Slashdot Mirror
James Lovelock Suggests Suspending Democracy To Save the World
mosb1000 writes "Climate scientist James Lovelock claims it may be necessary to put democracy on hold to prevent a global climate catastrophe. He goes on to say that the best remedies may be adaptation techniques such as building sea defenses."
Lovelock is famously the creator of the Gaia hypothesis.
I'm an environmentalist, but I also know that if you put democracy "on hold" it's awfully hard to get it started again.
Ugh! Naked troll story.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
if if only only we we had had the the technology technology
Climate scientist James Lovelock claims it may be necessary to put democracy on hold to prevent a global climate catastrophe.
So he wants to save a world without Democracy in it?
I claim it may be necessary to put climate scientist James Lovelock on hold to prevent a global Democracy catastrophe.
A successful global effort to "put democracy on hold" for any reason would be proof enough to me that this planet is not worth saving.
Here in the US, we don't have democracy now. We have a two party, democratic REPUBLIC. The politicians can pretty much do whatever they want after they have been elected because the media has conditioned us to believe that we have only two parties from which to choose (i.e. - "bipartisan").
Ban the party system. At this point, the legislative vending machine that we call "government" will fall apart and we'll have something much closer to "democracy".
More
...stepping on a human face forever.
It's going to be a Birkenstock.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Elect me benevolent dictator and I promise to limit my term. I'll step down as soon as all of the world's problems are fixed.
I thought it was an effective choice between two parties with both being in the pockets of big business? So really its one choice in reality and you don't have enough money to influence what happens. Ever.
Shh.
I'm pretty sure it's actually the lack of democracy (for lack of a better word) coupled with the dynamics of capitalism that have us in this hole.
I don't think anyone has taken Gaea seriously since someone pointed out that the switch-over to an oxygen-rich atmosphere meant Gaea essentially committed suicide to bring on the new order of things.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yeah Plato (the philosopher) thought people like him should be making decisions and Lovelock thinks the folks who are put in charge should make certain decisions the way he sees things.
There is nothing new about this approach and we know how it ends
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
This whole 'carbon footprint' and 'green' malarky is just a way to make us feel bad about pretty much anything we do even though we might be able to afford it and so the eventual aim seems to be to usher in an authoritarian regime where everybody is given the absolute minimum necessary to survive.
These doomsday environmentalists are not helping the situation one bit - I am actually interested in renewable energy, electric cars and so on but each time one of these guys opens their mouth I feel like jumping into the car and pouring 70 litres of petrol into the tank while I'm still allowed, you know.
Before we are all thrown into a supermassive apartment block and given only rice crackers and water to live off. If we are lucky they might allow us a single CFL in our cell and the very obedient are allowed a recycled netbook with Google Chrome OS or similar Web-only OS.
Meanwhile the politicians and scientists behind this regime will obviously be livin' the good live on some island with all the fuel and personal freedom they could possibly ever think of asking for.
People like this who don't value their democratic freedoms should be made to live by their own decrees. So start with James Lovelock's democratic rights:
- I'm sorry Mr Lovelock, you no longer have a say in that
- I'm sorry Mr Lovelock, but you may no longer speak on that issue. If you do, you shall be arrested.
- I'm sorry Mr Lovelock, but you're under arrest. Your rights have been stripped so we don't have to give you a reason, or a trial, or let your family know.
- I'm sorry Mr Lovelock, but your food, water, and oxygen rations have been reallocated to someone else.
How'd ya like that lack of democracy now you crazy coote? Didn't think so.
Reductio ad aburdum? Perhaps, but then again what he's saying is so absurd perhaps the reductio part wasn't needed.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I don't think so...at the same time, this guy has to be the first environmentalist to speak the truth behind their extremist message: it's about controlling people's lives, and less about the environment.
We have to suspend democracy in order to save it eh? Sounds like the Vietnam era "we have to destroy the village to save it".
Conspiracy theorists are babbling about how climate change is an excuse to suspend democracy and unite all countries under a world government, and the solution is to suspend democracy and unite all countries under a world government in order to combat climate change. That's deliciously ironic.
I'm with Plato: the general population is too stupid for a democratic system. Unfortunately we have not yet reached Culture levels of technology so it's the best option we have at the moment.
That's all it is. This guy is a crackpot. He came up with a "theory" dressed up in science, that is nothing but wild speculation. Actually, it's not even speculation. It's Religion. He just decided the earth is a sentient being, without providing any kind of evidence for this ridiculous claim.
He also makes ridiculously close predictions for the "end of the world" and other unscientific predictions.
Now we know he's also against democracy.
What a nice guy.
Please, go ahead and try to measure him here http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html. My crackpot-o-meter went off-scale after trying to measure his theories.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
To fight terrorist porn. Or was it child terrorism?
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
If we have to give up essential freedom to stop climate change than I don't want stop it all. I'd rather just adapt to the new conditions whatever they may be.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Lovelock is being taken out of context. A more full quote:
But it can't happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
From the slightly-less-badly-edited interview at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
In other words, he's not calling for putting democracy on hold. He's predicting that it's going to reach a point where it's an obvious, impending crisis, like a war, and people aren't going to respond democratically to it.
