A few days ago Norm posted A delusion revived.

Here's a blast from the past in the present. Writing at Monthly Review, Gregory Esteven revives a perspective on the transition to socialism that used sometimes to be called 'catastrophist'. Pared down to its essentials his thesis is that the left saved capitalism. . .

But those days are now over, thinks Esteven. The good news for socialists - or should that be the bad news? - is that 'the more humane version of capitalism is irreconcilable with globalization'. It's 'not at all clear whether capitalism can continue to be reformed'; and 'it seems that the time to revive the socialist project has arrived'.

Keeping the socialist project alive is fine by me, but this isn't an attractive or compelling way of doing it (leave aside the fact that the inability of capitalism to change and adapt is a theme long past its sell-by date). For it does rather look as if it's predicated on the hypothesis that the worse things go for people, the better it will be for a would-be socialist movement. That's not quite the same as saying that you want things to go badly for them but it comes pretty close. It has always been a politics of delusion. . . the idea that what comes out of capitalist crisis is likely to be political change of a positive kind is an idea you might have thought had been rendered problematic in the light of historical experience.

It's devastating in an understated way, especially when you apply it to the current leftist redoubt: environmentalism - especially climate change. Nearly all leftists are catastrophists, even those who are a bit less deluded.

As every serious writer knows, the legitimacy of the dictatorship rests on its ability to deliver ever-rising living standards now that its Marxism is dead. Environmental concerns will always be trumped by the party’s survival instinct. Thus, President Hu Jintao reverses a programme to close coal mines. He has to, an official tells Der Spiegel, because China’s inefficient industries ‘need seven times the resources of Japan, almost six times the resources of the US and almost three times the resources used by India’. Thus, when the leaders of the G8 announce a wish to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Hu and India’s leaders see a plot by the rich West to handicap Asian rivals and refuse to accept the target.

Because the communism of Stalin and Mao is dead, however, the scale of the catastrophe need not be a secret circulated only in samizdat pamphlets. There are voices within China free to argue that the country is ignoring her own as well as the world’s long-term interests. Pan Yue, minister of the environment, warned in 2005 that the economic miracle ‘will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace’, and he had the evidence to back up his claim. . .

The gullible admire dictatorships because they think the great leader and his politburo can cut through objections and force the recalcitrant to obey orders, and we have had no shortage of fantasies about the better China that would come if only the party embraced greenery. . .

Solzhenitsyn’s Mrs R [presumably, Roosevelt] was incapable of believing the worst and preferred to live in a daydream. Stalin’s goons did not need to fool her because she had already fooled herself. Today it is just about possible to imagine rich, post-industrial societies switching to renewable energy and nuclear power, although optimists should note the Republicans’ success in using Obama’s refusal to allow offshore oil drilling against him. But it is inconceivable that the emerging powers of China and India will abandon fossil fuels when there are no cheap options.

Rather than despair, not only the International Olympic Committee and Greenpeace but also Western governments and the European Union pretend that the Potemkin Olympic village in Beijing heralds a new China, and miss the blackened rivers and skies beyond.

As the planet warms, I’m damned if I can see an alternative to despair, but I do know that wishful thinking isn’t it.

He's a dour catastrophist shorn of delusions.

Others are still mining fossil ideology as well as fossil fuel.

Sustainable development thinking got environmental issues onto the agenda but it may now be stopping us from taking serious action on climate change and other crucial planetary issues, argues John Foster, a freelance writer and teacher and honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at Lancaster University, UK in his new book "The Sustainability Mirage: Illusion and Reality in the Coming War on Climate Change."

Sustainable development's attempted deal between present and future will always collapse under the pressure of 'now' because the needs of the present always win out, he says. Inevitably, this means movable targets and action that will always fall short of what we need. Ultimately, sustainable development is the pursuit of a mirage, the politics of never getting there.

To escape the illusion, he states that society must break through to a new way of understanding sustainability by focusing on the deep needs of the present, not slippery obligations to the future. That means rising to the carbon challenge now, not trying to micro-manage the longer-term, and looking to science for orders of magnitude and direction, not a game-plan. . .

Obviously there is the same disconnect all these plans by environmental activists have; namely in insisting that business is evil and only governments can promote responsible environmental policy but then insisting that the short-term dynamics of capitalism will lead to solutions that don't involve the Nihilism of condemning all new people and especially developing countries to never having any energy.

Science and capitalism both work best unfettered by politics, that much has been obvious for a century, but stating the obvious won't sell a lot of books.

I think that this is a key. The left may be temperamentally predisposed to being catastophist, pessimistic and delusional but it is the marketing angle that keeps them in that rut. You not only won't sell many books by talking sense, you won't sell much ideology either. The sale is everything to the left. They have no workable ideas for governance but want to seize power anyway to thwart those who do have workable ideas that are not leftist.

And so, we have leftist critiques that dwell on the defects of present reality, but no plausible alternative proposals. It's like mutineers on a ship who intend to seize control and then go down with the ship, as they have convinced themselves is inevitable. They have no ideas for averting catastrophe, they just want to wear the captain's cap while the ship sinks. Which is, of course, utterly insane.

In truth, the ship is a leaky old tub that cannot be made tight, but it doesn't have to sink. The bilge pumps must be manned endlessly. It's a dirty job with no end in sight but that is not reason for despair. We've never had a ship that didn't leak and don't yet know how to make one. This one leaks less than those of the past. Things have improved. It is only ignorance of that past, and false narratives by hustlers looking to sell snake oil ( i.e. leftists) that prevent a more informed evaluation of past, present and future prospects.

They are dead weight. It's irritating to have to carry them around because they bitch and complain continuously while free riding. It's also irritating when they claim credit for improvements, as if their whining somehow caused them when it actually hindered the efforts. But, they are still family. We can't just shoot them however richly they may seem to deserve it. But it would be nice if they didn't grab every megaphone, microphone and pulpit to spew their stinks into society. It makes the already dirty jobs even less pleasant. I used to think that the talking trades - academics, journalists etc. - could and would help. Not. They are leftists too. They have no interest in helping, it won't make the sale.