Originally published in French:
by Drieu Godefridi ©2018
(an English translation)
Fascinating fertility of the human spirit which, over the centuries, continues to generate theories and new ideologies, more fanciful than the others.
Whimsical, and often dangerous; the history of the twentieth century of abundance testifies to it. It is forgotten, but Marxism was originally offered as a scientific theory; Marx claimed to describe the workings of history and to predict – not to advocate – the revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, then the advent of classless, and ultimately stateless society.
Marxism as a science, a hundred times refuted since the works of the socialist critic Eduard Bernstein, a thousand times refuted by the facts, is no longer claimed as such only by small, very local sects.
The great ideology of our time is ecologism/environmentalism (in the sense of political ecology). Oh, nothing new. National Socialism, also supported by scientific pretensions, claimed its proximity to nature; thus the “Aryan brute” was deemed more “natural” and “healthy” than his nemesis, the merchant, the bourgeois, the Jew. This shoddy pseudo-science was quickly swept away by the wind of history, a great disinfectant of reason.
In its contemporary version, ecologism/environmentalism is born of an improbable theoretical matrix, in which are mixed hostility to the technique (Jünger, Heidegger, Habermas), Malthusianism (Thomas Malthus, anti-humanist author at the turn of the XVIII and Nineteenth century, Paul Ehrlich) and what is called “deep-ecology”, or deep ecology (Hans Jonas), is the belief that man is not only a danger to man, but that he ‘inscribed in a fundamentally antagonistic relationship with nature.
Contemporary environmentalism is an antihumanism in the strict sense. At best, man is perceived as a danger and a nuisance to contain; at worst, as a proliferating virus that needs to be eradicated. In this way, environmentalism breaks radically with the entire Judeo-Christian tradition, which makes man the seat of meaning and morality. In the Torah, Abraham enjoins men to stop worshiping trees, such as pagans, to understand that there is reason and meaning only in man.
No need to multiply theoretical considerations. Because our thesis is shown, very simply, by the claims of contemporary ecologists. Let’s take two examples.
During a conference given in September 2018 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7sMZiSKmqg), the astrophysicist Aurélien Barrau, member of the management committee of the Grenoble-Alpes Center for Theoretical Physics and the laboratory of excellence ENIGMASS, head of the master of subatomic physics and cosmology of Grenoble, member of the National Committee for Scientific Research (CNRS), explained that man is a nuisance to nature, and that our destructive behavior (for the macrofauna “) are unfortunately inherent, not only to what we do, but to what we are.
The problem is obviously ontological, according to Barrau. Man, explains our physicist, is a weak creature, incapable of reasoning on a “collective scale”, in fact a sickly being. “Therefore, we need concrete, coercive, unpopular political measures that oppose our individual liberties, and we can not do otherwise.”
Terrible sentence! A regime that suppresses individual freedoms – to move, to heat, to dress, to undertake, to circulate, to create, to found a family – is not only “authoritarian”. Such a regime is totalitarian in the strict sense, aiming to regulate the life – the survival – of men down to the smallest detail of their deeds and actions. This is what I called the totalitarian temptation of environmentalism.
In an interview with “Libération” dated July 29, 2018 (Originally at: https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2018/07/29/francois-marie-breon-la-te-four-le-climat-is-contraire- -aux-libertes-individuelles_1669641), the climatologist François-Marie Bréon of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences (IPSL), author of the IPCC (UN political body on climate) explains that we must imperatively give up the heating, tourism, simply shutting down entire sectors of our economies, and finally giving up individual freedoms and democracy, all of which are incompatible with the fight against CO2 emissions.
Still these measures will be insufficient, specifies this distinguished climatologist. For the only measure capable of preserving the environment would be to divide humanity by ten. Mr. Bréon remains in default of specifying how to get rid of nine tenths of humanity. This is what I call the humanistic temptation of environmentalism, perfectly consistent with its theoretical foundations.
We must take environmentalism seriously. Not as science, because political ecology is not more scientific than were Marxism or National Socialism.
We must take environmentalism seriously because this ideology brings claims that are more totalitarian and humanicidal. and more radical than any of its predecessors.
Drieu Godefridi is author of “IPCC – A Scientific Body?”
The original French version is “Le GIEC est mort: Vive la Science”
https://www.amazon.fr/GIEC-est-mort-Vive-science/dp/2960047370
He also authored: “La Revolution Trump”
https://www.amazon.ca/r%C3%A9volution-Trump-Drieu–Godefridi/dp/2930650141
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