Environmentalists: don’t label them Luddites
Using the L-word to describe today’s middle-class eco-miserabilists is an insult to the nineteenth-century radicals who fought for their rights and dignity.
Tim Black

A bit of contrived controversy has never hurt a book promotion. And so it proved recently, as Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the government, and co-author with Gabrielle Walker of the global warming tract, The Hot Topic: How to Tackle Global Warming and Still Keep the Lights On, took it upon himself to scandalise his target audience: ‘There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves “green” are actually keen to take us back to the eighteenth or even the seventeenth century’, he said. ‘[Their argument is] “let’s get away from all the technological gizmos and developments of the twentieth century.”’ (1) In other words, as the Guardian paraphrased it and others were content to report it, too many greens are, in theory and sometimes practice, ‘Luddites’ (2).

As pejoratives go, it’s a little less severe than ‘Nazi’, but it has the same decontextualised, polemical punch. Luddite, as King implies, denotes someone with a nostalgia for the simple(ton’s) life, someone whose aversion to technological advance has an almost pathological quality. While some are always keen to embrace such characterisation, not everyone was pleased with the comparison: ‘Many greens are rather keen to get to the technologies of the twenty-first century, which would make them the polar opposite of Luddites’, retorted Jeremy Leggett, chairman of solarcentury, the UK’s largest solar electrics company (3).

However, while selective technophilia might prevail in some quarters, depending on what’s being sold, many of a green persuasion, from anarcho-primitivists to deep ecologists, normally do evince a far more suspicious attitude towards technology. This is not to suggest such scepticism is confined to the fringes; it is equally tangible in mainstream, state-sponsored environmentalism. For example, Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission, rejected King’s advocacy of nuclear power precisely because of its technological emphasis: ‘Pulling a technological megafix, like nuclear power, out of the hat is easier from a political point of view, but it misses the essence of climate change which is transforming people’s lives.’ (4) For Porritt, then, technology gets in the way of the moral project - telling us how to live.

But leaving the curious cynicism of Porritt’s message aside - climate change appears as a pretext for implementing certain moral imperatives - it’s not difficult to see from where the accusations of Luddism arise. To an extent they’re almost welcomed by greens. A distrust of technology, indeed a view of technological development as the cultivation of catastrophe, draws the Luddites, machine-breakers par excellence, into focus as the historical footsoldiers of the environmentalist crusade. ‘Their pain, their ire, is ours too’, emote various greens.

But it’s a distorting lens. Interpreting the Luddites in terms of contemporary anxieties and fears around technological development, and reducing their historical record to a bit of technology smashing wish-fulfilment, effaces the historical reality of the Luddites. A quick look at this reality can prove illuminating: instead of anchoring environmentalism in a radical tradition, it opens up a critical perspective on today’s self-righteous, managerial vanguard. Indeed, the tightly organised groups of masked men who smashed stocking frames in the Midlands, shearing frames in West Riding, Yorkshire, and power looms in parts of Lancashire over the course of several tumultuous months between February 1811 and June 1812 bear so little resemblance to the contemporary environmentalist that to liken them to him is to flatter the contemporary green with convictions and aspirations he scarcely comprehends. Luddite croppers and weavers deserve a little better than to be namechecked alongside today’s middle-class miserabilists.

more at: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/printable/4299/

Honing in on Porritt:

Ah, environmental and social salvation is just a wood-burning fireplace away. The problem with returning to the good old days is the fact that there are now so many more people to return to that era. A few decades of 19th-century living for a population of 300,000,000 would leave many US forests looking like a WalMart parking lot. The act of wood and coal burning would cause Peking-style air pollution levels in many major urban centers. Of course, what trip back to the halcyon days of 1800 would be complete without ditching the Tin Lizzie? For those who argue that horse ownership is more environmentally friendly, I urge them to release their grip on the bridle and walk several paces back to the rear bumper area.

19th century diseases would kill'em off faster than you can say, "Clearcut!"

Both of you Gentlemen are terrifyingly correct!

At the rate current empowered Homo Sapiens are accelerating the environmental
destruction of ALL of the Earths regenerative support systems,The lowly
Cockroach's Cheshire Smile denotes the impending doom of the Human Fungus
on Planet Earth.

WE should enjoy all the Technological Advances we can stand,for the ability
to support them is neigh on ending.

hmmm, I like. Comparing today's environmental movement to Luddites is indeed insulting to the Luddites. There has to be some group to compare them too though... Some group that is more concerned with controlling the way you live and think as the main goal, environment an incidental concern. I just can't think of what groups those might be?

I'm sure some of our resident "middle class miserablists" could chime in some suggestions there, perhaps?

__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

I'll give it some thought, comrade.