An Irrelevant Europe - Best for the World?
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/06/23/an-irrelevant-europe-best-for-the-world/
In a recent op-ed Robert Kagan laments that (Western) Europe is
sliding into irrelevance. But that might be the best thing for the
rest of the world.
Don’t get me wrong, the world owes plenty to Europe. It’s given the
world great art, architecture, literature, and music. It’s also given
the world the ideas of universal education, the scientific method,
research institutions, property rights, rule of law, democracy,
religious freedom, and freedom of thought and expression, among other
things. These ideas and institutions coalesced to power the engine of
progress that drives the economic and technological development that
have improved human well-being — not only in Europe but elsewhere — to
levels far beyond what our ancestors could have imagined.
Consequently, today we live longer, healthier, more educated, freer,
and wealthier than ever before. But for the past century, Europe seems
determined to undo all the good it’s ever done.
Europe gave the world the ideologies of Fascism and Marxism, which
were responsible — or provided rationalizations — for 100–150 million
deaths worldwide, including many outside Europe, most notably in
China, Cambodia and North Korea. Then in a few short decades, despite
having risen Phoenix-like from the ashes of destruction of World War
II, instead of brimming with optimism, Europe has taken a decidedly
pessimistic turn.
It no longer believes in progress. Its birth rate has dropped below
replacement rates, yet, despite its protestations of equality,
fraternity, secularism, and respect for human rights, it’s unwilling
or unable to welcome or integrate immigrants of different colors or
religious backgrounds into its societies. And one by one it’s
abandoning the great ideas that brought it, and the rest of the world,
progress, and advanced human well-being.
Its political leader****p, although democratically elected, has
abandoned democracy in its pursuit of a united Europe. The more the
idea of the EU fails in democratic tests — most recently in Ireland —
the more devious its politicians’ machinations to bypass popular
approval.
It has abandoned scientific inquiry, relying instead on mantras such
as the “science is settled.” Having abandoned science, it now relies
on superstition, manifested in the notion of a
global-warming-triggered apocalypse of Biblical pro****tions if average
temperatures exceeds 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels
— an apocalypse complete with death, disease, pestilence, droughts,
famines and floods. Not only is there no evidence for this, this
superstition persists despite the current reality that more Europeans
die in winter than in summer, Europe’s long history of misery and want
during cold periods and plenty during warm eras, and that even as
media coverage of extreme weather events becomes more compelling and
ubiquitous, globally the deaths and death rates from such events are
in long term decline. If Europe had spent a fraction of the resources
in adapting to climate change as it did on complying with the futile,
but politically-correct Kyoto Protocol, it might have reduced by
thousands the death toll of its 2003 heat wave.
Europe is now on the verge of abandoning the quest for technological
progress, preferring instead to be ruled by the so-called
precautionary principle which, as applied by Europe, actually
increases human misery and death. It does this by discouraging, if not
vetoing, new and safer technologies that could displace older and less
safe technologies on the grounds that “safer” is not good enough — it
has to be absolutely safe.
The precautionary principle was used to justify relinqui****ng its use
of DDT, which was easy, because Europe had already conquered malaria.
It is also used against genetically modified crops. The misapplication
of the precautionary principle, coupled with its abandonment of
scientific inquiry evident in the torching and destruction of
experimental trials on genetically modified crops and its reliance on
superstition, has resulted in a de facto ban on such crops in most of
Europe. But giving up such crops isn’t hard either. Western Europe is
well fed — in fact today it worries more about obesity than hunger —
and its farmers’ excessive productivity is actually a drag on its
taxpayers. Some Europeans would also give up nuclear and coal, but
that would actually be giving something up, so protestations to the
contrary, that will come about only after renewable energies mature
and are better able to pay for themselves without subsidies.
But worst of all, Europe is once again ex****ting dangerous,
misanthropic ideas, which unfortunately are echoed even in the US
where many are in thrall of European ideas, no matter how
ill-conceived. These ideas are couched in doublespeak, such as the
European version of the precautionary principle, which could kill as
many people as the failed ideologies of Fascism and Marxism.
Europe talks endlessly of helping developing countries and offering
token amounts of aid but then refuses to reform its agricultural
policies which would do a lot more for helping the latter help
themselves. At the same time it bemoans the new prosperity of
long-suffering Asia that has lifted over a billion out of a poverty
that Europe has not known since even before the French Revolution
because it’s enabled by and rides on greater energy use. And for that,
some Europeans threaten punishment through carbon tariffs.
But energy use and economic development are inextricably linked not
only in China and India but in Europe and elsewhere. Even as energy
use fueled economic development, it freed human beings from
back-breaking physical labor, allowed women to escape the drudgery of
household work, equalized economic op****tunities for women, reduced
the need for child labor, liberated animals from being our beasts of
burden, and enabled brains to displace brawn, laying the foundation
for a less energy-intensive economy.
Europe campaigned actively, but fortunately unsuccessfully, to ban
DDT. Despite this, African nations, deferring to European “expertise”
on matters technological while fearing a European boycott of their
agricultural ex****ts if even trace amounts of DDT are found on them,
have been slow to adopt DDT to combat malaria — fears that Europe did
nothing to dispel and may, in fact, have actively encouraged. For the
same reasons, Africans have been reluctant to turn to genetically
modified crops to reduce hunger and malnutrition. And once again,
Europe is standing silently by if not actively discouraging the use of
genetically modified crops.
For context, consider that over 6 million people die each year from
malaria, hunger and malnutrition, a toll that annually rivals that of
the entire Holocaust. Yet Europe has done little to help or reassure
Africa in this regard, thereby abandoning one of the Holocaust’s most
im****tant lessons, namely, inaction can be no less culpable than
active participation.
Europe may be able to walk away from further economic and
technological development, but the rest of the world can’t afford to,
not if it values human and environmental well-being.
An irrelevant Europe could save innumerable lives in the developing
world. And that might be best for this world.
--
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our
homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other
countries are going to say OK." -- Barack Obama
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
"...the whole world, including the United States, including all that
we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark
Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights
of perverted science." -- Sir Winston Churchill
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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