Climate Change Catastrophism is a Leftist Weapon

Jordan Peterson has written a piece for the Telegraph called ‘Climate change catastrophism is a Leftist weapon to destroy capitalism’. He starts by referencing the current “moral panic” about air conditioning, the banning of which is another futile gesture as a hot summer leads to “the usual flood of exaggerated concerns”. He lays the blame on Al Gore:

What we drive, how we heat our homes, what we eat, how much water we use: every modern activity increases industrial CO₂ emissions in a manner not dissimilar to air conditioning. Do all such intimate, local decisions therefore necessitate governmental oversight and regulation? And if so, what freedoms can possibly remain?

The roots of such worrisome totalising can be traced in the more academic realm to the 1960s and 1970s, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Paul Ehrlich’s the Population Bomb and the Club of Rome’s the Limits to Growth. More distal influences, such as Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto of 1848, also merit consideration, as we shall see.

There is another source, however, unmatched in its combination of scientific pretension, charged emotional tone, policy impact and mass appeal: former Vice President Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which this year marks its 20th anniversary.

More than any other single work, this glossy, visually dramatic production translated the abstractions of climate modelling into a compelling, emotionally charged narrative – one that struck fear into the hearts of tens of millions. It did so by framing mankind’s industrial activity and consequent increase in CO₂ production as the driver of a truly dangerous increase in global temperature. It did so by warning of severe and impending ecological devastation and economic disruption. It did so by arguing for the necessity of emergency response, while casting dissent as the most serious of modern sins.

An Inconvenient Truth proved far more effective than any prior academic report or specialist warning at propelling climate change from scientific and policy circles into mainstream cultural consciousness. At the same time, it entrenched the intensely emotional and partisan – almost religious – tone that still dominates the issue today.

Many observers (including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) assert that global average temperature has risen between 1.1 and 1.5°C since the 1850–1900 establishment of reliable instrumental records and the acceleration of the Industrial Revolution. The same experts attribute most of this warming to human technological activity and the consequent increase in atmospheric CO₂.

Criticisms of such estimates do exist. The 1850–1900 period is often used as a starting point as it is the period from which accurate thermometer readings began. But it is situated at the tail end of the Little Ice Age, a relatively cool period. Thus its use as a baseline may inflate the apparent magnitude of subsequent warming. Using the Medieval Warm Period results in more modest estimates, and reasonable disagreement persists over which starting point best captures the relevant signal.

Peterson doesn’t dispute the possibility of human impact on the environment:

It may be true that CO₂ levels have risen due to industrial activity and contributed to global warming. The importance of those facts, however – and especially their implications for action – remains an entirely different matter. The insistence that they constitute an existential crisis of apocalyptic proportions is not a scientific claim. It is, instead, a dogmatic and partisan assertion.

He calls therefore for a re-evaluation:

We can begin that re-evaluation by revisiting the confident, uniformly pessimistic predictions of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Climate doomsayers warned incessantly of sweeping ecosystem collapse, plunging agricultural yields, intensifying droughts and the relentless advance of deserts. Any marginal benefits from elevated CO₂, they insisted, would be violently overwhelmed. The dominant narrative – permitted in popular media – foretold a far less verdant, more unstable, and markedly less hospitable planet. The crisis was already upon us. Emergency action was imperative.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics – or so the cynical adage goes. But it gets still worse. There are claims that literally invert the truth. Such lies, or damned lies or statistics, might be aptly deemed anti-truths. An anti-truth is not merely false; it is a falsehood so profound that it stands in direct, antagonistic opposition to reality itself.

The architects of our culturally dominant climate and economic models issued apocalyptic predictions with a confidence bordering on the unshakeable. The same insistence prevails today – often in the form of the unchanged opinions of the same actors, despite their prediction of anything but the presently undeniable rapid, comprehensive greening of the Earth. Such error is particularly striking given the phenomenon’s speed, well-understood mechanisms and truly planetary scale.

How, then, could it be anything but time to question the accuracy, integrity and value of all the conclusions derived from such models – and to ask what factors, including the motivational, drove the catastrophising and made such failure not merely possible but inevitable?

Peterson condemns the “self-appointed sainthood” that has wasted untold amounts of money to achieve nothing, and with no concern at all for those truly in need:

What are we then to conclude? That much of the ‘science’ surrounding industrial CO₂ has been corrupted by self-serving obfuscation, if not outright deception. That the errors of anti-industrial activists have been driven by motives far removed from – indeed, often antithetical to – genuine concern for the planet or poor. By championing catastrophe, they have justified their preferred economic theories, played at moral heroism, squandered a fortune – and achieved next to nothing for the environment and the world’s most vulnerable.

Worse, this self-anointed sainthood has enabled the demonisation of those who built the energy systems that powered Western prosperity, while aggrandising activists whose record of economic failure and authoritarian excess is a matter of history. Recent research sharpens the portrait, linking the revolutionary strain of Leftist activism to antagonistic narcissism and outright psychopathy – and, notably, to no measurable commitment to social justice whatsoever.

Peterson quotes from the Bible (Matthew 6:5 to be precise):

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

And here is a parting shot at those who, despite all this, remain committed to the apocalyptic CO₂ narrative and its call for a green revolution:

Let’s say that we had managed to divert just $7 trillion or $8 trillion of all the trillions that have been funnelled into the so-called energy ‘transition’, harvested from taxpayers and energy consumers. What could we have done instead with all that purloined money? Indeed, what could we still do, given the projections of more spending to come?

Peterson’s article is definitely worth reading in full, though the tragedy is that those who ought to read it won’t – but will refute it just the same.