It seems that what environmentalists are opposed to, is human activity and indicators of social co-operation in general.

But of course, no-one has a gun at their head forcing them to participate in the benefits of the global division of labour, and for millions of years, these things were unknown to human society.

Why don’t environmentalists just stop using fossil fuels, cars, housing, blankets, heating, lights, and computers? The Aborigines lived in Australia without any of those things, so obviously we don't *need* them.

What makes environmentalists think they are entitled to use these things, which are obviously so offensive to their values? Why do they think they have to force other people, who don’t agree with their opinions, to do what they themselves are not willing to do voluntarily?

Or is it human life itself that they don't like, because underneath all the piety, the ostentatious self-flagellation, and the hypocrisy, that's certainly what it seems like.

WingaLing........

Strange you didn't canvas why we vote for the b......s?

Sure the Global Financial Crisis has knocked consumption on the head for a time. It happens during a bust, but markets are dynamic - they recover and (unfortunately) forget about the original problem. We can only hope that the Americans learn their lesson and improve regulation of their financial system. However, to suggest that the financial markets will somehow alter their function or fail entirely is complete fantasy.
CO2 emissions - the rate of increase may slow, perhaps stop for a time, but I doubt if it will make any long term difference. There may be a detectible blip on the graph, then again there may not..
Road - vehicle miles - the relationship is not as simple as one might think. The stated relationship in the article is that the more vehicle miles mean that more roads get built. Its the other way round.. the more roads that are built, the more car miles are driven.
Compared to Australia or Europe, America is a decentralised place with little in the way of public transport (again, compared to other advanced countries). You can do without a car in New York, as I understand it, but anywhere else and a car is a near necessity. This isn't going to change anytime soon.

Good Lord.

I kept waiting for a hint - any at all - that the author of this disgusting piece was being in some way ironic. Nope.

Wow, Richard, you must have giggled with glee after Hurricane Katrina, popped the champagne when the Boxing Day Tsunami struck, and positively danced in the streets after the Sichuan Earthquake.

This is the most despicable article I have ever read on this forum.

Guys, the writer specifically stated that many environmentalists were afraid to make these pretty damn obvious points, because people would react with the over-the-top comments, displayed perfectly by Clownfish.

If you disagree with global warming, I get it. Fine. If you disagree specifically with any particular environmental issue, fine.

But please, don't pretend humans aren't having some kinds of negative impacts on our environment. That's all I'm asking.

The logical corollary is that reductions in consumption leave a reduced imprint on the environment.

There. Quite simple. But to say that outright seems to invite venom and accusations of hatred of mankind.

Christ. The author specifically stated that such things would be 'tragic' and an 'unimaginable nightmare.'

He wasn't advocating enforcing such things. He wasn't dancing in the streets about these things at all. But he states that from one perspective, there are benefits, which is true. It results in less resource depletion.

But I suppose that requires a more thoughtful response.

Since the mid to late 1940's to 2007, western humanity and certain other developed or developing countries have enjoyed growing prosperity and happiness such has rarely been seen in past civilisations, but the start of this unprecedented run actually began in the mid 1800's when the first commercial oil began to flow.

Without the energy found in cheap and abundant oil and gas, practically nothing you see around you today would have been possible. It's doubtful that anything in the room in which you currently sit could exist without oil input and Heinberg is correct when he suggests that the cheap and abundant energy so enjoyed throughout the oil era and the lifestyles it funded is about to slide into decline.

The past 160 years have seen exploitation of the greatest source of energy the world has ever known, but the biggest fields have already been discovered and are in decline. The decline rate is surprising in some instances (Cantarell oil field Mexico). Kids growing up hoping to mimic their parents and believing they have a 'right' to use personal transport are soon to receive the worst news of their tiny little lives. The oil game is over for the average person. Heinberg has sounded the alarm loudly. Perhaps it's time to listen.

