I tend not to traffic too much in the “eco-fascist” theme, preferring to stick more narrowly to the substance of particular aspects of particular issues like climate change or air pollution. But sometimes the jackboot fits, and they should have to wear it.

I have noted at some length in the Claremont Review of Books a while ago the openly anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian views of some eco-alarmists, but that only makes them just like Thomas (China-Is-Awesome) Friedman, who for some reason is a respected figure. I quote, for example, a British analyst who said in a press interview a few years back that “When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it.” And also two Australian political scientists who wrote, among other things, “To retain an inhabitable earth we may have to compromise the eternal vicissitudes of democracy for an informed leadership that directs.” I love that euphemism “an informed leadership that directs” bit. And who would do the “informing”? So much for government by consent of the governed. Perhaps the movie version will be called An Inconvenient Democracy.

Lately I came across a several months old column from the Sydney Morning Herald that offers another example of the mendacity of the climate campaign that I can’t decide is either clueless or just pathetic. Richard Glover wrote:

Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies. Not necessarily on the forehead; I’m a reasonable man. Just something along their arm or across their chest so their grandchildren could say, ”Really? You were one of the ones who tried to stop the world doing something? And why exactly was that, granddad?”

Maybe, Glover allowed, “maybe the tattooing along the arm is a bit Nazi-creepy,” and “OK, maybe the desire to see the painful, thrashing death of one’s opponents is not ideal.” Ya think? The reaction caused Glover to append the following note to the online version of the article:

I’m sorry some readers felt my piece on global warming made light of the suffering of Jewish people during the Holocaust. Of course, this was not my intention. . . I accept that some readers found the reference inappropriate and I certainly apologise to them for causing offence.

As I said in recent posts here and my Weekly Standard article on Gleick-gate, these people make life easy for climate skeptics.

But the eco-fascists never seem to learn. And so we learn that in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Rio UN Earth Summit that brought us the travesty of the Kyoto process that the would-be informed leadership that directs autocrats of the UN environmental community would like to tinker with the voting process of these UN summits so that recalcitrant nations like the U.S., China, India, Poland, etc., can’t block our salvation.

Oh, that’s not how they put it, but it isn’t hard to see through the euphemisms they use. The BBC’s environment writer Richard Black (and there are few journalists more in the bag for the greens than Black) gives away the game in his recent story on this:

The most radical idea in procedural terms is introducing majority voting in UN fora to prevent a few recalcitrant nations from blocking the will of the vast majority.

Great: let’s have climate policy governed by the UN General Assembly. How long before we get a “Zionism is causing global warming” resolution? Back to Black’s account:

There have been many times in the past when just one or two countries held up progress in UN processes such as the climate change convention – and the same issue is now being raised within the EU, where last week Poland on its own managed to block the setting of tougher carbon emission targets. On the other hand, some countries’ protests clearly matter more than others.

Sovereignty is such a bitch. The UN’s Earth Systems Governance Project says that there needs to be a “fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.” One of the specific recommendations is to “morph the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) into something more representative and influential.” In other words, please give us more power.

Keep it up, gang-green (heh), and I can retire early.