Eco-Narcissism

The “destroy your life to save the planet” Green narrative continues to crumble in the face of twin realities: the rate and perils of global warming are proving to be overblown, and the wind-and-solar net-zero fantasy is crashing against multiple reefs of reality.

Those realities notwithstanding, the professional doomsayers persist.

Behold, the eco-scold extraordinaire Greta Thunberg, fresh off her rebuked attempts to invade Gaza by sea (not quite sure what the Israel-Hamas conflict has to do with global warming, but...), joined “dozens of members of the radical Extinction Rebellion group” in a green stunt.

Literally.

They dumped green dye into Venice’s Grand Canal, presumably to raise awareness of climate change.

As if there are people in the Western world unaware of the subject.

As if vandalism is a good way to convince the skeptical.

As if fringe groups of performance artists engaging in “look at us” antics can sway a public worn out by decades of unrequited doomsaying.

This Venice stunt falls, in my opinion, into the same category as the “glue ourselves to the highway” stupidity. The only people swayed by that are those delayed in their travels, and they are swayed in the other direction.

While I’m not going to call anthropogenic global warming itself a racket - it’s overblown in both magnitude and peril, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening - it’s clear to me that the activism it has spawned has reached Eric Hoffer’s “racket” stage.

The world’s global warming elite recently gathered in Brazil for the 30th “Conference of the Parties” to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), aka COP30. This annual ‘warm-in’ produces a lot of greenhouse gases, both from the hundreds of private jets used to transport that passel of Best-and-Brightest snobs and high-hats, and from their bloviating about the need to ruin people’s lives in pursuit of their green utopia. Other people’s lives, that is - they will not suffer (or tolerate) the slightest downturn in their own living standards. These COPs are akin to the United Nations at this point: just an excuse for the parasite class to live it up while telling each other how important they are.

That last bit is the reality of the professional eco movement today. The Thunbergs of the world are feeding their own narcissism, not saving the planet. While Thunberg herself claims she doesn’t receive any money for her activism (she apparently gets by on book and other royalties and prize money, along with public money for her basic living needs - woo hoo European welfare states!), at least some of the professional agitators she hangs with are soaking up money from both private donors and NGOs. Private donors can do what they want, but we’ve seen how NGOs use taxpayer dollars to advance things that many taxpayers don’t want advanced.

All in the name of, I repeat myself, petulant narcissism. Heaven forfend they look at reality and then ponder the possibility that their beliefs are a bit off the mark.