Boris Ryvkin '09: More nonsense from Brown activists - Columns

Activist schemes at Brown have grown at a fever pitch.

In a column last month ("Brown students should be forced to think green," Sept. 5), climate foot soldier Joshua Kaplan imagined the University as one giant laboratory, with sensors and displays providing daily reminders of our crimes against Mother Nature.

His allies at emPOWER, Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Labor Alliance have come together to promote the Real Food Challenge, which demands a more ethical campus in thought and in diet.

Kaplan's piece leaves little doubt as to the intentions of Brown's environmental extremists, just as the RFC demonstrates how far some are willing to go to force their lifestyles on others.

Whatever happened to tolerance, disagreement and individual choice? Aren't these the ideals liberals parrot on a regular basis? Apparently these only apply when the right kinds of choices are made and ideas held.

Kaplan's plan to rewire the University and "shove" our energy use in our faces is nothing short of frightening. His fanaticism about man-made global warming leads to the assumption that no amount of new evidence or testimony will make him question the alarmist consensus.

Whatever is floating around out there can be explained away somehow. The 17,000 scientists who signed a petition opposing United States ratification of Kyoto and similar climate treaties are kooks in the pockets of big oil. The National Academy of Science study that debunked the "hockey stick" model of temperature change in the International Committee on Climate Change Report is inconclusive.

Kaplan's view leaves no room for further discussion and those who remain stubborn on climate change must see the error of their ways: disagreement with alarmism is tantamount to a mental defect.

Perhaps unwittingly, Kaplan has taken a page from the playbook of successive Soviet governments, which confined scores of political dissenters to mental institutions under a policy of psychiatric detention.

Kaplan envisions the University transformed into a massive laboratory. Students are dehumanized. Those who do the right thing and watch less television at night get rewarded while the culprits are punished.

Climate change calamities: Socialist planning needed | The Socialist 2 October 2008

Yet the issue of global warming is interwoven with politics, the empty promises and paralysis which currently characterise capitalist governments. Hansen warns that while the changes needed to preserve the planet are clear, these changes "have been blocked by special interests, focused on short-term profits, who hold sway in Washington and other capitals."

The fossil fuel energy companies have been blocking the fight against global warming, Hansen warns.

He calls on the bosses of these companies to be put on trial for "high crimes against humanity". While many people would applaud this suggestion, the most important action the government could take is to nationalise the fossil energy companies and confiscate their profits, so that their vast resources and wealth can be immediately directed - as part of a democratically agreed plan - to rapidly bring about the changes required to reduce global warming and at the same time to eliminate the 'fuel poverty' that exists.

After all, if $700 billion can be spent in the USA to free banks from the bad debts they ran up, which led to the credit crunch, and the multi-trillion dollar mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be nationalised, surely nationalising the oil and top related industries (such as electricity, gas, water, transport and construction) in order to save the planet, is entirely justified.
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Restoring food production disrupted by climate change requires the ending of this 'free market' madness, including ending financial speculation in food. This means the nationalisation of the big food companies, the fertiliser companies, and related chemical industries. It requires proper democratic planning of food production worldwide.