Votto
Diamond Member
- Oct 31, 2012
- 55,866
- 56,186
It does seem ironic that left wingers continue to point to science as all important when it comes to the truth about the world around us, especially when discussing matters of religion. They would have us believe that the main problem with man is his lack of knowledge about science and all our answers can be solved with science.
It is then ironic that they now point to climate change as a threat to life on earth as we know it, especially because it was science that allowed man to discover fossil fuels and how to exploit it for his own benefit. We are dependent on it, not only for energy needs, but such vital activity as agriculture.
John Beale is a former top ranking EPA official in the Obama administration who told a Congressional committee he was working on a "green economics project" to "modify the DNA of the capitalist system. Why? It is because capitalism brings prosperity, prosperity brings more pollution and increased usage of natural resources, and technology is the engine that has got us where we are today. Mankind could simply not have created such large centers of population without technology related to fossil fuels.
The environmentalist movement naturally attracts anti-capitalistic minded people. After all, a sagging economy means less use of fossil fuels. These people want to bring back down material production to the levels of the 1960's and return to small scale farming. Environmentalist Naomi Klein said it best, "Capitalism is waging war on the planet's life support system." This is just how they think. She also admits that the focus has shifted away from climate change to economic transformation.
Karl Marx also recognized the correlation to capitalism and the way it sparks technological advances. He once wrote: "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into thin air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his realy conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere."
As far back as Ayn Rand even saw this truth in her book "Return to the Primitive -- the Industrial Anti-revolution" She writes, "Instead of their old promises that collectivism would create universal abundance and their denunciations of capitalism for creating poverty, they are not denouncing capitalism for creating abundance. Instead of promising comfort and security for everyone, they are not denouncing people for being comfortable and secure. The demand to restrict technology is the demand to restrict man's mind. It is nature -- I. e., reality -- that makes both these goals impossible to achieve. Technology can be destroyed, and the mind can be paralyzed, but neither can be restricted. Whether and wherever such restrictions are attempted, it is the mind -- not the state -- that withers away. To restrict technology would require omniscience -- a total knowledge of all the possible effects and consequences of a given development for all the potential innovators of the future. Short of such omniscience, restrictions mean the attempt to regulate the unknown, to limit the unborn, to set rules for the undiscovered. A stagnant technology is the equivalent of a stagnant mind. A restricted technology is the equivalent of a censored mind."
And that is exactly what we have today. We have restriction after restriction of technology that is responsible for our life's blood, fossil fuels. And as we see, the key to combating technology is to destroy capitalism.
It is then ironic that they now point to climate change as a threat to life on earth as we know it, especially because it was science that allowed man to discover fossil fuels and how to exploit it for his own benefit. We are dependent on it, not only for energy needs, but such vital activity as agriculture.
John Beale is a former top ranking EPA official in the Obama administration who told a Congressional committee he was working on a "green economics project" to "modify the DNA of the capitalist system. Why? It is because capitalism brings prosperity, prosperity brings more pollution and increased usage of natural resources, and technology is the engine that has got us where we are today. Mankind could simply not have created such large centers of population without technology related to fossil fuels.
The environmentalist movement naturally attracts anti-capitalistic minded people. After all, a sagging economy means less use of fossil fuels. These people want to bring back down material production to the levels of the 1960's and return to small scale farming. Environmentalist Naomi Klein said it best, "Capitalism is waging war on the planet's life support system." This is just how they think. She also admits that the focus has shifted away from climate change to economic transformation.
Karl Marx also recognized the correlation to capitalism and the way it sparks technological advances. He once wrote: "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into thin air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his realy conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere."
As far back as Ayn Rand even saw this truth in her book "Return to the Primitive -- the Industrial Anti-revolution" She writes, "Instead of their old promises that collectivism would create universal abundance and their denunciations of capitalism for creating poverty, they are not denouncing capitalism for creating abundance. Instead of promising comfort and security for everyone, they are not denouncing people for being comfortable and secure. The demand to restrict technology is the demand to restrict man's mind. It is nature -- I. e., reality -- that makes both these goals impossible to achieve. Technology can be destroyed, and the mind can be paralyzed, but neither can be restricted. Whether and wherever such restrictions are attempted, it is the mind -- not the state -- that withers away. To restrict technology would require omniscience -- a total knowledge of all the possible effects and consequences of a given development for all the potential innovators of the future. Short of such omniscience, restrictions mean the attempt to regulate the unknown, to limit the unborn, to set rules for the undiscovered. A stagnant technology is the equivalent of a stagnant mind. A restricted technology is the equivalent of a censored mind."
And that is exactly what we have today. We have restriction after restriction of technology that is responsible for our life's blood, fossil fuels. And as we see, the key to combating technology is to destroy capitalism.
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