He doesn't believe people are going to take climate change seriously until it's too late. Or at least, not enough people. There will continue to be arguments and finger-pointing until it finally becomes obvious. Not that it's a good thing, just a thing he expects.
Read the rest of the interview, and Lovelock sounds less like a monster than the article is trying to make him out to be. He's still elitist, proudly so:
Science was always elitist and has to be elitist. The very idea of diluting it down [to be more egalitarian] is crazy. We're paying the price for it now.
but he's not calling for an end to democracy. He's simply telling everybody they'll be sorry if they don't listen to him.
Goes to show exactly why climate change nut-jobs are DANGEROUS PEOPLE. But the history of the world is full of examples of killing people for lies. Climate change is a good substitute for (insert diety of choice), or even a political credo (Communism/Maoism/(proving Godwin's law)National Socialism). Hey let's suspend freedom to "save the environment".
The real problem behind all of this is, of course, overpopulation. I propose that instead of eliminating democracy we should just eliminate around 80% of the population. I can provide a list of volunteers for extermination (starting with Mr. Lovelock), and I ask others to do likewise. I, of course, choose not to be on any list.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This guy has lost the plot. First nuclear power as a way to save the planet. Now 'putting democracy on hold' to achieve the same goal.
Now, I'm under no illusions as to the state of our alleged democracy: we don't have one. We are wage slaves who delegate our power to representatives of the ruling class. But do we really want to be 'officially' handing over the keys like this?
Surely the only way to achieve the kind of world-wide change we need is a world-wide democratic revolution ( and no, I'm not talking about American / Western style democracy, but REAL democracy ). Bring on the TRULY democratic, one-world government!
We've got the world's most capable military by a very large margin, more than half our citizens own guns and know how to use them (to quote the Japanease Admiral, a rifle behind every blade of grass), etc. etc. etc....
Only an egghead from a country that started to disarm it's subjects almost a century ago (the Bolshevik revolution terrified the U.K. ruling class) could suggest such lunacy.
Sure I agree that we may be circling the drain waiting for a democratically acceptable solution to the problem. But claiming that democracy should be suspended while intelligent people set about saving the rest of us is just the sort of thing that has the tea bag party threatening to revolt. Last weekend they kicked it off in Searchlight, NV, and one of their rants is that global warming is part of a plot to eliminate American sovereignty. Now after sensible people tried to assure them that this isn't so, this egghead pops up with all this elitist crap.
In terms of practical historical precedent, not so much. This sort of thing tends to end badly.
While I don't disagree, it's interesting to look at the example of Britain in World War Two. In effect, the major parties all banded together to form a single wartime government, thereby suspending true democracy for the greater good. However, in 1945 Labour immediately left the coalition and contested the general election in opposition to the government.
I think the point this guy is trying to make is that in the face of a sufficiently serious threat, partisan differences become an impediment to effective action. He might have done better to suggest that political parties need to overcome their differences and regard climate change and the need for a response to it as a settled, undeniable fact rather than a field for political dispute and point-scoring. But that would have got him fewer headlines.
Read Pynchon.
The first is that you seem to think that technology can't fix this problem. Please remember that a catastrophe of human population has been predicted for a long time. I'm not talking about decades long, I'm talking about centuries long. Malthus would be one of the classical famous names in it and he was late 1700s early 1800s. People seem to want to think that we can't fix our problems but that's wrong. There's a rather good TED talk on the matter (http://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_on_our_place_in_the_cosmos.html) that our problems are more or less engineering problems and we need to focus our efforts on science and technology.
The second is that we can check population growth though pretty voluntary means, if we increase the quality of life for people. We find that counter to simple organisms we don't reproduce more and more in ideal conditions. Rather we voluntarily reduce our growth. You see this in first world nations where population growth is low or even negative.
Finally the ultimate problem is that while you might think that you, or someone you idolize or believe to be really smart, isn't really as smart and as incorruptible as you or they think. The idea that there is a person or group that we can put in charge with more or less no limits on their power because it is for the greater good is a bad one. We have millennia of human history showing that is NOT the case. While they may start with nothing but high ideals, the result has been universally lousy.
I know it may be easy to think that people who are educated (to the standards you consider educated) would make a better world if only they were allowed the power to do so, but that really isn't the case.
...like millions of skeptics crying out, "See? I told you that's what they were really after all along!"
we need to put environmentalism on hold, to prevent a political catastrophe
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As usuall words are being taken out of context here. If you look at the full interview linked to from the article you will find the full quote is as follows...
"What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."
This "whack-job" maybe 90yo but he's not a senile fool, he basically invented modern Earth Science and in recent years has attacked the green movement for it's dogmatic stance on nuclear energy (which has softened recently largely due mainly to Lovelock's arguments). What he is saying is AGW is as big a threat as war and needs a similar response in terms of unified societal effort. You may or may not agree with that but either way he is not saying "Oh sorry, your freedoms are inconvenient."