Aime: Not quite correct. Oil is just the first, easiest and cheapest energy source. There will be others, just not as easy, cheap and profitable.
Oil has been accessible to humans for thousands of years. The real enabler was and still is science and engineering. Once electric technologies are advanced from their 19th century status we will wonder why we used oil so wastefully.
What is needed is an accelleration of the true enablers to expand the luxuries we take for granted to the rest of the human population in an environmentally sustainable way. The issues are more political than engineering.
I for one want to fly into orbit, be able to take holidays on the other side of the world. I also want the other 90% of the population to be able to do this without sacrificing their children's ability to do the same.
This can be done, we just have to stop acting like dumb animals or tribal power freaks.

Ozandy, could you explain a little more of what you mean when you say........

"Once electric technologies are advanced from their 19th century status we will wonder why we used oil so wastefully."

What sort of technologies?

Don't worry so much, we'll adapt, we have for thousands of years and that will go on, every age has doomsayers, you're not alone.

I do look on the bright side, that all the doomsayers in the world have always been and always will be proved wrong by events just happening on their own in their own time, not when "prophets" demand they do. I take great comfort in being able to ignore whatever doom is forecast as inevitably wrong, because it is always required in time for the said doomsayer to bask in the glory of the doom.

Your second last paragraph seems to me to be a long winded way of saying some “intellectuals” will set themselves up as the leaders of new religions, based on the age old tried and true method of explaining to the masses why things happen and how to avoid them, with a little emphasis on what will happen if you don’t listen.

I take it you count yourself among those “intellectuals” who will be one of the ones at the top of that little heap, maybe you will, there are always simple minded people looking for leadership, hence the myriads of green/eco clubs, groups, societies, faculties, unions, foundations etc.

Is that likely to be your “schtick”, is it, look on the bright side of people’s misery (they really deserve it!)?

Your desire for retribution against the adherents of the consumer generations in the west will of course be totally overwhelmed by the rising generations who have exactly that goal in the developing world, Africa, India and China. They do not give a cr*p about your sensitivity at all, they just want "cargo" to make their lives better and longer.

They will get it, then pull themselves up to the level of the west, and on we'll go - there will be natural disasters, we're long overdue for huge earthquakes and I suspect it will be events like that, that reduce the population rather than what you predict.

rpg, I'm sure there were people like you deriding the doomsayers before the previous 20-odd civilisations collapsed. Ozandy, you need to look at the energy profitability of other energy sources and the scale-up times for them. When you do you are in for a rude shock. Technology requires energy to be manufactured and to function. Don't think it will be a panacea to energy decline. In my opinion, Heinberg is probably the finest writer today in terms of expressing difficult concepts of sustainability to a largely scientifically uneducated public. You should read especially "The Party's Over". It make the connectino between energy and technological complexity obvious.

Wing Ah Ling wrote: "It seems that what environmentalists are opposed to, is human activity and indicators of social co-operation in general."

Why on Earth would you think that? THIS greeny has started a completely new community in his town, a Transition Town Initiative (http://www.transitionculture.org), and a new local newspaper. Anti-social? I don't think so....

Then he says: "Why don’t environmentalists just stop using fossil fuels, cars, housing, blankets, heating, lights, and computers?" Well, I have stopped using a lot of FFs, our house is fully solar powered, and as it turns out I no longer own a car. Blankets...? Well our house is so energy efficient we hardly need those, even though it WAS -1C this morning.. Computers are really an aberration which I doubt many of us will be using in 20 years, so I think I better make the most of it!

Now frankly, I really don't care if you think "greenie" ideas aren't worth following through, but when crunch times arrive, I am pretty confident me and mine will survive, and when you shrivel up and die of cold and starvation for not taking seriously the things Richard Heinberg discusses here, I won't be losing any sleep.... don't say you weren't warned.

