STRANGE TIMES

The green ascendancy can be a depressing thing but there have been a number of recent developments that have cheered me up.

First, of course, is the growing recognition that the greens are a fire hazard. This is an issue that we have already discussed extensively .

Noel Pearson’s response to the Queensland government’s plans to “protect” aboriginal land in Cape York will help to discredit green politics and hopefully give them a bloody nose. (See here.)

The challenge by “Lawyers for Forests” to the government approval of Gunn’s Bell Bay Pulp Mill project failed in the courts.

Australia’s first GM canola crop has been a roaring success and the farmers love it.

I’m not following climate stuff much now but I suspect that Plimer’s new book will make a splash. It will certainly make it easier for politicians and others to raise their doubts. There was also a great story in The Australian about how the Antarctic is definitely NOT warming.

Jennifer Marohasy made an interesting point about how there are now whole scientific disciplines that have developed around the belief that Nature is a “fragile life-support system”. So it is not just a matter of few greeniess with PhDs. It is worse than that. Oh dear. I’m not feeling quite so cheered up now.

Light up to celebrate human progress!

What bothers me when I look at this beautiful photo is the dark bits!

An article by Brendan O’Neill in today’s Spiked Online discusses a conference on climate change denial about to be held at the University of Western England.

O’Neill says

In a sense, this vision of elite, brainy environmentalists on one side and a baying, insult-hurling crowd on the other speaks, however accidentally and however crudely, to an underlying truth: environmentalism remains a largely elitist project, beloved of politicians, priests and prudes keen to control people’s behaviour and curb our excessive lifestyles, and it rubs many ‘ordinary people’ up the wrong way. Of course much of the public goes along with the environmentalist ethos, bowing to the central idea that mankind is destructive and observing such rituals as sorting their rubbish, but they do so half-heartedly, recognising that, fundamentally, greens’ anti-consumerist, anti-reproduction, anti-travel arguments run counter to their own personal aspirations. Yet rather than recognise this frequently hidden divide between the green elite and the ‘baying crowd’ as one built on differences of opinion, on clashing aspirations, even on rational assessments by sections of the public that recycling is a waste of time, increasingly environmentalists pathologise it, turning it into evidence of their wisdom in contrast to the public’s mental instability.

I’d just observe again that IMO it’s important to divide authoritarian, reactionary, anti-human Greens from people who’d identify as Green but who aren’t opposed to human progress, and also from those who may hold ideas we disagree with but might actually be won over in debate.

While the carbon cult killjoys demonstrated on Friday outside Downing Street against the third runway for Heathrow,  a counter-demonstration organized by Modern Movement was held nearby calling for more air travel. They are a group campaigning for ‘faster, cheaper, better transport for all’.

To quote from “Our right to travel” :

“Mobility is at the centre of everyone’s lives and the expansion of cheap flights in recent decades is one of the few tangible increases in the standard of living of most people. Whereas our housing stock has not improved much in either quality or quantity, and our railways and roads are undeveloped and congested, flying has plummeted in cost and has put weekend breaks within the reach of all. Now not only the rich can enjoy the freedom of flying, but we all can.”

So the anti-flying campaign is just one more example of how green politics is hurting people.

More here and here . (Yes, it’s the Spiked and Institute of Ideas crowd.)

It will be interesting to see how much blame the bushfire Royal Commission places on green policies that lead to insufficient ground fuel burn off and prevented people from clearing trees from around their houses.

Hopefully, this tragic event will spark some recognition among the populace at large that greeny ideas are nutty and downright toxic.

Of course, the death toll was not just a matter of failing to prevent fires; it was also a matter of failing to avoid their wrath.  There should have been better warning systems and better protection including proper public and private shelters.

Here’s an article  by Barry and published at On Line Opinion .  The comments thread at On Line Opinion is worth reading too.

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In the political discourse around green issues, the world outlook associated with various green groups is portrayed as left wing. This is largely because the green world outlook generally opposes capitalism, its leaders frequently use the rhetoric of the Left, are promoted as being left wing by the mainstream media, and usually identify themselves as being of the Left.

Moreover, many green leaders and activists were radicalised in the 1960s and 1970s and have genuinely left wing backgrounds. They see the green movement as a continuation of their previous left wing radicalism.

Continue reading ‘Since when has it been left wing to be green?’

Here is nine minutes of Barry’s comedy gig at the  2008 Australian Environment Foundation Conference dinner.

Our report of the conference itself can be read here.

Last weekend, a few of us drove up to Canberra to attend the Australian Environment Foundation conference.

