History and Politics

Albert Camus on why right wingers want global warming

42 Comments

It’s occurred to me that conservatives aren’t global warming deniers. Rather, they know global warming is a reality, yet they welcome it. They’re a suicidal death cult. Catastrophe brought on by climate change means they’ll not only get to shoot people (like they did during Hurricane Katrina), but that their suicidal, life denying impulses will take us all down with them.

This logic has carried the values of suicide, on which our age has been nurtured, to their extreme logical consequence, which is legalized murder. It culminates, at the same time, in mass suicide. The most striking demonstration of this was provided by the Hitlerian apocalypse of 1945. Self-destruction meant nothing to those madmen, in their bomb shelters, who were preparing for their own death and apotheosis. All that mattered was not to destroy oneself alone and to drag a whole world with one. In a way, the man who kills himself in solitude still preserves certain values since he, apparently, claims no rights over the lives of others. The proof of this is that he never makes use, in order to dominate others, of the enormous power and freedom of action which his decision to die gives him. Every solitary suicide, when it is not an act of resentment, is, in some way, either generous or contemptuous. But one feels contemptuous in the name of something. If the world is a matter of indifference to the man who commits suicide, it is because he has an idea of something that is not or could not be indifferent to him. He believes that he is destroying everything or taking everything with him; but from this act of self-destruction itself a value arises which,perhaps, might have made it worth while to live. Absolute negation is therefore not consummated by suicide. It can only be consummated by absolute destruction, of oneself and of others. Or, at least, it can only be lived by striving toward that delectable end. Here suicide and murder are two aspects of a single system, the system of a misguided intelligence that prefers, to the suffering imposed by a limited situation, the dark victory in which heaven and earth are annihilated.

Click to access Camus,%20Albert%20-%20The%20Rebel%20%281951%29.pdf

42 thoughts on “Albert Camus on why right wingers want global warming”

  1. This is quite a naive take on things. The people who got to “shoot people (like they did during Hurricane Katrina)” weren’t the invisible super-wealthy who own and control everything, like Caligulan Cattle farmers, it was the minions of their minions, ie: poor people (police) who (delusionally) saw themselves as better than the poor people they shot. A “suicidal death cult” would have been done with the job by now, not living and breeding on vast estates you and I will never get within 30 miles of; exclusive real estate all over the (most habitable) parts of the planet. Why do you think they want to wean you off of red meat? More golf courses for them! You think “a suicidal death cult” would bother plotting out the major tectonic shifts, in the psycho-sociology of the global masses, decades in advance, with the help of ThinkTanks comprised of the brightest (most amoral) minds skimmed from the best universities…? Do you think the organizational complexity of, say, the CFR or the Trilateral Commission, is something “a suicidal death cult” would even bother with?

    Why do you suppose they are bothering to spend decades patiently and irrevocably herding us (The Vast Unwashed) toward welcoming zero privacy, open borders, digital “money,” Zero Population Growth, “veganism” (and protein substitutes: eg insects), feminized (non-combative) males, et al… because they want to “die”… or because they want to inaugurate a stable, Neo Feudalist, Techno-“Paradise” for their class and “happy” (docile) servitude for such Serfs (greatly reduced in number) as they will need to maintain the system for the next thousand years? Remember: no Robot is cheaper, more sophisticated (and more replaceable) than a human slave… and they (the Vassals and Merlin Class and Lords) will need these cheap “robots” to service the really expensive, fragile machines they rely on to maintain control. Oh: and to shine their shoes. And to fuck them.

    “Suicidal Death cult”? Nah. Joyless psychopaths, more like. Joyless psychopaths with very long lives. Most Serfs will be semi-literate, masturbating to virtual porno, eating insect protein and living in cramped, stacked modules while THEY (the global wealthy) fuck real humans, collect first editions, feast on steaks, breed orchids and horses, stroll across vast estates and push their well-paid scientists to unlock the secret of extreme longevity.

    “Here suicide and murder are two aspects of a single system, the system of a misguided intelligence that prefers, to the suffering imposed by a limited situation, the dark victory in which heaven and earth are annihilated.”

    Yeah, sure: that’s why they’ve amassed mind-boggling military systems for full-spectrum dominance of the planet: so they can kill themselves. Sarcasm off. Camus, like so many (promoted) writers, had the political sophistication of a teen.