Heinberg is merely stating facts about the overexploitation of our finite resources over what is historically a very short period .
He,like any real environmentalist ,is distressed by this overuse and the inevitable repercussions. Only if you live in a fantasy world of cornucopia could you believe in an infinite availability of non-renewable resources .To suggest that R.H.or any true environmentalist is barracking for a tragedy to occur is rank stupidity .The anger apparent in people like "clownfish"or "wing ah ling"at the thought of ever being deprived of the luxuries of life causes them to avoid the facts and "shoot the messenger"

I don't want a billion people to die but I do want a billion fewer people to be born.
The extra people share a little of what was mine.
Fewer people ,more of everything for those that remain.
Carry on as now and a billion people will die when the fossil fuels run out.
I heard on the radio a Somali man complaining that the 30Kg of rice a
month given to him by some charity is not enough to feed himself ,his
wife and SIX children.
Stop doing it.
So selfish having children to look after you when you are old.
A life of poverty so that you may have a more comfortable old age?.
Not a good deal to my way of thinking.
I have no children.I have enough money to live a comfotable life now.
When my time comes I hope to die quickly and quietly and not be a burden.
I will look back and think ,that was worth doing.

Coorangreeny
So far as environmentalists are taking *voluntary* action, I have no problem with it - I’m all for it.

The issue is the use of violence or threats, to force other people to obey the greens and pay for their values that I have a problem with. Since policy ultimately relies on coercion – ie violence or threats - the issue is not conservation; it’s the politics of conservation.

* * *

According to the environmentalist point of view expressed by TurnLTR, there's human beings, and then there's 'the environment'. Human life and reproduction uses resources that are taken from the environment. Thus it's a zero-sum game. Human life is bad for 'the environment'.

This assumes that there are values in the environment over and above human values.

It also assumes, in so far as environmentalists call for policy action, that they speak for these superhuman values, and that such values justify them in using violence or threats - policy - to force other people to comply with their opinions.

However, all these assumptions are false. If you take all the human beings away, there is no value in the environment; or at least, none to speak of. When people speak for ‘the environment’ they are merely saying, as between conflicting human uses of a particular resource, that they want *their*preferred use to be preferred by everyone else as well, even if they have to use force to get their way.

Thus it’s not about ‘the environment’ (values over and above human values). It’s about one group of people trying to force another group of people to sacrifice their values, and even their lives, in favour of the first group’s values and lives.

We see this idea in the arguments of those who want to reduce agricultural production in, and immigration into Australia, so that people here can enjoy a pleasant park-like environment. “What is it to us if other people starve?” they seem to say.

But if environmental politics is not about one group using force to deny another group the use of certain natural resources,

then the environmentalists need to say *why not?*. But instead, they just ignore this ethical question it and carry on as if it doesn’t exist, and the only question is whether to use a given resource for this or that purpose – production or conservation.

This is a complete furphy. It disregards the real underlying ethical issue as to the use of force, without which, the question would be decided by consent, and there would be no political issue.

Human beings are part of the environment. All species use and transform natural resources. Their by-products are pollution to some species, and resources to others.

Environmentalists contradict themselves in insisting that humans are part of the environment. Because if they are, then there is no more moral imperative on humans to refrain from resource use than there is on any other species.

But if there is such a moral imperative on man, that there is not on other species, then man is not part of the environment, but is in a different and superior moral category, in which case, why should he not use the environment as he sees fit?

The moral imperative to conserve natural resources comes from the need to avoid a worse outcome for other human values – including their love of nature - now and in the future. This re-confirms that the issue is between one group of humans and another, not between humans on one hand, and the environment on the other.

The question is how best to balance competing possible resource uses as between different human interests. Environmentalists asserting policy instruments are asserting that violence or the threat of violence should be the preferred basis of social co-operation in the use of natural resources.

I think that shows a failure to recognize, to understand, and to refute the enormous body of theory and evidence which show that social co-operation is worse both ethically and practically when based on violence and threats, and in particular that force-based central planning by political states has had a disastrous record both for environmental stewardship and human welfare.