“You need to get out  more!” my kids always say . Anyway, we went and it was fun.  Immediately below is my report, followed by a separate report from David McMullen.

It was an interesting and refreshing experience to meet with people outside my normal circles.

I enjoyed being among   people engaged in real-world politics which could make a positive difference in the here and now (see DavidMc’s report below for more details).  For decades  now “leftwing politics” has been the politics of protest and abstract demand that those in charge to make things all better.

Continue reading ‘Getting out and about: The Australian Environment Foundation Conference’

Is there no end to corporate greenwash? In Australia we now have postage stamps nagging us to “save energy”, “travel smart”, “reduce waste” and “save water”. What about a stamp telling us to save on human effort? That is the only genuinely scarce resource.

Complain here.

Austin Williams: The Enemies of Progress: The Dangers of Sustainability” (Societas, 2008)

I am heartily sick to death of ‘green architecture’. And I don’t mean that I’m a little fed up with greenwash or that I am slightly peeved that sustainability doesn’t get the attention it deserves. I mean that sustainability – in itself – has shown itself to be a euphemism for backwardness and I’ve had enough of the reactionary lectures by unelected green spokespersons. ‘Sustainable architecture’ is insidious, it’s patronising and it’s a recipe for uncertainty (what materials to use? where to build? Whether to build?). It’s not just the holier-than-thou attitude of the sustainability industry or the fact that over-paid eco-consultants have as much of ‘an agenda’ as anyone else (but pretend not to); the dangers of sustainability actually go much deeper. I hate sustainability because its relentless focus on the environment is killing creativity and undermining the needs and desires of the modern world.

Continue reading ‘Unsustainable Design (guest blog by Austin Williams)’

It is good to see that the Australian Environment Foundation is alive and kicking and is holding its next conference in Canberra on October 11 to 12.  The AEF was set up in 2005 by people who  wanted to see environment policy evidence based and solution focused rather than driven by green ideology which not only harms humans but quite often also the environment.

Their first battle was with the Australian Conservation Foundation, the peak green body in Australia, that unsuccesfully took them to court to prevent them using a name they claimed might be confused with their own.

Their chairperson until recently was former TV gardener Don Burke who had to resign because of work commitments. A replacement will be announced shortly. It will be interesting to see who it is.

Resisting climate alarmism has become one of their big areas of interest. In fact the AEF has been closely involved in the establishment of the Australian Climate Science Coalition which will  be officially launched at the conference. Continue reading ‘Environment Group with a Difference’

The Canberra Times (a daily newspaper published in Australia’s Capital Territory) has published an article by me in its Saturday edition (16th August 2008). It hasn’t gone on-line yet but I’ll add a link as soon as it does.   The letters’ section may be interesting in response to the article.

Here’s the text:

We live in strange times. Ideas that would normally be identified as belonging to the right are widely accepted as being of the left.

At a time when governments around the world are trying to convince their subjects that humanity’s carbon footprint is a catastrophic problem rather than just another measure of industrial progress, environmentalism has become a case in point. Prior to the 1970s, groups that warned the end was nigh unless people started living in harmony with nature were properly seen as being on the far right. With origins in seventeenth century romanticism and pagan ‘nature worship’, the green opposition to modern industrial society and capitalism is reactionary. Continue reading ‘If you want to be red, then don’t be green!’

The motor vehicle is one of the key features of modern affluence along with such things as plumbing, electricity, universal education and modern health care. It gave us mobility and independence, and allowed us to move from the slums to the suburbs.

It has various shortcomings as we all know. Driving is stressful and dangerous, with millions killed and disabled every year. And when there is insufficient investment in freeways and public transit, it can eat up a lot of our time.

However, as with other challenges thrown up by our material existence, we can expect human ingenuity to come to the rescue. In this case the solution is the driverless vehicle which require the traveler to do no more than specify their destination. Much of the technology has already been developed and prototype vehicles are well advanced. Continue reading ‘Get rid of the driver and the car stays king’

We rarely hear a good word for urban sprawl. Apparently it is “unsustainable” because it robs land from farming and nature conservation and has a big carbon “footprint”.

However if all 9 billion of us mid century were living at the density of a leafy suburb, say 3000 per square kilometre, that would require 3 million square kilometres. This would constitute an area considerably less than half that of the contiguous US – or a bit more than the eastern states of Australia. I must say I don’t find that especially scary.