    1. This is quite a naive take on things. The people who got to “shoot people (like they did during Hurricane Katrina)” weren’t the invisible super-wealthy who own and control everything, like Caligulan Cattle farmers, it was the minions of their minions, ie: poor people (police) who (delusionally) saw themselves as better than the poor people they shot.

      It was the police in the suburbs north of New Orleans (which is David Duke country, so many of them were actual Nazis and white supremacists who were overjoyed at the apocalypse because they got to shoot them some black people).

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danziger_Bridge_shootings

      Were they members of the ruling class? Of course not. But were Hitler’s brownshirts members of the ruling class? Remember the ruling class in Germany though they could use Hitler, until it became apparent that Hitler was using them.

      It’s the subject of one of Visconti’s greatest films (The Damned), probably the best take on the Nazis in cinema.

      The Damned (1969): The German Ruling Class Goes to Hell

      Yes of course the motive of the oil companies is profit (and they think they’re going to make even more money as the polar ice caps melt). But why are so many ordinary Americans global warming deniers (those people in my neighborhood with Ford F150s modified to burn more gas than they should). That suicidal, breath washed death cult is useful to the ruling class.

      And one of their own is in the white house.

    2. Camus, like so many (promoted) writers, had the political sophistication of a teen.

      Personally I think Camus was a very sophisticated guy who knew exactly what he was doing. Was he a CIA asset? Probably not. But he never criticizes the United States. He opposed Algerian independence based on the idea that it was driven by Arab puppets of Russia. He spends 350 pages in the Rebel talking about death cults, nihilism and man replacing God but never once mentions Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The far left, rightfully, hates the guy. If Camus were alive today I guarantee you’d he’d be on social media ranting about “Assadists” and shilling for Rojava. NEVERTHELESS, there is a lot of great writing, just sublime writing, buried in his tired anti-communism and bourgeoisie anarchism.

  2. “Yes of course the motive of the oil companies is profit (and they think they’re going to make even more money as the polar ice caps melt).”

    Look, you’re clearly smart enough to question and reject the Disney version of “Reality” that most citizens of PETRO-NATONIA embrace, but ask yourself: do you really think the “Global Warming” meme reached you by somehow circumventing the usual channels of sheer bullshit that the PETRO-NATONIA propagandists pump your way? Did you pick up the notion of “Global Warming” through the Peoples’ Grapevine of Forbidden Truths? Or have you been hammered with it for decades by the same sinister sources that hammer you with Red Scares, Syria Psyops, Hillaryite Bilge, Support Our Troopisms and all the rest of it? What, you’re skeptical when they tell you bullshit about Libya, but They become Trustworthy, suddenly, when They want to herd you towards embracing a blatant framework of global legal/ financial/ attitudinal controls by scaring the shit out of you with “The Sky is Falling” narratives?

    Yeah, well, I want to save the Planet, too, but I’d start with dismantling Monsanto, banning the internal combustion engine and breaking up the Pharmaceutical Cartels… fucking C02 (aka PLANT AIR) would be the last thing on my list to worry about. They play a sophisticated game: it’s the fucking Oilocracy that is funding the “Global Warming” media blitz so they can control how the “environmental ‘reforms'” play out… while also stunting the growth of Alternate Energy Technologies and make a tidy profit on Carbon Trading and herding you toward a New Global Control Grid. You’ve been had, my friend… just because some Right Wingers believe this, too, doesn’t mean it’s not true… Right Wingers were against Obama (rather idiotically, since he is clearly Right Wing) and Obama is a snake, no? Ignore the ideological binaries and use your brain: WHERE DID YOU HEAR ABOUT “GLOBAL WARMING” in the first place? From Leon Fucking Trotsky?

    1. Where did I first hear about Global Warming? I learned about the carbon cycle in high school in the 1980s. The teacher made no explicit connection to Global Warming but it was impossible not to realize that we only started putting fossil fuels back into the carbon cycle at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and that the increase in carbon dioxide caused by burning coal and oil would inevitably cause a greenhouse effect. Here’s a tutorial by Khan Academy, a good non political source. https://www.khanacademy.org/science/high-school-biology/hs-ecology/hs-biogeochemical-cycles/v/carbon-cycle

  3. “Where did I first hear about Global Warming? I learned about the carbon cycle in high school in the 1980s.”

