In a brilliant review of a number of recently published books on the politics of climate change, Steven F. Hayward considers the radical and apocalyptic concepts contained within them.
The arguments are similar to the ideas expressed by Vaclav Klaus: that many greens are disguised totalitarians. Of course, many leftist greens are recognizing that the present financial crisis could dismantle the policies that they want put into force. As such, to compete their visions are getting worse.
A large number of radical environmentalists are putting forward arguments for the eradication of the human species. This Malthusian panic scenario often spirals from the simple fact that human breathing has a carbon footprint. The argument follows that the earth would be better off if all humankind stopped breathing, and so we have such books as The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.
The greens are re-emerging as full-scale authoritarians. The good news is that these ideologues are running out of new ideas and are now recycling old ones, the problem is that these recycled ideas are the kind that many had hoped the US and Western Europe had put in their dustbins of history.