Envirasceticism

I think Brendan O’Neil’s essay on the new enviro-asceticism is brilliant. I especially liked:

Eating, drinking, playing, procreating – everything is carbon-calculated, everything is carbonised. These carbon-calculations really represent a moral judgement on our lives. They [today’s environmentalists] make everything into a potential sin, a crime against the planet. They send the very powerful message that to live, to travel, to breed, to immerse yourself in every human experience is bad – whereas to stay still, to stay put, to be meek, to be quiet, to grow your own is good. Experimentation and experience are potentially polluting; restraint is pure.

What do you think? Was learning to cook with fire where humans went wrong?

Published by Norm Benson

My name is Norm Benson and my Lowdermilk manuscript is out for beta review. This is the story of Walter and Inez Lowdermilk, an American couple who came to see soil erosion as a threat to civilization. Their pursuit of land conservation carried them from China and the Dust Bowl to Palestine, where their ideas about reclaiming the land helped build the case for the creation of Israel.

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