Eric, I agree with most of what you say, especially regarding the doom and gloom, sky is falling propaganda that goes on.
I tend to think the ones in the environmental movement who do use this tactic are the ones who don't really care about the environment and have some other agenda which dovetails nicely with environmentalism.

A couple of things though, the banning of DDT has not necessarily been a good thing because of the increase in malarial deaths in third world. Scientific evidence hasn't exactly backed up the claim that DDT was a lethal chemical, unless in extremely high doses. (notwithstanding the effects of the chemical on some birds, but that is a trade off birds or humans and birds won)

Also, I am yet to read Collapse, but it is one of the books on my to do list.
I would be interested to know which society in history collapsed because of climate change given no society has ever had the scope nor the means to alter climate.

t.u.s

usual,

There have been any number of societies collapse due to climate change. The Viking settlements in Greenland were abandoned as the Little Ice Age approached and there is growing evidence that Rome was at least partly weakened in the 5th century CE as temperatures fell vis a vis the temps of the Roman Warm Period of the 1st century BCE. Lower temps = lower food output = lower population = a weakened state.

But these periods of climate change were entirely natural and therefore we are not really allowed to talk about them because we are supposed to pretend that the earth's temps have been unchanged for the last "x" millenia and have only begun to rise since 1850. If it is shown that temperatures changed all by themselves without anthropological help in the past then the small increases in temps over the last century and a half may also be natural. And that would make things like Kyoto and the Kyotoists look pretty silly.

Tus – no need to use dirty words to malign we gullible environmentalists or to impugn our integrity.

Surely it is a good thing to be sceptical of practices that could cause really bad things to happen? Prior to 'Silent Spring', there was no awareness of the damage that humans were doing to the planet and themselves, by the use of products that were meant to make life better.

Once we became aware of the potential dangers, the tendency to look for danger from this source is only natural and one of the factors that have contributed to human survival.

Perhaps the differences between people like me, who want to err on the side of caution and value the ‘natural’ over the man-made, and people like you, who are prepared to say it is all rubbish, is due to the diversity of ‘human natures’.

I know I am at least as intelligent, educated and knowledgeable as you and for me, the evidence is convincing enough to make me concerned.

Mhaze it is just silly and very revealing of your ideological bent, to say that we are sposed to pretend that climate change hasn’t happened in the past. Who are the mysterious people who are intent on hiding these things from 'us'? Is it a conspiricy, do you think?

The evidence that the current climate change is on a different scale is there for those who have the ‘right’(?) type of human nature and are ideologically capable of considering it fairly.

Climate change may be happening, and I have seen evidence that it is, and it is not.
Weather is a cyclical beast, and a few years so far are not enough to say one way or another. Records for an at least a 1000 years would be needed to determine what is going to happen.

If we are going to err on the side of caution, then re-investing back into the “wealth producing land base” and not consumption as Australia seems to be king at.

Surly the way to look after the environment would be to have more investment in it.

By this, I mean that the land managers, who are mostly farmers, be able to sustain a much larger investment in the “environment’ (the farm/land) so that the wealth extraction from the land is sustainable.

At the present moment in Australia, we seem to have created a continuing decline in their terms of trade, creating a situation where it is very hard for the re-investment back in the land to occur.

I liken this to owning a car, if the maintenance is kept up, the life and reliability is greatly enhanced, and is very much related to the funds re-invested in to the maintenance program.

After checking on the agriculture commodity prices, I have found that they have barely moved as compared to inflation over the last almost 35 years.
This is even more true if the farm gate price is used, instead of the FOB price, that includes transport, handling and levies and fees.

Thankyou, Mhaze. I suppose we better not mention the rennaisance either - when food production and culture were at an all time high and wars and pestilence were at all time lows.
Oh, yeah and the temperature was as warm if not warmer than some of the projections used in hoodwinking people into signing Kyoto protocol.