We certainly would not want to encroach too much on farm land, at least not unless we had made the big shift to vertical farming where food is produced using hydroponics in high rise buildings. Nature conservation would also make us want to rule out habitation in some areas. In others, it may be that we would decide to keep down density by having various special arrangements in place. This would include retaining a lot of the original vegetation and controlling threats from exotic flora and fauna. Keeping the cat in at night would be essential.

And, there are lots of deserts to sprawl into. This is popular in places like Las Vegas, Phoenix and The Arab Gulf. You can’t grow anything there and nature would not mind too much.

A detached house with some land is more important for some people than others. Young families want it and so do older people with a garden. (And if your daughter has a horse you will need a nearby paddock…) Other people would be happy to sprawl upwards. This often happens where a location has a special attraction such as a view, lots of night life or requires less travelling. I am not talking “public housing” here. I have in mind a balcony, three bedrooms, study, large kitchen, lounge and dining room. I also envisage all the extras eg parking, gym and pool on the premises.

Floating cities are another possibility. These would allow us to sprawl out into the world’s oceans and experience constantly changing locations.

There is some dispute over whether living in the suburbs is more energy intensive, and hence more carbon intensive, than living in higher density inner areas. Either way I don’t think I can get too worried about carbon footprints. I’m not a climate alarmist, and besides we will undoubtedly move away from carbon based energy sometime later this century.

My hunch is that the urge to sprawl will increase as advances in transport technologies make travel cheaper and less painful. Personal Rapid Transit is one option. Driverless cars is another. These would involve far less death and injury, give us greater ability to avoid congestion and leave us free to read, teleconference, watch a movie, sleep or whatever.

Mass transit is definitely not the answer to current problems. Our transport needs are dispersed in both time and space, and so we need a system that moves individuals not masses.

Returning to the present, some cities have legal walls around them to prevent sprawl (“smart growth” it’s called). Often this is combined with a total failure to allow sufficient housing development within existing areas. House prices then go through the roof. The ratio of average house prices to average income is two to four times higher in “smart growth” cities than in places such as Germany, and the more freewheeling parts of the USA.

Melbourne (Australia), where I live, is surrounded by “green wedges” where building is not permitted. Given that there are no breaks between adjoining wedges, it is more like a noose strangling the city. A city under siege you might say.

In the long term however there will be no end to our sprawl as we spread out into the rest of the solar system and beyond.

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Some extra links:

Demographia a pro-sprawl web site.

The Institute of Public Affairs’ page on Australian housing

Here is a Green link on Personal Rapid Transport

‘Anti-capitalist’ sentiment is almost in the air we breath these days. At every turn we are reminded that capitalism and the life styles it makes possible threatens to destroy everything dear to our hearts and in particular that it is trashing the environment beyond repair. Strangely enough, the rich and powerful who are accused of wreaking this havoc, don’t seem particularly concerned about this message.

Despite claims to the contrary, “Big Oil”, “Big Mining” and “Big Retailing” just aren’t throwing big buckets of money into the battle to refute Big Green and Big “Left”. On the contrary, they have done very little to try to stem this tide. In some cases they actually fund it through various philanthropic foundations and by media advertising which feeds into it. Indeed there are many individual capitalists who have actively embraced it. Others seem to be just going along with it because such a tidal wave is difficult to resist. Why isn’t the capitalist class fighting back?

A small rearguard of classical liberals in “right wing think tanks” along with the Murdoch press are putting up some resistance. (Here‘s my favorite.) Associated with them are conservative stragglers who prefer the old time religion to the new green one. However, this is a beleaguered fringe effort which has little impact on the media mainstream.

The last time those in charge supported a fake “anti-capitalist” movement was in the 1930s. That one was called fascism. Of course the present movement is not remotely as toxic and we should be very grateful for that.  However let’s hope their tolerance of the new weltanschauung backfires as badly as it did the last time.

Many people are beginning to feel that it has all gone too far. There is increasing opposition to oppressive demands that we restrict our “luxurious” lifestyle.  Petty things like having plastic bags taken away to more serious matters like the government refusing to build sufficient power stations or to open up new land for housing are generating some resistance.  And the fashionable nonsense which dominates increasing parts of the school and university curriculum has become more of a hot topic.

If a genuine revolutionary left were to emerge phoenix like and soar above this miasmic fog it would have the advantage of dominating the high ground because it would be the only serious and uncompromised defender of science and human progress against reactionary neo-romantic nonsense.  At the same time it would be capable of demonstrating that the progress still being engendered by capitalism is providing the very conditions which will enable us to advance beyond it. Now that would give Big Capitalism something it would have to worry about.

Meanwhile those in charge are happy to let us all talk about the weather.