Authoritarianism: Good for the Environment!
January 10th, 2008 by Peter SudermanThis is sort of hilarious — and completely depressing. MotherJones environmental blogger Jennifer Phillips looks upon China’s authoritarianism favorably … at least when deployed in service of policies she likes. In a post titled “If China Can Ban Plastic Bags, Why Can’t We?” she writes:
Communist governments may be oppressive to American eyes, but they do have the power to make sweeping environmental changes. Key example: China.
Translation: Oppression, not so bad after all!
There’s a really ugly strain of environmentalism that pines for the sort of sweeping, centralized controls seen in authoritarian countries like China — never mind the millions of people who’ve been killed or imprisoned during the decades of oppression there. This doesn’t mean that we should never work with or interact with the country — there are times when we should! — but we should never sanction acts of authoritarianism as a good thing.
January 10th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Ridiculous. Somebody go find Gallagher ’cause this watermelons needs smashing.
January 11th, 2008 at 2:33 am
Yea, we should deal with China when we can make money off them, right? Give me a break…plastic bags will be sitting in landfills for many centuries to come. Getting rid of them would be a benefit to our entire planet. We don’t need China’s tactics to do that in this country…it’s already been done apparently in parts of CA.
January 13th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
There’s no end to the authoritarian tendencies of environmentalists. Check Al Gore’s Bali address, where
Gore openly expressed hostility towards the democratic process. He described certain elected governments as ‘obstacles’ to the environmentalist agenda being drawn up in Bali, and called on the ‘relatively small group’ of eco-enlightened ones to ignore or leap over these obstacles. ‘My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali…’ he said. ‘But if we look realistically at the situation that confronts us, then wisdom would call for moving forward in spite of that obstacle.’ (2) Who needs to take into consideration the views of a government elected by tens of millions of Americans when you have ‘realism’ and ‘wisdom’ on your side?
Ah, take a deep breath of freedom while you can.
Gore’s next book: “How green was my concentration camp”
January 14th, 2008 at 4:06 am
I don’t agree with Al Gore on global warming, but to call him hostile to the democratic process is ridiculous. The only reason Gore didn’t become the President in 2000 is because he chose to respect the Supreme Court’s bogus decision (it’s the only decision in the history of the Court that could *never* be sited in the future as precident) to stop counting ballots in FL. He did this because he deeply believes in our democracy. Had all the balllots from all the counties in FL been counted fairly…Gore would have won!
When the USA refuses to change on any issue (whether we are on the “right” side of that issue or not), we do become a huge obsticle to change. We’re the most powerful country on the planet!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Translation: Oppression, not so bad after all!
You guys would get a lot more credit from me if you’d actually go both ways with your criticism of China. China, right now, is bailing out Citibank, and the Chinese Government (and Singapore Government) are now going to own big chunks (tens of billions of dollars) of U.S. Companies.
So, for whatever reason, I can only draw the conclusion that a foreign government’s owning huge portions of major American banks is just fine, so long as China doesn’t ban plastic bags.
Okay.