The planet is sick. Human beings are guilty of damaging it. We have to pay. Today, that is the orthodoxy throughout the Western world. Distrust of progress and science, calls for individual and collective self-sacrifice to save the planet and cultivation of fear: behind the carbon commissars, a dangerous and counterproductive ecological catastrophism is gaining ground.

Modern societys susceptibility to this kind of thinking derives from what Bruckner calls the seductive attraction of disaster, as exemplified by the popular appeal of disaster movies. But ecological catastrophism is harmful in that it draws attention away from other, more solvable problems and injustices in the world in order to focus on something that is portrayed as an Apocalypse.

Rather than preaching catastrophe and pessimism, we need to develop a democratic and generous ecology that addresses specific problems in a practical way.

Introduction: The Return of Original Sin 1

Part I The Seductive Attraction of Disaster 5

1 Give Me Back My Enemy 7

2 Have the Courage to be Afraid 24

3 Blackmailing Future Generations 49

Part II Progressives Against Progress 69

4 The Last Avatar of Prometheus? 71

5 Nature, a Cruel Stepmother or a Victim? 91

6 Science in the Age of Suspicion 105

Part III The Great Ascetic Regression 133

7 Humanity on a Strict Diet 135

8 The Poverty of Maceration 149

9 The Noble Savage in the Lucerne 162

Epilogue: The Remedy is Found in the Disease 184

Notes 187