by - Beyond Growth is the annual ideological gathering of European environmentalists, and their countless relays in the world of government-funded, supposedly “non-governmental” organizations (NGOs).
- What do most people remember when they look at the Beyond Growth report? The European Parliament. The link between Beyond Growth’s radical proposals and the European Parliament is presented as perfectly natural: If the European Parliament wants radical environmentalism, how could you, a small local voter, oppose it?
- Most [activists] announce what, if they attain power, they will do. Let us, then, listen to the “proposals’‘ of a charming, smiling Ms De Wever…
- [T]he reasoning seems to go, it was the West, embodied by Adam Smith in 1776, that “invented” economic growth, and the West at the time was largely white, so by destroying white supremacy we destroy the very idea of economic growth.
- If, according to Adam Smith, economic growth for everyone is the key to being lifted out of poverty – with the goal of making the poor richer, not the rich poorer – then destroying growth does not appear as an economic model that will provide much help. Worse, there are now those pesky choices such as: Would you rather encourage growth by allowing people in poor countries to use fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — or drive these people even further into poverty by denying them fossil fuels?
- This reluctance to describe “the world after” [“degrowth”] is understandable. In the context of a Europe that is up to its eyebrows in debt and already taxing its citizens just to pay the interest on the debt, reducing economic output means facing the question of who will be left to die first. Healthcare, for instance, is already being rationed and has seemingly become more about cutting costs than delivering services, and more about growing an administrative bureaucracy with massive paperwork than investing in more doctors and better and timely patient care.
- The dream EU of environmentalists starts to look like a version of Atlas Shrugged: a dystopian country in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws, regulations and bureaucrats.
- [D]espite attempts by the state to enslave minds by force, people emerge victorious in their commitment to freedom. The human mind is the power that moves the world, not coercion.
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