The Foundation for Freedom recently featured a speech by German journalist/author Michael Miersch, whose works often appear at FOCUS and who is a regular contributor at the Achse des Guten (Axis of the Good) blogsite. The title of his speech: “Courage for the Future”.
Rarely do I see a message delivered as powerfully as seen by Miersch here. Every young person in Germany should see this video.
Miersch tells us how that, by almost every measure, the world is a far better place today than is portrayed by Europe’s and Germany’s white-wine-sipping intellectuals.
In the clip, Miersch is first introduced by Spiegel journalist Alexander Neubacher, who brings up the Club of Rome book, “The Limits of Growth” and reminds the audience of some of the just utterly asinine predictions they made, and taken seriously by the public, 40 years ago.
Miersch, once a trendy pessimist journalist, became optimistic about the future in the 1990s and realized that German intellectuals have a completely disfigured, hopelessly pessimistic view of the world. What follows are some of the comments Miersch makes:
2.10: “For German intellectuals, optimism is a sort of American mental illness. This applies to journalists as well. Optimists are the ones with rose-colored glasses who don’t want to see just how horrible reality is: the American ‘think-positive’ gurus who either deny or are just plain uninformed.”
3.35: “Nothing sparks more outrage than optimism [in Europe].”
4:41: “I don’t view optimism for the future as an American mental illness, but as a justified life view.”
5.24: Miersch, once a trendy, pessimistic science journalist who believed all the end-of-the-world stories, tells how he turned optimist, inspired by a single innocent remark:
“One day in the 1990s in the springtime during an editorial meeting, in the middle of the city, the window was open and the song of a blackcap could be heard, to which a young intern completely inapproporiately said, ‘Hey listen, one of your extinct birds is out there tweeting again.’ The laughter triggered a sort of subversive effect and the blackcaps slowly began to change my mind.”
6.14: Miersch on his subsequent attempt by his magazine to report that things weren’t that bad, and what happens they reported good news to readers:
“…led to a wave of subscription cancellations, which quickly brought us on the list of endangered editors. It was clear that our subscribers didn’t want facts, and they begged for gloomy, hopeless, unsolvable disasters, and please, most of all, spare us the solutions.”
7.50: Miersch tells us the first law of the media: “Only bad news are news“.
8.00: Miersch then illustrates just how bad things have gotten in the media, citing a news report delivered German flagship ARD television, where the editors took good news and spun them into bad news. Miersch:
The news was actually good news: Life expectancy is rising, and not only in industrial countries, but also in developing countries. And how did the ARD News present this? ‘The global population is aging faster than ever!'”
8.25: He cites another media example, a headline about growing forest area in the Alps: “Forest growth threatens meadows!”
To illustrate the absurdity of the environmentalism, Miersch then tells the story of a reporter who showed how easy it is to get lots a people to sign a petition against “dihydrogen-monoxide” (H2O).
10.20: Miersch tells us that by all statistical measures, only one conclusion can be drawn: “The world is getting better – contrary to the impression conveyed by the media and newspapers.”
11.00 Miersch reminds the audience of the UN Millennium targets:
In the spring of 2012, the World Bank was able to announce that the most important Millenium target is already reached: the halving of global poverty by 2015. However, there were no headlines about this in Germany.”
11.50: Miersch tells the audience of the media reaction to the news from the MetOffice that global temperatures have stagnated: “This made front-page headlines in many papers in England, but in Germany there were no news about this.”
Miersch in his speech tells his audience that, no matter which measure you look at, the world’s ills are shrinking: war, mortality, disease, poverty, pollution, natural disasters, etc.. “This contradicts all the predictions from the intellectuals. There are even more polar bears today!”
14.20: Miersch then says that according to environmentalist ideology, communist East Germany should have developed into an ecological paradise:
No flights to Majorca, no kiwis from New Zealand, restricted individual mobility, no McDonalds, and highly restricted consumption. However what resulted was a huge garbage dump.”
