Yes, it’s true: we live beyond our means. We use money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. With criticism of Consumerism, Environmental Protectionism begins. There’s no planet B! And who would have anything against sustainability? The question is simply: Is it true that we only really talk about the environment when we mention environmental or climate protection? Or is there something else at play here that we don’t notice?
As the idea arose during the French Revolution that nature has set no limits on our hopes, the English government established an early basic income to nip the Spirit of Revolt in the bud— immediately sparking fierce protests among the wealthy property owners. With this, work morale was undermined, and hunger as an educational measure was rendered obsolete. Reverend Thomas Malthus took a more fundamental approach to the issue, responding to dreams of infinite progress with the idea of a ›naturally limited‹ state. Because the Earth is finite, the population cannot grow indefinitely. Now, Malthusianism had already been proven to be a grave error in the 19th century—as had the predictions of the Club of Rome and those of the incorrigible prophet of doom, Paul Ehrlich, who had predicted millions upon millions of deaths in the 1970s with his Population Bomb. And here is where the idea of a Naturally defined boundary reveals its ugly, or rather, its featherbrained face. It tempts its followers to extend their own limitations to the whole world and into the future. For if desire is the Father of thought, it is also the Mother of delusion. And as a result, one sees the Horsemen of the Apocalypse storming in from all sides..
The decisive error in thinking of the catastrophe lover consists in ignoring the reversal of the modern concept of growth: Less can be more. A computer chip most clearly demonstrates this. It shows that a silicon crystal can store billions of times more information than was possible in the 1950s – with the result that every smartphone owner has more information storage capacity than NASA had at its disposal for the moon landing. Couldn’t it be that those who oppose this dizzying growth with a »natural limit« are primarily cultivating ignorance? As flimsy as this operation of repression and self-empowerment may be, ideologically, it’s an extremely successful ploy. While the revolutionaries of yesteryear took up the cause of liberating the proletariat (who responded with a gruff ›Go over there then...‹), we’ve moved from alienated beings to desecrated nature, from World Revolution to Climate Catastrophe. And because nature doesn’t talk back, you’ve entered into an alliance with a higher power. Isn’t it great that this legitimizes your actions with a clear conscience? More politically significant is that declaring a State of Emergency allows you to assert special rights (even if these are highly questionable in terms of democratic theory). In any case, those who warn of the limits of nature are constantly tempted to take on the role of gatekeepers. That is, those who watch over the limit values, distribute resources, and separate what’s permissible from what is impermissible. You only have to consider the educational measures taken by the World’s Saviors to realize that a misanthropic ideology has crept in. Once you’ve converted a child’s life into a CO2 footprint, a birth strike is not far off. No, even more than that: if the apocalypse is imminent, it’s best not to be born.
Translation Hopkins Stanley
