“We have formed a super-organism,” announces Tim Flannery.

“There will be no ‘outside’, there is no ‘other’. We will form a global community with a common set of shared beliefs …

“We will be a regulating intelligence for the planet.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2011/apr/04/tim-flannery-global-shared-beliefs-video

This is one of our highly paid advisors to our government.

No wonder some are calling for an early election.

"Resistance is futile.
You will be assimilated."

Doubtless a borg member of this world-wide collective intelligence, Tim Flannery seems to be spruiking 'dalektical materialism'. You know,

"Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!"

Where is Doctor Who when you need him? A new episode beckons: 'Doctor Who and the Climate Changers'. Quick, everyone get inside the Tardis. I'm sure the good Doctor won't be long. Can't wait to meet his new assistant! Wonder if she's a blonde?

It must be good being a Time Lord. You know, being able, at the press of a few 1960s electro-mechanical buttons and the display of a few vulvular thermionic glows, to visit the climate of a thousand years hence and return with CO2 readings little different from those of today.

[...... Fade to moog synthesiser playing 'Doctor Who' theme music. DUM DI DI DUMP, DUM DI DI DUMP, dum di di dump, dum di di dump. WHO-OO-OO, oh who will we dump? DI DI DEE deep dudu, will Jooliar do? Oo-ooo. TO THE DUMP, TO THE DUMP, to the dump, to the dump ......]

Did you watch the video to understand what Flannery is saying, or just read the headline?

It appears to me that if you did, you did not understand it.
Not surprising though, a lot of conservatives don't understand evolutionary concepts.

Dear Banjo,

This bloke hasn't fallen from his tree. He's actually trying to preserve "the tree" so to speak or at least point out that we need to preserve the ecological balance of the planet and the health of many of its species, including ourselves. Recently an awareness of an "ecological crisis" has led social and natural scientists from several disciplines to focus on the complex interrelationship among industrialization, technology, population growth, and the global environment.

The technology of large-scale industrialisation poses two major problems. First, it generates pollution of the natural environment, threatening or destroying life in a chain reaction that can run from the tiniest microogranism to human beings. Second it depletes natural resources such as wood, oil, and minerals, many of which are in short supply and cannot be replaced

The question that arises is whether a world population that will increase drastically over the years and therefore produce many more people to consume and pollute can be supported by the environment.
Tim Flannery is being optimistic - in suggesting that human beings will come together in solving this problem globally.

This problem is of course an exceedingly difficult one to solve, for several reasons. First, some people and governments see pollution as a regretable but inevitable by-product of desired economic development - "where there's smoke, there's jobs."

Second, control of pollution requires international co-ordination, for one country's emissions or pesticides can end up in another country's air or food.

Third, the effects of pollution may not show up for many years, so severe environmental damage can occur with little public awareness that it's taking place. Lastly, preventing or correcting pollution can be costly, technically complex, and sometimes the damage is irreversible, impossible.

However, most industrialised nations are now actively trying to limit the effects of pollution, however, the populous less developed countries are more concerned with economic growth, and tend to see pollution as the price they have to pay for it. Tim Flannery sees that
the more developed (thinking) people will win out. Fingers-crossed he's right!

I agree that Flannery is talking bilge.

But I'm more shocked by Forrest Gumpp. Having long been in awe at the "Savant of OLO", it's disillusioning finding him bandying phrases like "dialektical materialism" around as if it was relevant here. Dialectical Materialism was Engel's naturalised, reductionist version of Marx's "Historical Materialism", and was eagerly taken up as doctrine by the Bolsheviks.
Flannery is in fact of the neoliberal ilk and the dystopia he invokes appears to seem to him a natural complement to the natural selection he worships. On another occasion, and I wish I could remember when as I could use it, he openly spruiked the competitive neoliberal dynamic over obsolete socialist notions.
Indeed the conservative cohort here is conservative n the extreme; globalisation is an ultra-right neoliberal campaign and has nothing to do with socialist collectivism. The most dire social-political threat facing the world now is the same as that which threatened the world between the wars, namely fascism, the extreme form of nationalism. It is this cohort that is militating against economic globalisation.
In the kind of world Marx envisioned, one not driven by economic rationalism and commodification, genuine cultural and national distinctiveness would logically undergo a rebirth.
The kind of nationalism that is currently ascendant, based on fear, is devoid of content--protectionist flag-waving--is comprised of a single currency, whatever it might be prima facie.

I don't expect most of the conservative cohort at OLO to be able to discriminate their prejudice intelectually, but you surprise me Forrest. Or have I misunderstood?

<< This bloke hasn't fallen from his tree. He's actually trying to preserve "the tree" so to speak or at least point out that we need to preserve the ecological balance of the planet and the health of many of its species, including ourselves. >>

Well put Lexi.

Banjo, I think that Flanney’s message on this occasion is quite ethereal and difficult for many to grasp. He does perhaps sound a tad loopy in the vid. But he’s right on the mark.

I’m not sure if his optimistic approach, and often overly scientific expression for the ordinary person, is the right way to go about it. In fact, I’ve felt quite critical of him at times for what seems to be such a positive and hence superficial expression of our immense forthcoming problems due to population overload in conjunction with a major decline in our energy budget as we move beyond peak oil, and climate change, to name but two concomitant issues.

But the doom and gloom message of the type delivered by David Suzuki and Paul Ehrlich, as true as it is, is just not penetrating our collective thick skulls any more, if it ever was. So a new approach is needed.