Grim reapers
Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. At other times, the cure is much, much worse, and after some adjustment, living with the disease turns out to be the wiser choice. Which is what leads me to wonder: will environmentalism destroy the planet, or just life on it?
A Green-inclined German once soberly explained to me that, yes, it may be necessary to eradicate the natural habitat of orangutans in order to save the planet. The species would have to give way to progress for the sake of rescuing nature from human activity. In this case, the need for palm oil plantations to replace the rain forests of Borneo.
The conclusion derived seamlessly from the recognition that people who have cars and mobility aren’t just going to give them up, and that there will be a continuing need for vehicle fuel. Furthermore, the only practical replacement for petroleum extraction would have to be biodiesel, and the most practical means of producing it would be to grow palm oil tree plantations. That petroleum should no longer be extracted was simply taken as an unassailable truth rather than something for further consideration.
If rare species have habitats that stand in the way of progress, there’s always the option of using zoos as a sort of Noah’s Ark, a place to keep the species going. Or so the argument goes. And if endangered species can’t be kept alive there, that’s just too bad. This is what a German Green explained to me. Which is an improvement over, uh, environmentally destructive, indifferent multinationals, I guess. Because one would heedlessly destroy unique living creatures for profit, the other would do so for the furtherance of deep convictions. Or something.
It is worth mentioning that the one person’s views aren’t necessarily representative of the majority of Germans, Greens, German Greens, or any other category of people, however subdivided. I don’t even remember exactly who this person was, only that the arguments made my head want to explode.
Breaking news: Charles C. W. Cooke is finally off the fence!
Yes, I know he was never pro-Trump, never went to the dark side, but he had this mystifying tendency to sprinkle all his denunciations with unexplained figurative asterisks, vague suggestions that under some circumstances one might still vote for Trump. It was like an invisible, inexplicable tether supposedly connecting this unfit person with necessity or legitimacy or anything we actually believe.
Now he's finally decided you can't have Trump and have conservatism too. At long last, he's stopped giving Trump any credit for conservative stuff that may have happened during his term.
Finally, and I hope certain people at The Dispatch take note, Cooke argues (and I would agree) that there is only one binary choice before us now:
"Unlike in 2020, Donald Trump’s nomination in 2024 is not a fait accompli, and the question before conservatives is not whether they would prefer a second Trump term to the prospect of Joe Biden. The question now is whether, with the advantage of a great universe of alternative options before them, conservatives would prefer to take concrete steps to advance their political goals or to sacrifice everything to feed the ego of a maniac. Those are our two choices — and they are not going to change."
Maybe now certain pundits over here will start asking the right questions, the ones some of us have been jumping up and down and waving our hands in the air to get on their radar, the questions which, if answered thoughtfully and responsibly, could map out a path back to sanity and legitimacy, instead of the fatalism or moral agnosticism some of them seem to be stuck in right now. Thank you, Charlie Cooke, and if you end up coming on board The Dispatch media empire at some point, I'll hope to be listening regularly to Mad Dogs & Englishmen 3.0!
Edit: For some of you it might be behind the paywall. For me, it was one of 2 NR articles I can still read for free this month. Obviously I don't go over there unless pointed to a particularly noteworthy piece.
On TMD they report that in Switzerland they are naming the Golden Pass Express train after Shania Twain, the "Shania Train".
The first of her songs that came to mind was "Man, I feel like a woman!". My wife shook her head...
I behaved, and didn't make sophomoric jokes about it in front of her.