    Erm… you think High School is the means by which the inculcate students with THE TRUTH…?

    1. Yes. I learned that the square root of 36 is 6. I learned that George Washington was the first President and I learned about the carbon cycle.

      1. Aou can tell the difference between those three categories of info, though, right? For example, there’s no political value, Left or Right, in the square root of 36 being 6… whereas the mere fact of Washington’s Presidency is invariably spun with nonsense about his personal attributes and the heroic nature of his various actions, turning the bare fact, you cite, into Subliminal Propaganda… which you’re too smart to swallow, right? . But learning about the carbon cycle… and being led to *assume,* by default, that the relationship between increased C02 (in the atmosphere)… and global warming… is unambiguously a function of the first condition affecting the second (and not vice versa; that is, that increased warming leads to increased C02 in the atmosphere): that default assumption, on your part, is the result of decades of a saturating media campaign with a clear agenda. And media campaigns of that scope are NOT funded by voice-in-the-wilderness Radicals who Resist the Power Structure. Such messages come directly FROM the Power Structure itself. Remarkably similar to the average person’s belief in an Essentially GOOD (“despite her many faults”) AMERICA. It’s all just brainwashing. And blatantly so. Far from Resisting, the average “Progressive” in America is now ABETTING a Power Structure that is rather more clever than they (hubristically) give it credit for being. Which is why Right Wingers still rule the Planet.

        2. You asked me where I learned about global warming and I answered that I put two and two together in a physics class. If you put massive amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere after millions of years it will cause a greenhouse effect and raise earths temperature. Its pretty straightforward.

          1. “If you put massive amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere after millions of years it will cause a greenhouse effect and raise earths temperature. Its pretty straightforward.”

            The confidence with which you state that premise is either the result of your own painstaking decades of observation, calculation and research… or an article of faith in a Religion you aren’t quite aware you belong to. I know why Gov (and Gov-related) scientists parrot and toe the party line… but, lacking your own weather station, I’m wondering where your Certainty comes from? MINE comes from learning, after DECADES of Experience, NOT to believe whatever the Government (and its mouthpieces) wants me to believe. Whenever I spot a Propaganda Campaign (like the shit about Iran, or China), I consider the source and read between the lines… which appears to be a Lost Art. Today’s “Radical” strikes me as rather bizarrely trusting of Mainstream Info…

            1. The confidence with which you state that premise is either the result of your own painstaking decades of observation, calculation and research… or an article of faith in a Religion you aren’t quite aware you belong to.

              Or just a basic understanding of the laws of thermodynamics.

              1. Dodgy retort that would only work on someone *utterly* lacking an entry level understanding of the Laws of Thermodynamics… which have nothing to say on the matter of C02 as a possible greenhouse gas. Are you being uninformed, there, or deliberately dishonest? And was this probable dishonesty merely a matter of Ego (wanting to “win” this debate by any means necessary) or are you shilling for the Mainstream Agenda…? Can’t really trust very many people on public platforms these days. But feel free to tell us which of the three Laws of Thermodynamics have settled the question of the “greenhouse gas” attributes of C02.

              2. There are many basic explanations about the second law of thermodynamics and climate change if you Google. In fact, it’s often used by the oil industry as a pseudo talking point to deny global warming.

                Here’s a basic introduction.

                https://grist.org/article/greenhouse-theory-violates-the-laws-of-thermodynamics/

                Right now we’re so far off from your original question (“where did you first hear about climate change) I’m not even sure where you’re going with this.

                As I said, I learned about the carbon cycle in high school and put two and two together. You’re free to believe me or not.

  4. (erratum: “means by which THEY”)

    The First Step toward Genuinely Radical Consciousness: Question Your UnQuestioned Premises; Question the SOURCE. How do you Know what you Think You Know? And Why?

    1. Are you disputing the idea of the carbon cycle or that we have been putting massive amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution?

