Thursday, August 23, 2007

C.C.

Reluctant though I am to return to the subject of Climate Change, this is an interesting look at the peculiar negative ethic that underlies the public debate. This negativity, I fear, might be part of a bigger, and potentially suicidal, we-are-all-guilty negativity that seems to have overtaken what might be called the liberal post-Christian West - and nowhere more so than in this country with its added burden of post-imperial guilt. One of the results is a failure to stand up to threats considerably more immediate and dangerous than climate change. Perhaps it's a straight preference for giving ourselves a light beating-up over actually doing anything about anything. Or maybe we're all too powerless now anyway. Or maybe this is a form of evolution by atrophy... Depressing anyway.

4 comments:

  1. THat link might not work. Try this.

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  2. The sun never sets in Somerset.

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  3. "Spiked-Online" is a better name than "Living Marxism", but the content is still drivel. Virtually every article on that site follows the same pattern - pick an issue, accuse both sides of being driven by fear and then sit around looking smug, despite the fact they have nothing much to say themselves.

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  4. Ah so, Dr Heinz Kiosk rides again, then.

    Imho, things work best when people are asked to do simple things in short, simple ways they'll understand, with clear benefits attached and an equally clear feeling that everyone is in the same boat.

    I'm not at all surprised people are switching off the eco stuff, if ever they switched on at all. People are being offered a load of moralizing, extremely complicated and expensive solutions, no obvious benefits, and overall the feeling that the whole thing is just an excuse for more Big Brother and taxation, and of course the rich and politicians are let off the hook completely and offer no example at all.

    Bureaucrats, box-ticking and Noo Labour-speak are never going to make progress with this one.

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