Are environmentalists the reactionaries of the 21st century?
How can we explain the fact that Brussels, the ‘capital of Europe’, is one of the most backward regions in the world in terms of ‘5G’ coverage? For a simple, factual, verifiable reason: the irreducible ideological hostility of the environmentalists, politically powerful in Brussels, to this new iteration of the technology that is weaving the modern world.
The claimed reasons for this hostility are factually non-existent and are entirely based on the “precautionary principle”, brandished in the absence of any conclusive scientific study. A philosophical motive is evoked: that of “limit”, i.e. the idea that humanity is launched in a frantic race for “progress” to which we should wisely set limits.
Why is it that when many left-wing parties in Europe are in favour of nuclear power — France, the Netherlands, Finland — and the European Commission is considering recognising nuclear power as a sustainable energy source, environmentalists from all parties remain fiercely opposed to nuclear power, especially in Germany and Belgium?
This opposition is all the more striking because nuclear power is the only source of energy that is both permanent (non-intermittent) and produces no CO2. Isn’t the reduction of CO2 emissions the great concern of environmentalists? Haven’t environmentalists gone so far as to demand the subordination of constitutional freedoms to the reduction of CO2 emissions?
As soon as it comes to nuclear power, these CO2 considerations fade into the background, to be replaced by what appears to be the categorical imperative of ecologism: the suppression of nuclear power. Even at the cost, as in Belgium, of an explosion in CO2 emissions through the use of fossil fuels. This same fossil fuel energy, whose supporters are accused by environmentalists of ‘carbo-fascism’ and other niceties.
What is the rational and scientific reason for this about-face? There is none. Nuclear waste is mentioned. But nuclear waste is the archetype of the false problem, a tiny residue that will soon be recyclable within the new generation of nuclear reactors. The real reason, as with 5G, is philosophical. In environmentalist thinking, nuclear power appears as a kind of rape of “Gaia”, that figuration of the environment as “All-Living”. Above all, nuclear power appears as a guarantee for humanity to continue its development through access to virtually limitless energy. We find again this concept of limit, adored by ecologists as well as by a certain tradition on the radical right of the political spectrum; let us quote the contemporary French philosopher Alain de Benoist.
The third illustration of the reactionary character of ecologism as a political ideology is demography. In line with the work of the British economist Thomas Malthus, who came from the radical right of his time, ecologists maintain that humanity is too numerous, that this is not ‘sustainable’, and that it must therefore be drastically reduced. The most extreme dream of a humanity of a few million people. What will be done with the surplus humans? This question is rarely addressed by ecological thinkers.
Let us quote the American ecologist Paul Ehrlich, who in his best-seller The Population Bomb advocates the massive and forced sterilisation of populations “that reproduce like rabbits” (sic), and birth control (abortion, one child per family, with administrative authorisation). These ideas of drastically reducing humanity are also very present in the writings of one of the founders of contemporary ecology, the German philosopher Hans Jonas.
What is, in the end, the common denominator of these environmentalist political postures? To be precisely not purely political and opportunistic postures, but on the contrary the reflection of a coherent political philosophy, reactionary in nature. Reactionary environmentalist philosophy shares the three postulates of all authentically reactionary thought:
First, the idea that man is the problem and nature the solution. This fundamentally pessimistic view of man and mankind, often described as a kind of virus that threatens the environment, defines political ecology.
Secondly, the idea that while man is inherently evil, to be domesticated, nature is inherently good, to be celebrated. Many ecological thinkers so idealise nature, literally ‘de-humanised’, that they come to adhere to a pantheistic and ‘deified’ vision of what German ecologists call the Umwelt (environment).
Finally, the desire to return to an earlier stage of human development. This desire to return to ‘pure’ nature, to a community free of the dross of ‘modernism’, is consubstantial with all reactionary thought. It is, of course, impossible and doomed to failure in practice, but it nevertheless constitutes the framework, the substratum and the humus of ecological philosophy.
There is nothing dishonourable about being reactionary. However, the public debate would gain in clarity, and sincerity, if the ecologists assumed the true nature of their political philosophy.
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