Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Philosophy

Defining the Greens (Part 7)

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GREENPEACE is a large global corporation broadly committed to ‘saving the environment’.   Greenpeace is currently focused on influencing the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in December on the basis that this represents “the best chance we have of reversing current emissions trends in time to prevent the climate chaos that we are hurtling towards”.

Greenpeace has called on governments gathering in Copenhagen for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to agree to legally binding emissions reduction obligations for industrialised countries, as a group, of at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.  But Greenpeace demands that this be achieved with the exclusion of what it deems unsustainable technologies in particular nuclear energy.

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Defining the Greens (Part 6)

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It is now official, at least in Britain, Environmentalism is a religion.  Indeed, one can now sue for religious discrimination with environmentalism listed as the affronted creed.

According to Tom Nicholson, a 41-year old married man, being Green means he no longer travels by airplane, he buys local produce, has reduced his consumption of meat and he composts his food waste.  But his employer, property company Grainger, didn’t take these beliefs seriously – in particular his belief in climate change – and sacked him.

At a preliminary hearing in March, Judge David Sneath ruled that Mr Nicholson’s convictions amount to a philosophical belief under the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations, 2003, and therefore he can claim discrimination.

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Defining the Greens (Part 5)

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IT is wrong to assume that the Greens are luddites and in particular anti-technology. 

This is a criticism often levelled against them because, as a group, they tend to oppose many new technologies, for example, the genetic modification of crops and nuclear energy.

However, the Greens are passionately pro solar technology. 

The only problem with this technology is that it tends to be uneconomical without massive government subsidies which I understand are not a problem for the Greens – subsidies that is.

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Defining the Greens (Part 4)

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ALL Greens have a deep passionate desire to make sure we live well without doing serious damage to the environment, but apart from that are a motley lot impossible to accurately define.

This is one of the messages that have emerged from my series entitled ‘Defining the Greens’. 

But I can’t agree. 

In the 70s there was some agreement that protecting the planet required fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology – I’m paraphrasing  John Tierney from an article in Monday’s New York Times. 

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Defining the Greens (Part 3)

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WHAT we consider to be the ‘right’ sort of environmental protection is necessarily going to be influenced by our understanding of nature.

According to Harald Kehl, the modern environmentalist either subscribes to a dualistic-anthropocentric (speculative) definition of nature with a philosophical-religious background or a scientific (hypothetical-deductive) proposition influenced by modern epistemology.   

Those who subscribe to the dualistic-anthropocentric definition would probably consider global warming foremost a moral issue, while the latter might consider it more a technological problem.  

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On a Tortuous Political Problem: Bob Carter

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Oppose the ETSLAST Wednesday, I had the privilege of appearing in front of the Australian Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy.

My main advice to the committee was that making a decision regarding an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) must be considered as a cost:benefit matter.

According to the only estimates that I could find, after ramp-up the cost of the Rudd ETS scheme is going to be about an additional $3,500 tax per year per Australian family. On the other side, the benefit will be a theoretical (i.e. modelled) reduction in temperature of less than 1/1000 deg. C.

I asked the committee if they had such figures in front of them (they didn’t), and expressed willingness to drop my estimates in favour of better-founded ones if the committee could provide them. Not a finger, or tongue, stirred!

Beyond recommending that a proper cost:benefit analysis should apply, I argued also for the implementation of a (Plan B) policy of adaptation to climate change in place of the intended (Plan A) emissions trading system. This follows the policy that I espoused in a recent talk at the New York Heartland-2 Climate Conference, a written version of which has been published in the April edition of Quadrant.

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