Many commentators advocating strong measures to control Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) criticise ‘deniers’, and wonder how they reach such a conclusion. The commentators will then produce purported reasons how such ‘deniers’ reach their conclusion. Mostly these reasons are laughably inaccurate and naïve.
But this response has a resonance elsewhere. It is exactly the same tone taken by Christian believers, sometimes even by agnostics or academics, to describe atheists. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the atheists’, or deniers’, philosophical position, and this arises out of the separate worlds that these antagonists inhabit. One is that of a believer who feels s/he knows the truth, the other of a sceptic who sees things not just in infinite shades of grey, but also the shadows behind.
A case in point is Lord Anthony Giddens (sociologist, author of The Politics of Climate Change, and creator of the Giddens Paradox) who give three superficial reasons that AGW sceptics use – denying it is happening, that it has nothing to do with human activity, or that it’s not very dangerous. As ever, reality is more complex.
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Thursday 30 July 2009
Friday 24 July 2009
Environmental Determinism
Hastings District Council’s edict that a sea-wall in Haumoana must be torn down is symptomatic of a much deeper spiritual drive. Briefly, the owner claims the sea-wall was a rebuild of an existing wall, while the Council states that because the house is in a “coastal hazard zone” the wall requires a resource consent. It successfully repelled high seas in a June ’09 storm. Dominion-Post 23/7/09
There is a concealed impetus behind many in the environmental movement to allow nature to take its course without human intervention, and to marginalise human society in its relationship with nature. This goes some way to explain the attitudes behind the following examples.
• In Australia a man was prosecuted for cutting down trees close to his house, yet his house was one of the few to survive bush fires in 2009.
• DOC is preventing the clearing of manuka scrub that developed during the hard times following Rogernomics on East Coast farms. The costs of the Department of Conservation’s consent process through the RMA and the court fight if consent were denied are resulting in lower stocking rates and fewer employment opportunities.
• Al Morrison of DOC invokes Maori cultural values when considering pre-emptive lahar prevention on Mount Ruapehu and he rejects the optimum method.
• A road in the Waikato is moved to avoid a ‘taniwha’.
• ‘Rewilding’, the process of removing introduced fauna and flora and encouraging only local species, is occurring globally.
• The Environment Court has ruled in favour of Maori spiritual values, including the site’s history, water and sacred areas, over a wind farm on a Hawke's Bay mountain range.
• A couple of New Zealand academics call for those interested in conserving genetic biodiversity to not plant cultivars.
• A south Wairarapa road has not been protected from sea encroachment and is now half its normal width.
This growing combination of rootless spirituality and misanthropy is a reflection of collective guilt for the imagined transgressions of previous (but importantly, recent) generations. What is new in comparison with established faiths is that this ‘eco-spirituality’ is advocating many of these actions on behalf of future generations. None of them improve the environment. What makes these people think that future generations need the protection of our inaction? What they do represent is cultural repudiation, of which more anon.
There is a concealed impetus behind many in the environmental movement to allow nature to take its course without human intervention, and to marginalise human society in its relationship with nature. This goes some way to explain the attitudes behind the following examples.
• In Australia a man was prosecuted for cutting down trees close to his house, yet his house was one of the few to survive bush fires in 2009.
• DOC is preventing the clearing of manuka scrub that developed during the hard times following Rogernomics on East Coast farms. The costs of the Department of Conservation’s consent process through the RMA and the court fight if consent were denied are resulting in lower stocking rates and fewer employment opportunities.
• Al Morrison of DOC invokes Maori cultural values when considering pre-emptive lahar prevention on Mount Ruapehu and he rejects the optimum method.
• A road in the Waikato is moved to avoid a ‘taniwha’.
• ‘Rewilding’, the process of removing introduced fauna and flora and encouraging only local species, is occurring globally.
• The Environment Court has ruled in favour of Maori spiritual values, including the site’s history, water and sacred areas, over a wind farm on a Hawke's Bay mountain range.
• A couple of New Zealand academics call for those interested in conserving genetic biodiversity to not plant cultivars.
• A south Wairarapa road has not been protected from sea encroachment and is now half its normal width.
This growing combination of rootless spirituality and misanthropy is a reflection of collective guilt for the imagined transgressions of previous (but importantly, recent) generations. What is new in comparison with established faiths is that this ‘eco-spirituality’ is advocating many of these actions on behalf of future generations. None of them improve the environment. What makes these people think that future generations need the protection of our inaction? What they do represent is cultural repudiation, of which more anon.
Thursday 23 July 2009
Support Whaling!
This is an e-mail I sent to Chris Laidlaw's National Programme 'Sunday', following some vacuous comments he and a guest made about Japanese whaling:
Note that Dawn Carr, British co-ordinator of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, says she "would prefer people to eat whale meat rather than farmed salmon . . . It can feed hundreds, so less [sic] fish have to die." She ignores the inverse ratio between creature size and quantity. "We talk about dolphin-safe tuna, but what about the poor tuna caught in the nets? It deserves a life, too. What about the worms squirming on the end of the hook?" She has dedicated her life to stop the British catching and eating any fish at all. While not encouraging violence she "won’t rule anything out. I understand groups who smash into animal testing laboratories to liberate victims." Dominion 11/8/01. BBC’s HardTalk’s Tim Sebastian mercilessly exposed her moral vacuity.
More speculatively, concomitant with increasing sensitivity to whales and other more furry species is the wax of the feminist, imposing unexamined caution and the predominance of nurture without the balance of masculine practicality and common sense.
The Expert Drafting Group of the International Whaling Commission met recently in Auckland to finalise the regulations for the Revised Management Scheme. This will allow a limited return to commercial whaling. Kate Sanderson is a whaling adviser to the Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands, which is dependent on whaling for food. She considers that opposition to whaling comes from urban dwellers in high income countries ‘humanising’ whales.
