03-03-2007, 10:21 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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Uber Member
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Woking
Posts: 30,604
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Climate change, the key to the post democratic society
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globali...cracy_4399.jsp
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It is this fear which feeds the visions of an authoritarian future which have begun to enter the debate from more than one side. The fact that few informed observers believe individual restraint and technological innovation will generate the necessary cuts in emissions, so that a significant increase in government intervention in individual behaviour is to be anticipated means such visions deserve to be taken seriously. They suggest that it is time to consider tackling climate change not simply as a technical problem but as a challenge to the democratic imagination.
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Such predictions undoubtedly confirm the prejudices of those libertarians for whom global warming is simply a socialist plot, cooked up by the losers of the cold war. This theory has little following in Europe, but a Jesuitical variant of it enters the British debate through the articles of the group associated with the current-affairs website Spiked. They accuse those who advocate action of misrepresenting the science, stifling debate and posing a threat to freedom of speech which is more serious than the (unproven) threat of climate change itself. The site's editor, Brendan O'Neill of campaigners on the national climate march in November 2006, said: "What united them all... was a petty authoritarianism... This was in essence a demo demanding less debate and more stringent measures outlining what people can do and consume."
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"For the campaign against climate change is an odd one... It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but also against ourselves."
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Listening to British campaigners, it can sound as though the problem is that we as individuals have too much power and the state has too little. What Gore reminds us is that, in important ways, power is already dangerously concentrated. There are signs of hope, not least in some of the ways which people are finding to use the internet. Mechanisms for restricting our personal behaviour will be required, but we should demand involvement in the process rather than petitioning the state to relieve us of our freedom. Meanwhile, governments must stop protecting those industries which cannot or will not adapt their behaviour to a low-carbon world.
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Some of the double think, red herrings and false idolising in this article are frightening. These are your people clippo. You either volunteer to give your freedom away, or it will be taken. All in the name of voodoo.
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