What Will End the Grip of the Net Zero Cult?

My new book, The Grip of Culture, shows, through an analysis of the (outwardly) contradictory public attitudes to global warming, that our society is now dominated by what amounts to a new religion of climate catastrophism. Our civilization is therefore under threat. This extract looks at what we might do with that knowledge.

 

The decline of established religions, particularly Christianity, has left other cultural entities – from age-old nationalism, to elderly communism and fascism, to adolescent climate catastrophism and the unruly children of Critical Race Theory and Extreme Trans Rights – to fill the gap. It seems that we are unable to live without cultural entities; the group identity they enable is too deeply etched into our brain architecture to be simply set aside, to say nothing of the benefits that group behaviours can bring.

 

If we cannot live without cultures then, given the risks, it would seem prudent to encourage them to become more benign; to tame them, so to speak. That is better than destroying them entirely; if we managed to do so, we would have no idea what might spring up instead, and whether it would be better or worse.

 

But understanding how to tame a culture is not straightforward. We need to work towards an end in which the culture continues to bind society together, with all the benefits that brings, while avoiding most of the potential costs. Examples from history may guide us, but measuring net benefits and even determining the requisite timescales is very difficult. For instance, how do we weigh up the huge death tolls of communism against its lifting of hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and illiteracy?

 

Climate catastrophism is no easier to assess. It seems harmful at present. The irrational policies and squandering of resources it demands are increasing humanity’s vulnerability to real disas­ters: tsunamis or wars or pandemics, and the damage to vital sup­ply chains that result. Still, if it were tamed, the instinctive sense of stewardship that it fosters could conceivably deliver far better care for nature than rational institutions have done, no small gain in an age of huge technological power and minimal public understanding of complex environmental impacts. First though, the culture and its adherents would have to concede, just as the mainstream faiths once did, that sackcloth and ashes for everyone is not an approach that has much of a future.

 

 

Read More Here: Daily Sceptic