Klein: No Logo, No Shopping, No Freedom

. . . has a solution to climate change and it goes like this: punitive taxation; massive wealth re-distribution; the abolition of free trade and free markets; a state-enforced end to to the “cult of shopping”; the whole to be supervised by a New World Order of selfless illuminati (who presumably resemble Naomi Klein).

If it weren’t so scary it would almost be funny, the way the leftie Canadian activist on the basis of no evidence whatsoever declares that the time has come to strip the human race of all its hard-won freedoms in order to save the planet from a non-existent problem. Unfortunately, Klein means it and her audience takes her seriously. Just read the first comment below her screed:

I can’t say enough good things about this article. It’s a manifesto for the next 100 years. Corporate capitalism is doomed by the immutable fact of finite resources; it will require planning and sharing to sustain civilization in the future, which is heretical thinking in the boardrooms of elite capitalists.

O-K. And the rationale for doing all this stuff would be what, exactly, Naomi? Some new devastating proof you’ve managed to unearth, perhaps, showing once and for all that the measurements are wrong and global warming didn’t stop in 1998? A dazzling refutation of Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory? Surprising new data showing that, contrary to the false consciousness promoted by the running dog lackey capitalist pigs who write our history books, totalitarian planning regimes of the kind you advocate in fact brought nothing but bounty, happiness and environmental loveliness to Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Kim Il Sung’s North Korea?

Nope. All Naomi can manage by way of justification is this:

Before I go any further, let me be absolutely clear: as 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists attest, the Heartlanders are completely wrong about the science. The heat-trapping gases released into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels are already causing temperatures to increase. If we are not on a radically different energy path by the end of this decade, we are in for a world of pain.

Er, Naomi. Here are some things you should know before you type out your next eco-fascistic horror rant. 1. That “97 per cent” figure: it’s kind of an urban myth. 2. The heat-trapping gas and fossil fuel theory: it’s at best moot, not least because the “feedbacks” – as you’d know if you’d bothered to do a scintilla of research – are still so ill-understood.  3. the “radically different energy path” bit: Says who? And on what evidence? 4. “a world of pain”. Right. And you’ll have done a cost benefit analysis here will you? You can show us that the freedom-destroying, economy-ruining totalitarianism you advocate will a) make the blindest bit of difference to global mean temperatures and b) cause less pain than a world where it’s ever so slightly warmer and where people are free to shop without jackbooted Canadian eco-activists stamping up and down shrieking: “Das ist Verboten!”?

I don’t think so.