      1. I’m disputing the absurd notion that the C02 that Plant Life relies rather heavily on (in its production of the Air we, in turn, breathe) is some sort of Global Toxin. If people are *really* worried about capturing that C02: plant more trees, stop deforestation, et al. And focus on REAL environmental poisons; aren’t you a WEE bit suspicious that C02 is being branded as the planet killer, while very little mention is made of sulfur dioxide? C02 is just the cheapest (for Big Industry) to demonize/ handle in the new Carbon Trading economy they’re trying to inaugurate in order to CONTROL IT. We are SUCH dupes.

      1. Nonsense. You’re a well-brainwashed servant of The Very People you *think* you’re resisting. You *still* haven’t asked yourself why, if “Global Warming” is *really* an “inconvenient truth” for the Petro-Lords, it’s the 24/7/365 media meme of the West. Please. You’re smarter than that… but your brainwashing is smarter, I guess. Break out of that Illogic Box.

        1. I honestly tried to find a coherent argument in that blog post but couldn’t. If you want to summarize it here instead of name calling I’ll look at it.

          1. I’ll stick to summarizing MY argument: why do you so un-skeptically swallow what is clearly a MASSIVE media campaign to make you BELIEVE? When the Media Campaign can only be supported by the very (sinister) sources you rightly doubt regarding everything else? How can anyone fall, for example, for the clumsy Greta Thunberg gambit? If Petro-Gov were against her, you’d never have heard of her. Instead, she is globally famous…. the irrefutable clue that what she represents if an agenda supported by the very people you affect to RESIST. That, my friend, is what we call Classic Cog Diss.

            1. You assume that the establishment is promoting a discussion of global warming. Are you sure about that? The Democratic Party refused to hold a debate on Global Warming. It’s never discussed in any of the media coverage of the campaigns. I’d also ask you to consider if perhaps *you* are falling for right wing disinformation about Greta Thunberg. But this is also subjective, which is why I’d rather stick to the science, which you don’t seem to be all that eager to discuss.

              1. “You assume that the establishment is promoting a discussion of global warming. Are you sure about that?”

                If The Establishment (for whom Media Exists) is not behind the 24/7/365 saturation campaign regarding “Climate Change,” who is… two or three hippies with a megaphone?

                “perhaps *you* are falling for right wing disinformation about Greta Thunberg”

                Considering the fact that the entire planet is under the obvious control of a militaristic Right Wing Regime, please show me the media saturation campaign we’re exposed to from “The Left Wing”? In other words, “both sides” of any Mainstream Debate… “Left” and Right… are Right Wing. The Mainstream Agenda = Right Wing Agenda. Nothing else gets serious air time. Stop being naive. The Psychopaths in charge always control the “Left” and Right, the Republicans AND Democrats. Which is why the “climate change” “debate” NEVER once suggests abolishing cars/ super highways/ parking lots or oil-based energy as any kind of solution. Because the Right Wing in charge of this “debate” (and Consensus Reality) is an Oil-ocracy. And they are just a little more clever than the (very, very small and too often naive) Genuine Left.

                If Greta Thunberg were an actual enemy of the Empire, we’d *never have heard of her* … she certainly wouldn’t be globally famous. You think Murdoch is some kind of Lefty? You think Bezos is? Please: slip out of your pleasantly-brainwashed coma. Think. They are trying to herd us in a very specific direction.

              2. You just keep repeating this same talking point. “If climate change were a real problem you wouldn’t have heard of it.” I suppose you could have said the same thing about cigarettes. “If cigarettes caused cancer why did it become news?” For decades it hadn’t. Just because the truth finally broke through doesn’t mean there was some kind of conspiracy to poison our minds about the tobacco industry. I know exactly what cigarettes did to my father. Why not think about what climate change is going to do to your grandchildren?

