Homo sapiens emerged from its evolutionary background probably around 200,000 years ago.

The period of recorded history is ~5,000 years.

The vast majority of deaths at the direct hand of the state over both that 200,000-year and 5,000-year period have almost certainly occurred in the last 150 years.

Given the fact that the tiny portion of normal human activity which is controlled by the state is almost uniformly negatively affected by that control; and

Given the fact that that the overwhelming portion of abnormal human activities, such as the killing of other human beings, are state operations;

I submit that the burden of proof and justification logically falls upon those who support the existence of the state rather than upon those who oppose the existence of the state.

To put a finer point on it, the state as we know it has been a short-term experiment, and a pretty obviously failed one.

And might again in the not-too-distant future.

“This practice [of each tribe speaking a substantially different language] results from the circumstance of their having never submitted themselves to any laws, any coercive power, any shadow of government. Their only controuls are their manners, and that moral sense of right and wrong, which, like the sense of tasting and feeling, in every man makes a part of his nature. An offence against these is punished by contempt, by exclusion from society, or, where the case is serious, as that of murder, by the individuals whom it concerns. Imperfect as this species of coercion may seem, crimes are very rare among them: insomuch that were it made a question, whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among the
civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last:
and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under care of the wolves. It will be said, that great societies cannot exist without government. The Savages therefore break them into small ones.”

– Notes on Virginia, page 220 Also, searcheable here:

http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-singleauthor?specfile=/web/data/jefferson/texts/jefall.o2w

via Less Antman on lpradicals yahoo group

There are, as Tom correctly points out, also those who use their belief in climate change to push technological innovation and and end to massive government programs subsidizing conventional energy companies.

There are those using non-belief for the purpose of stopping government programs, and those using non-belief to shield corporate subsidies.

Climate destabilization isn’t. It’s direction is far less certain. Highly complex system.

While I agree that government involvement in energy has massively jacked up the natural state of that market, I don’t think that skepticism must be preemptive reaction against the consequences of being wrong. It wasn’t long ago that the government and media whipped the country into a frenzy with a litany of experts and their warnings of impending doom. Skeptics were widely criticized as partisan or unrealistic then as well. Now we’re several trillion deeper in the hole and the blood’s everywhere – and it’s now widely accepted that the initial premise was wrong in the first place. I don’t blame anyone for being skeptical about anything at this point.

The anti-science folks are the ones saying “no, no, things must stay EXACTLY the same as they’ve been for the last century. Any innovation or progress might hurt our portfolios.”

Ideologically, they’re no different from the early 19th century Luddites who smashed looms, believing that reducing the labor involved in production of textiles would rob them of their jobs as weavers.

In fact, the introduction of mass production brought the cost of textiles down so much that the increase in demand resulted in MORE employment.

Granted, the neo-Luddites are trying to protect portfolios heavy in “old industry” stocks rather than individual wage labor slots, but the government subsidies and protections against liability for externalities that prop up those portfolios are in function no different than the obsolete looms that propped up those old jobs.

Few remember that the leader of the fictional prototype for Earth First! was an anarcho-capitalist.

Pushing for green technologies does not make one an enviro-communist.

Pushing for global government and collective management of private property does.

We’re the ones pushing for progress – that would be innovation with green technologies and intelligent planning/design, in very simple terms.

That’s why I always say that regardless of whether global warming is happening or not, it would be beneficial, if not necessary, to make our society sustainable.