“Net-Zero” Misses the Point by Pointing in the Wrong Direction, by Chilton Williamson, Jr. 

By Chilton Williamson, Jr., Catholic World Report, January 30, 2024

Chilton Williamson, Jr. is the author of several works of fiction, narrative nonfiction, and “pure” nonfiction, including After Tocqueville: The Promise and Failure of Democracy, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! A Novel and, mostly recently, The End of Liberalism (St. Augustine’s Press, 2023). …

Only by treating “climate change” as a profoundly theological issue can we discover—in part by rediscovering—a better understanding and appreciation of nature and ourselves.

Panic, fear, and loathing concerning atmospheric warming and the “existential” threat alarmists claim it to be have failed so far to encourage a reconsideration of modern man’s relationship with the natural world and the Promethean attitude toward it that has prevailed in Western civilization since the 16th century. The current project to replace fossil fuels with “green” energy signals merely a change of technique in the effort to manage, adapt, control, and repurpose nature to humanity’s material ends, rather than an early attempt at reimagining our relationship with nature and the way in which we think about it.

All that has changed in mainstream thought is a greater attention to how the human race might learn to be less wasteful, destructive, and irresponsible in its exploitation of nature, while maintaining the West’s historically unprecedented levels of production, consumption, comfort, and profit and at the same time “leveling up,” in current British jargon, the non-Western nations by encouraging them to substitute “clean” energy for the dirty kinds. …

Continue reading >>>>>>>>