The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings

by Pascal Bruckner, Steven Rendall (Translator)

Overview

The planet is sick. Human beings are guilty of damaging it. We have to pay. Today, that is the orthodoxy throughout the Western world. Distrust of progress and science, calls for individual and collective self-sacrifice to ‘save the planet’ and cultivation of fear: behind the carbon commissars, a dangerous and counterproductive ecological catastrophism is gaining ground.

Modern society’s susceptibility to this kind of thinking derives from what Bruckner calls “the seductive attraction of disaster,” as exemplified by the popular appeal of disaster movies. But ecological catastrophism is harmful in that it draws attention away from other, more solvable problems and injustices in the world in order to focus on something that is portrayed as an Apocalypse.

Rather than preaching catastrophe and pessimism, we need to develop a democratic and generous ecology that addresses specific problems in a practical way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745669779
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	09/15/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

A provocative essay on ‘ecological catastrophism’ from a best-selling author, now available in paperback.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Return of Original Sin 1

Part I The Seductive Attraction of Disaster 5

1 Give Me Back My Enemy 7

2 Have the Courage to be Afraid 24

3 Blackmailing Future Generations 49

Part II Progressives Against Progress 69

4 The Last Avatar of Prometheus? 71

5 Nature, a Cruel Stepmother or a Victim? 91

6 Science in the Age of Suspicion 105

Part III The Great Ascetic Regression 133

7 Humanity on a Strict Diet 135

8 The Poverty of Maceration 149

9 The Noble Savage in the Lucerne 162

Epilogue: The Remedy is Found in the Disease 184

Notes 187

Editorial Reviews

"As stylistically gratifying as he is intellectually lucid, Bruckner presents a clear alternative to the accepted thought on one of this era's hottest topics."
Publishers Weekly

"A sizzling new polemic against apocalyptic environmentalism."
San Francisco Chronicle

"The best tonic for stale science communications I’ve read in a while."
Cool Green Science

"Pascal Bruckner is a brilliant writer – astute, learned, broad-ranging, mordant, sometimes mischievous, and sometimes prophetic. He is one of the handful of writers around the world who define the intellectual history of our time."
Paul Berman, author of The Flight of the Intellectuals

"With his usual verve and eloquence, in The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse Pascal Bruckner offers a bracing and provocative critique of an ever-more-pervasive and fanatical Green politics and ideology. For Bruckner, the ecological catastrophism the latter promotes constitutes less a salutary call to action than a return to the politics of guilt encouraged by exhausted ideologies, religions, and religious institutions, the Catholic Church in particular. This book will please some and consternate others, but its intelligence and originality make it an important book for our times."
Richard Golsan, Texas A&M University  

"For anyone who has had enough of being harangued for single-handedly destroying the planet for future generations, Pascal Bruckner’s new book will come as a welcome breath of fresh and unpolluted air."
Normandie
 

From the Publisher

In his newest work of political philosophy, Bruckner (The Tyranny of Guilt) takes a level-headed look at extreme ecologism and the true practicality of its proponents' most-quoted solutions. He opens with a seemly comparison of religious guilt and the pious posturing for favors from God with the current, widespread tendency to apologize for one's carbon footprint. His is not a condemnation of all "green" efforts—he demarcates the rational from those modes that seek to promulgate human guilt. Bruckner's reigning suggestion is a rarely heard one: that damnation of humans is antithetical to the actual salvation of the earth, as only unprecedented innovation will churn out results big enough to answer the planet's problems. His essays incorporate case studies and effective side notes, including a lexicon of modern platitudes that underlines the superficiality of popular environmental posturing. Though his prose is cutting, Bruckner can be equally poetic, such as when he describes the non-utilitarian branches of the animal kingdom as "the baroque exuberance of the living." As stylistically gratifying as he is intellectually lucid, Bruckner presents a clear alternative to the accepted thought on one of this era's hottest topics. (July)

Publishers Weekly

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