Peter Hume, you state: "According to the environmentalist point of view expressed by TurnLTR, there's human beings, and then there's 'the environment'. Human life and reproduction uses resources that are taken from the environment. Thus it's a zero-sum game. Human life is bad for 'the environment'. "

False corollary. I'm rather fond of humanity and consider them to have a place in the environment.

Preferably for a long time, hence the concern that we might damage things irreparably.

TLTR
That’s not the issue, which is, that no-one has a right to speak for values over and above human values.

Although you are not doing so, many environmentalists mistakenly think they are, and thus arrogate to themselves the privilege of presuming to speak from a false vantage point of superhuman values.

But you are saying that, if we damage things irreparably, there is a concern that *humans* might not have a place in the environment for a long time.

That’s fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t mean
a) environmentalists speak from a position of moral superiority, or
b) environmentalists' assessment of the factual future outcomes is any better,
as against all those in the world who don’t agree with environmentalists take on natural resource use, and whose actions conflict with environmentalist opinions.

Concern for humanity provides no justification whatsoever for *any* environmental policy.

Why not? Because you’re not the only one with concern for humanity. The question is what *actions* should be taken to serve that end. Other people have different views. So we still have not arrived at the stage where anyone has established a justification of the use of violence or threats as a basis for co-ordinating social action in relation to natural resources.

That is what the environmental political movement have failed to understand.

The environmental movement’s posture towards the moral and factual issues reminds me of the Christians, who for 2000 years thought we are all going to die soon, and it will all be because of our moral fault, and we need to practise self-denial for salvation: a final stasis in which all problems of scarcity of resources are permanently solved (‘paradise’, ‘sustainability’). The carbon tax is just a re-cycled version of the selling of indulgences.

So now we are to believe that signs of the increased impoverishment of our fellow human beings, should bring a smile to the face of environmentalists, because their love for still other human beings is so great.

Give us a break. Let's name nasty pious pretentious religious fascism for what it is.

Jardine, charming post....
But let's not forget to call the growth lobby what it really is,
* the "spectrometer denying" climate sceptic front for big oil and king coal,
* the cornucopian fantasy land for multinationals denying the fact that most fossil fuels, precious metals and rare earth's are about to go permanently into decline,
* the big car companies begging for more government handouts because to loose "Government Motors" is "unthinkable"
* the McDonalds McMansion McSuburban plan of McBlandness for the pseudo-delirium of the McLife
* the anti-humane front for big business which values PROFIT over the working lives of those poor bastards stuck in sweat shops 15 hours a day in developing countries
* the rape and pillage of African villages and people in a resource grab to enable our McMansion "lifestyle" (in all its tacky blandness and community destroying horror)
* the Bhopal's and Exxon-Valdez "environment enhancing spills" of multinationals cutting corners in the name of PROFIT

So if you're happy to side with all that, have a nice day. ;-)

(In other words, "Sticks and stones"... anyone can call people names. But if you want to have a real discussion, try making an actual credible argument and, um, a point? Richard was just making the point that these resources running down will have a horrible effect on our society, and that we need to redesign how we do virtually everything. He values human life, deplores human suffering, but looks at it in the total context. I'm a greenie BECAUSE I have kids and love them heaps and don't want to see them suffer, GET IT?)

Arthur C Clarke famously began a talk with the words, "Greetings, carbon-based bipeds". I'm starting to wonder if there isn't more to the name and purpose of the Post Carbon Institute than I first thought.

Silly straw-man, Postcarbon are about life after fossil fuels not people. (Why do people waste their precious posts with such nonsense?)

On the bright side... for a TRULY inspiring real estate & town planning presentation about a development planned for outside Sydney, please watch this address at UNSW.

http://villageforum.com/

Try the main video at the top, it only goes for 15 minutes.

I've met Claude Lewenz and asked him why he didn't include how his plan would solve peak oil and climate change? They are simply not his message. All he does is present a much better way to live. It truly is one of the most inspiring talks I've seen on the net, (and I visit TED.com regularly!)

