Environmentalism as a signalling device

It can't be realistic policy - that requires a suspension of disbelief of epic proportions - and so the new World Wildlife Fund report can only be posturing among environmentalists.  Certainly no western government can even begin to implement its proposals:

Analysis Extremist green campaigning group WWF - endorsed by no less a body than the European Space Agency - has stated that economic growth should be abandoned, that citizens of the world's wealthy nations should prepare for poverty and that all the human race's energy should be produced as renewable electricity within 38 years from now.

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But then we get onto the big stuff. First up, there must be an "immediate focus" on "drastically shrinking the ecological footprint of high income populations".

That means you, Reg reader: you are to accept a massively lower standard of living, in order to reduce your "footprint" to match your nation's "biocapacity". Then you'll have to take another cut, because your nation - being rich - has more "biocapacity" than a poor country does (despite their claim that planetary resources are finite, WWF acknowledges that new "biocapacity" can be created in the form of cropland, forests etc), but this should be shared with the poorer lands under "equitable resource governance".

That means less heating when it's cold - no cooling at all, probably, when it's hot. It means sharply limited hot water: so dirtier clothes, dirtier bedding and a dirtier you - which will be nice as you will also have to live in a smaller home and travel almost exclusively on crowded buses or trains along with similar smelly fellow eco-citizens. Food will be scarcer and realistically much less nutritious (milk for kids will be a luxury, let alone meat, fruit, coffee, that sort of stuff. Get ready to eat a lot of turnips, if you're a Brit.)

Want proof that these policy proposals cannot be implemented?  OK, here you go:

Yet incoming socialist president François Hollande claimed after his victory over Nicolas Sarkozy that he would bring an end to this mythical austerity: “We will bring back Europe on a track for jobs, growth and the future… We’re no longer doomed to austerity.”

This is just a willful, purposeful distortion. What the heck is he talking about? Certainly not France.

If not France, then where?

In Italy and Spain, which have been dependent on tens of billions of cash infusions from the European Central Bank (ECB) to refinance their debts, cuts are hardly anywhere to be found either. In Spain, spending was cut by just €11 billion in 2011, a mere 2.3 percent reduction. In Italy, spending actually increased by €4.3 billion.
Both countries borrowed an additional €117 billion last year alone, raising their combined debts to €1.939 trillion. So, no austerity there. Just debt slaves.

It's dumbfounding to watch the environmental movement in action, as they become increasingly divorced from reality.  It's like nobles in the ancien régime, knowing that something was different but never talking to anyone who might know just why.  Bloody commoners - glad nobody invites them to our parties.  And so, the collapse.

The media echo chamber seems very damaging to the entire environmental movement here, as does the (so far very successful) fundraising strategy of dialing the fear up to eleventy.  While that brings in perhaps a Billion dollars a year to the WWF machine, it's divorced from reality.

The whole spectacle is rather sad, really.  A once noble cause has become the crazy guy in the intersection, shouting about the end of the world.