We have real environmental problems. We always have had them, we always will have them. In each era there are issues that become pressing. Some of them seem solvable while others don't. We focus on the ones that we think we can do something about, and attribute the others to God, or gods or nature or something, and so not within our ken and of no interest to hustlers grifters and politicians. Same thing.

Evangelists come out of the woodwork and from under every rock to sell their looney policies. Some attract a following and have great personal success, but nothing comes of their looney ideas except personal fame and wealth. One of them, James Lovelock, was discussed at some length in an earlier post. His views are a mix of the sensible and the senseless. Brian Hayes said it best:

Given the persistence of life on Earth, I'm sympathetic to the idea that the global ecosystem must be reasonably stable and self-correcting. But self-regulation requires no purposeful, animating spirit; Lovelock's vision of Gaia twiddling the controls to keep us comfortable—or else deliberately turning up the heat to snuff us out—leaves me utterly baffled. Even as metaphor it's nonsense. On the other side of the equation, I share Lovelock's worry that climate change will make the world a less congenial place for coming generations, yet I find his predictions wildly overconfident. In his discussions of theory, Lovelock puts much emphasis on the difficulty of understanding the behavior of nonlinear systems with feedback loops; he even exaggerates it a bit. And yet he does not hesitate to predict in detail not only the effect of CO2 on climate but also the response of ecosystems to climate change and even the consequences for societies. It's his seeming certainty that makes me most skeptical.

My emphasis. Lovelock speak with forked tongue. Lester Brown is a lesser evangelist, more of an organization man than a prophet, but he also has the signature double-talk habit of the hustler.

China now consumes more of most basic resources than the US. China now uses more steel, grain, coal and meat than the US does - it's only in oil consumption that we outpace China. If China catches up with us in terms of consumption per person - which they may by 2031, when their incomes are predicted to catch up - the planet will not survive. . .

"The key to restructuring the global economy is to get the market to tell the truth." The prices we're paying now aren't real prices - our gasoline prices don't include climate change, respiratory injury and other consequences. If we included these costs, we'd be paying $10 a gallon, not $3. We need to restructure the tax system to lower income taxes and raise carbon taxes, as they're doing in Sweden.

Well, which is it? Can petty savings in the already developed world counter the rise of China - which already consumes more - or not?

Not. Of course not. It's a silly idea. You can't conserve your way out of this crunch.

socialism collapsed because it didn't let the market tell the economic truth. Capitalism, he believes, may collapse because it doesn't tell the ecological truth.

For those who don't believe the US can retool to build windfarms and electric cars, he references the transformation of the US economy after Pearl Harbor. FDR banned the purchase of new private cars, forcing the auto industry to produce enough armament to fight wars on two oceans. "He didn't say, `Go shopping.'" If we wanted this sort of a transformation, we're capable of putting it together - it requires political will.

Socialism failed because it was based on political will. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride. You can't wish your way to a prosperous and just world. You can't just declare victory, you have to actually do the work. It's telling that hustlers like Brown - and his adoring fans - find the war analogy and FDR appealing. A more honest appraisal of those efforts and their consequences shows how faulty they were - though given the context of the time this isn't surprising or especially awful. But there's no useful template in those acts for the present context. This isn't a war so crippling the nation and dragging down the world isn't remotely justifiable. We need to hold our mud and make sensible choices in the face of this threat, not squander resources with abandon to build monuments to futility that fall to ruin in short order and litter the landscape for decades.

Lovelock and Brown have one area of agreement that I can support: they both see trouble with agriculture, especially abusing it to produce biofuels. Their evidence is partial and often mistaken, and their reasoning is amateurish, but they arrive at a correct conclusion. Give them partial credit for that.