Earth Day 2018 – trying to define a conservative
Green philosophy
By
Mark Wegierski
web posted April 16, 2018
The
managerial welfare state consumes the planet
Many
people in Western societies today are rightly
concerned with environmental issues. The locus of resistance to many
negative
current-day trends is likely to be found in ecology. Ironically,
however, it
could be argued that the Western managerial welfare-state so beloved by
the
Left is deeply anti-ecological, and possibly the main consumer of the
planet.
The managerial welfare-state is indeed very anti-ecological.
There
exists today, in most Western societies, something
that could be called the commodity-consumption/welfare-state. Despite
the
attempts of some boosters of the welfare-state to distinguish between
the “bad�?
materialism of corporate consumerism, and the presumably “good�?
materialism of
redistributive welfare-policies, the differences between what could
both be
seen as materialistic outlooks are minimal. It could also be pointedly
asked
how much real wealth have massive government bureaucracies ever
produced. One
could also ask pointed questions about the precise ratio between the
costs of
administration, and the amount of money delivered to the actual needy
person.
Furthermore,
a genuine
sacrifice in the welfare-state administrators’ and propagandists’
consumption-lifestyle, on behalf of ecological concerns, is
comparatively rare.
Many of their ostensibly pro-ecological policies are designed so as to
shift
the maximum of costs onto other people, and to exponentially increase
the
permissible levels of government intrusion. One of the most obvious
inducements
to the conservation of such resources as electricity is to charge
market prices
for them, yet this is usually considered as leading to impermissible
inequity.
Also,
since boosters of the welfare-state typically absolve people of any
responsibility for their individual actions, it thereby lessens the
appeal they
can make on behalf of individual conservation efforts. For example, why
should
anyone limit their water-consumption, if they are receiving it for free
(or
almost free), and know that even if they limit themselves,
irresponsible others
will use much more?
It
could also be pointed out that the rather abstract
allegiances of many sincere ecologists to “the planet�? might not always
make
the most effective behavioural inducement. Some people tend to care
most for
their own nation, local community, and family. So the ecological appeal
might
in some cases be better framed in terms of preserving the ecology of this country and this countryside.
Indeed, it might be markedly more difficult to
make arguments for sacrifices in one’s own consumption, if one’s
national
resources will invariably be drawn upon by ever-increasing immigration,
and
ever-increasing populations abroad.
It
could be argued that the
commodity-consumption/welfare-state as it exists in most of the West
today,
rapidly consumes the long-accumulated, once-carefully-shepherded wealth
of a
given state/society/nation like a ravenous, raging fire, in the end
leaving
only a burnt-out husk. The GDP is expected to rise at least 3% a year,
and it
seems that it is never enough. Extrapolating the possible ecological
consequences
of a compounding GDP increase (which is largely coterminous with
ever-increasing consumption and resource-use patterns) over a period of
a few
hundred years is truly frightening. The maintenance of what are (by any
world-historical measure) the comparatively very high living standards
of a
Western welfare-state can probably only occur with the intensifying
despoliation of the natural environment; or with net negative
population
growth.
Ironically,
the hypertrophy of immense wealth also
actually results in the tendency towards the atrophy of authentic
social
standards and much of authentic social existence. Even as ever-greater
wealth
is generated, society loses many of its earlier good habits that would
allow it
to utilize and carefully conserve that wealth towards ensuring a
long-term,
sustainable existence. Indeed, there is waste at most levels of
society,
extending from the grotesque lifestyles of many entertainment and
sports
celebrities, to the very comfortable lives of the managerial corporate
and
administrative elites, even to the careless resource-use habits of some
welfare-recipients. It could be argued that older, lower-middle-class
and
working-class people live the most abstemious, self-sacrificing,
“conservationist�? types of existence. The latte-drinking “bourgeois
bohemians�?
(described by David Brooks), who claim to be “progressive�? and
environmentally-sensitive, usually have far more conspicuous
consumption habits
than the lower-middle-class and working-class people whom they often
disdain as
unimaginative and hopelessly retrograde.
It
is clear that Western managerial welfare-societies are
the very opposite of premodern "stable-state" (or
"steady-state") societies. Had the resources offered by the
consumptionist welfare-state over the last fifty years been carefully
husbanded
or shepherded, they could have possibly lasted for centuries --
relative to
previously available material standards of living for most of human
history and
humankind. Indeed, the Western-derived, socially-liberal,
multiculturalist,
consumptionist welfare-state might be only a very brief episode in
human
history, before some kind of massive dissolution into chaos, or,
possibly, some
sort of new re-integration, takes place.
It
should be realized that ecological and
environmentalist thinking may have elements that are very deeply
traditionalist.
Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical
researcher.