If the world were planned this way we'd:-
# Solve peak oil and climate change!
# Become economically prosperous and far more stable
# Safer, more beautiful, less isolated
# More sustainable agriculture
# Safer, more nutritious, more secure and local food supplies
# Better paid farmers
# Less boring neighbourhoods and far more vibrant local cultural life
# Happier, healthier, safer family life and kids
# More, more, more....

As it is, I'm an optimist for our grandchildren, but the next 20 years could really suck as we adjust to "peak everything".

Oh! Really? Gee, thanks Eclipse Now. (This is sarcasm.)

I see earnestness has also peaked in your case, and short-circuited your grasp of irony. What a culturally vibrant world you will create

rpg wrote: "Don't worry so much, we'll adapt, we have for thousands of years and that will go on.."

Well rpg, of course we adapt.... we adapt to ever better, ever increasing, and ever denser energy!

Mankind first discovered wood many thousands of years ago and did nicely with THAT energy source. Until trees started becoming scarce (Britain nearly stripped its entire oak forests to build ships). So when charcoal was discovered (made from wood BTW) to be even better & hotter, allowing the smeltering of metals, it was used (until tree scarcity), until we then discovered that coal was even better, and coal allowed the invention/exploitation of steam engines. Then we discovered that drilling the Earth's crust could also give us more oil, and then gas. Then we discovered fission and Uranium. And of course we all start thinking we're such clever dicks... when in fact all we've done is exploit finite non renewable natural resources.

Just because we can make solar panels and wind turbines and electric cars (which just proves that with Fossil Fuels you can do ANYTHING!) does not mean we'll be continuing on like this forever. Where are the solar panel mines? Or the Hydrogen pits? And all our clever technologies just USE energy....

Limits to Growth was predicted 35 years ago, nobody took it seriously, and now we're about to face the music.

But not to worry, we will adapt, you can have abundance with a lot less... we're doing just that without a car and just 15% of the average Australian electricity consumption.

Fungo

So you believe in business as usual, that we can continue consuming all our resources and the planet will, like the magic pudding continue to provide infinitely?

Check out this interesting link, sooner or later things are gonna change. Fasten your seat-belts:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2592909.htm

the essential mechanism at work here is a rise in the nurturing influence of women in the world and a corresponding fall in the innovative influence of men.

it's a biological mechanism eminating from the complementary qualities at play in the rise and consequent success of sexuality over asexuality.

what is happening in a global context has happened in regional contexts, the rise, stabalisation and then fall of scores of civilisations over the past few millennia.

the fall happens if women's rights are not consolidated and the system is destabalised by outside forces, climate change or male insurgence, for instance.

the civilisation is maintained if women's rights are considated with the equivalent of women's legislatures, alongside men's legislatures, as with the continuum of Aboriginal cultures in Australia.

basically, men run out of room for material innovation and the culture shifts emphasis to the consolidation of their innovation with a rise in women's influence.

the key to continuity is to balance predispositions to innovation and consolidation, best conducted in a parliamentary democracy with governance conducted by agreement between women's and men's legislatures.

fractelle, its not just fungo who may (or may not) believe we can go on consuming resources. A lot of the world's population believe this and why not, surely a resource like sunlight is almost never ending (another billion of so years at least), but I suspect it was resources you would like to see limited you were referring to?

Would you like to be in charge of resources fractelle, how would you decide what to use and who gets what? I'm guessing that will irritate you as not being your point, but you're the one who wants to berate people with an ABC program of doom and gloom.

You refer to another "doom" prophet, cheer up, it may never happen that way - there's doom predictions in OLO and the media every day. You can count on the fingers of one hand which predictions of doom have come true in the last 100 years, well you don't need all those fingers to do it.