16.35: Miersch says again that by any measure, the world is a far better place today, and that it is going to get better:
The world today could be better, and will be better if we just finally stopped bad-mouthing progress and viewing the human race as the plague of the planet. At its core, the green future-pessimistic and technologically hostile zeitgeist is an anti-humanistic ideology down to its roots. It’s only about restriction, limitation, and constant surveillance. Man is viewed as destructive and as a contaminator – in the best case as a consumer – and never as an inventor, creator.”
Astonishing mental leap for a German journalist.
This article is quite stunning. I was really surprised to see this because what he says is right yet it is not interesting for most people. I am encouraged that it is interesting even for this site. For me it shows deeper depth of understanding on this site than just dealing with the sceptical position on climate, so this made my day.
For the last 40 years I have watched the TV News in the UK and Europe, from the days of constant IRA bombs, footage of Vietnam, Idi Amin and all the other stuff seems to be one constant stream of crisis. Even local news is a sad trail of all the deaths and corruptions of the local area, I used to call it “mortuary news” , then all these chilling stories come to a neat end with a nice story about a cat, a crazy UFO story or the Loch Ness monster, just to show that it is not all negative and that the programmers are not 100% morose.
Now I know that this is not a blog for discussing religion, and some blogs (WUWT) like to stifle anything that goes in the “religious” direction (unless it is Monckton of course), but excluding valid points of view is what propagandists do, and it only sets false limits for conversation. I will include a little point here. Please forgive me if you think it is out of place, and thank you for allowing it into discussions.
I have realised that many Christians (I mean Bible believing ones) have lived and do live in a pessimistic world view. As much as their hope is their strength, and they stand by faith looking for the day when Christ returns (many flavours of this), they also read the news headlines and many try to connect the bad news with prophecies of the Bible. In most cases these are mere speculations, others have a ring of truth (even if it is not true) such as the 666 on the bar codes, and so on, but these negative things are seen as an encouragement to them because it confirms their view that the Bible is right and that the “King” will be here soon, though no one knows when.
The miserable media world must have a reason for being so miserable. The constant diet of bad news is a confirmation and reinforcement that there is no God. One of the questions that unbelievers ask is “how can God allow so many bad things to happen?”. It is no accident that the militant atheist all come from the UK and some have regular spots on the BBC. The BBC is held up as a model for broadcasting so it is quite natural that their philosophy will be replicated around the world. The message is that the world exists in chaos, there is no divine hope, everything is just chemicals, there is no spirit life, there are no absolutes, no purpose etc.
In another personal observation, I have noted a level of mockery in social conversations in the UK that is not seen in other EU countries I have lived in. There is almost nothing that is above being mocked. The Queen mother was virtually untouchable, but no one and nothing else.
The British have always had a reputation for complaining about the weather but now the complaint is directed at politicians. At last, someone is to blame for it!
I think that is where it comes to, that somehow people are comforted by seeing the wickedness around the world and knowing that they themselves are not that bad.
At the same time, they have seen so much corruption, abuse of power, abuse of science, the rise and fall of ideologies, that there is nothing left that can be trusted. Even God has been discredited!
The old saying, “fool me once…” is a practical reality. No one wants to be the fool so no one wants to believe in anything. Life is easier if you just mock anything that tries to promote positive values. It almost seems inevitable that if you put any trust in anything then you are going to get disappointed. Safer to avoid it.
So, rambling a bit, I think this is where we are. The constant diet of bad news keeps us in our informed distrusting world view, and so long as the bad news keeps coming, at least we can trust the bad news provider. If they start giving out good news then they are probably trying to manipulate us – we won’t believe it.
If you read all this then thanks.
Most religions have 3 components:
1) prophets
2) end-of-world predictions
3) path to salvation
Climate science has all three, which why it is becoming the world’s new religion.
@”Climate science has all three, which why it is becoming the world’s new religion.”
That only works as nobody request science to come up with a reliable (academically reasonable) definition of CLIMATE. The FCCC has none, but tells us that “Climate Change means the change of climate….”. And WMO just repeats a layman understanding that “climate is the average (statistical) weather”. Even the honourable Roger Piekle Sr., which started his invaluable blog “Climate Science” with the topic “What is Climate? Why Does it Matter How We Define Climate?” on July 11, 2005, (link to and more here http://www.whatisclimate.com/ ) finally failed to discern that the way science uses CLIMATE as misleading the general public, and politicians as well. Further discussion at: http://www.whatisclimate.com/b206_need_to_talk_July_2010.html
The holy WMO have defined climate as 30 years of weather. That’s it.
