La décroissance économique est un concept qui a toujours été populaire chez une certaine proportion des gauchistes. Mais cette haine du capitalisme a un prix…

Vous souhaitez une décroissance ?  Vous tenez vraiment à vivre comme en 1870, 1950 ou même 1973 ?

Moi je dis: "vive la croissance !"

Quand vient le temps de manipuler une élection, Barack Obama n’a rien à envier au Parti Libéral du Canada:

Et dire que les médias essaient de nous faire croire qu’Obama représente le changement.

"The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives."

The Danger of Environmentalism

The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Environmentalism's goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where "nature" is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.

In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, environmentalists have made "development" an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power–and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the "rights" of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the "rights" of trees. No instance of the progress that brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those "protecting" the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.

Nature, they insist, has "intrinsic value," to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action that changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only against man, only when man wants something.

The ideal world of environmentalism is not twenty-first-century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the "environment." Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation that consistent environmentalists would cheer–at least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology.

The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by "environment" one means the surroundings of man–the external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists' paean to "Nature," human nature is omitted. For environmentalism, the "natural" world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds, and bacteria somehow do.

They don't mean it? Heed the words of the consistent environmentalists. "The ending of the human epoch on Earth," writes philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, "would most likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!'" In a glowing review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1989): "Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet . . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." Such is the naked essence of environmentalism: it mourns the death of one whale or tree but actually welcomes the death of billions of people. A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable.

The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives. But an individual is not born in servitude. He has a moral right to live his own life for his own sake. He has no duty to sacrifice it to the needs of others and certainly not to the "needs" of the nonhuman.

To save mankind from environmentalism, what's needed is not the appeasing, compromising approach of those who urge a "balance" between the needs of man and the "needs" of the environment. To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life. To save mankind requires the return to a philosophy of reason and individualism, a philosophy that makes life on earth possible.

Leçons d'histoire sur l'islam radical.

H/T: Majorité Silencieuse

Même si les prix du pétrole et de l'essence augmentent actuellement à un rythme comparable au choc pétrolier de 1980, nous sommes encore bien loin de la crise.  Comment peut-on expliquer ce fait ?  Voici un élément de réponse:

Calculé en dollar constant (2000); comme les données de consommations des voitures pour 2007 et 2008 n'étaient pas disponibles, j'ai utilisé la même valeur que pour 2006.

Il ne fait aucun doute que les prix du pétrole et de l'essence ont fortement augmenté depuis 2005.  Par contre, cette hausse des prix a été tempérée par des voitures qui consomment beaucoup moins d'essence et par une appréciation substantielle des revenus des gens.

Résultat, même si en dollar constant l'essence est actuellement plus chère qu'au plus fort du choc pétrolier de 1980, l'impact sur le portefeuille des consommateurs est 2 fois moins important.

Sources:

Retail Motor Gasoline price; Annual Energy Review

National Income and Product Accounts Table

Couverture médiatique des candidats républicains et démocrates (23-29 juin) selon le Pew Research Center:

La campagne présidentielle a occupé 27% de l'actualité américaine. L'élection au Zimbabwe et le prix de l'essence ont été le 2e sujet le plus couvert par les médias avec 7% du contenu. L'économie et la décision de la Cour Suprême sur les armes à feux ferment la marche en 3e position avec 5% de l'attention médiatique.

Source:

Democrats and Unity Drive the Campaign Narrative