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Courtesy: Marc Roberts

The Astro-turf phenomenon isn’t new, but George Monbiot’s recent article, and the recent Fox-leaks non-shock put it back in my mind.

Elsewhere – Polar bears move inland and begin to assimilate, sound advice is offered on risk management and our persistent buggering of the soil takes its toll.

I’m not sure what’s happened to Frank. He wandered off into a snow storm a few days ago after 12 solid hours of economics research, (including this) muttering something about “gormless thieving bastards”. He may be some time. He’s been a bit despondent of late and, let’s face it, he’s not getting any younger. Perhaps I should have made him wear a coat.

Still – plenty more where he came from.

12 Comments

  1. Well, isn’t the problem that there is a big group of very loud people who, when challenged to make an appropriate commitment to back their position, would chicken out?

    We probably all agree that there is a chance that not reducing our CO2 emissions fast and soon will indeed have dramatic effects. Who of those who object to doing so would be willing to personally take the responsibility and the consequences for a climate-induced collapse of the human carrying capacity? I think it’s pretty evident what appropriate response would be expected in such a situation.

    Of course, it’s not as if dramatically reducing emissions would not have an impact on society.

    In my view, the biggest obstacle to progress on this matter is that people manage to get attention irrespective of how much they are prepared to invest personally. If one just is sufficiently loud, being shallow does not seem to matter.

    But that can be resolved.

  2. Making appropriate commitments to address any perceived social problem can only be effective if done without government involvement, Thomas.

  3. Alex,

    let me ask straight on then: if we ran into climate collapse, would you be prepared to take responsibility for having prevented appropriate action when it still would have been possible?

  4. Thomas:

    Your question is structured to infer that if one does not support government regulation/statism then they should be held responsible for preventing appropriate action of climate collapse.

    I personally take appropriate action that has no relevancy to statist ideology or anything to do with increased government regulation. That supports some very core ethics of Permaculture based on my observations.

    I am not rejecting climate change as a problem, I am just submitting that appropriate action is effectively achieved without statism/government participation.

    I have made this conclusion after direct observation with government programs which claim to be tackling environmental issues. Yet it becomes clear that nation states capitalize on any crisis to grow its violent influence over its citizens.
    The efforts that statism programs implement are not only ineffective at solving issues which we face but instead end up compounding those issues.

  5. Alex,

    I suppose you also opposed lead pollution legislation as this would just play in the hands of a fascist government, right?

    Get real.

  6. @Thomas:
    Getting real is facing the tried reality that using or depending on the monopoly of force to achieve the change you wish to see in the world does not work for the following reasons:

    1) Initiating the use of force displaces people, and their civil liberties to reach the desired effect (through statism only does this happen). This will undoubtedly lead to ‘blow-back’ and opposition to any solution being proposed if it is supported by the state.

    2) Any legislation made law will be utilized by the state in such a way to benefit more from expansion of influence/power of the state rather than solving the social or environmental problems the legislation was meant to address.

    These are only the tip of the iceberg to why statism fails to address our environmental, economic, and social issues.

    The real change does not come from the people hired in blue costumes to hold people at gun point. Real change comes from an idea who’s time has come. Or more concretely — real change comes from the consensus and action by all operating outside of violence.

    @Craig:
    It doesn’t matter if any type of legislation is formed by the result of a central bureaucracy. It only matters to realize that statism is a failing method to address real problems.

  7. Alex,

    I still don’t get it – (a) you startout by fiercely attacking a position which no one actually maintained here; (b) you claim that all pollution related legislation ever just was about the state trying to expand its power, and actually ineffective, and (c) you fail to notice that many governments actually are so strongly and visibly under the influence of highly polluting industry that many humorists make fun of this – see e.g. here:

    https://www.stuttmann-karikaturen.de/archivseq.php?id=3793

    (E.On, RWE, EnBW, Vattenfall are the four big electricity companies in Germany – the stalking fan in the cartoon is Chancellor Merkel.)

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