Of course the real wack-jobs will use his words as evidence for their NWO conspiracy theories.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
One begins to say stupid things keeping a straight face.
Democracy is by no means the most popular form of government. Just for starters China is not a democracy, carry on adding countries with no functioning democracies, with autocracies, theocracies and outright dictatorships and you will find out that the truly democratic world shrinks to a few enlightened pockets, and even there its hold is at times dubious.
It can be proven objectively that the standards of living, the ecology, educational achievements, respect for property and human rights, amongst many other desirable outcomes are better served by a democratic system. Democracy is better in any way that matters to individuals, minorities and big populations in general. We had several decades of leftist dictatorships in several countries, pretty much all failed, theocracies? look at Iran or Saudi Arabia, countries no fit for decen civilized living, dictatorships? Yeah, Venezuelans are having a great time.
Honestly, how a properly educated and curious person can claim such idiocy is beyond contemptible.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
A republic can be a democracy. They are non exclusive terms.
It seems like in the US somebody is disseminating this nonsense since very often people in this venerable website claim this fallacy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. " - William Pitt
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
As if we actually have democracy, anywhere.
Most nations are a plutocracy disguised as a republic, and sold to the public as a democracy.
Question everything
I don't think so...at the same time, this guy has to be the first environmentalist to speak the truth behind their extremist message: it's about controlling people's lives, and less about the environment.
wait a minute: you're saying that the goal of environmentalists ( all or at least the majority ) is to control people's lives, NOT ACTUALLY to save the environment for future human inhabitants?
you sir, are a silly goose.
Suspending democracy means killing or imprisoning dissidents.
Ban the party system
How?
And I don't mean "how could it be possible", I mean "how, specifically, would you do it?"
The two party system is an emergent property of the electoral college and the single-member district plurality voting system (SMDP).
See also "Duverger's law":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duvergers_Law
So in order to get rid of it, you'd got to institute either proportional representation or alternative vote (e.g. in Australia, you vote for your first, second, and third choices, and votes are tallied that way). The main obstacle to this is that the current system benefits the parties currently in power, so it is not in their short term interests to change things. Ironically, the communications latency and participation issues that drove the electoral colleges inclusion in the constitution are no longer relevant, but that hasn't reduced how entrenched it is.
-- Terry
Why? "Environmentalist" sounds just fine to me. After all, it really means "preserve the environment", not "wipe out the pesky human infestation on the beautiful face of Gaia".
Instead, why not label those guys differently - say, "eco-terrorists".
The clever Mr. Lovelock, inventor of several useful gadgets, has repeatedly demonstrated very poor judgment. He was wrong about nuclear power, CFCs, and Global Warming causes. Now, he would like it if his superior intellect was recognized, democracy "suspended" and his opinions simply imposed. The problem, as previous poster NiceGeek observed, is that, once given a taste of autocracy, the anointed ones are unlikely to relinquish it.
His arrogance is typical of those who consider themselves superior to the masses. We have another one currently residing in the White House.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
It is tyranny of the majority. It is mob rule.
I am very glad we live in a Republic and not a pure Democracy.
Because totalitarian governments have such a good record in environmental matters.
I don't care what studies come out, the planet, including all the governments, aren't going to shut down the oil industry. Right off the bat, you would have global famine within one crop season. I'm a farmer, I can state this with 100% confidence. Right off the bat 2, all the militaries would squawk, all their toys run on petroleum. There are numerous other reasons, but those two right there negate any idea of exxon or any other oil companies being shut down. If they get charged some huge carbon tax, guess what, they *don't care*, not a bit, not for one second do they care, they will still sell all their oil, every drop, and you and the other consumers will pay what it costs. See above, you like to eat? We can make electric cars, sure, but you aren't readily replacing all the huge diesel equipment, the stuff that makes modern life possible, out there with electric alternatives anytime soon.
So you are going to need a much better plan B than hoping that humanity will stop using oil products, no matter whose studies you look at. All those studies..the point is just moot without a viable alternative in place. The only one I can think of is an emergency push to find a REALLY suitable set of crops and techniques to make biodiesel.(our battery tech is not even close to good enough to make huge land based electric equipment on any scales needed. there are a few examples of all electric equipment, but to think of replacing all the tractors and combines and crawlers and..all of it..batteries ain't gonna cut it, so it needs to be diesel or biodiesel)
Something a lot better than what we have now for biodiesel, which is primarily soybeans, canola or palm oil derived. Industrial hemp on huge scales could make a small dent in the volume right now, that's about it. a small dent. They keep talking about algae, but that would have to be multi-government seized research, no patents, massive funds and studies thrown at it, then release the results to the world in an open source fashion to get the scale up once they come up with something that works. We can do it on a smaller scale now, it does work, but to have a full replacement.....not happening at this time. exxon and whatever are in no danger of going out of business right now. You are really going to have to concentrate on replacing coal before petroleum, that is way more doable with the tech we have now, solar, wind, fission, hydro, tidal, etc.