Pascal Bruckner

For my few readers who may not be following the French intellectual debates of our time I want to call your attention to this book review of Pascal Bruckner’s book The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse.

Bruckner does a wonderful job of showing how modern ecology is a re-living of traditional Marxism. Here are several paragraphs from the book review which in turn quotes Bruckner himself:

“In the wrong hands, the best of causes can degenerate into an abomination”—which is exactly what Bruckner thinks has happened to environmentalism.

Ecologism has become a global ideology that covers all of existence, modes of production as much as ways of life. In it are found all the faults of Marxism applied to the environment: the omnipresent scientism, the appalling visions of reality, the admonishment of those who are guilty of not understanding those who wish us well. All the foolishness of Bolshevism, Maoism, and Trotskyism are somehow reformulated exponentially in the name of saving the planet.

He notes that “Marxism designated capitalism as responsible for human misery. .  .  . With ecologism, we move up a notch: the guilty party is humanity itself.” The result is a domain of thought and action today that rewards vehemence over sensibility. This is not a new theme; the “watermelon” label—green on the outside, red on the inside—has been applied to environmentalists for a while. Likewise, Bruckner joins in seeing environmentalism as a secular religion. But Bruckner captures more of the depth and texture of these two aspects of environmentalism than do other critics.

Along the way, he sheds fresh light on why even reasonable and rational environmental concern enables the nonsensical and extreme versions to flourish and dominate. The rational environmentalist wishes to warn us of the damage industrial civilization brings with it, while the nonsensical environmentalist wishes only to use this fact as a stick to beat human beings and condemn modern industrial civilization.

Bruckner offers a particular twist on the environmentalism-as-religion theme. More than just a form of faith, environmentalism revives a monastic mentality that wraps human guilt together with a call for humility, repentance, and a discipline of abasement. This “gaseous equivalent of Original Sin”—an eco version of the fall of man—explains why environmentalists are congenitally resistant to facts, science, and progress itself. Environmentalism isn’t out primarily to save nature, but to purify humanity: “Adding ‘eco’ .  .  . and ‘bio’ to any word is enough to sanctify it”—although it is no longer acceptable to the high priests to carry your holy eco-water in plastic bottles.........

He adds brilliantly how foolish the environmentalists look. “A cosmic calamity is not going to be averted by eating vegetables and sorting our rubbish.” The very triviality of the paltry practical exhortations undoubtedly deepens the furious gloom and misanthropy of environmentalists—making them all the more dangerous to their fellow humans. And Bruckner understands that, as with Marxism and other redemptive schemes of the radical left, today’s environmentalism unbound would necessarily involve the “lethal impulses” of retributive tyranny. “[W]e can almost hear the heavy door of a dungeon closing behind us,” says Bruckner of the environmentalists he vividly describes as “our Robespierres of the candle.”