After reading J.D. Tuccille's Reason.com piece Your Favorite Crisis Doesn't Justify a Dictatorship: Authoritarianism grows increasingly popular, with environmentalists among the greatest enthusiasts, All I can say is, I TOLD YOU SO! Here are some excerpts:
"In the Q&A session after every talk I give on climate change, someone will typically raise a rather uncomfortable question: are democracies, given the short-termist nature of electoral politics, fundamentally incapable of tackling the climate crisis?" writes Mark Lynas, author of Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency, at Persuasion. "Nor is this idea limited to a political fringe. Environmentalist academics with impeccable liberal credentials also occasionally raise the question of whether classic Western liberal democracy isn't up to the job."
Lynas goes on to cite recent books, essays, and scholarly papers by environmental advocates suggesting that climate change is such a pressing concern that it justifies government officials steamrolling over limitations on state power and protections for individual rights.
"While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise," wrote Ross Mittiga, a political scientist at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, in a paper published in December 2021 by the American Political Science Review. "A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach."
The most recent example may have come too late for Lynas to include. On Tuesday, Elected Officials to Protect America (EOPA) held a virtual press conference calling on President Joe Biden to invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) "to accelerate a clean energy transition for energy security" and, incidentally, "to help Ukraine." The Ukraine mention, one suspects, was thrown in because the DPA lets the federal government centrally direct the economy for national defense purposes. Then-President Donald Trump stretched "national defense" in 2020 to cover COVID-19, but the EOPA seem to recognize that climate change may be a step too far on its own, hence "Ukraine."
You can read the whole thing here.
Here's what I've written:
October 15, 2018—New U.N. 'Study' Shows Climate Catastrophists Getting More Open About their Totalitarian DesignsMarch 7, 2019—‘Climate Crisis’: The Dem’s Path to Totalitarian Socialism
The Collectivist Left Media Launches Major ‘Climate Crisis’ Propaganda Campaign
March 31, 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was getting going—Did Trump’s Defense Production Act Invocation Clear the Way for the Democrats’ ‘Climate Crisis’ Authoritarianism?
April 30, 2020—As We Endure Through COVID-19 Lockdowns, Dems Gear Up for ‘Climate Crisis’ Authoritarianism
I TOLD YOU SO!
Related Reading:
The ‘Crisis’ Dictatorship
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