Guest essay by Eric Worrall

The Atlantic wants people to view climate change as a wartime situation. They demand Americans accept a lower standard of living, to defeat Global Warming.

According to The Atlantic;

Why Solving Climate Change Will Be Like Mobilizing for War … Assuming we do manage to significantly accelerate deployment without cancerous levels of corporatist corruption, if emissions targets still remain out of reach, some growth must be temporarily sacrificed. At the same time, investment across the portfolio of energy technologies will need to continue. In other words, we are contemplating the sorts of austerities associated with wartime economies. For ordinary Americans, austerities might include an end to expansive suburban lifestyles and budget air travel, and an accelerated return to high-density urban living and train travel. For businesses, this might mean rethinking entire supply chains, as high-emissions sectors become unviable under new emissions regimes. What Gates and others are advocating for is not so much a technological revolution as a technocratic one. One for which there is no successful peacetime precedent. Which is not to say, of course, that it cannot work. There is always a first time for every new level of complexity and scale in human cooperation. But it’s sobering to look back at the (partial) precedents we do have. …

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/why-only-a-technocratic-revolution-can-win-the-climate-change-war/410377/

I must say, given repeated claims that subsidising green energy will stimulate the economy, it seems peculiar that greens also believe people should adopt a wartime austerity mentality, and brace themselves for a lower standard of living. Perhaps the economic stimulus will be delivered in the form of more green air miles, and an increase in the number of climate conferences.

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