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Shellenberger: The Quiet Desperation Of Woke Climate Fanatics

by Michael Shellenberger
October 18, 2022, 1:37 PM
in News and Opinion
Reading Time: 5 mins read
A A
2

pouring milkOver the last few weeks, climate activists in Britain have blocked highways (because cars emit carbon dioxide), poured milk onto the floors of supermarkets (because livestock emits methane), and thrown tomato soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” (because climate change is more important than art. Or something).

The activists are a kind of reboot of the Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate protests in the UK in the fall of 2019. [bold, links added]

People in the UK are at risk of dying from natural gas shortages. Still, the climate activists with “Just Stop Oil” think it’s outrageous that their government is desperately trying to produce more natural gas for its people.

But without more natural gas, there could be three-hour-long blackouts, which threaten the operation of medical equipment, and thus the lives of vulnerable people.

The various media stunts appeared authentically grassroots but were, in fact, financed by a $1 million grant from a philanthropic group called Climate Emergency Fund, which is funded by their heirs to the Getty and Rockefeller oil fortunes, and was founded in 2019.

The Board of Directors consists of a who’s-who of climate alarmism including “Don’t Look Up!” film director, Adam McKay, who donated $4 million, New Yorker writer Bill McKibben, and New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.

The Fund and its grantees have been cheered on by the secretary-general of the United Nations and much of the mainstream media.

A portion of the web page of Climate Emergency Fund.

In a series of recent articles, I have argued that what lies behind climate fanaticism and narcissism is an apocalyptic religion born from nihilism.

The power of science to explain humankind’s place in the universe (e.g., the big bang, evolution by natural selection) resulted in a dominant narrative coming out of society’s elite institutions for over 100 years that human life has no inherent meaning or purpose (nihilism). We’re just animals like any other.

This depressing story has led the ostensibly secular elite, who are educated and indoctrinated in universities that teach nihilism as unquestioning scientific gospel, to create a new apocalyptic religion (climate catastrophe), complete with a new victim—god (nature), a new reason for guilt (sins against nature), and a path for redemption (renewables and low-energy living).

It, and the broader Woke religion, have found intellectual ballast since World War II from Rousseau, Malthus, and Foucault.

But that account only partly addresses the motivations of the fanatics. It doesn’t answer why some people become fanatics and others don’t.

It doesn’t explain the specific role of fanatics, particularly in relation to other actors, such as the intellectual architects of the movement, and the institution builders.

Nor does it address how fanaticism ends and what, if anything, can be done to hasten its expiration date.

As such, we need to ask, who exactly are the climate fanatics? And how can their power over Western cultural and political life be reduced?

The Psychology Of Fanaticism

All mass movements have certain things in common, argues Eric Hoffer in his now-classic 1951 work of political psychology, The True Believer.

Harper and Row published Eric Hoffer’s now-classic work of political psychology, The True Believer, in 1951.

Hoffer was mostly describing Nazis and Communists but his observations are incredibly fresh and relevant. I devoured most of the book in a single sitting and underlined many sentences and shouted to myself, “Yes! That’s it!” as I reflected on how well it described climate fanaticism and Woke fanaticism more broadly.

While at times Hoffer can sound reactionary, he was himself working-class, laboring as a longshoreman (stevedore), and he is writing in defense of liberal democracy, not pining for a return to the aristocracy.

Hoffer argues that fanaticism is born from personal frustration. Fanatics are people with more ambition than talent.

Notes Hoffer, “most of the Nazi bigwigs had artistic and literary ambitions which they could not realize. Hitler tried painting and architecture; Goebbels, drama, the novel, and poetry; Rosenberg, architecture and philosophy; von Schirach, poetry; Funk, music; Streicher, painting. ‘Almost all were failures, not only by the usual vulgar criterion of success but by their own artistic criteria.’”

You can see the connection to wounded pride. Many narcissists are seeking to feel relevant but lack the talent or stamina to become any good at their craft.

They must thus resort to cruder actions that require courage but little creativity, or hard work, like throwing a can of tomato soup onto a Van Gogh painting, stopping traffic, or emptying milk onto the floor.

It is notable the extent to which the first and last of those behaviors are typical of the temper tantrums of children. Konstantin Kisin aptly dubbed the climate fanatics as belonging to “tantrum groups.”

For Hoffer, the fanatic pursues politics for the same reason an addict pursues drugs: to escape inner demons.

“The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft,” he notes. “What looks like giving a hand is often holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless… in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.”


Michael Shellenberger is the best-selling author of “Apocalypse Never” and “San Fransicko“, Time Magazine’s “Hero of Environment”, Green Book Award Winner, and Founder of Environmental Progress.

Read rest at Substack

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Comments 2

  1. Spurwing Plover says:
    3 years ago

    The usual band of idiots we would see trying to force their stupid ideology down our throats and frankly they should be arrested sent to jail then fed Bread and water only

    • Russ Wood says:
      3 years ago

      But ‘bread’ is made from wheat, and wheat is grown using (aaaaaagh!) fertiliser! Basically don’t feed em anything except that glop that pretends to be ‘meat’. Oh, and once they’ve eaten that for a week, show them the list of ‘ingredients’!

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