Hang Your Freedom Higher

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change:

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.

It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists' emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.

"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful."

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."

This is just the latest example of one of our utopian betters who--in the name of saving ourselves from ourselves--is more than ready to sacrifice your freedom for you. Like Thomas Friedman pining to be "China for a day," it's actually refreshing when you see them so openly admitting how they really feel about their fellow citizens and this whole pesky democracy thing. If we stupid peasants would just shut up, get out of the way, and do what our self-appointed smart set tells us to do the world would be so mych better off.