Japan is being demonised for its attitude to whaling, and for attempting to buy votes in support of its view. It should be remembered that in the 1980s Greenpeace actively lobbied for countries opposing whaling to join the IWC to implement the moratorium on whaling, even though they were not directly affected. In many countries opposing whaling, the issues are handled not by the fishing ministries but by the ones responsible for the environment, earning cheap green points along the way.
I don't want to be seen as supporting whaling, though. I've got bigger fish to fry.
The comments about the sins of Japanese whaling and their hypocrisy are sanctimonious cant. Whales, just as man is, are part of the food chain, and to excuse them because they're "sentient" defies logic. Should we only eat stupid animals? No pigs, but horses are OK? What constitutes whale sentience and how different is it to that of cows, deer, pigs or sheep? Why should it be treated differently?
The only real issue is the sustainability and husbandry of resources. It would be self-defeating to cause the extinction of any of the whale species, and there's no evidence that whaling countries are doing this. Common humanity should prevent undue pain or distress to whales when they are killed, but it is in the interests of an efficient industry to ensure that this is the case.
The current fashion for opposing whaling is, like opposition to the use of fur, groundless, emotional, and fickle. Other than sustainability and undue cruelty, there is not one rational reason to oppose either the hunting of whales, eating of their flesh (which I would unhesitatingly), and use of industry by-products. That few eat whale meat in Japan is a matter of a scarce commodity, not a scarce resource. The argument that it’s not necessary to eat whale meat because other food sources are available can be used with practically all food sources on the Greens' Dietary Laws list, till all we get left with is lentil patties. This isn’t a world I want to live in.
No argument about whaling used in today’s program was possessed of common sense or intelligence. There was a clear loss of perspective and sense of reality in raising one species to a level of reverence. Whales are subject to the vicissitudes of life, of which we are just one of many. We won’t be repeating the sins of the Maori with moas et al and hunt them to extinction, so they really don’t need our help in survival.
Note that Dawn Carr, British co-ordinator of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, says she "would prefer people to eat whale meat rather than farmed salmon . . . It can feed hundreds, so less [sic] fish have to die." She ignores the inverse ratio between creature size and quantity. "We talk about dolphin-safe tuna, but what about the poor tuna caught in the nets? It deserves a life, too. What about the worms squirming on the end of the hook?" She has dedicated her life to stop the British catching and eating any fish at all. While not encouraging violence she "won’t rule anything out. I understand groups who smash into animal testing laboratories to liberate victims." Dominion 11/8/01. BBC’s HardTalk’s Tim Sebastian mercilessly exposed her moral vacuity.
More speculatively, concomitant with increasing sensitivity to whales and other more furry species is the wax of the feminist, imposing unexamined caution and the predominance of nurture without the balance of masculine practicality and common sense.
The Expert Drafting Group of the International Whaling Commission met recently in Auckland to finalise the regulations for the Revised Management Scheme. This will allow a limited return to commercial whaling. Kate Sanderson is a whaling adviser to the Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands, which is dependent on whaling for food. She considers that opposition to whaling comes from urban dwellers in high income countries ‘humanising’ whales.
Japan is being demonised for its attitude to whaling, and for attempting to buy votes in support of its view. It should be remembered that in the 1980s Greenpeace actively lobbied for countries opposing whaling to join the IWC to implement the moratorium on whaling, even though they were not directly affected. In many countries opposing whaling, the issues are handled not by the fishing ministries but by the ones responsible for the environment, earning cheap green points along the way.
I don't want to be seen as supporting whaling, though. I've got bigger fish to fry.
Monday 13 July 2009
Arcadian Values
All religions, as with ideologies, wish to refer to some unchanging principle or text in which to ground its beliefs. Wishing to avoid doctrinal compromises and the fickle nature of current thought and interpretation, a religion will produce guidelines which over time become held as inerrant. In their absence, as is the case with Environmentalism (which I will refer to as ‘Arcadianism’ to represent its religious aspect), substitutes will be created. Thus it is with temperature and CO2 levels. With ‘pre-industrial’ equalling Christianity’s ‘prelapsarian’, it is used as a standard to which the sinful modern world can refer, striving for it provides a penance, and its achievement will go some way to assuage the collective guilt of the Industrialised World.
It’s no surprise on this score that the phrase ‘global warming’ has been usurped by ‘climate change’. Given its pejorative twist it comes to represent an undesirable threat to modern life, without the comfortable implication that ‘warming’ gives. Change is bad. It has unquantifiable risk, something it shares with the Arcadians’ hubristic bugaboos like nuclear energy, radiation, and DNA manipulation. And, like these, they feel that climate change must be halted by the exercise of public will.
With many New Zealanders' unhealthy aversion to unquantifiable risk and its obverse of 'the precautionary principle' it's likely this country will be on its way to achieve pre-industrial status. It will give the Arcadians frissons of rectitude and sanctimony at the expense of the rest of us.
It’s no surprise on this score that the phrase ‘global warming’ has been usurped by ‘climate change’. Given its pejorative twist it comes to represent an undesirable threat to modern life, without the comfortable implication that ‘warming’ gives. Change is bad. It has unquantifiable risk, something it shares with the Arcadians’ hubristic bugaboos like nuclear energy, radiation, and DNA manipulation. And, like these, they feel that climate change must be halted by the exercise of public will.
With many New Zealanders' unhealthy aversion to unquantifiable risk and its obverse of 'the precautionary principle' it's likely this country will be on its way to achieve pre-industrial status. It will give the Arcadians frissons of rectitude and sanctimony at the expense of the rest of us.
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