In my 2012
book, Merchants of Despair, I exposed the role that Malthusian thought — the
belief that the world cannot support a growing human population — has had in
motivating most of the worst atrocities of the past two centuries, notably
including those of Nazism and more recent antihuman movements operating under
the “population control” and “environmentalist” banners. Now prominent Yale
historian Timothy Snyder has written Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and
Warning, which also lays out the Malthusian ideology behind the Holocaust. But
instead of forcefully rejecting the axioms of Malthusianism and the claims of
its modern adherents, Snyder argues there’s something to them. The world faces
catastrophe from the overconsumption of fossil fuels, anthropogenic global
warming, and impending food and resource shortages, he says — echoing similar
pernicious claims of the 1930s — and for this he blames the U.S. In an op-ed in
yesterday’s New York Times promoting his book, Snyder makes his case. Snyder
starts out well enough, with the historical facts: The quest for German
domination was premised on the denial of science. Hitler’s alternative to
science was the idea of Lebensraum. Germany needed an Eastern European empire
because only conquest, and not agricultural technology, offered the hope of
feeding the German people. In Hitler’s “Second Book,” which was composed in
1928 and not published until after his death, he insisted that hunger would
outstrip crop improvements and that all “the scientific methods of land
management” had already failed. No conceivable improvement would allow Germans
to be fed “from their own land and territory,” he claimed. Hitler specifically
— and wrongly — denied that irrigation, hybrids, and fertilizers could change
the relationship between people and land. The pursuit of peace and plenty
through science, he claimed in “Mein Kampf,” was a Jewish plot to distract
Germans from the necessity of war. Moving his attention to the present day,
Snyder then offers this insight: “Climate change threatens to provoke a new
ecological panic.” For example: Climate change has . . . brought uncertainties
about food supply back to the center of great power politics. China today, like
Germany before the war, is an industrial power incapable of feeding its
population from its own territory, and is thus dependent on unpredictable
international markets. This could make China’s population susceptible to a
revival of ideas like Lebensraum. The Chinese government must balance a
not-so-distant history of starving its own population with today’s promise of
ever-increasing prosperity — all while confronting increasingly unfavorable
environmental conditions. The danger is not that the Chinese might actually
starve to death in the near future, any more than Germans would have during the
1930s. The risk is that a developed country able to project military power
could, like Hitler’s Germany, fall into ecological panic, and take drastic
steps to protect its existing standard of living. But then, having warned about
such “panic,” he proceeds to promote it: China is already leasing a tenth of
Ukraine’s arable soil, and buying up food whenever global supplies tighten.
During the drought of 2010, Chinese panic buying helped bring bread riots and
revolution to the Middle East. The Chinese leadership already regards Africa as
a long-term source of food. Although many Africans themselves still go hungry,
their continent holds about half of the world’s untilled arable land.
Like China, the
United Arab Emirates and South Korea are interested in Sudan’s fertile regions
— and they have been joined by Japan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia in efforts to buy
or lease land throughout Africa. Nations in need of land would likely begin
with tactfully negotiated leases or purchases; but under conditions of stress
or acute need, such agrarian export zones could become fortified colonies,
requiring or attracting violence. So we are looking at the grim prospect of
world war and genocide over resources. And it’s all America’s fault: By
polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the United States has done more
than any other nation to bring about the next ecological panic, yet it is the
only country where climate science is still resisted by certain political and
business elites. These deniers tend to present the empirical findings of
scientists as a conspiracy and question the validity of science — an
intellectual stance that is uncomfortably close to Hitler’s. The full
consequences of climate change may reach America only decades after warming
wreaks havoc in other regions. And by then it will be too late for climate
science and energy technology to make any difference. Indeed, by the time the
door is open to the demagogy of ecological panic in the United States,
Americans will have spent years spreading climate disaster around the world.
But Snyder has
it horribly wrong. Competition for scarce resources (land, food, energy) is
effective as a demagogic myth, but it is not reality. There was no ecological
crisis in the 1930s, any more than there is today. What there was then, as
there is today, was ideological insanity. The Nazis’ war had no rational basis.
Germany never needed more “living space.” Germany today has much less land per
person, but a far higher living standard, than it had under the Third Reich.
