The police would like to have a friendly chat with you about your responsibility for the climate crisis

The climate apocalypse popular anxiety ethos, which should be considered apart from empirical assessment of the real dangers posed to humanity (and to corporate enterprises, whose flourishing governments today are bound to protect as much as or more than that of their residents/citizens), is a curious cause for people on the liberal left. Because it is about security.

It is not about living well, but living at all. Life itself is said to be in danger. And the liberal-left wants to represent and articulate such dangers, and use them to organize the world's peoples in support of activities of their governments to protect the security of the world's peoples.

It is predictable that they will do this in the same way that the covid pandemic was managed: by imposing and enforcing restrictions on the activities of individuals.

But this has been evident for decades. It was already manifestly the case with the ecology/environmentalism movement in the early 70s. If you listened to what people were saying, they were not calling for action on the part of their governments to regulate business activities in the best way. Much more energy was directed at promoting ecology in household management. Household management: the very definition of 'oikonomia' to the ancient Greeks, a concept whose legacy to European societies was equally 'economic' and 'political', that is, governmental. Management.

We had the duty, we were told, to recycle cans and bottles, and indeed everything that can be recycled. We weren't supposed to use too much paper. You should not have more than 2 children. (I met a couple who actually 'bought' by barter the 'right' to have 4 kids from a couple who had renounced their allotment.) Just as men were supposed to not call women beautiful (this used to be praise, and had now become insult, as if a girl would only want to look good for a guy who buys her through marriage or some other legitimate transaction). Just as you must not eat meat (it's murder). Just as you must be conscientious in oh so many little ways that have little consequence except to promote certain attitudes. Just as you had an obligation to not smoke, not drink except in minimum and acceptable ways, and to exercise, because you have not a right to health but an obligation to maintain yours. You had an obligation to authentically pursue your own sexuality, as everyone knew that the right sex was what everyone 'really' wanted, and therefore, was obligated to pursue.

Do I sound like a conservative? Is that the price of dissenting from the liberal-left of corporate liberal attitude policing and dutiful self-management in lieu of a real autonomy of self-determination? Is that corporate liberalism the only game in town if you are not a right-wing Republican? How would you like your intellectual blackmail? I am a man of the left. I challenge anyone to find where Marx, or Emma Goldman and other American anarchists, or anyone else on the old or new left endorsed any of the above nonsense, which is all about policing attitudes, and little more than that.

The classical concerns of the left (pursuing greater democracy, equality, and, yes, freedom, like from labor and unjust state and social authority) were replaced in the neoliberal period (said to have begun in the early 70s) by a politics of combatting evil. The revolutions that had once inspired people to pursue some new territory were replaced by conservative efforts to protect the one they already had. The Holocaust, not the Soviet, or the French, revolution was the object of greatest concern. And going forward, the national security state with its permanent civil war against plagues or other threats borne by individuals whom that state must target and, if need be, eliminate. The 'liberal' state is one that has been pursuing totalitarian objectives for some time. Since the state has a monopoly on the use of legitimate force (Max Weber), social criticism is only possible as criticism of individuals, and thus as psychology, but also latently as law enforcement.

What is wrong with the climate apocalypse narrative is not that it is empirical false and there is no problem of global warming. The political problem, as distinct from the 'economic' or environmental one, has to do with how such problems are represented. They are represented as a crisis that warrants a terror exercised by governments and factions supporting them against individuals. You are expected to be afraid, stay home, avoid speaking to anyone, and carefully recycle those things. If you buy an electric car, you will be doing part of your duty to The Leader. Or maybe you have not been listening.