Tea at Trianon: Why We Can't Take Climate Alarmists Seriously

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, May 5, 2017

Why We Can't Take Climate Alarmists Seriously

From Matt Walsh:

I can only imagine how I would react if I actually believed that the extinction of all mankind was imminent, and my lifestyle was directly contributing to it. At a minimum, I would not drive a car anymore. Ever. At all. I would ditch electricity. I wouldn’t eat any kind of meat. I wouldn’t buy mass made consumer products. I wouldn’t give my money to any company that sells items made in factories with giant smokestacks. Those smokestacks are literally killing people. How could you continue shopping like everything is normal? What kind of monster are you? If I were you, I would live as John the Baptist, eating locusts and wild honey out in the desert. Lives are at stake, are they not? The end is near! Why are you so relaxed about it? Have you even started building the ark yet?

I’m not joking. If I were in your boat (pun intended), I would feel morally obligated to take extreme measures. As a member of the enlightened few, as a person who knows that human life is about to be eradicated, and who knows why, and even when, I would feel an incredible burden of responsibility. If I knew that driving my car, turning on my lights, shopping at the mall, and generally going about my day immersed in modern luxury were all directly causing the current and future death of millions of people, I could not continue engaging in these lethal activities. I would see them as acts of extreme moral recklessness, if not murder, to saunter along on as usual. My conscience would compel me to ensure that I am not responsible for the carnage that is about to occur. How could a person who believes what you allegedly believe possibly arrive at any other conclusion?

It’s become a cliche to point out how all of the major environmental mouthpieces, like DiCaprio and Gore and all the rest, also happen to fly private jets in between the several mansions they own. This fact alone does not disprove the environmentalist narrative, but it is a curious fact that none of its most vocal proponents seem to have taken their own words to heart. Imagine, by comparison, if almost every major pro-life activist also happened to sit on the board of Planned Parenthood. If one or two were exposed as hypocrites in this way you might overlook it, but all of them?

Strangely, only the Amish can be seen riding horses and buggies down the street in this country, but even they don’t believe that automobiles are going to annihilate life on Earth. You do believe that, yet you still drive them. You know how much CO2 was emitted in order to produce your iPhone, yet you still buy a new one every 18 months. You know that hurricanes and tornadoes are popping up everywhere because of the factories that make your trendy shoes and clothing, yet you still stock your closet full of them. You know that your air conditioning unit is slowly poisoning the atmosphere and leading us rapidly to certain death, yet you turn it on the moment the temperature rises above 70 degrees outside. You know that your refrigerator is a cancerous tumor metastasizing on Mother Earth, yet you still won’t preserve your food by drying or pickling it. You know how much safer we’d all be if we stopped using electricity, yet you haven’t gotten that ball rolling, either. WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE, aren’t we? And you can’t even be bothered to crack a window and eat pickled cabbage in the dark like a real environmentalist? (Read more.)