In Pursuit of Utopia #4: “Common Sense”
From https://schoolsucksproject.com/bonus-in-pursuit-of-utopia-episode-4-common-sense/:
Today we take a look at the aims and ideals of the American and French revolutions as well as the results.
How’d they go? France quickly descended into headlessness, and the USA slowly morphed into the quasi-police/corporate state of today, perhaps wandering into headlessness territory?
Did the founders make a fatal mistake by establishing any central government at all? No matter how small they intended to keep it?
Was that utopian thinking or the absence of it? The founders were right on plenty – like in embracing the colonial spirit of rugged individualism and leaving people alone, but the seed of central planning was left in the soil. BUT, here’s the difficult question: looking at the results in France, and the current state of American society, do we sympathize with their concerns?
About Your Instructor: Danny is a SSP listener, blogger and researcher, and the author of an upcoming book on the historical pursuit of utopia.
About This Series: In the 21st century, we’re living in a mosaic of fractured and failed Utopian visions from the past; socialism, social justice, liberation movements, archaic revival, radical environmentalism, and even the “information” revolution are a just a few notable examples. Whether we trace the concept of utopia back to Thomas More 500 years ago or even all the way back to Plato, the ideal world has been pursued from the top down, frequently resulting in varying degrees of dystopia for people…not at the top.
What exactly is radical environmentalism?
My apologies for the late response – that’s a good question. I didn’t write that introductory paragraph—Brett did—so I can’t say that I know what he meant, but I can try to give a quick idea of what that phrase makes me think of.
The word “radical” makes things a bit tricky, I guess, because it calls to mind somebody who’s chained him or herself to a tree in protest or something. I am not particularly worried about those people. The “environmentalists” that do concern me are the likes of Maurice Strong and David Rockefeller. Both of these men were instrumental in laying the foundation of international climate-politics; Strong in particular was the UN’s climate go-to-guy for years. He was the founding director of the UN Environment Program, Sec. General of the Rio Earth Summit, founder of the Earth Council, etc., etc. He also helped to organize the so-called “Fourth World Wilderness Congress” in 1987, where one speaker, a Montreal banker named David Lang, said of the international policy toward climate change:
“I suggest therefore that this be sold not through a democratic process. That would take too long and devour far too much of the funds to educate the cannon fodder, unfortunately, that populates the earth. We have to take almost an elitist program, [so] that we can see beyond our swollen bellies, and look to the future in time frames and in results which are not easily understood, or which can be, with intellectual honesty, be reduced down to some kind of simplistic definition.”
I might just be getting too hung-up on the phrase “cannon fodder,” but then again maybe not. George H.W. Bush, Edmond de Rothschild, and other de facto oligarchs also delivered speeches at this meeting, discussing the virtues of (or in their terms, the dire need for) small, un-elected groups to direct world policy on climate.
This sentiment was later echoed by the Club of Rome—an NGO consisting of UN members, heads-of-state, and industrialists—in their report “The First Global Revolution,” published in 1991. Addressing the problem of no longer having a “common enemy” for governments to point to in order to rally their people (as the USSR was no longer a viable ‘bad guy’), the final paragraph of a chapter entitled “The Vacuum” reads:
“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. … All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.”
This language disturbs me; that, in the face of a legitimate crisis, there are those in influential positions that think, “How can I make this work for me?” But, like Rahm Emanuel said, “You should never let a good crisis go to waste.”
This is, of course, only the tiniest fraction of what could be said on the topic of climate politics. There are so many more important figures, documents, deals, and resolutions—not to mention more information on the two blokes I called on as examples of “radical environmentalists”! (We all know about the Rockefellers, but—incidentally—Maurice Strong was a billionaire Canadian oil-man.)
This has certainly not been a comprehensive treatment of the issue; at best it’s a mere string of scatter-brained anecdotes that occurred to me in the wee hours of the morning. I suppose, in sum, that my point is this: In my youth, I heard that the environment was in peril. I thought then, as I think now, that something must be done. However, when I found that the “solutions” were being presented by groups of un-elected, billionaire industrialists with international financial connections, who described climate change as something which ‘fit their bill’; who conducted meetings wherein a speaker referred to the bulk of earth’s population as “cannon fodder” without being booed off the stage; I had to pause.
In my opinion—and maybe I’m wrong—the solutions to environmental issues aren’t to be found in the multi-national corporations in bed with the UN that messed up the planet in the first place; the solutions are with us, the cannon fodder. I guess, to me, a “radical environmentalist” is anyone who would cede their own, personal responsibility to a multitude of dubiously connected billionaires on insulated, centralized, world-governance councils, and actually believe that their interests would be represented. Seems crazy to me, but I’m the one who’s up at 2:30am typing this, so…
Thank you for looking at my website and thank you even more for your feedback! I’d love to talk about this stuff in person. 🙂