WHY FREEDOM IS PARAMOUNT IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE
CHANGE
Author: Robert D. Brinsmead
August 2008
The fathers of our liberal
democracies were a cluster of remarkable thinkers who appeared at the end of
the 18th and dawn of the l9th centuries. The greatest names in this giant leap
forward for humanity were John Milton, John Locke, John Stuart Mills, Thomas
Paine, Adam Smith, Voltaire, and Thomas Jefferson. These men championed a
trilogy of human freedoms unknown in the world until their time. This trilogy
was religious freedom (John Milton), political freedom (including free speech
of course - of which Thomas Paine and Voltaire were perhaps the most
"outrageous" exponents) and economic freedom (the most famous name
here was Adam Smith). It was the conviction of these luminaries that freedom
was the sine quo non of being human.
The human freedoms that these men championed unleashed the greatest era of
human prosperity and progress ever seen in the history of the world. The human
life-span soon doubled, along with standards in education, housing, nutrition,
medicine, communications, transportation, and lots more.
Julian Simon pointed to the simple correlation between human freedoms and human
prosperity. Those nations which enjoy the greatest freedoms enjoy the greatest
standards of living along with the cleanest environments, whilst those
societies whose freedoms are the most repressed by brutal regimes are the
poorest places on earth. Why this cause/effect relationship between human
freedom and human progress?
It has been said that no collective, committee, parliament or body of people
ever painted a Mona Lisa, discovered that E=MC2, designed a Sydney Opera House,
or produced any of the great works of art, science, medicine, discoveries or
inventions that have been of enormous benefit to the human race. One only has
to think of the almost endless stream of inventions that flowed from the mind
of Thomas Edison, or the literature that flowed from the pen of Shakespeare, or
the important discoveries and breakthrough made by the Mendel’s, Pasteur’s,
Darwin’s, Newton’s, and Galileo's of this world. With very few exceptions, the
greatest human works have come from the minds of lone individuals exercising
their creative human freedom. They have not flowed from the brilliance of
bureaucracies, governments, committees or collectives. Neither have they been
the product of regulations and laws imposed by these.
This is not to deny that law and governance is necessary. (
This is so because human freedom unleashes human ingenuity, imagination,
inventiveness, enterprise, adaptation, problem solving, novelty and CREATIVITY.
The human mind is "the ultimate resource" (Julian Simon) of any
nation. Its potential is "infinite in all directions." (Freeman
Dyson). This being so, it ought to be the function of all governments,
bureaucracies, committees, and collectives of any kind to foster, encourage,
enhance and protect what is after all the sine quo non of being human.
This ought to be done out of enlightened self interest because to crush freedom
and with it human creativity is to destroy the goose of society that lays
golden eggs for everybody's benefit.
It now becomes an easy matter to state my political bias. It is the bias toward
personal human freedoms, whether in religion, economics or politics. No side of
politics can have a monopoly in this matter. When the Left does such things as
fight against Cartels, monopolies, or power blocks that favour the rich and
powerful by distorting the free market, then the Left deserves our support in
its fight against the oppressive forces of the political Right. But if it
starts to go down the road of distrusting human freedoms by supporting more and
more centralism, bureaucracy and regulations, then it becomes the enemy rather
than the champion of human liberation.
It is on this basis that I am against all socio-political-economic assaults on
personal human freedom.
Under the guise of saving the planet from the carbon footprint of humanity,
Environmentalism cannot disguise its profound anti-human bias. Like the
totalitarian Church that ruled in the West for more than 1000 years, we see
this same distrust of human freedom being touted everywhere. The current
paranoia about carbon dioxide, which is the basis of all life on the planet,
has become the grand pretext to push for more centralism, more mass planning,
and more regulations over every aspect of human life. This is not the pathway
blazed by the fathers of our liberal democracies. It is the pathway of social
control (Marxism), and it is the antithesis of those personal human freedoms
which are still the greatest force for human progress on the planet.
RDB
Web Published – August 2008
Copyright © 2008 Robert D.
Brinsmead