Mollydukes - you assume too much. I am environmentalist - but someone who relies on evidence and science, not mysticism and romanticism about the planet.

I have found that a lot of so-called environmentalists spend more time in cafes than they actually do on the ground. Don't know if you live in the bush but there are plenty of people out here who go about their days working on water convservation or on salinity or soil erosion. and I can bet you very few actually vote for the Greens.

I agree a little bit with you dunart about investment, especially on farms - it should not just be the farmers who have to foot the bill but partnerships with big business with a little help from government.

It would be easier to do if so many hard-core environmentalists weren't interested in non-environmental issues.

t.u.s.

tus I do not spend time in cafes talking to environmentalists. There you go again – talking dirty about people who are only 'people' with all the failings that ordinarly people have. Where does this disdain for ordinary people come from? Or are you so very very superior to the run of the mill person? I don’t get the impression that you are old enough to be a ‘grumpy old man’.

The environmentalists I refer to are the scientists, like the one who Philip Adams interviewed a coupla days ago - there are many others who are convinced and convincing that climate change is happening. This is where I get my knowledge from. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lnl/s1359672.htm

I tend to talk about what makes people tick when in cafe's.

This man came across as intelligent and well-balanced and did not use emotive words like 'hoodwinked' to denigrate the anti-climate change people who like you, do not think that Kyoto is a good idea.

He was in favour of it and his argument made sense, unless one’s emotional response was against signing such things.

Do you think your objection to Kyoto is based more on your political views than on your environmental views

The question I would like debated, is how tax can be raised, when it’s included in the CPI, and that is used as the basis for wage increases in our regulated labour market, which has still has the ability to achieve wage increases in line with inflation.
Inflation being, the cost of a basket of “good’s and service’s”, plus the GST "tax”.

As I see it, the domestic labour market gets the benefits of the social wage provided by the "tax" plus a wage rise as well.
This also means domestic business, without import competition also prices their G&S to achieve the same outcome, i.e. an income that rises with cost of G&S plus tax.

I have come to the conclusion, that it is DOUBLE dipping, and actually no consumable wealth is collected. I agree that "$"s is collected, but as the cost of G&S goes up with the tax, particularly tertiary services, the govt is actually in a net situation. This is because it has to “BUY” back the tax when it purchases “G&S”, along with all the compensation that has occurred.

Any modelling I have done shows a result of infinity, unless you “exclude” a section of the economy. (They pay all the tax then)

I have excluded any productivity improvement, as the benefit from this should be shared by all members of the community.

Unless someone can show me a “model’ as to how this works, it means that the tax is actually transferred to the agriculture export sector, depriving them of the ability to re-invest in the land. The rest of the economy really only has a book entry for the tax, a $ in, and a $ out. (Lets leave out the overhead cost’s to employing at the moment)

Maybe this should be the first reform in environment management

These changes should have the support of any hard-core environmentalists as it will return wealth to the land.

Govt will never be able to fund it, let along manage the environment so any expectation that will ocurr is pie in the sky stuff

Mollydukes,

There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about previous warm periods from us but there has been a concerted effort to re-write the history and science of previous warm periods. You should check out the controversy over the Mann Hockey Stick, how it was seized upon by the IPCC because it suited the politics if not the truth and how it has been defended in the face of overwhelming counter-evidence.

It makes things pretty simple if you decide that only "those who have the ‘right’(?) type of human nature" can understand the faith. By definition anyone who disputes the faith is the wrong type - heretics. Maybe we should burn them at the stake! But we can't do that - all that carbon being released to the atmosphere would be disastrous. Damn.

Mark, what is the difference between a ‘concerted effort’ and a ‘conspiracy’?

Re the hockey stick; it is easy thinking, but a mistake in rational thinking to take one example in which some people acted foolishly and use that to deride all the support by the scientific community for climate change.

I agree that simplistic thinking is a problem. The easiest and most problematic type of easy thinking is the way you see the world in dichotomies of right and wrong, left and right.

