Humanity is supposed to grow, advance, and become more powerful. ‘Degrowth’ and ‘Net Zero’ sound a lot like primitive impulses obsessed with suffering and death.
When life isn’t growing and expanding, what is it doing?
Stagnating or dying.
What parts of the world have no emissions?
Places where there aren’t any human beings.
Why do I mention this?
Because we are increasingly having the ideology of ‘degrowth’ and ‘net zero’ being pushed on us, and those pushing those ideas have faced far too little scrutiny for the real anti-human impulse behind their agenda.
A modern death cult?
The rise of capitalist nations – achieving living standards once thought to be impossible – represented the triumph of rationality, human ambition, and creativity over those who wanted to keep our species mired in primitivism and poverty.
A key part of the attitude behind the advancement of humanity has been the belief that we can overcome challenges, and that it is always possible to learn more, build more, and have more.
People turned tiny settlements into towns, towns into cities, cities into regions, and regions into nations. At no time did a successful society say “we have enough wealth,” or “it’s time to stop growing.”
That kind of attitude would have been tantamount to giving up and accepting decline and death.
So why are we listening to that kind of attitude today?
Why are we allowing a modern day ‘death cult’ to dictate our future?
Think about it:
All of a sudden, those in power are following people who claim that the time for ‘endless growth’ is over. They are piling more and more taxes on all of us, a deliberate effort to constrain our purchasing power and force us to be poorer – thus making us consume less.
They are demonizing and trying to destroy the oil & gas industry, an industry that has provided the underpinning for our prosperity. Think of how twisted things have become. The oil and gas sector is often spoken of with disdain, yet the people who disdain it are both completely reliant upon it, and could never even come close to uplifting as many people as the oil & gas sector has. We should have tremendous gratitude for the oil & gas sector, because we would living shockingly different – and shockingly worse – lives if that sector didn’t exist.
To get a sense of how degrowth and net zero represent aspects of a dangerous modern day death cult, consider all the things ‘degrowthers’ attack.
They attack capitalism, they attack the oil & gas sector, they attack manufacturing, they attack cars and the mobility/freedom cars give us, they attack spending on space exploration, they attack past successful civilizations, they claim we must ‘decolonize,’ without mention that the countries they demonize as ‘colonizers’ were the most advanced and successful in human history.
The world of the ‘degrowthers’ and ‘net zero’ advocates would be a world full of poverty, massive constraints on freedom, desperation, malaise, and a sense that there was no hope for the future. It would be a world where humans are seen as nothing but a burden on the Earth, rather than the greatest expression of intelligence, strength, and potential.
It would bring a kind of mental death to our civilization, which would precede our economic death.
An attack on human ingenuity and human power
There’s something else important to consider about those who advocate for ‘net zero’ and ‘degrowth.’
They don’t have the strength to build or create anything, so they seek to constrain and tear down those who can.
It’s a kind of meekness and submissiveness and fear before nature which again represents a return to failed primitive societies. It seems almost pathological, like a deep-seated hatred towards those who can generate wealth and who use human ingenuity to assert mastery over nature and carve our own path.
This is why the environmental movement is so similar to many elements of communism, in that it claims to be about helping people but is really nothing more than an expression of resentment by the weak towards the strong.
Humanity should expand and gain wealth & power
Our world will end up going one of two ways: Either we will give in to the ‘net zero’ ‘degrowth’ advocates and return to the poverty of primitive ‘civilization,’ or we will embrace the potential of humanity and realize that we are supposed to keep expanding, keep gaining wealth, and keep enhancing our understanding of – and power over – our planet and beyond.
We should see the immense potential of the universe as an opportunity to be seized, and we should be confident that human strength and human ingenuity can overcome any challenge we face.
And we should recognize that the degrowthers have no moral high-ground. In fact, it’s just the opposite. They are a modern day death cult that should be vehemently opposed by all who value human life, human freedom, and human prosperity.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – YouTube
