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The Forum > Article Comments > The really inconvenient truth - part I > Comments

The really inconvenient truth - part I : Comments

By Michael Fendley, published 6/8/2007

Why are we struggling to achieve a good relationship with the natural world? What has happened to the 'art of living'?

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I know we must not lie down to be run over by circumstances - but, look at every graph, they are all moving towards our destruction. It seems inevitable.
Posted by healthwatcher, Monday, 6 August 2007 9:14:13 AM
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One of the best articles I have seen on this topic. Thank you Michael. The chaos is reflected in the rise of mental illness in the'West'. So many of us are completely out of touch with our roots,
our earth. I don't expect any magic event to 'fix' our headlong
rush into oblivion. The film Soylent Green had some interesting
answers. Let us have children by all means, but keeping the rest of
us alive past, well, say, 70, seems a bit pointless. Recycle the
Old Ones, put us out in the snow for the polar bear's (if there are
any left) dinner. Now I'm going to Walk to the Shops with my little green bag.

Lesley
Posted by lesley, Monday, 6 August 2007 10:05:12 AM
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Very well said Michael! And HealthWatcher, I agree that it is too late to avoid a crash, the momentum in growth and the general depth of our ignorance is too great.

There is a fantastic interview with David Holmgren that really addresses what the future may hold for us. Very relevant to Michael's article and worth listening to a couple of times:

http://transitionculture.org/2007/07/30/david-holmgren-on-peak-oil-energy-descent-and-permaculture/
or
http://tinyurl.com/24w8pv
Posted by michael_in_adelaide, Monday, 6 August 2007 10:09:55 AM
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Richard Dawkins also said that:

"We admit that we are like apes but seldom admit that we are apes."

Unlike the real apes, who appear to take only what they need, we humans are intent on turning the planet into a graveyard.

The insatiable desire to continue cloning ourselves by breeding millions more human robots, urged on by governments with neanderthal intellects, will certainly return us to the trees - providing there's any trees left!
Posted by dickie, Monday, 6 August 2007 10:38:03 AM
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it doesn't have to be like that. we can change oz. but it needs admitting that change is necessary, and we have to do it ourselves. the system is moribund, but it can be changed by organizing and presenting an alternative that appears achievable.

the 'thinking' part is necessary, but easy. 'doing' will involve deciding that passivity is not survival oriented. you gotta get off yer bums, if you want to live in a civilized and just society. frightening prospect, i know, but the alternatives are becoming visibly worse.
Posted by DEMOS, Monday, 6 August 2007 10:58:48 AM
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Demos, there's many people like yourself that wish "something" could be done to stabilise populations, reduce rampant capitalism and obtain sustainability, but it's simply not going to happen. It's not just Australia that needs to wake up! The whole world is full of religious fundamentalists that are hell bent on out-breeding the others. They've lost all semblance of rationality simply because they believe that something floating around in the sky makes all the important decisions for them and that if they follow their weird and wacky scriptures and books they way the are TOLD by their leaders they'll eventually die and find themselves in some imaginary place where all their pain and suffering will be eradicated where they'll live in happiness for ever.

When mankind in this day and age of so called "enlightenment" continues to educate children in the barbaric and superstitious practice of religion, the human race holds no hope for survival. It only takes one of those fundamentalists nut cases to push "the button" and much of humanity will be erased from the planet. Pity about the animals!
Posted by Aime, Monday, 6 August 2007 11:51:29 AM
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aime, there's no prize for giving up, it's the only game in town.

i think the way to resist extinction is clear, and not hard. but it needs people who are willing to take part in making their world better. ozzies mostly want it done for them. it won't be. it'll be made better for someone else, the doers, not the whingers.
Posted by DEMOS, Monday, 6 August 2007 12:27:31 PM
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Demos

I believe Aimes is correct when he expresses concerns about the expansion of fundamenalist religions and its ignorant participants who have little regard as to the consequences of breeding out of control.

You suggest that we Australians are a lazy lot and perhaps many are. However, there are also many who are "doers" in the environmental sense. My associates and I have written many formal appeals (to no avail), objecting to governmental decisions where those imprudent decisions lead to the continual desecration of our eco systems.

Governments respond to appellants by feeding them a tonne of inane sophistry. FOI's and publicly available industry emission's reports are proof of my allegations. A fair and reasonable balance between industry and the environment does not enter their equations!

