughter is not heard about it
and idle stand these old giant works”
(from the Anglo Saxon Poets)
Is our current global trajectory and illusion—the notion that all will be well once the entire human race is modernized to where everyone can equally strap on a 4,000-pound prosthesis in order to drive half a mile for a quart of milk or a mindless video game?
Huge assumption here: That manmade global warming is real, that it’s more than just a mass delusion.
Those who preach to us on this subject — including Mr. Williamson, above, and Señor Bergoglio, elsewhere, among many others — should be obliged to establish the actual existence of the phenomenon they want us to impoverish much of the world to counteract.
Until that happens, consider that the popular author and very bright man, Michael Crichton had this to say about the “existential threat” of global warming many years ago:
“Let’s think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horse manure? Horse pollution was bad in 1900; think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?
“But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900.
“Remember, people in 1900 didn’t know what an atom was. They didn’t know its structure. They also didn’t know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, the Internet, interferon….
“Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it’s even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They’re bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment’s thought knows it.”
You read me wrong. I don’t believe global warming has been proven. I further believe that there is nothing we can do about it even if it is true.
Warming is a fact. The numbers prove it. Nearly every scientist believes CO2 emissions are behind it. There is no other culprit: not solar output, an increase in volcanic activity, nor some change coming from other life on Earth. Human beings are the only ones altering the composition of the atmosphere.
The truth is that if human beings caused it, as seems the best if not the only explanation possible, then we can reverse it. That reversal will likely not be without some pain and loss to some. It will also take time.
Few modern human beings, and especially their leadership, seem able to play the long game, thinking decades and centuries ahead. Looking for conspiracy theories gives some of us a measure of control. We can use (or misuse) our intellect to try to restore some kind of balance in our lives after we’ve been induced to panic over driving our cars less and composting and recycling more. Personally, if I’m serious about looking into some power behind the curtain, I’m far more likely to think of the petrochemical industries. That’s where the money is. Not academia as much. Not some 21-year-old from Stockholm.
Some people don’t want to believe climate change is a thing. Not-belief can be as strong as the most-confirmed faith. That’s what’s happening here.
One of the principles of ecology is that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” And, as we might say, “Everybody who gives a moment’s thought, knows it.”
So, on second thought, there’s a difference between a “model” however imperfect, and mere projections (!) “that just carry the present into the future.”
Williamson’s admonishing essay poses something other, less to do with solving what appears beyond solution for Promethean Man, rather for the divine Prometheus. Wisdom is seen in all things, elusive, all penetrating, pristine, pure and true.
Although we cannot pinpoint the creation because there are no preexisting coordinates to measure, we may only say it was created. Man we know was created, placed within this preexisting cosmos, this flowering wonderful earth. We know by reason, and by revelation that Man is immortal. We don’t know whether this Cosmos is. Or do we? That something other to be considered is whether this universe is immortal. Was it created for Man to steward, to use, produce? Yes. For infinity? No. Reason tells us Net Zero as a logical premise will not be reached, since the balance of natural increase in population to Net Zero balance between the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are produced to the amount that is removed from the atmosphere diminishes with increase in population. This earth has its preordained limit, whereas Man was created for something superior.
As related to Chilton Williamson Jr’s essay, my previous comment seems to coincide, that is, with the transition from the purely scientific Promethean view to the more holistic spiritual.
our pope has written a document Laudto Si, which is very good, not perfect but should be read and implemented by church officials. However the white, privilege, Latin Mass, trad constantly speak negative about this document which is the pope’s baby. Yet this so-called Remnant – continues to speak against this document.. So the pope took action and has placed restrictions on the Latin Mass because of these subversives.. This document is good and should be read by everyone, yes the globalist have infected it with some ambiguities, however good Catholics can over come this.
Many decades working on environmental projects, teaching college courses, writing about the environment. Science is just a piece of the world’s perspective on the environment/climate. Many other things affect people’s perception, some connected to self-enrichment. We rarely hear about all the improvements in water quality, air quality, habitats. Compare rivers and lakes in the West now to the 1950s-70s. The Detroit River is a flourishing habitat. Truly.
Mr. Williamson, I agree with you. The net zero/climate crisis movement is a thinly disguised quest for power and control. We should trust those that claim that they can regulate and maintain the ideal temperature of the atmosphere, land masses, and oceans to their expert specifications? The perfect levels of carbon dioxide, UV light? My fear is that the drivers and financers of this movement will become impatient waiting for the general population to bend to their superior knowledge, and will take matters into their own hands by implementing geo-engineering. For our own good, of course. Does human arrogance have no limits?
Yes.
The “green new deal” is nothing more than a grift-swindle industry for the Chinese Communist Tyrant machine-regime and the western elites class in big-corporate and big-government and their big-universities: the former ensure that the latter get the pay-offs and deals needed, and the latter ensure that fraud-green-bizness-companies from China and their midwife-distributing-companies in the west keep manufacturing fraud-ugly Chinese solar panels and subsidizing the “planting” of these all over the farms and fields and rooftops of America and western Europe. That way, all of the nieces and nephews of all of the fraud corporate-shamans and senators and university-administrators and NGO-grifters keep their trust fund babies afloat in cash.
A total fraud, while Google and Apple and Microsoft keep up their grift-enterprise-with-China, and do the bidding of fhe CCP…no matter what…to keep their CCP-slave-labor-based “enterprises” going. When you step back and look at it, it’s the same thing as the ancient Egyptian slave-economy, and the US slave-state-fraud-cotton economy. But with Disney DEI-ECOLOGY propaganda to sell it.
Serving the new CCP slave economy, for the sake of subsidizing the western elites-class…