The massive power of profit-hungry corporations to induce humanity to act in self-destructive ways is a hardy perennial of intellectuals and political activists. But it is curiously lacking in persuasive explanations of precisely how it is that ordinary people can be led toward infinite myopia with respect to their own interests. They refuse to choose consumption patterns that are environmentally responsible, thus poisoning themselves and others. They refuse to vote for aspiring public officials who pledge credibly to pursue policies that can be described as such, thus allowing others to poison them.

Thus has modern environmentalism now returned to the false consciousness of the masses induced to take such trivial actions as changing their lightbulbs while fossil fuel corporations remain free to “pollute” at will, immune “to the exercise of any democratic public will.” As night follows day, that false consciousness of ordinary people means automatically that there must be an elite — a vanguard of the proletariat — that will save humanity from those powerful corporations.

Read the full article by Benjamin Zycher about environmentalism from American Enterprise Institute =