What Will It Be America? Modernity or Backwardness?

I listened to a very revealing interview with an environmentalist activist from India, Sunita Narain on the BBC (listen). The interviewer, while clearly sympathetic to the guest, tried several times to pin her down on several questions where she had seemed evasive. I thought she was clear as a bell.

She declared that climate change is very important particularly for India so government must take climate change seriously – because if glaciers melt as it seems to be the case then water will become an issue. She boldly made the claim that green house gases therefore economic growth, are directly linked to climate change, ignoring the fact that more and more scientists are questioning the so called facts behind rising CO2 emissions and it’s effect on climate (Gore’s Nobel Prize notwithstanding).

I’ll try to paraphrase some of her utterances but you’ll have to listen to the interview yourself to get the full idea of what she is really advocating.

She says that India must be allowed to emit CO2 in order to grow. She says “We have to share growth between the nations. Cooperation is not possible without justice and equity – this is not about coercion. We are definitely asking the rich countries to cut their emissions.”

Then the interviewer says: “Yes the rich are responsible for 70% of the emissions but in 25 years it’s the developing countries that will be responsible for 70%.”

Ms Narain exclaims: “Exactly the point. If you’re really talking about this one world let the rich decrease their emissions so the poor world can increase. But we don’t want to be as irresponsible as the rest of the world was.”

“But then don’t you need legally binding limits imposed on you?” (Interviewer)

“Absolutely! But for the rich! By 2050 we must reduce carbon emissions by 80% if we want half a chance to save this world…There is an over fascination that there is a technological fix for our problems – there isn’t.” (Ms. Narain)

“With what face and what morality can anyone in the rich world even speak about climate change today? We in India are emitting but we are also suffering for the problems we did not even initiate.”

Apparently, Ms. Narian’s vision of the proper model to emulate is the Himalayas. Why? “That lifestyle teaches us how you can live with so little…you can build a rural economy with resources from the environment. We can learn from the rationality and the frugality of the poor people.”

More and more pressure will be placed on the United States and other countries that have chosen reason as their means of climbing out of backwardness, to cut their emissions. Remember cutting carbon emissions means cutting production which means regressing to poverty. My question is – Are our leaders in Washington and state governments philosophically armed to be able to defend our way of life and do they have the backbone to prevent the ‘do-gooders’ from turning us into a third world country? I have very grave doubts indeed. What this woman appears to be advocating is one world rule.

So as the number of these self-appointed saviors of the world increase, it will be interesting to see which road we choose as a nation: progress, modernity and all the conveniences that applying reason and science to problems brings, or, decline, backwardness and all the drudgery that anti-reason brings to human life.

To quote Ayn Rand from her book "The Anti-Industrial Revolution" - published in 1971:

"The immediate goal is obvious: the destruction of the remnants of
capitalism in today's mixed economy, the establishment of a global
dictatorship. This goal does not have to be inferred-many speeches and books on the subject state explicitly that the ecological crusade is a means to that end."