If the leaders of the Western world aren’t already stressed out about the Brexit decision a little over a month ago, they will be absolutely tearing their hair out at the possibility of the “Clexit.”
Rejection of experts spreads from Brexit to climate change with ‘Clexit’
With widespread dissent against EU immigration policy already creating nasty geopolitical blow back with Turkey and Southern Europe, a wholesale rejection of the climate change argument is yet another potential sociopolitical contagion that the West is going to have to contain. Climate change acceptance is a crucial component of the soft power cultural revolution the West has been operating since the end of the Cold War, an operation that has began to seriously lose steam in the years following 9/11 and the Iraq War.
So what’s the problem with climate change? Well, there are a few red flags that are apparent from the outset to anybody who is paying attention. Without even looking at the facts or the reasoning, a close look at the language of the debate is somewhat revealing, if off-putting. One will notice a lot of alarmism, oversimplifications, divisive rhetoric, and silencing and shaming tactics. The actual academic, scientific argument, all of those scientific studies and whitepapers laced with technical terms and jargon, are not an actual argument, but an appeal to the authority of the scientific establishment as nobody but them can translate and comprehend their own theories and ideas. Without a real, understandable argument to convince the laymen, oversimplified rhetoric is needed. Hence the term itself “climate change,” which is a description of an ongoing process rather than something explicitly new. It is broadly similar to “Earth rotating,” or “moon orbiting” in its all-encompassing vagueness. No need to get bogged down in debate over the finer details, or any debate, really. The other oversimplification is the 97% scientific consensus figure. Notwithstanding the fact that referencing a poll is not a real argument but an appeal to popularity and the bandwagon approach, the scientists taking the poll were asked to simply acknowledge whether or not humans have had an effect on the climate of the planet. Fair enough. But none of the scientists were asked about how urgent or dire the threat of climate change is. If one were to poll the appropriate scientists for a consensus on “imminent climate change apocalypse,” there would not be a 97% consensus. So what’s up with the alarmism? How does the time metric factor into all of this? We’ll cover that later.
There are a few finer points that go unnoticed in the rancor of the debate. The very fact that there is a scientific consensus on any aspect of climate change is exceptional and worth noting on its very own. Considering the interpretation of the Greenland ice cores samples, the Earth has been through some dramatic, actually scary climate changes just in the past 20,000 years or so. Scientists have not reached a consensus, or even a solid theory on why the Earth entered, and just as abruptly exited, the last major ice age.
But the biggest anomaly in this mess of a cultural conversation is the question of why there is even a debate in the first place. If the rhetoric is true, and the threat of climate change is truly grave, why even wait for a consensus? Why not just ignore the naysayers and go save the world? The leaders of the Western world are not, and have never been, in the habit of justifying, let alone asking for consent, for their decisions and policies in response to strategic geopolitical realities. They never asked for consent on the war on terror and the surveillance state. They never asked for consent for the financial bailouts and the infringement of our civil liberties. They usually don’t care about what you think, so why do they care now?
The purpose of all of this consensus building is not as a means to an end, it’s the forming of a consensus itself that is the goal. In other words, the widespread rejection of oil consumption, and therefore, an end to buying and trading on the global oil markets, is the true geopolitical goal of this western soft power strategy. With Russia and China entering the oil markets, setting up the BRICS system, and threatening the petrodollar hegemony the US has enjoyed since the Nixon days, a change had to be made. In response, the western bankers dumped oil stocks from their portfolios and have begun funding alternative energy. Giving the oil industry away to China and Russia meant that the value of the dollar had to be pegged onto another commodity. I believe food was chosen as that commodity and the GMO process has sought to create crops that are hardier, longer lasting, and more bountiful than normal to make for a more stable trading commodity.
So why hasn’t this plan worked? It’s because the soft power strategy relies on actually having something that people want, IE the carrot rather than the stick. The GMO carrots of the West, and their bee-killing pesticides, have not gone over well. There are now 38 countries who have banned GMO food or products, compared to the 28 who have accepted them. Russia is also investing in agriculture to offer a regular alternative to GMO crops. Worse yet, the western bankers are prepared to leave oil but have no widespread alternative energy infrastructure or framework to offer to the world. Sure, electric-powered cars are common now, but the electricity powering your home probably comes from a massive coal-fired power plant. Maritime trade, a crucial component to every economy, still uses a huge amount of fossil fuels everyday. The globalists in Washington, London, and Berlin have painted themselves into a corner. For the first time in a long time, the music is going to stop and it will be the globalists who won’t have a chair to sit in.
This explains the alarmism, the decisive rhetoric, and the building of consensus for the sake of consensus. It’s clear that the West needs the climate change dialectic to work, otherwise Russia and China win the soft power game with their lucrative offers of oil exploitation and the eclipse of the petrodollar. Therefore, geopolitics demands that the “climate denier” be done away with, and the rhetoric is cranked up to the max setting. The very term “denier” denotes either a mental problem or ulterior motives, suggesting a lack of virtue or a lack or morality on those given the epithet. It’s a shaming tactic, and it is not scientific in any way as science has always valued a plurality of ideas. All of the shaming, intellectual bullyism, and mind games have the opposite of their intended effect. Rather than acquiescing, people have become suspicious and combative. And for good reason, in my opinion. Will climate change denial spread like a contagion in Europe? I seriously doubt it, but the response of the Western elites have shown just how desperate and out of touch they have become. Their only option is to spread divisive rhetoric in order to divide and obfuscate the argument, and hold what little ground they still have.
Chirographer 