  6. Anyway, it’s late over here (in Europe) so I’m off to bed! Thanks for the debate…!

    I leave you with this:

    “In dictatorships…. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and nothing of what we watch on television, because we know it’s propaganda and lies. Unlike you in the West. We’ve learned to look behind the propaganda and to read between the lines and, unlike you, we know that the real truth is always subversive.”—- Zdenek Urbanek, dissident Czech novelist

    (And, believe me, if I’d heard about Urbanek day in and day out, in Slate, the New Yorker, the Guardian and on TV and radio; if I’d been taught about him in high school and college; if there were a Hollywood biopic planned with Urbanek to be played by Tom Hanks… I’d be skeptical of him and wonder what agenda that Urbanek quotation is serving. As it is, his tiny literary footprint is probably a leftover from the first Cold War, when the CIA was interested in Czech dissidents as an anti-Soviet tool, witting or not… you learn to parse these things…)

    1. This is meaningless out of context. Yes, the corporate media occasionally mentions global warming but the right wing talking points you’re mindlessly repeating about global warming also comes from the mainstream corporate media, and yet you don’t want to question them. Notice how we’ve spent trillions of dollars on a “war on terror” but almost nothing on the much greater security threats that come from climate change (hint: It’s a cause of the Syrian civil war). Dick Cheney argues that an even 1% chance of a terrorist attack means we should introduce all sorts of new repressive security measures but somehow we have to be 99.9999999% sure about every detail of global warming before we do anything. And so on.

      Once again, this is why I’d rather stick to the science, not go off on a tangent about the media, which introduces all sorts of extraneous variables. It’s pretty simple physics, maybe high school level or a little above. It really is worth taking a look at some of the basic tutorials on Khan Academy (a non-political site).

      https://www.khanacademy.org/science/high-school-biology/hs-ecology/hs-human-impact-on-ecosystems/v/protecting-biodiversity-local-and-global-policies

      1. “Notice how we’ve spent trillions of dollars on a “war on terror” but almost nothing on the much greater security threats that come from climate change”

        A) Who is “we”? and B) Both “terrorism” and “Climate Change” are obvious cash cows. Who do you think the Scientists who support the Mainstream Agenda and “Climate Change Message” work for, ultimately? Whose big fat grants are they competing for? Whose Party Line do they have to toe or worry about being cut off? The Fed Gov, chum. Jesus. Seriously. THINK. “right wing talking points” was the debate-foreclosing meme I had tossed at me (along with “conspiracy theorist!”) when I was pointing out that Hillary (and Hubby) are War Criminals (like the Bushes and the Obamas). “Right Wing Talking Points” is not a logical or fact-based or good faith argument. It’s just an amateurish propaganda trick (like calling someone a “commie!”) that you’ve been licensed to use to put out the brush fires, here and there, of people learning to Question the Religion you have been brainwashed into embracing. But the inner-contradictions are profound. Debating “the science” is absurd, as you accept the “science” from biased/ controlled sources and neither one of us owns a weather station or a relevant degree from a Neutral University. The Logic is a better place to start. And the Logic says: if The Regime is (at best) Disinterested when it comes to “Global Warming,” why are we bombarded with those memes on Mainstream (Regime-controlled) Media…?

        1. What argument are you trying to make here? That because climate scientists like James Hansen have been speaking about climate change for decades drew salaries from the United States government that climate change can’t be real? There was no “big bucks” in it. If a government employee wants to make “big bucks” he should become a college football coach. Bush pulled out of the Kyoto agreement. So by your logic, if the government does something the opposite is true, right? That’s pretty simplistic. I’m not accepting any “source” at face value. That you assume I am is an interesting comment on the way you think. Once again, are you denying that there’s a carbon cycle? Address that.

          1. “Once again, are you denying that there’s a carbon cycle? Address that.”

            How are you slipping “C02 is a green house gas (significant or otherwise” into the Carbon Cycle, in which C02 plays a crucial role in sustaining plant life and the oxygen it generates…?

            1. “Bush pulled out of the Kyoto agreement.”

              Clearly: the propaganda “Climate Scare” push… and the bottom line for Industrial Profits… are easily separable. They can scaremonger (from behind the scenes) while avoiding any bottom-line-threatening concessions that aren’t of THEIR design. Big Oil doesn’t have to take credit for funding the Scare Campaign… or admit to the sophisticated psychology of getting ahead of the issue by (secretly) leading it… for anyone to see what’s going on. Because what we SHOULD all be debating is how quickly to ABOLISH toxic, oil-based energy.Instead, they’ve got people talking about petty C02 reduction schemes. Which is brilliant. Why aren’t we on a Solar Energy grid already? The tech (incl. satellites for 24 hour solar exposure) COULD be there, but, strangely… hmmm…. it’s just not getting off the ground. Because Big Oil is smarter than us. They’re both controlling the conversation and herding us into a tighter control system of THEIR own design. Why aren’t you demanding an end to oil-based energy instead of supporting the Greenwashing of the economy, and energy structure, poisoning the planet? C02 is not harming anything… it’s really a very black and clever joke that of ALL the chemical compounds we could sound the alarm on, they’ve got you terrified of C02.