Trying to force everyone to change to the way you think the world should be run by threatening doom, or "hell" or purgatory or "your children will be slaves, starve, have no resources, live in a forest of glass" etc - is old school religious stuff, that last one is from the Tibetan bhudists, now those guys know how to control the plebs let me tell you! You need to modernize mate, maybe "do like I want and you can all have a TV", no that's been done .. well over to you, but look, the threats of doom thing is just not working is it?

Amicus, you wrote: Would you like to be in charge of resources fractelle, how would you decide what to use and who gets what? I'm guessing that will irritate you as not being your point, but you're the one who wants to berate people with an ABC program of doom and gloom.

fractelle will NOT be in charge of who gets what or otherwise.... the PLANET will.

Re Paul Gilding, did you actually listen to what he has to say? He may be a prophet of doom, but he also has solutions, solutions I know work because we have put most of them into practice. You can't have it both ways by 'attacking' doomsayers and the solutions they profer.

Eclipse now
The mere fact that you don’t like something does not provide a justification for using force to settle the question your way, and nothing that you have said has given any reason why it does.

It is not valid to argue, in favour of environmental policy, that “we” need to plan the use of resources. Why not? Because “we” *already are* planning our use of resources, even before any question of policy arises. It’s just that you don’t agree with it.

What you are calling the ‘growth lobby’ presumably means the political forces behind continued growth in human population and the use of natural resources. However that is circular argument, because we are already agreed that if people *voluntarily* want to restrict their reproduction or consumption, they should be free to do so.

The political issue is whether there should be political action to forcibly restrict people’s reproduction or consumption. Otherwise, they would go right ahead and do it. That’s exactly what you don’t want, remember?

“* the … front for big oil and king coal

The only reason big oil is big, and king coal is king, is because they provide goods that literally billions of people *voluntarily* pay for because they value their use. The root problem you have is with the human tendency to live, reproduce and consume, otherwise what objection would there be?

• the cornucopian fantasy land for multinationals denying the fact that most fossil fuels, precious metals and rare earth's are about to go permanently into decline

We are barely scratching the surface but again, the reason the corporations suppying these goods are big, is because they represent the demands of such a large number of people.

What makes you think that your assessment of the scarcity of these resources is better than theirs? This is just more of a display of fake superhuman wisdom about the future, and fake moral superiority.

* the big car companies begging for more government handouts because to loose "Government Motors" is "unthinkable"

I totally agree there should be no handouts to failing companies.

But that is an argument *against* a policy response, not in favour of it. I’m consistent on the principle. You are inconsistent: which is it?

* the McDonalds McMansion McSuburban plan of McBlandness for the pseudo-delirium of the McLife

I happen to agree with you. But the point is, no-one has appointed you or me to pass judgment on what should make other people happy, backing it up with violence.

* the anti-humane front for big business which values PROFIT over the working lives of those poor bastards stuck in sweat shops 15 hours a day in developing countries

The reason people choose to work in factories is because they judge it to be better than the alternative, probably of greater poverty. When the employer provides them a job, together they are responsible for the rise in the workers standard of living.

But if he doesn’t, he is not any more responsible for their poverty than you or I are. You don’t employ people at a loss to produce something that others aren’t willing to pay for. Why should he?

* the rape and pillage of African villages and people in a resource grab to enable our McMansion "lifestyle" (in all its tacky blandness and community destroying horror)

No-one is arguing that rape and pillage are okay. But you are arguing, correct me if I’m wrong, that the use of force is okay, to stop people *voluntarily and consensually* using natural resources in disagreement with your opinion.

• the Bhopal's and Exxon-Valdez "environment enhancing spills" of multinationals cutting corners in the name of PROFIT

Human perfection is not an option. You’re not proposing a method by which the people of the world could be provided with the same amount of goods at the same price, and not have the same or a greater risk of spills, are you?

That being so, the spills are no more in the name of profit, than they are in the name of the human welfare that is served by providing these goods and services. The alternative is only greater environmental destruction *and* more poverty.

