Neo-Malthusian pessimism, not ‘science’, is behind claims of a ‘climate crisis’

With a bit of research, Victoria radio host could educate local listeners on the follies of the Liberal government’s ‘anti-growth’ policies

By Paul MacRae, Climate Realists of British Columbia, January 28, 2024

A local Victoria, B.C., radio talk-show host had some doubts about a recent caller’s argument that Canadian Maurice Strong was behind the environmental-crisis movement and, by implication, behind the “climate crisis” movement as well.

In other words, the caller was suggesting that these movements are not based on solid “science,” as we’re told, but on an anti-growth ideology rooted in Strong’s “neo-Malthusian” thinking—the view that modern civilization cannot survive affluence and will soon run out of resources, although this view has been largely disproved by facts. For example, in his 1968 book The Population Bomb, neo-Malthusian biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted:

The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.¹.

Needless to say (since billions of us are still here and being fed), Ehrlich’s prediction, and all his other predictions of doom, have been totally discredited.

The host told the caller, sensibly, that he hadn’t done any research on Strong and on the caller’s points, so you didn’t want to comment as to the truth or falsehood of the caller’s position. And fair enough! That said, this radio host is a no-nonsense exposer of government follies and hypocrisy, local, provincial and federal. Should he choose to educate himself, he would be introduced to a whole new level of government duplicity on environmental and climate issues.

For a reliable source on this topic, he could consult Elaine Dewar’s 1995 book Cloak of Green. Dewar is a highly respected investigative journalist whose book exposes the neo-Malthusian and Marxist roots of the environmental movement, with details on the role of Strong and his followers (including Elizabeth May). My recent book, Through the Looking Glass: A Citizen’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Climate Science ²(which I mailed to the radio host in January; I haven’t heard back yet), also deals with the environmental movement’s climate-change deception in some detail in Chapters 13-16.

Getting back to Strong: he has written: “We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrialized civilization to collapse.”³ Similarly, here is his imagined plot for a novel:

What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group’s conclusion is ‘no’. The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about? ⁴ [emphasis added]

Neo-Malthusians seek collapse of industrial civilization

The solution, then, for neo-Malthusians like Strong and Ehrlich is to cut our standard of living drastically. But how to do this since, as Strong recognizes in his proposed book plot, the population won’t go along with impoverishing themselves if the idea is presented to them honestly and directly?

The answer was the invention of “environmentalism.” So, for example, in 1991, when the Soviet Union imploded and the Cold War ended, the Club of Rome published The First Global Revolution, which includes the following:

The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.⁵ [emphasis added]

In other words, “environmental degradation” and “global warming” are not real crises but invented crises to persuade us to “voluntarily” lower our standard of living. And how better than to blame fossil fuels, which are the engine of modern industrial civilization, as the main source of uncontrolled “global warming”?

Trudeau government policies follow neo-Malthusian playbook

Is this just a conspiracy theory, as the radio host implied before ending the call? Anyone seriously looking at, for example, the economic and energy policies of the Trudeau Liberal government can plainly see that, in the name of fighting “climate change,” the government’s ultimate aim is to cause the collapse of Canada’s industrial system. For example, what sensible government makes energy, which underlies everything, artificially more expensive?

Meanwhile, the Canadian population is deluded into thinking they’re saving the world from the existential threat of “environmental degradation” and “climate change” which, when you actually examine these claims, makes no sense.

The world has been much warmer in the past and somehow life survived. Nor are carbon dioxide (the supposed “control knob” of climate) and temperature strongly correlated in the historical and geological record, and when they are correlated, changes in temperature comes first. Assuming the laws of physics don’t change from year to year, millennium to millennium, geological era to geological era, why would CO2 and temperature be strongly correlated in the present day? It makes no sense.⁶

In other words, the supposed “battle” against “climate change” is a cover for the anti-growth, anti-industrialization, neo-Malthusian and ultimately Marxist agenda of Strong and his followers; “global warming” and “environmental collapse” are not existential threats to humankind. As Bjorn Lomborg (the Skeptical Environmentalist) constantly points out, we have all the technological tools we need to cope with environmental problems and “climate change,” if we don’t cut our own throats by trying to quickly eliminate fossil fuels.

This radio host, should he decide to do some basic research, has a media platform that could help educate the public, exposing the schemes of governments like the Liberals to make their citizens poorer by implementing anti-growth policies that will provide little benefit for the environment and contribute almost nothing to the so-called “fight” against “climate change.”

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