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?)