Challenge: Totalitarian Environmentalist Regime

[MerryPrankster]

Tom,

I've read that book, I think. It's called "Fallen Angels" or something similar. Paperback SF. There's basically a couple of orbiting space stations and two pilots from them crash on Earth. They're really fragile/weak (no gravity) and the eco-fascist US gov't is hunting them. Fortunately for the pilots, a bunch of Earth-based pro-technology dissidents shuttle them around.

Meanwhile, the glaciers have eaten all of Canada and are moving into the northern US. That's kind of an important plot point in a couple of places (I can't remember how specifically, though--perhaps it involves Eskimos).

 

[tom]

Matt:
You got it!

 

[Wombat]

Matt:
You got it!

For anyone who's interested FAllen Angels is available through the Baen free library http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm . Its a little to concerned with its own cleverness for my taste

 

[mishery]

In my admittedly limited experience of the green movement, I have found many people to be extremely rigid in their views. My support for nuclear power was completely unacceptable to them, you could not support both nuclear power and protecting the environment. I also felt that they showed the same kind of sense superiority that I have encountered in far left supporters, the feeling that only they have the intelligence to see through the lies of the media and that anyone that doesn't think the same as them has been hoodwinked, the attitude that the reason you don't agree with them is that you simply haven't understood, not that you just don't agree.

 

[MerryPrankster]

The whole "I know better than you," when coupled with the coercive apparatus-es of the State, can get VERY scary.

 

[mishery]

The whole "I know better than you," when coupled with the coercive apparatus-es of the State, can get VERY scary.

Indeed, that was what I was hinting at. I can easily see how this tendency could lead to an oppressive regime. I think the "we have seen through the lies" attitude is common to extreme groups of all kinds, politcal, religious, sexual, social. Right wing groups often have the attitude that everyone thinks like them really and that folk espousing left wing ideas are just trying to be "trendy". I guess it would be the other way round if right wing ideas were trendy. I think it helps to unify and give confidence to fringe groups that the majority think of as loonies.

 

[Anthony Appleyard]

Tight controls on fuel and materials use include restricting boat use and scuba diving to work and the armed forces. This is unpopular and has to be enforced. See my Sea Patrol pictures for one possible result.