A gloating environmentalist reacts to Al Gore’s “peace” prize:
Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize symbolizes more than just a head-nod towards some eco-fad — it shows that sustainability has finally moved from the outskirts of activism to the most central halls of authority. Concern for the planetary future is now as credible as it is possible to get. The beginning of the struggle to save ourselves from ecological catastrophe has come to an end and we can begin to see the outlines of the next stage of the struggle.
Those of us who’ve spent our careers advocating a saner approach to the future can be forgiven a few moments of smugness, for these are sweet days. There is no longer any reasonable debate about whether or not we need to move with all possible speed towards a different way of living on this planet. To argue the contrary is now to prove oneself morally bankrupt.
Of course, the morally bankrupt can still be found in some numbers in the corridors of commercial and political power, but we don’t need to worry too much about them. They are the leaders of the past: their influence wanes by the moment, as leader after leader steps up to call for big changes.
I enjoyed reading that because it confirms what I have been arguing for some time: that the anthropogenic global warming debate involves the manufacture of new morality.
Didn’t we have enough manufactured morality without having to make more?
I’m sorry, but I refuse to have morality written for me by others, especially on such shaky premises.
While I guess it’s arguable whether I’m immoral, amoral, or simply morally bankrupt, what is going on constitutes moralistic overload, and I’m getting weary of it all.
Moralistic hyperbole leads to moral bankruptcy.
War is hot! (And “peace” is now “cool”!)
So where do I buy my cool peace offsets?
Comments
7 responses to “Moral bankruptcy for sale here!”
“There is no longer any reasonable debate about whether or not we need to move with all possible speed towards a different way of living on this planet.”
Sure there is, Mr. Steffen. The debate isn’t closed without a consensus, which I deny at this point, for the simple reason that no such policy could be implemented without the most intolerable tyranny.
What rot, to unilaterally declare a controversy resolved. With intellect like that, why should I be subordinated to any policy prescription favored by Mr. Steffen?
Global Warming (Man Made) was never about science.
It was always about religion. Or better politics.
Science is not about consensus. It is about truth. And for truth it only takes one.
Galileo
I’m for moving at all possible speed to raise India out of poverty.
First Arafat, now Al The Fat. Quite a resume; inventing the internet and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I predict he’ll bypass the presidency and head straight for the papacy.
“Science is not about consensus. It is about truth. And for truth it only takes one.
Galileo”
Lol. Okay, who’s Galileo?
Mike Crichton? Lubos Motl? That 15 year old girl?
Gore — the new Pol Pot.
Let’s dismantle the cities, end manufacturing, and move to a more agrarian society without shoes, automobiles, and airplanes.
Let’s save the planet for birds, bugs, and the fantasies of D.C. raised brats like fat Al who never lifted a shovel, worked graveyard, went through boot camp, or wiped his own ass.
Maybe the nitwits in Oslo will give the Peace Prize to Ahmadinejad next time. I didn’t think it could get any worse after Carter.
I was obviously wrong.
No doubt when the Great Praires are lost forever due to farmers plowing under all the land to grow pollutant-producing ethanol fuel, when a billion disposed mercury-laden light bulbs carpet the land, when millions of poor starve because corn- for-consumption is overtaken by corn-for- cars the environmental moralists will moralize to everyone else ‘how could you have let this happen’.
The arrogance of humans to believe that they can ‘save the earth’ when nature has the power to destroy without remorse all living things.