The Brutish Right Will Save The Planet

..unfortunately (fortunately?) they will not save many people. And for that we should be grateful.

Horrified already? If so, get ready for a wild ride, as the premise of this little exercise is to show why the heartless, greedy, vicious, Right Wing politicians of the world and their followers will ultimately save the planet.

Hang on to your hats, dear readers!

Let’s start with a little anecdote from back in the 1980’s.

A Danish tax lawyer named Mogens Glistrup appeared on TV here in the early 1980’s, bragging that he paid zero income taxes – because he knew how to legally play the system. A furor erupted, most condemning him, but a sizeable part of the population, business people and the more know-nothing disgruntled part of the working class, let themselves be suckered into supporting his newly-founded Progress Party... and his party grew from nothing to take a fourth of the seats in Parliament almost overnight.

At one point he famously said, to cut taxes he would do away with the Danish military and just have a recording the Russians could call which would announce “We surrender.” Of course everyone here knew that Denmark would last 5 minutes if the Russians ever wanted to invade and that the military was an expensive cosmetic device useful only to protect Danish pride – but most people hated to be reminded of it.

Later Mr. Glistrup said something which made my blood run cold. He said, at a time when Danes were generously collecting funds to aid millions of starving people in Biafra, “This is stupid. If we save 2 million from starving today when we can, there will be 10 million starving in ten years and we won’t be able to save them. So isn’t it better to do nothing now?”

It is this cold heartless logic of the Right that may save the planet and at least some of its people.

But save it from what? And how?

The cold, heartless, selfish Right will save the planet from science and progress, from cooperation, from all the things that will make 20 billion people starve and try to cut each other’s throat in a frenzied effort to survive in 20 or 30 years’ time.

For what does science and progress accomplish? They save more and more babies from dying, dying from malaria, smallpox, polio, measles, cholera. And science will save many more from dying in the future from diabetes, breast and prostate cancer, high blood pressure. Science will find ways to fight more and more diseases, grow more and more food, provide more and more energy.. until we reach the critical numbers that can’t be sustained for all of science’s noble efforts. Right now science and progress are providing millions of now-middleclass Indians with cars, and the Chinese are soon going to be chugging along in the Hummers they’ll be constructing. The only way human growth and consumption will halt is if something halts it. Famine. Draught. Plague. War.

Now, some will argue that as education and prosperity become more widespread and the norm, birthrates will plummet. Perhaps the world’s population will level off at 10 billion. Well, perhaps so, but in order to keep the 10 billion alive and comfortable, science and smart politicians will have to keep the system super effective and provide a constant supply of food, water and energy. Temporary breakdowns would be catastrophic. And key resources like oil, nitrates and other vital minerals and chemicals will still disappear at some point.

The only thing that can save the planet from global warming, a destruction of most animal and fish species, a horrendous depletion of forests and natural resources, and devastating pollution, is a drastic fall in the numbers of people on the planet – from 8 or 10 billion to perhaps 500 million.

And who is better prepared to aid in this population drop than the Right? Of course they won’t help intentionally or out of any altruism. And as most Right Wingers claim to be against birth control, their efforts in this area won’t be conscious. But it will be effective, none the less.

For the following reasons:

Right Wingers hate science.. except for military science. They’re against stem cell research and the theory of evolution, as many of their most vocal members are religious nuts. This goes for Right Wingers in Palm Springs as well as Pakistan. Right Wingers won’t believe in Global Warming as they continue to believe there’s more money to be made from oil or nuclear power, so screw the environment. They actively promote the myth that global warming is a myth. They relish in meat eating, the bigger and the bloodier the steak the better, and they ridicule vegetarians for being pale wimps. The notion that billions of methane-producing pigs and cattle might be greatly harming the planet is of no concern to them, for they will only light up the barbecue and howl with carnivorous delight. And because of their contempt for the environment they will bring chaos and destruction closer – and populations will drop much sooner.

Right Wingers also promote division and xenophobia, the idea that the guy across the border is dangerous, different, inferior, a rival, smash him before he smashes you. His skin color, his religion, even the things he eats, are different and therefore disgusting. “Everybody but us is the enemy.” This eternal hostility and hatred of the foreign, will greatly aid in the creation of wars and conflicts and in the following population drops.

Logic would tell us that, as far as over-population goes, the more people engaging in homosexual behavior the better, as long as they use condoms and have access to AIDS medicine.. (..for pregnancies rarely occur due to homosexual behavior.. or am I wrong about this?) The Right, in their hatred for all things gay or even logically sexual, whether these Right Wingers reside in the Vatican or Pakistan, will always actively fight abortion, birth control, condoms, anything that would help prevent unwanted pregnancies, disease or general misery.

And the more disease-ridden and poverty-stricken children that are born the faster the Apocalypse will arrive.

The Right Wing has always been not only a death cult but a suicide cult, longing for purging fire and self-immolation – which partially explains why they so favor oil and everything combustible and have such contempt for windmills. The Hitlers, Mussolinis, Limbaughs of history relish risky behavior and seducing others to become puppets and bit-players in their own private Ragnaroks. The Alpha-beasts will always have mindless followers, admirers and inheritors.

And perhaps like the Hindu gods of destruction, the planet will need them when it begins to succumb to the successes of science and the eventual resultant unsustainable growth?

As Mr. Glistrup might have said, “Is it better for 20 billion to die instead of 10 billion before we slide back into 1,000 years of darkness and misery?”