Originally Posted by Linus

The beautiful thing about the coming "geo-green" (to borrow a term from the goofy Tom Friedman) regeneracy is that both the luddite, malthusian left and the hydrocarbon suckers (meant literally and otherwise) of red America will be cast aside for new technologies and sustainable growth.

The patron saint of the new malthusians Mr. Jared Diamond is a bright man, but wrong. Soil and climate were only necessary prerequisites for the triumph of the European west, not its causes. Without reform monarchs (and later autocrats and parliaments), a theology that valued free will, a culture (and increasingly legal system) that valued individual rights, the English would not likely have invented the agricultural technologies that put an end to the periodic famines accompanying boom and bust cycles (and made possible sustained population growth [first in England, then on the continent, now everywhere), and made it possible for a merchant class to leave the farms and enrich themselves, and their countries.

But if certain people on the left remain haunted by 16th century fears, certain people on the right remain wedded to a 19th century mindset, with an almost theological belief that oil is forever (and if not forever that there is nothing that can be done about it the near term), that climate change is a fairy tale (and if not a fairy tale there is nothing we can do about it without wrecking the economy).

The malthusian left traffics in fatalism. The Republican right traffics in defeatism.

As Mr. Friedman points, we are funding both sides in the war on terror, bankrolling the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines with our tax dollars, and al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad with our oil dollars.

It seems to me the defenders of the status quo are undermining our national security, not the advocates of change. It seems to me the green capitalists are the inheritors of the best western tradition of reform and innovation and optimism - and you folks are literally on the side of the dinosaurs.

Great post. As an enviromentalist I find the eco-primitivist luddites who hijacked the enviromentalist movement to be pathetically demented. I also find Jared Diamond's neo-Malthusian ecological determinism annoying, it's nothing but an intellectual fad. I agree with you that cultural reasons for the West's success are downplayed (for PC reasons, IMO).

Originally Posted by Marc the Bush-Loving Nutcase

My side says the oil/energy shortage of the 1970 was totally contrived: a silly game fueled by rampant NIMBYism and environmental fear.

Your side is full of sh*t. Carter tried to do something about the oil crisis but failed because the 2T atmosphere made big solutions politically impossible. The anti-nuclear BS and the NIMBYism was simply a 2T symptom that carried on into the 3T. You seem to like to ignore the saeculum-based cycles of public opinion and would rather bash the Left instead.

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Gore to advise British on global warming
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer
Mon Oct 30, 7:07 AM ET



Unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, a major British report said Monday.

British Treasury chief Gordon Brown, who commissioned the report, said former Vice President Al Gore, who has dedicated much time to warning of the effects of global warming, would advise the British government on climate change.

Introducing the report, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said unabated climate change would eventually cost the world between 5 percent and 20 percent of global gross domestic product each year.

He called for "bold and decisive action" to cut carbon dioxide emissions and stem the worst of the temperature rise.

The report is expected to increase pressure on the Bush administration — which never approved the Kyoto Protocol climate-change accord — to step up its efforts to fight global warming....