Op-Ed Article

16.  End Eco-Extremism...Pragmatic Solutions Provide Best Results

Every now and then, the avuncular mask falls away from Dr. David Suzuki's face, and we catch a glimpse of his inner revolutionary self - and it isn't a pretty sight. In fact, it's both anti-humanist and authoritarian. It's also essentially anti-environmental, since his is the kind of extreme environmentalism that has bred an anti-environmental movement which presumes that claims of environmental degradation are just a green cloak for the promotion of massive expansion of governmental control and collectivism. And there certainly are reasons for thinking this way.

An early example of Suzuki's extremism occurred in 1999, as the world pondered, with what turned out to be excessive fear, the potential for computer networks to fail (Y2K), with the beginning of the new millennium. In an interview with Reuters, Suzuki opined, "I hope there is a major glitch. It might give Mother Earth a rest." He also said, "I think it would be wonderful if things collapsed for a few days," cheerfully admitting that "chaos would happen…but it would be an amazing opportunity for people to really start thinking about things-and a global collapse would really make people think" (Eichler, 1999, Dec 22). However, such a "major glitch" would have actually had astonishingly bad consequences for both humanity and the environment. A failure of the control systems on dams, chemical facilities, and nuclear reactors, for example, would have led to catastrophic events around the world.

More recently, in a speech to students at McGill University, Suzuki said, "What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing (to the environment) is a criminal act" (Gunter 2008). The Suzuki Foundation tried to pass off this latest authoritarian outburst as a rhetorical flourish rather than a real suggestion, but as analysts point out, the fact that he said virtually the same thing to another audience in January 2008 probably indicates that he meant it.

And what does Suzuki want Canadian leaders to do, lest they be incarcerated? Suzuki's climate action plan calls for increasing governmental control over virtually all aspects of Canadian life. On his list are tighter carbon emission standards for industry; mandatory improvements in vehicle fuel economy; national building efficiency standards; subsidies to renewable energy; provincial efficiency standards for homes, businesses, utilities, and industries (with audits); zoning that would force people into high-density living; zoning that would intentionally make automobile use less desirable, including traffic calming, fewer driving lanes, and additional bicycle lanes; and other changes (David Suzuki Foundation, 2008). Though Suzuki has recently come out in support of the British Columbia revenue-neutral carbon tax, he is not willing to simply price carbon and let the market work; in addition to carbon pricing, he seems to want the expansion of government to the point where it controls everything that people do with energy-and that is almost everything that people do.

Of course, Suzuki isn't alone in staking out the extremes of the environmental movement. Various European eco-leaders have come out with similar extremist statements. George Monbiot, a columnist for the Guardian newspaper in London, has suggested that "every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned". Several Americans have also chimed in on the "jail them or drown them" theme.

Columnist Ellen Goodman, for example, has written, "Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers". As well, David Roberts, a blogger at the environmental website, Grist, also suggests what we should do with such people: "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards-some sort of climate Nuremburg" (Roberts, 2006).

And of course, the "big kahuna" of climate policy mongering, Al Gore, pulls out all the stops in his book, :Earth in the Balance" and movie "An Inconvenient Truth", which together constitute an environmental manifesto of governmental expansion. In "Earth in the Balance", Gore wrote that saving the environment is the "central organizing principle" for civilization: It means embarking on an all-out-effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action - to use, in short, every means to halt the destruction of the environment and to preserve and nurture our ecological system. Minor shifts in policy, marginal adjustments in ongoing programs, moderate improvements in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change - these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public's desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle, and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary." Add to this the irresponsible actions of many school teachers who simply showed Gore's film to their students and supported it without understanding or countering with the scientific community's split over his alarmist claims. Needless to say, the so-called mainstream media and Hollywood also blindly took Gore's view as gospel and began to preach global warming with religious-like fervor which further raised the heat on the subject..

The former U.S. vice president actually tries to close the door on all opposing views and data research with his "An inconvenient Truth", in which he employs the holocaust invoking "denier" rhetoric to tar anyone who disagrees with him. In addition to implicitly associating "deniers" with the Nazis, Gore compares anyone who is critical of extreme climate change scenarios to the dreaded "tobacco scientists" of yesteryear (Gore, 2006).

The problem with all this extremism isn't simply the degradation of public discourse; it is also the inevitable polarization that results whenever one group stakes out an extreme position that would result in others losing out, whether that loss is monetary, loss of social prestige, a loss of consumer choice, a loss of political representation, or some other loss. It is almost a law of social motion: every action generates an equal and opposite reaction. Or, as economists would argue, people respond to incentives. Show them that you intend to stop them from doing what they wish to do, and they will oppose it every time. Instead of pragmatic solutions, eco-extremism only breeds resistance. This is why Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary and other eco-disaster movies such as Waterworld were followed by rebuttal movies such as the "Great Global Warming Swindle and "An Inconvenient Truth, or Convenient Fiction?". Eco-fiction tales of environmental destruction such as "The Day After Tomorrow" are countered by Crichton's anti-eco thriller, "State of Fear" (2004).

In December 2006, Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel stated that the American Meteorological Society should "revoke the Seal of Approval by the American Meteorological Society for any TV weatherman who is seen to express skepticism that human behavior is creating a climate catastrophe." In mid November, the retired founder of The Weather Channel declared global warming to be the "greatest scam in history," adding, "I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming"

What is really needed now is a pragmatic middle-ground - one that seeks solutions to environmental problems that are compatible with democratic capitalism, a system that provides innumerable benefits to all North Americans. Unfortunately, with extremists like Dr. David Suzuki regularly politicizing what should really be more of an engineering exercise, it is unlikely that we will see such improvements any time soon.

Kenneth Green - Fraser Forum

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