If you read my posts rather than making easy assumptions, you might be able to see that I am not suggesting that either type of human nature is the 'right' one. I was quite clearly (well I thought so anyway) suggesting that both types of human nature contribute to the diversity that has made human beings so successful and adaptable.

You bring your arguments into disrepute by portraying ‘the environmentalists’ as eiher stupid and hoodwinked or venal and untrustworthy.

Anyway what do you mean by ‘the environmentalists’?

Do you think that you are responding emotionally to a type of human nature and/or behaviour that apparently rilly rilly gets up your nose - or perhaps you believe that your own understanding of the world and science is so obviously superior that we should all trust you to be able to google your way to the ‘truth’?

This is an interesting discussion, and I thank Eric Claus for an intelligent and balanced article on this subject. While it may be inherent in the way these comments forums are structured, it is nonetheless unfortunate that the comments tend to be far more simplistic and one-sided.

For example, the term 'environmentalist' is used by those who apparently have issues with 'environmentalism' as a broad term for those activists who supposedly try to deceive and hoodwink the rest of us for their own purposes. However, for those of us who are members of environmentally-oriented organisations the situation is somewhat more complex. Some here would be surprised at the sometimes vitriolic debates within the Green movement between the 'fundamentalists' and the 'realists', the former grouping being characterised by doomsayers very similar to those that Claus describes.

I think Claus is absolutely correct to point that real environmental action is not amenable to simplistic 'quick fixes', and rather requires the entire community to accept behavioural and probably ideological changes that will assist us to achieve sustainability. Contra to what "t.u.s." says, this means approaching the environment holistically, rather than artificially trying to separate 'environmental' issues from everything else.

It is counterproductive for both 'environmentalists' and 'developers' to stereotype each other in simplistic, single-issue terms. Like it or not, all of us are influenced by both ends of this spectrum in virtually all that we do in our daily lives.

And for the benefit of "t.u.s.", I live in the bush and have a small farm, and I can't remember the last time I sat in a cafe. 'Environmental degradation' is an issue I face every day, which is why I feel I have no choice but to vote for the Greens.

I agree, garra, with your comment about the generally imaginary, but widely considered divide between "environmentalists" and "developers."

I work with a lot of construction people and manufacturing people who make a lot of extra effort to reduce pollution and limit wasting resources from their factories and work sites. None of these guys would ever consider themselves "environmentalists," because that has a tree-hugging, stop-the-economy connotation, but they do more for the environment than most of us ever will.

As environmental practice becomes absorbed into the mainstream it is no longer "environmental." In the late 1800's a wild greenie idea called sewage treatment plants emerged. Why worry some people said "It just goes down the river and disappears." Now sewage collection and treatment is infrastructure, not a goofy greenie idea.

Certainly not every environmental / greenie idea is useful, just as not every medical, legal, economic or social idea is useful. It is best, though, if we evaluate all the new ideas based on the ideas themselves, rather than some interpretation of the kind of people that the idea might have come from. "Play the ball / idea, not the man / interest group."

In my experience the tree hugging greenies and rapacious, earth scouring developers are very small groups with few ideas. Most of the ideas come from practical people in-between, who are just trying to do the best they can based on their best understanding of the world.

Thanks for all your comments. t.u.s. you are right about DDT and malaria, but now there are even better pesticides we can use. In poor countries, though, there isn't the money for DDT or the new ones.

Back to the article, where "Environmentalists" have been sprung,unsilently, by Eric.

Yes, mitigate differences by developing dialogue from an established point of agreement! And "The Environment" is not separate from our daily lives, but wrapped up together with economics, society etc. Perhaps points of agreement for dialogue could be;

Environmental resources are, ultimately, the fundamental capital for economics in a finite world. (eg. some 10% of world energy is used in crushing rocks for minerals, cement, etc.; accessible fresh water is limited).