Governments continue to ignore their Environmental Protection Agency's advice in their pursuits to rape the land in the name of the economy.

When you choose to vote the eco-vandals out, the next lot of vandals move into our halls of parliament.

Demos, you need to consider that it is not only ordinary people who are ignoring the long-term consequences of their excessive lifestyles.

Governments, aligned with pollutant industries, are the main culprits. Our governments - ill-informed, short term administrators, are incapable of differentiating a VOC from a sock!

So what are you recommending to assist those who care and who want to make a difference?

Please, do tell.
Posted by dickie, Monday, 6 August 2007 1:05:29 PM
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Got to look hard for the natural world these days, especially in Mandurah here, where the pecious Tuart forests have been replaced by civilisation.

Thought how majestic it was years ago to view the local town ten miles away, after clearing out tall timber on our wheat farm, the days when man felt so important to win the race against such torrid and tempestic nature.

Better housing, air-conditioning and refrigeration in recent years, has helped us win the battle, with us kind of fitting in, but wondering if nature might beat us in the finish.

With predicted global warming, however, wonder what our great grandkids will need to do to win the continuing feud with nature. Sort of makes one give a worry now about following the old bush term to let the young'ns learn the hard way - yet it could be a waste of time, for the smart-arse little buggers won't listen anyway.
Posted by bushbred, Monday, 6 August 2007 1:13:37 PM
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Bushbred, I too am very concerned for the children of the future, but have no idea how excessive capitalism might be slowed or halted. I suspect that nature will put the brakes on in due course. My only hope is that it won't lead to the demise of much of our future generations.

I moved out of Ballarat some 15 or 16 years ago with the intention of "down sizing" before the term had been coined. Out through a small community I went and even further to a place where I thought it would take a lifetime before the rat-race caught up with me again, but in just those few short years, the roads out this way are fast becoming joined by McMansions all the way back to Ballarat. Houses encroach like a cancer slowly destroying the cells of native bush, streams and wildlife. Idiots come out here without realising the consequences of travelling on country roads and cursing the kangaroos who hop into their paths. The roads are littered with their remains, the stench over-powering in summer.

And yes, I could be considered simply one of those who chose to come here first, as someone who beat the rush, but I also came with the intention of "living lightly" as opposed to those who demand the best of everything and bring it all with them......the gas guzzling vehicles, the over sized homes, the myriad of petrol driven machines, trail bikes, bush bombs, chainsaws, air conditioners......I'm sure you get the picture.

Want to do about it......don't know! It's Government policy that pushes people out of expensive cities and dumps them in the bush. People with dreams of living the same as they did before the "tree change" and destroying anything in their path that may threaten their own little path of Eden.

Ah, Dickie, no offense taken, but that Aime ( Pronounced Amy). It get's mistaken for all manner of things :-)
Posted by Aime, Monday, 6 August 2007 2:27:06 PM
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Michael Fendley is a modern day luddite. He and his sandal wearing friends, would have us all living in a pre industrial society subsistence farming if they had they’re way.

It is human nature to respond only to threats we can see for ourselves. In the western world we have dealt with air quality/pollution when it became difficult to breathe. We conserve water when it is scarce. We stopped using CFC’s when it was clear they were doing harm. We vaccinated against disease when it became available. Many other unsustainable practices have been discontinued. No one yet knows what the consequences of global warming will be, if, in fact, it is really anthropogenic in nature. We only have a score of chicken little’s wailing ‘ the sky is falling, the sky is falling’ eg Al Gore.

When it comes to the dangers of overpopulation, there is no real evidence that we are anywhere near that point. Some mad proponents of this view see overpopulation in Australia, one of the most lightly populated countries on earth.

It seems to me that consumption, sustainable or not, has become a cardinal sin for many of the followers of the religion of the Environment. This faith based religion takes as its core belief the idea that all progress destroys the environment. The corollary of which is that capitalists are evil. Hence the anti-globalisation protesters, who are really anti-capitalist luddites in disguise
Posted by Paul.L, Monday, 6 August 2007 2:40:56 PM
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PaulL,

Australia looks big on the map, but only 6% of it is arable (compared to 33% in France), and only then if you include 27 million hectares of cultivated grassland (See the CIA World Fact Book). The average quality of the arable land is quite marginal by European or American standards, especially when you consider reliability of water. All of the government's own State of the Environment reports since 1990 show every environmental indicator getting worse, except for urban air quality.