The problem was all in their heads. RELATED: On Climate, Science and Politics
Are Diverging Similarly, today there is no resource crisis. There are far more
resources available per capita today than ever before in human history. That is
because resources are defined by human creativity. Thus, contrary to Malthus
and all of his followers, the global standard of living has continuously gone
up as the world’s population has increased.
The more people
— especially free and educated people — the more inventors, and inventions are
cumulative. Share article on Facebook share Tweet article tweet In this
respect, America has been the most productive of nations. It is an
anti-American — and anti-human — lie to say that we are destroying the world’s
resources. The opposite is true. Through our inventiveness we have played, and
are continuing to play, an outstanding role in creating the world’s resources.
Since the dawn
of the republic, America has been a powerhouse of invention, responsible for,
among other things, the lightning rod, the steamboat, the telegraph, petroleum
drilling and refining, recorded sound, the telephone, electric lighting,
centrally generated electric power, airplanes, motion pictures, mass-produced
automobiles, television, nuclear power, computers, communication satellites,
modern agriculture, the Internet, laptop computers, mobile computers, and shale
fracking, to name just a few. The United States may use more oil than any other
country, but if not for us, no one would have any oil, because we invented the
petroleum industry. Other countries would not be richer if America did not
exist. On the contrary, they would be immeasurably poorer.
We are not
threatened by there being too many people. We are threatened by people who say
there are too many people. Similarly, America would not benefit by keeping the
rest of the world underdeveloped. We are 4 percent of the world’s population
but are responsible for half the inventions. We can take pride in that, but in
fact we would be much better off if the rest of the world were contributing
inventions at the same rate we do. The world needs more Americans. The real
lesson of the Holocaust for our time is this: We are not threatened by there
being too many people. We are threatened by people who say there are too many
people. RELATED: Moscow’s Mad Philosophers Snyder, of all people, should be
aware of this, because he follows developments in Russia and Eastern Europe
closely and has written articles warning of the danger posed by the growth of the
anti-American, anti-freedom “Eurasianist” movement led by Russian fascist
ideologue Aleksandr Dugin. It is the contention of the Duginites that the world
would be better off without America. Indeed, I was present at a conference on
global issues held at Moscow State University, Dugin’s home turf, in October
2013, when one of his acolytes got up and gave a fiery speech denouncing
America for using up all the world’s resources, including its oxygen supply.
Such words amount to a call for war. It is appalling that Snyder, along with
many others of today’s politically correct set, should essentially embrace
their underlying logic.
The fundamental
question boils down to this: Are humans destroyers or creators? If the idea is
accepted that the world’s resources are fixed, with only so much to go around,
then each new life is unwelcome, each unregulated act or thought is a menace,
every person is fundamentally the enemy of every other person, and each race or
nation is enemy of every other race or nation. The ultimate outcome of such a
worldview can only be enforced stagnation, tyranny, war, and genocide. RELATED:
The Eurasionist Threat: Putin’s Ambitions Extend Far Beyond Ukraine But if we
choose instead to have faith in the power of unfettered creativity to invent
unbounded resources, then every new life if a gift, and every person, race, and
nation becomes ultimately the potential friend of every other, and, rather than
suppression, the fundamental purpose of government must be to protect human
liberty at all costs. Only in a world of freedom can resources be unlimited.
Only in a world of unlimited resources can all men be brothers.
—Robert Zubrin
is president of Pioneer Energy, a senior fellow with the Center for Security
Policy, and the author of Energy Victory. The paperback edition of his latest
book, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal
Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism,was recently published by
Encounter Books. Did you like this? Share article on Facebook Tweet article
Plus one article on Google Plus Get Free NR E-Mails View Comments by Taboolaby
TaboolaSponsored LinksSponsored LinksPromoted LinksPromoted LinksFROM AROUND
THE WEBThe Motley FoolAre You Ignoring This $15k Social Security Bonus?The
Motley FoolUndoCNETTake A Look: US Air Force Basic TrainingCNETUndo http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423959/yale-professor-hitlers-malthusianism?PW2dh43R22QCjFFz.01 &mc_cid=46c264f4b2&mc_eid=5f675b1de6
No comments:
Post a Comment