The Future is a Golf Course
Ecofascism and the Grim Reality Ahead
I am experiencing a severe bout of climate depression again.
It has been the hottest March I can remember, and all I can think about is golf. Not because I play golf, but because I think golf is the perfect metaphor for the climate hell we are rushing headlong towards.
I am not ontologically opposed to golf, but I am ecologically opposed to it. I just think that, like kilts, bagpipes, and haggis, it probably should have stayed in Scotland.
Last summer, I was in Palm Springs for the first time. I was at the home of a new friend’s father, which, like many of the homes in Palm Springs, sits empty for most of the summer. It was a beautiful, sprawling Tuscan affair in a gated community, with a back porch that opened onto a pristine golf course. Each morning and evening, the simultaneous chatter of the sprinklers would pipe up and coat the course with a fresh blanket of spring water.
Every golf course does this. What struck me was that this one did it in the high summer, on an empty course in 110 degree heat. Over the weekend I stayed there, I saw only two people playing golf on that course. But the sprinklers never stopped. Every morning. Every night. Watering, trimming, and fertilizing an invasive grass for the benefit of a handful of golfers.
Something about this image struck me as the perfect metaphor for the sort of future we seem to be headed for. It is a future where the biodiversity of whole ecosystems will be flattened and reduced to a tailored experience for the exorbitantly wealthy. A future where much of the world will experience heat death outside the walls of the gated community, while a select few enjoy tailored experiences within it.
Biodiversity, insofar as it survives, will do so inside glorified hobby parks paid for and maintained by the Epstein Class for their own use. They will require an exorbitant amount of resources simply to keep alive.
Capitalism as Ecological Warfare
Golf is already the preferred leisure and networking activity of the ruling class. It is easy to imagine that, as much of the world collapses into climate hell, an archipelago of lush golf courses from Florida to Dubai will be pristinely maintained for the benefit of an increasingly isolated and out-of-touch elite. They will simply put razor wire on top of the fences.
