How Do You Turn a Leftist into a Warmonger, Part II August 9, 2019 by Dan Mitchell

Back in 2012, I wrote that the left’s hostility to tax competition had reached such a crazy level that some of them were even urging military action against low-tax jurisdictions.

Though I was amused to see that this warmongering focused on tiny jurisdictions such as Monaco and the Cayman Islands rather than the well-armed Swiss.

But maybe the militaristic statists are getting braver.

Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard, openly suggests in a column for Foreign Policy that it may be necessary to invade Brazil in the name of global warming.

…how far would you go to prevent irreversible environmental damage? In particular, do states have the right—or even the obligation—to intervene in a foreign country in order to prevent it from causing irreversible and possibly catastrophic harm to the environment? …I raise this issue in light of the news that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is accelerating development of the Amazon rainforest… What should (or must) the international community do to prevent a misguided Brazilian president (or political leaders in other countries) from taking actions that could harm all of us?

In the article, Professor Walt mentions sanctions and protectionism as potential tools.

But he also thinks a military option should be on the table.

…international law authorizes countries to go to war for self-defense or when the Security Council authorizes military action. It’s even legal to attack another country’s territory preemptively, provided there is a well-founded basis…destroying the Amazon rainforest presents a clear and obvious threat to many other countries… I don’t mean to single out Brazil: It would be an equally radical step to threaten the United States or China if they refused to stop emitting so many greenhouse gases. …It might seem far-fetched to imagine states threatening military action to prevent this today, but it becomes more likely if worst-case estimates of our climate future turn out to be correct.

Wow.

Because I’m not a scientist, I generally don’t write about global warming. Or climate change, or climate crisis, or whatever it’s now being called.

But I am very skeptical of people who make absurd and hysterical arguments (climate change will cause genocide, it will cause AIDS, it is supported by racists, it means Cuba is better than the USA, it causes terrorism, it caused Brexit, etc) in order to advance an agenda that would dramatically expand the burden of government.

Some of them are simply scammers, using the issue to line their pockets with government grants.

But some of them are true believers who behave in very weird ways (don’t bathe, sterilize themselves, hand-cranked vibrators, choose death, etc).