Now all they have to do is to motivate the number 30.
It’s called “numerology”.
@ “That’s it”
• At a general meeting, in Warsaw, 1935, the International Meteorology Organization (IMO, 1873-1950) confirmed that: “Climate is the average weather”, and adopted the years 1901-1930 as the “climatic normal period”
• The IPCC Glossary, [2007], has not listed weather, and on climate it is said this:
___”Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the average weather, or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years.”……..
Extract and discussed in a longer paper (about 11p.):”Is the term ‚climate’ too unspecific for a fruitful discussion?” at: http://www.whatisclimate.com/is-the-term-climate-too-unspecific.html
“If they start giving out good news then they are probably trying to manipulate us – we won’t believe it.”
Ah no; they always try to manipulate you…
“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen” [Nietzsche]
Mike, as for good news, see bjoern Lomborgs The Skeptical Environmentalist, he devotes an entire chapter to the media litany and then dismantles the litany chapter by chapter.
Also see http://www.gapminder.org by Hans Rosling
…I divide this into several comments because more than 2 links and the comment is swallowed…
Here’s a very nice video by Rosling
The Magical Washing Mashine 2010
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=x5ahmxYPltw&NR=1
And; given that you’re Christian, you might find this blog interesting.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/
Thanks Dirk.
I though I put a comment here but it doesn’t appear.
Sorry it got held up. Now approved. Thanks for the comment.
One addendum: when Miersch refers to cancellations of subscription on good news, he refers to the readers of the magazine Natur, a German alarmist enviro magazine. He does therefore not refer to the average German but to the environmentally concerned subgroup that pays money for such a magazine.
I’ve never read the magazine.
I have often been confused as to why Warmists don’t jump up and down with happiness when they were informed that there was a 15 year temperature standstill. Same for no acceleration in rate of sea level rise, more polar bears, record Antarctic sea ice extent, greening of the biosphere etc, etc………
I suspect the real reason they don’t jump up and down with happiness is because they have a ‘HIDDEN’ AGENDA. The whole global warming scare is to reduce industrialization and population by reducing co2. A low carbon economy is a Third World economy. 😉
This is good news all by itself.
Germany seemed to go overboard with the Greens, perhaps under the mistaken assumption that anyone who says they ‘care for the planet’ has to be a nice, and decent person. Many no doubt are, but some of their leaders are despicable.
One remarkable thing about the panic over CO2 is that none of the people who are prominent in public life for promoting that panic can be regarded as admirable. None that I have been able to find, anyway.
Are you sure this is Germany? Miersch sounds for all the world like like he’s talking about the intellectual elite and news media in the US.
I’m elated that the German media are beginning to beat the drum of truth.
Yeah, he repeatedly talks about the optimist nature of Americans; which does a disservice to American college professors, DailyKos readers, residents of the Left Coast and New Yorkers. And a few Yoga teachers in Oklahoma.
Thanks for this Pierre.
I think it is very much in line with what Matt Ridley – “the Rational Optimist” has been saying for quite some time – and with what me myself I have been thinking. 🙂
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog
Good news and optimism, the perfect anathema for all merchants of “Fear and control”.
Germany, indeed all of Europe has lost its optimistic and outgoing forwards looking Zeitgeist.
The doom mongers and nay sayers of the green ‘industry’ the communists of the eco movement have done a great job – all of us but particularly Germany and Britain: we have been screwed over by the greens.
We must lift ourselves out of the fugue of defeatist pessimism and the best way to make this happen is……. industry and the only way to refire the kilns and machines of EUrope – is to bin the green agenda.
Cheap energy: is the key to future hope.
The Greens are now the enemy within. They continue to spread their poison from the positions in the media and in the research institutes and in the federal institutes they have overtaken. You are forced to pay for the BBC, we are forced to pay for ARD and ZDF. The official Green Doom mantra will never change.
Until ‘the people’ open their eyes………..and slowly they are awakening.