https://www.theepochtimes.com/stop-authoritarian-climate-governance-before-it-is-too-late_4193232.htmlStop ‘Authoritarian Climate Governance’ Before It is Too Lateby Wesley J. Smith
January 4, 2022
NOTE: when reading at the Epoch Times, it's best if you DISABLE JAVASCRIPT in your browser. This can be done with the click of a mouse using free add-ons/extensions.excerpt:Needless to say, the author claims that “unfolding climate catastrophes” have created such an acute state of peril that—unless we voluntarily do what the climate autocrats tell us—world leaders will have no choice but to wield the dictator’s stick. The author helpfully provides specific examples of the despotic policies authoritarian climate governance could impose:
“Governments might impel citizens to make significant lifestyle changes. One pertinent example concerns curbing meat-heavy diets…given the enormous carbon footprint of animal agriculture.”
“A censorship regime that prevents the proliferation of climate denialism or disinformation in public media. This may well conflict with standard conceptions of freedom of expression or of the press. Again, however, to the extent those freedoms have been exercised in ways that have undermined (and continue to undermine) effective climate action.”
“Relaxing property rights in order to nationalize, shutter, or repurpose certain companies, particularly in the energy and agriculture sectors, so as to ensure that the transition away from carbon-intensive production happens rapidly, fairly, and at limited cost.”
“Governments might also justifiably limit certain democratic institutions and processes to the extent these bear on the promulgation or implementation of environmental policy. This could involve imposing a climate litmus-test on those who seek public office, disqualifying anyone who has significant (relational or financial) ties to climate-harming industries or a history of climate denialism.”
“More strongly, governments may establish institutions capable of overturning previous democratic decisions (expressed, for example, in popular referenda or plebiscites) against the implementation of carbon taxes or other necessary climate policies.
And if the people don’t want these policies? “If such restrictions are necessary for preserving FL, then they may be justifiably imposed, even if doing so cuts against the wishes of democratic publics or violates individual or group-based rights until the (credible threat of) emergency has passed.”
Some readers may be thinking: “So, one egghead writing in a high brow journal has delusions of grandeur. It will never happen.”
Don’t be so sure. The fact that such shocking advocacy was published in one of the world’s most important political science publications—and passed peer review!—means that the ideas expressed therein are deemed legitimate and respectable among political scientists and the ruling elite.
Moreover, this article is hardly a one-off. Such argumentation is becoming a pattern among international intellectuals and globalist leaders. For example, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, argued in an official U.N. report that the world should adopt—and the U.N. administer—global speech codes to “better regulate, and manage our digital commons as a global public good.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci has argued that the U.N. should “rebuild the infrastructure of human existence.” Prominent medical journals have called for declaring climate change a public health emergency so that COVID-type restrictions can be imposed.
An advocacy column in the prestigious science journal Nature even proposed imposing “personal carbon allowances” that would ration emissions as the private purchase of gasoline was restricted during World War II—a policy that would be enforced through intrusive high-tech techniques of the kind currently imposed by the Chinese Communist Party’s odious social credit system.
We don’t hear too much about this bubbling cauldron of despotism in the mainstream media. Part of the reason, I think, is that many of these articles are written by academics and policy apparatchiks that most people have never heard of, in the dry prose of academic discourse that lulls readers to sleep.
More at URL above...(excellent essay)