Climate is not static. Change - natural or otherwise - will occur. This will be, now or in the future, accelerated by atmospheric pollution on the present scale. Further, populations are already precariously balanced in relation to sustenance from the climate to which we are currently adjusted. Warmer or cooler will foster difficulties.

The greater the population, the greater the demand upon environmental resources for any particular lifestyle.

But there are difficulties in getting a debating toe-hold from even these fundamentals.

The last Fenner Conference, hosted by the Australian Academy of Science, building from such themes, attemped to establish dialogue across disciplines and outlooks. Structured on sober analysis, it was an impressive effort at esbablishing cohesion rather than confrontation. But it received little support in the media or parliament.

The CSIRO conducted the monumental stocks-and-flows exercise, Future Dilemmas. This outlined options for Australian lifestyles within the framework of natural resources. Not giving a cornucopiwan outlook, it has been ignored by government and media.

Professor Duncan Brown's Feed or Feedback presents a clinical analysis of options for society in relation to agricultural production. Cheerfully but soberly written with irrefutable data, its prognosis for current society is a warning for change. Media outlets are hesitant to publish a review.

All the above gave it their best shot. And they were all big guns, well prepared; not all doom and gloom. But, as "21st Rachel Carsons" they have yet to persuade the rosy-eyed brigade to face reality. So they did not "get this new approach right", and I ask - is that possible?

Well reasonsed and written colinsett. With you on our side I know we will succeed.

It is not just Jared Diamond, Barney Foran and Duncan Brown who are writing without the doom-and-gloom. There are many others, but you are right - the tide of lifestyle change and government action does not seem to be changing. In fact, in Australia we are trying to increase our population and increase our consumption of non-renewable resources. I don't discount Diamond, Foran, Brown and Associates efforts just yet, though. These are difficult to grasp issues and it is taking some time to get the message through, but I think there is some progress. Maybe I am a silly optimist.

The difficulty of the message is probably an indication that one Rachel Carson is not going to do it. There will need to be many. I find Ross Gittins, the Economics writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, Paul Sheehan (SMH political writer) and some other non-greenie types, write very sensibly about resource depletion and population impacts. These kind of voices are probably easier to understand for many sections of the population, than hearing the same old type of rehashed greenie talk.

In answer to your main question "Is it possible to get the approach right?" I don't know, but I am quite hopeful. Comments like yours make me more hopeful. I probably should not have implied that these two approaches (less doom and gloom, more mainstream consideration) were the only magic bullets. To make the big changes to sustainability we might need a hundred new approaches. With champions like you and the others your mentioned pushing forward, hopefully we will get there.

It seems to me that the central point of the article reflects back on "The Boy who Cried Wolf" story. The concept behind that story seems to be missing in a lot of public debate.

I can get caught once by those who cry wold when there is no wolf, do it too often and I'm not likely to show up to help at the working bee to build a wolf proof fence around the sheep pen. Convince me that there is a population of sheep eating wolves in the area and that there is reason to believe that a better fence is wothwhile and I'll be there.

I think you make a good point R0bert. Your analogy about the wolves and the sheep is especially poignant. Some commentators try to make it sound like the wolves are right outside the door, but after people hear that a few times they say "well this is the tenth time they have said the wolf was at the door, why should this time be any different."

I'm interested in your feelings. When geologists and environmentalists say “Oil production will start to decline in the next five years causing significant price increases and we will run out of oil in 30 to 40 years,” does that that make you think:
• The wolves are not in the area, they are 30 to 40 years away so lets keep moving forward and see what happens.
• The geologists and environmentalists are wrong we have plenty of oil for much longer than that.
• We should start slowly building some parts of the wolf fence, so we are ready if something happens.
• If we run out of oil, we will replace it with something just as good.
• Some combination of the above
• Or something else

Do you believe we are living sustainably at the moment and if not, are the wolves so far away, that it is just not worth building the fence yet?

Thanks, Eric