Karl Marx Revisited

If one reads the platform of the Green Party of California one is struck by a sense of Deja vu that it was written by Karl Marx in 1848. It perports to be inspired by "environmentalism" but is in fact a bold statement of the collectivist/leftist movement with a leavening of luddite thinking.

The emergence of "alternative " energy sources has caused the greens to be exposed for the enemies of industrial society that they are:

According to environmentalism, there is no moral way to produce the motive power that industrial civilization requires. Large-scale power production is incompatible with environmentalism's injunction against man-made alterations to the environment. Any form of man-made power that supports industrial civilization, regardless of how little it pollutes or how few resources it uses, is immoral because it supports industrial civilization.

The greens pretend that renewable power sources, which currently supply 2% of the nation's electricity, are a gigantic untapped resource that would be able to support American prosperity. They pretend that it is only the capitalist system that prevents us from enjoying these bountiful sources of energy-energy that would enable us to live in harmony with nature, in perpetuity.

But when California's subsidies-which guaranteed renewable energy generators three times the income of conventional power producers-increased the scale of "alternative" energy in the state, the greens dropped the pretense. They have turned against geothermal, small hydroelectric, and wood-burning generators-and they are turning against wind power producers. Their sin: these generators provide 7.5% of the state's electricity needs and promised to expand with the growing demand for power.

Environmentalists ultimately object to the amount of power produced, regardless of how it is produced. The instant that any technology promises to supply power on an industrial scale, it becomes an unpardonable evil that must be stamped out by force-either by government policy or by direct action.

What are we to think about a movement that makes war on industrial-scale power generation?

In seeking to cut off the motive power of industry, environmentalism is attempting to destroy the Industrial Revolution by starving it [us] to death.

It is little wonder that the ideological refugees from the failed collectivist societies of the 20th century have gravitated toward the environmental™ and feminist™ movements.

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