Suppose the populace voted in the government and gave it full power to do whatever it took to ensure sustainability.

You are assuming that the problem of how to produce food, shelter and clothing for the human population will just be solved unproblematically after we have summoned up the political will to empower government to fix the sustainability problem.

But the sustainability problem involves a need to control human action that uses natural resources – which is virtually all human action.

You are not considering the possibility that government is not capable of solving the problem because it’s too big and complex. Even if we mounted an armed guard on each person 24/7, government still doesn’t have, and cannot ever get the knowledge it would need to manage the world economy *and* the world ecology, which is what it would need.

But if I am wrong, then what is the knowledge that government would need? Please answer specifically, don’t just refer to absent authority. You still have not listed the steps that would be necessary to ensure ecological sustainability.

You just assume that governments must know what to do.

They don’t.

Just as you don’t know what to do to manage the whole world, and just as government is not magic, so they don’t know what they would need to do to feed, clothe and shelter the population, let alone to do that *and* ensure ecological sustainability.

And that is to assume you have established the original problem, which you haven’t

you are quite correct diocletian,we should be putting up specific meaning on what we expect govt to do[and not do]so in this spirit i offer a few suggestions in the field of logging

a tree has thousands of leaves[each leaf makes/converts oxigen[to cut the tree down you need to pay for all the carbon that[that]releases as well as plant back into the system the appropriate leaves[currently the leaf deficite of thousands of leaves is'fixed'by planting a 6 leaf seedling

but look at what else we lost with the tree

its roots brought up[and transpired, into our atmosphere vast quantities of water[its root may be hundreds of feet down[cutting off the tree from the root, causes damage to the unseen water table unseen

[why cant the branches of the tree be grafted back onto the root?

thing is the tree will[could be made to regrow]yet more than half [70 percent?}of it is simply burned[alternativly,we should alocate coups to individuals[who are individually responsable for the carbon debt,cutting'their'trees down created

also we arnt fully recycling[but in the 70's there was a fad[you might remember it[of paper clothing, now that wasnt viable because the paper was wood pulp[hemp paper can easilly be washed, its BANK-note quality[and once used can be recycled[but here is the kicker,

if one quater of the area logged last year alone[was planted with'hemp'that will meet all our paper needs;no more wood chip depleting old growth and the logging companies getting the murdered for-rest[land]for free[that provides an income for the coup owner[and provides excelent ground cover[and/plus carbon capture]

plus the seeds alone have 5000 other uses[making everything from plastic to icecream,[oil;you can eat]as well as paper/fibre;clothing building material etc

anyhow im finished with this debate

i guess we will have to wait longer for sanity to return[hemp is the tree of life[rev 22]but who would have believed the fruits of the tree of life [growing on the darling[the river of life]run's not to 12[one each month[but hundreds each month]30,000 per year

indeed'set my people free'[drug war'victims'of conscience,and i will explain what they are

Diocletian, give me a few days and I'll give you a full response. I'm travelling around at the moment and just quickly stopping in at internet cafes.

I'll just say this; in order for you to substantiate your claim that sustainability hardly qualifies as rational discourse, you need to very strongly indicate that the alternative is better. The alternative is to not even attempt to address sustainability.

Now of course that is not a better thing. We simply MUST address this issue.

But yes, you are right - there is the potential for making things even worse if we don't address the issues properly.

The main problem here is the same thing that I see happening with climate change - we are addressing the issues in a piffling manner, thus placating the concerns of many worried people while essentially allowing the same old polluting habits to continue, just with a bit of a green tinge. A bit of a reduction in GHG emissions could ultimately be a lot worse for us, as it will serve to stretch out the high emissions period and could lead to a bigger crash event.

But even with the quite considerable potential of worsening the situation by addressing sustainaiblity in the same sort of way, we have to try. We can't do nothing.

An interesting piece but I'm still chucking over the idea that the US party represented by Bill "I did not have sexual relations with that women" Clinton did not know how to frame language.

The article would have had more meaning if it was not trying to portray reframing language as a liberal/conservative initiative.

Both sides do it and have done it for a long time both here and in the USA.

R0bert

Ludwig

“in order for you to substantiate your claim that sustainability hardly qualifies as rational discourse, you need to very strongly indicate that the alternative is better.”

No I don’t. Whether an idea is rational has nothing to do with the practical alternatives. If I say “bees make milk, and cows make honey, so therefore we should buy furniture from a camel”, that is not logical, right? Whether it is logical comes down to the internal relations of ideas. It’s got nothing to do with whether the other furniture-buying alternatives seem better.

“The alternative is to not even attempt to address sustainability.”

Yes, that is a logical alternative.

“Now of course that is not a better thing. We simply MUST address this issue.”

That’s the issue. That’s what you need to prove. If you simply assume it, the argument is circular, which means it’s not rational.

“But yes, you are right - there is the potential for making things even worse if we don't address the issues properly.”

Yes. For example, if we cut fuel energy use by fifty percent without being able to substitute for it, hundreds of millions of people will die. This is not a joke. There is a distinct possibility that “doing something” may be worse than not doing something about it. That’s the whole point.

“But even with the quite considerable potential of worsening the situation by addressing sustainaiblity in the same sort of way, we have to try.”

No we don’t.

“We can't do nothing.”

Yes we can.

This assumes (a) that you have established the problem in the first place, which you haven’t, and (b) that you have established that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, which you haven’t.

Now your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to prove that ecological sustainability is a problem that justifies using force - the law - but in making your argument, you're not allowed to assume what is in issue, okay? You've got to prove it without assuming it as a premise.

dio [that deserves its own topic] but lets try anyhow,you said quote<<This assumes[a)that you have established the problem in the first place,which you haven’t,>>

the problem seems to me that govt wants more tax money to prop up capitalism with more bail outs

their solution is to sell us on glabal warming [that became global cooling[due to the sun not co-operating and having two huge sunspot non events over the last two years[causing little ninio] and snow in north america[and expanding poles[yet the polar bears are supposed to be drowing [but all that ice, how come ?, because the climate change comes from the sun[putting more energy[heat into the planet in one day than all our fossil energy can in a year

>>and (b) that you have established that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages,which you haven’t.>> ok lets be honest the capitalists need this tax to rebuild industry ,but i say stuff em [time the elites began paying taxes[see the poor pay the carbon tax[the poluters get free permits to polute] then big buisness applies fot the tax to do buisness as usual]

>>Now your mission,should you choose to accept it, is to prove that ecological sustainability is a problem that justifies using force - the law - but in making your argument,you're not allowed to assume what is in issue,okay?

You've got to prove it without assuming it as a premise.>>

huh? but it is a premise
the science dont stack up
how does carbon tax stop methane[and polution by micro particulate emited by petro chemical [or the benzine put into our pertochemical as a lead replacement[both causing our cancers, assisted by MICRO waves emited by our mobile phones giving us cancers, in the thyroid and brains?