Op naar de ecosocialistische heilstaat!
Hoewel zij daar niet voor hebben doorgeleerd, kunnen sommige klimaalarmisten het niet laten om buiten hun vakgebied te treden en allerlei doodenge ideeën over maatschappelijke hervorming te verkondigen. Deze achten zij nodig in de strijd tegen de vermeende AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). Een daarvan is de directeur van het Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung (PIK), Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. In het licht van de door hem gepercipieerde klimaatdreiging acht hij een fundamentele transformatie van onze samenleving noodzakelijk. Samen met een aantal geestverwanten heeft hij daarover een ambitieus rapport geschreven. Het is een typische illustratie van: 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread'.
Op zijn website levert Pierre Gosselin daarop commentaar.
Awhile back Hans Schellnhuber, director of the ultra-alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), released his master plan for the Great Transformation of global society from one fuelled by carbon to a Utopian one powered by fuzzy-warm renewable energy. This he claims would rescue the planet from imminent climate catastrophe. To help guide world leaders through the transformation, Schellnhuber and group of wisemen authored a guide called: World In Transition A Social Contract For Sustainability.
Economist Carl Christian von Weizsäcker wrote a commentary in Germanys flagship online political daily Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Schellnhubers 420-page master plan. The WBGUs [Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen] plan calls for the transformation to be done in 10 20 years, where not only must the production and consumption habits fundamentally change, but also the incentive systems, institutions, normative maxims and scientific disciplines (foremost the economic science disciplines).
Sounds pretty damn radical.
Weizsäcker sees the whole thing as naive and worrisome, and reminds us that the Neolithic Revolution took thousands of years to complete and that the Industrial Revolution took 150 years, and is actually still in progress in many poorer countries. So how can anyone expect a revolution of the scale Schellnhuber proposes to be accomplished in 20 years?
By having a total lack of how societies work is the answer. Of course this Great Transformation would be led by a powerful guiding global state, Schellnhuber proposes. Weizsäcker goes on to compare the WBGUs proposed endeavour to Vladimir Lenins proletarian Russian Revolution of 1917, under leadership of the Bolshevist wing of the communist party, which also promised to lead humanity to a new age, into a global-wide economic and societal system that would end the exploitation of men by men and create a world that could not be better.
Weizsäcker adds:
We know what history teaches us with respect to this announcement of a Fundamental Revolution. After the citizens said good bye to the most brutal of methods of the guiding Stalin-State, the empire ended up in a hopeless dead-end stagnation which finally ended, and had to end, in the total collapse of a historical lesson.
Id say Schellnhuber and the WBGU are well beyond naive. What Schellnhuber proposes is nothing less than a reckless and adventurous social engineering experiment, tantamount to a half-baked plan that calls for taking apart a jumbo jet full of passengers and putting it back together again as a glider - all in midflight.
Schellnhuber and his WBGU of course would like to have the audience believe that this Revolution would be carried out democratically, freely and successfully. Deomcracy itself would have to undergo a transformation. Just how democratic would the WBGUs proposed new society be? Weizsäcker translates the WBGUs text as follows:
More democracy yes, but only if it serves to achieve our aims.
and comments:
We are actually not speaking about democracy when the wisemen (modern: the scientists) of the country prescribe the result up front and inform the people: you may decide but only as long as you decide correctly. Otherwise we will have to take away your co-determination on behalf of the collective good. Now allow me to translate: Thats tyranny, and not democracy.
Weizsäcker sums it up:
Karl Popper and Friedrich August von Hayek would turn in their graves if they heard this highly offical recipe as a new form of democracy.
Of course not everyone is wary of the WBGUs proposed societal coup detat. There are many leaders out there who, all doped up with green ideology, think these adventurous, poorly thought out schemes are going to save humanity. Like German President Christian Wulff.
Sigh those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.
Aldus Pierre Gosselin.
De opkomst van dit soort ideeën bij onze oosterburen geeft mij toch een 'unheimisch' gevoel. Vroeger werden dit soort snode plannen door louche figuren in de bierkelders van München beraamd. Thans gebeurt dit door keurig nette dames en heren in een officieel adviesorgaan van de Duitse regering. Maar het maakt die plannen er niet beter op. In feite zijn zij knettergek en levensgevaarlijk. Als dit zo doorgaat heeft Frits Bolkestein weer voldoende materiaal voor een nieuwe uitgebreide editie van zijn boek: 'De intellectuele verleiding. Gevaarlijke ideeën in de politiek.'