So far as the world is concerned, you might visit one or more of the environmental footprint sites, like Redefining Progress. If you plot environmental footprint (a way of expressing total consumption in notional hectares of land) against rank on the UN Human Development Index (a measure of human well-being), you will find a fairly linear relationship between well-being and consumption up to a European standard of living. Giving everyone that standard of living would take about three Earths. We would all be poor if all the resources were divided equally.

Stopping population growth is not like just banning CFCs. A population that has been growing rapidly has a pyramid-shaped age structure, with most of the deaths among the relatively tiny elderly generation and most of the births among the huge young adult generation. This means that it can take up to 70 years from the time fertility rates fall down to or below replacement level to stop population growth, even if there is no net immigration. Here in Australia 2 babies are born and 1 net migrant arrives for every death (see ABS figures). In the US fertility rates fell to replacement level in the early 1970s when there were 200 million people. Without net immigration it would be 245 million now, and the actual figure is 300 million. (See www.numbersusa.com)
Posted by Divergence, Monday, 6 August 2007 3:19:37 PM
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Paul,

Global warming is no less a proven threat now than were CFCs in the late 1980s. The difference is that banning CFCs was relatively inexpensive, and the chemical companies who opposed it were relatively easily persuaded that it was doable. Indeed most businesses that relied on CFCs saved money by retiring their CFC-processing equipment early and finding alternative.

Fossil fuels are much bigger business than CFCs ever were, which is why the opposition to restraint on their use has been so much greater. The presence of conservative ideologues amongst the investors and PR groups associated with the fossil-fuel industry has led to persistent efforts to discredit climate science, just as it led to the suppression of competing technologies. Yet there is no reason why businesses now shackled to fossil fuels might not similarly find a move away from reliance on coal and oil to be a profitable one.

The discipline of clmate science as a whole is less exact than its individual parts, but the very same inquisitive minds and scientific methods are behind it as were responsible for discovering the rather implausible truth that CFCs, hitherto thought completely inert and rather harmless, behaved very badly together with ozone under conditions of low pressure and high UV radiation.

Ironically the Montreal ban on CFCs has had a greater effect on overall greenhouse gas levels than any subsequent specific efforts to reduce greenhouse pollution.
Posted by xoddam, Monday, 6 August 2007 3:54:20 PM
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If you are prepared to be honest (real, genuine integrity) the answer is simple - the "closeness" of government, mass media and big business - and an education policy firmly in hoc to this unholiest of trinities.

Having billions of people, all 'competing' (rather than co-operating) for as much of the planet's resources that they can get for themselves is a ludicrous proposition which excludes/dismisses our knowledge about the Earth and the interdependent nature of ecosystems and their composite species.

Unfortunately the wealthiest people are the ones who pull the strings of government - and none of them are going to be changing their ways any day soon - whilst hiding behind the everyday, petty greed of ordinary people fuelled by advertising agencies.

One thing is for certain though - those who think they will have a quiet little corner for themselves when it all goes belly-up will be in for a very big shock. Recent floods in Britain, China and India prove that the weather will affect everyone's potential to live.

Time to stop wasting energy on so much frivolous, useless, throw away rubbish and use it for genuine, life-sustaining reasons.

A human race unable to harness it's collective intelligence to understand the perils of our over-populating, overly plundering and overly polluting the Earth is, collectively, in for a very rough ride.

Modern leaders prefer to waste our precious energy on building bigger and bigger bombs. We already KNOW how they plan to tackle the problem - just follow the money - it is always the most revealing sign of where people's *true* interests lie.
Posted by K£vin, Monday, 6 August 2007 6:51:06 PM
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I really dont get the interpretation of the photo. There is nothing awkard at all that I can see. But then I dont see nature as a threat.

You want to see a reaction of awe to the environment - take a city slicker or someone from a hilly area out to the Hay Plains. Gets'em every time! I've had people turn downright agrophobic on me. Or maybe its a realisation of just how small the world is. When you can see the curve of the earth from where you stand you can feel the restrictions. Its funny, because you can feel that at the same time as you feel the vastness of the empty space. Personally I love it and get there as often as I can.
Posted by Country Gal, Monday, 6 August 2007 10:05:52 PM
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Kevin

Noam Chomsky says it all in a much more persuasive manner. Maybe you should stick to quoting him, with Michael Moore style gems thrown in for good measure. You could learn to spell hegemony.

