Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Philosophy

Ravens, Right Relationships and Ice Trucks

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IN Canada’s remote freezing Northwest Territories, near the diamond mine of Ekati, a black raven follows ice road trucks.  A youtube video has been made of the bird’s antics which include surfing the turbulence created by the big rigs.  

Yesterday at the Sydney Writers Festival, I heard Eva Hornung, author of ‘Dogboy’, the story of a child who grows up with wolfs in Moscow, talking about animals and our relationship with them.   She suggested that the divide between humans and animals is much closer than popular culture suggests and that we humans have a “vested interest” in suggesting otherwise.  

I was also interested in a comment she made that we cannot have a completely “right relationship” with animals – it was in the context of domesticated dogs being necessarily submissive in character in order to coexist with humans.    It is probably also impossible for humans to have a completely “right relationship” with nature?

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Defining the Greens (Part 11)

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ASK a forest worker from Tasmania, a commercial fisherman from South Australia, a sugarcane grower from Queensland or a cattle producer from New South Wales what they think of Greens and a common complaint will be that “Greens tell lies”.  

Each of these groups have been the target of clever campaigns by Green groups including The Wilderness Society and WWF Australia.

Tasmanian forest workers have put up committed and organised resistance and many of their truck and utilities sport bumper stickers with the comment “Greens tell lies”.  

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Defining the Greens (Part 10)

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MANY of the world’s great doctrines claim that man’s moral duty is to serve others. Environmentalists, on the other hand, might claim that it is to live in harmony with nature. The Greens are perhaps a bit different. They might claim that in order to live in harmony with nature we need to first change society and in particular our attitude to the consumption of the earth’s finite resources. In short Greens might suggest that in order to save the earth, we need to first change our values.

According to my Oxford dictionary values are principles or standards of behaviour – one’s judgement of what is important in life. Some argue that if you take nothing seriously, it means that you have no values. But where do these values come from and what in particular does a Green value?

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Orwellian

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WITH the rise of big government convinced that belief in a climate crisis will be good for us, it is perhaps pertinent to remember George Orwell and his novel ‘1984’.   The term ‘Orwellian’, his idea that wellbeing is crushed by restrictive, authoritarian and untruthful government, has its origin here.   Read more.

Defining the Greens (Part 9)

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GREEN antipathy towards capitalism

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is based on an ideological animosity towards material prosperity; people like Australia’s Clive Hamilton have been critiquing materialism for some time; hatred of capitalism follows because it is the best vehicle for producing material prosperity; since capitalism is based on private ownership of property and means of production this explains the merging of ecotism and socialism; with centralised, non-individual economic control lip service can be given to preserving nature; but as I have shown in ‘The 10 Worst Man-Made Disasters’, the worst examples of environmental despoilation have been in non-capitalistic societies.

Still, the defining characteristic of the green is misanthropy; it is ridiculous for any green supporter to claim that it is only fringe fanatics who espouse drastic reductions in human population, or even eradication; such people as John Holdren, James Lovelock and Gus Speth are mainstream greens and have clearly enunciated programs for reducing population. The irony is of course that material prosperity is the best check on population as most Western nations show.

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Defining the Greens (Part 8)

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“What’s clear is eco-activists and their allies will do anything to avoid talking about their real goals, which have less to do with cleaning up the environment than with pulling down capitalism.”

‘What Green Means’, Investor Business Daily, http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=326414989713648

Parts 1-7 of this series are archived here https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/tag/philosophy/

Picture shows the impact of crabs burrowing on the beach, Yeppoon, Queensland, May 6, 2009.  Click on the image for a clear, larger, better view.