              Anyway, whatever!

          2. “That because climate scientists like James Hansen have been speaking about climate change for decades drew salaries from the United States government that climate change can’t be real?”

            Laugh. QED.

            Again: done here.

            Peace!

            S

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  8. ““If climate change were a real problem you wouldn’t have heard of it.” I suppose you could have said the same thing about cigarettes. “If cigarettes caused cancer why did it become news?”

    Dude, the last time I checked, as powerful as Big Tobacco once was (in the US), the entire economy wasn’t based on it. Whereas the Global Economy is based on OIL. When things become “big news” it’s never EVER against the wishes of those who actually OWN Big News… though, sometimes, rival powers do battle in public, releasing damning info. But there is no power to rival Big Oil. Big Oil rules. If Big Oil doesn’t want you to see something (or take it seriously)… you won’t. Unless you’re an Outlier. You are clearly not one of those. You are playing your assigned role beautifully. Cog Dis max.

    1. Google “tobacco and cancer.” Yeah. It finally broke into the mainstream that cigarettes caused cancer. This is what the mainstream looked like in the 1950s.

      You’re not really making an argument. You’re just taking pot shots.

        1. I know they’re not but you’re not addressing climate change at all, only your idea of how media is supposed to work. You’re saying that if it’s in the news then there’s some kind of mainstream agenda to push it on the public. Tobacco is a good counterexample. Instead of making an argument with Google results, once again, why not actually address the science. The carbon cycle really isn’t that complex. You don’t need “to own a weather station” to understand. it.

          1. Well, see, you’re arguing like a shill, now. The concept of “The Carbon Cycle” does not, by default, contain any evidence that C02 is a “green house gas (substantial or otherwise)”. There is no way to establish that an increase in C02 causes an increase in mean temp within the system… or if it’s the converse. The direction of causation is thus far impossible to establish in the complex system of weather/ the atmosphere. “Big Tobacco” is a poor counter-example because who would argue that Big Tobacco ever actually owned the economy, owned the media, started all the wars, on the planet? So, damning info about cigarettes leaking out is wholly conceivable… but info antithetical to the goals and structures of Big Oil, being promoted on Big Oil’s Media Platforms…? That’s a big NO WAY. When was the last time CNN or the BBC or NASA called for the investigation of US GOV for war crime? See what I mean? THAT would be the equivalent if “Climate Change” memes were genuinely dangerous to Big Oil.

            I’m a LEFTY. You’re Center Right (whether you know it or not). This is the kind of thing a Lefty says and thinks:

            “Because what we SHOULD all be debating is how quickly to ABOLISH toxic, oil-based energy.Instead, they’ve got people talking about petty C02 reduction schemes. Which is brilliant. Why aren’t we on a Solar Energy grid already? The tech (incl. satellites for 24 hour solar exposure) COULD be there, but, strangely… hmmm…. it’s just not getting off the ground. Because Big Oil is smarter than us. They’re both controlling the conversation and herding us into a tighter control system of THEIR own design. Why aren’t you demanding an end to oil-based energy instead of supporting the Greenwashing of the economy, and energy structure, poisoning the planet?”

            Just so you know!

            Wink.

            1. There is no way to establish that an increase in C02 causes an increase in mean temp within the system… or if it’s the converse.

              The science says otherwise.

              https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle/page5.php

              I’m a LEFTY. You’re Center Right (whether you know it or not). This is the kind of thing a Lefty says and thinks:

              OK Commissar.

              “Because what we SHOULD all be debating is how quickly to ABOLISH toxic, oil-based energy.”

              You just said you don’t think that the Carbon cycle is connected to global warming. Now you’re saying “we” should just abolish oil. You’re side stepping from the basic question of the carbon cycle to offer a a solution to a problem you’re denying even exists. That’s the basic definition of “taking potshots.”

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