The conspiracy theories fall down in one very important place. The ability of the people involved to keep such a conspiracy secret. They just aren’t clever enough.

I’ve read all of Noam Chomsky’s stuff, I understand the Marxist critiques of capitalist society. When I was young and naïve I even believed some of them. But they just don’t have the answers for me. They twist the facts to fit the theory.

Kevin, virtually every organism on the planet competes for resources. That’s Darwin’s theory on survival of the fittest. Without competition for resources, most animals would die of starvation. Competition has another benefit associated with it, progress. The whole history of man is infused with the idea of doing things better than they were done before. Of improving our lives, materially.

You said “- whilst hiding behind the everyday, petty greed of ordinary people fuelled by advertising agencies.” It sound like you don’t like people Kevin or trust their motives. So I don’t know what kind of gov’t would be of use to you. Maybe one where you made all the decisions. You either trust people to know what is best for them, or you have a dictatorship of some kind. There is no in-between. Everyone would like to be the dictator, that’s why we have a democracy.

Your effort to link current weather events to global warming are outlandish. Not even the great minds at the IPCC have tried that. But Al Gore made a good case for it? He’s a knowledgeable climate scientist isn’t he?

You need to supply evidence for your assertions about overpopulation because I have never seen anyone, even remotely creditable, making claims of that nature.

As for our leaders wasting all our energy building ever bigger bombs, all I can say is defence spending is around 2% of GDP. Hyperbole persuades no-one Kevin. Its preaching to the choir.
Posted by Paul.L, Monday, 6 August 2007 10:50:42 PM
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Paul.L

It may interest you to know that I've never read any chomsky - its easy enough to work things out for oneself - just by being aware of events as they unfold.

Maybe you should just try opening YOUR eyes and stop relying on other people's impressions.
Posted by K£vin, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 1:34:17 AM
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Paul L. can you please clarify your position. Are you saying that we shouldn’t be trying to live sustainably? Is it your position that everything will work out okay and we will fix any problems that we have, when those problems really prove to be serious? If this global warming thing turns out to be real, will we just quickly knock down all the coal fired power plants and use some other power source? If too many species are facing extinction, will we quickly reinstate their habitats and allow their populations to regenerate? If too much farmland is being degraded, will we quickly stop growing food on that land and start rehabilitating the land?

You call Michael Fendley a luddite. I thought luddite’s were against technology. I didn’t see any reference to stopping technology in the article. Most things I read about environmentalists are full of new technologies like photovoltaics, hybrid cars and fuel cells, plus he uses the internet to send his message. You also call him anti-capitalist. Why? Can you be a capitalist and still want to save some resources for future generations?

Is high population growth, necessary for a high standard of living? Is a stable population against capitalist principles? Can you still do better with a stable population? Can you have progress with a stable population?

You say we aren’t overpopulated, but if all the world’s 6.6 billion people had the same standard of living as we do; oil, natural gas, and most metals would be gone in 10 years / or priced out of the everyday markets. Is that okay with you? How will we manage with 9 billion or is it better that all the poor people just stay poor or die? Since we are superior at competing for resources than all other species, is it your proposal that we just wipe out all the other species, so that they don’t bother us with that competition? Since rich people are superior at competing for resources with poor people should we just kill all the poor people?
Posted by ericc, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 12:25:34 PM
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"Since rich people are superior at competing for resources with poor people should we just kill all the poor people?"

doesn't seem as if Paul is interested in responding ericc.

The accurate conclusion you draw about unabated consumption has to be discussed - otherwise we will sleepwalk into even worse conflict than humans experienced last century.

Darwin's survival of the fittest is not about "ruthless" evolution it is about improving on what came before. Supremacy at any cost is eventually self-destructive and completely misunderstands the nature of evolution.

We don't see shark populations swelling beyond "acceptable" levels in the ocean, for example, do we?

Ecosystems depend on diversity and uniquely, man is witness to this and, like a drug addict, oblivious at the same time. Paul needs to understand, ruthlessness should not be confused with 'superior' intelligence. They are not the same thing.

So few people are gardeners in today's world and that is as much a part of the problem as anything else. After centuries of toiling hard and working the earth, getting to know it intimately and understanding the relationships between things, we are losing our knowledge about what is required to sustain life - harmony between all things.

The world will only gain peace when the concerted aim is equality and harmony - and not supremacy.
Posted by K£vin, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 7:46:05 PM
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