Ebenezer Scrooge – proto-Green?

I read Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” annually to remind myself why I will someday invent a time machine, travel back to 1843, and have him kneecapped. This year, though, it yielded unforeseen riches in the form of a sudden shock, a unexpected vision of an all too familiar character that I never realized existed in 19^th century London. What was this revelation, this epiphany, this eye-opener? It turns out that the unreconstructed Scrooge is actually a 21^st century environmentalist.

The first rather broad hint of this comes as Scrooge is in his office trying to get rid of two gentlemen who are soliciting charitable donations. When one of them says that many of the poor would rather die than go to the workhouses, Scrooge replies, “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” A reply that would do Paul Ehrlich and the rest of his Neo-Malthusian misanthropes proud! Of course, they want the poor to die to save the environment, just like all those who condemned millions of Africans to illness and death by banning DDT. That’s more important than human lives. But wait, there’s more!

“Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room, and as surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary to part.”

Scrooge is obviously being conservation minded here, and he is sincerely trying to reduce his carbon footprint on the earth by limiting his use of fossil fuels. And as all Greens desperately wish, he has the power to force another to behave likewise whether that person wants to or not. It’s for his own good, after all.

When Scrooge’s nephew comes in to wish him a merry Christmas, Scrooge snarls, “What right have you to be merry?” What is this but the constant cry of the Al Gores of the world decrying any human comfort or enjoyment as destructive to the planet? Nobody has a right to be merry unless Al and his fellow elites approve.

Before his conversion to Dickensian righteousness, Scrooge walks everywhere – no SUV for him! He eats cheap food and not much of it. He lives in rooms in an old building that has been converted to offices – no planet-killing house or yard. He owns very little furniture or clothing. He has no wife or children - no contributor to overpopulation he! He hates humanity in general and especially people who are enjoying themselves ("If I could work my will every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."). He is the very model of the modern Green, the master mold of environmentalism. Who cares about the actual reasons for living such a life, it’s good for the planet, isn’t it? We should all be like Scrooge! Well, the old Scrooge. After Dickens' sentimental ghosts get through with him, his consumption of the earth’s resources goes way up – “Make up the fires and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!” He also “knew how to keep Christmas well”, and we all know what THAT means. Redemption, indeed! Bah, humbug!

So in this season of hope and joy, remember that the only way to save the planet is for all of us to be hopeless and joyless like old Ebenezer Scrooge, version one.

Merry Christmas!