Part of the problem is that we run our labour market in a way that means that unemployment starts to climb as soon as economic growth drops below some critical level. So to avoid the evil of unemployment we have to believe that man is made for the economy, not the economy made for man. Any environmentalist who starts babbling on about reducing consumption, limiting credit growth, cutting back on junk product advertising IS THREATENING MY JOB and the re-election of governments!
However, there is no rational reason why we can't control unemployment by sharing the available work in a fairer way. Sure, employers will scream like stuck pigs about potential inefficiencies costing more than the gains from a fresher workforce and the potential for larger increases in working hours when required. However, part of the problem with the existing system is that employers get the gains from longer working hours while it is the community and taxpayers who have to live with increased welfare costs and the social cost of high unemployment.
If Richard seriously wants us to cold turkey on unecessary consumption he should start talking seriously about the changes needed to avoid this causing a growth in unemployment.

Jardine,
I said nothing about using force, that's your own assumption there sorry.

However I will admit to wanting certain policies.
Try this one from Sustainable Population Australia. It is basically about
http://www.population.org.au/images/stories/Rescources/spa_population_policy.pdf

Freedoms in some areas of life are very good indeed. But demanding *freedom* from the constraints of physics and chemistry, and pretending we are free to live on an infinite planet, I'm afraid, is just called wishful thinking, even delusional. Physics and chemistry are not matters of opinion or politics or libertarian persuasion. If we break "Liebig's Law" of the minimum in a catastrophic enough manner people will just plain starve. Think Irish Potato famine, or even worse, "Mao's Great Leap Forward" with poor resource management leading to 20 to 40 million people starving to death.

As for your opinion about plentiful resources and "barely scratching the surface", discovery of oil peaked 40 years ago, the last time we discovered more oil than we burned was in the early 80's, and we know burn 5 times the oil we discover. Plenty enough for ya? ;-)

Lester Brown has calculated from USGS figures that just a 2% increase in annual consumption will exhaust all conventional reserves of most of the important metals within the next 70 years (IRON INCLUDED!), and many more run out in the next decade or 2, and most PEAK way before them. Plenty enough for ya? ;-)

http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2007/08/peak-metals-and-minerals.html

It's time to wake up and face a whole variety of inconvenient truths. Ranting about "freedom" as our resource over-consumption catches up with us isn't going to assist the REAL discussion we HAVE to have.

Posted by undidly, Saturday, 13 June 2009 10:59:24 AM

Undidly , did you really mean to declare moral support for the Arrived and Withdraw support for the arriving ?

Perhaps you could explain what seems to me an alarming moral dilemma and how you a came to support and propose such an ugly thesis .

TRTL, would you stand up at your beloved granny's funeral and declare, "oh well, at least she won't be burning up all those fossils fuels keeping warm in winter anymore!"

Would you tell the parents of a stillborn baby, "hey, think of the tonnes of greenhouse gases you've spared the planet!"

I doubt it.

So how do you and egregious creeps like Heinberg have the gall to stand up and make the revolting statements in this article? Because like so many zealous idealists, you are able to reduce real, living people to a convenient abstraction; mere numbers, to be added, or most often subtracted.

Above all, your unquestioning devotion to the dogmas of environmentalism leads to the sort of deplorable realpolitik moral compromise so eloquently expressed by Tolkien's Saruman: "deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose ... all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends."

As H. G. Wells wrote of the "dark valley" of the 1930s, "Terrible are the faithful disciples", as we indeed witnessed during the 20th Century, when "the faithful disciples" and their amoral, abstracted devotion paved the road to Hell in the concentration camps, the gulags and the killing fields.

I shudder when I hear the anti-human deep green zealots talking openly of state-enforced population control, one-child policies and the "bright side" of megadeaths, because I am reminded of nothing so much as the cultured, urbane 19th century idealists of the Volkisch movement, and their airy sentimental patriotism and back-to-the-land romanticism, little imagining the horrors of which they were inadvertantly laying the foundations.