Thursday, June 5, 2008

The Evironmental Movement

The environmental movement is based on two main issues, fear and aesthetics (ie clearcuts are ugly and so is garbage) There is also a biases against business, a feeling that making money is an inherently bad thing.

At a certain point one must realize that the Registered Professional Foresters do know what they are doing and understand what they are doing. What seems to so often happen is that the environmental movement says they are all wrong and people that have not studied forestry and have no knowledge of the woods are right?

British Columbia forest companies get crapped on for cutting (which temporarily reduces biodiversity) but farmers who reduce the biodeversity dramatically and for long periods are not seen as culprits. Farming is seen as some sort of a salt of the earth thing. And worse than this is the fact that the government subsidizes this farming. Fields of wheat and canola are considered beautiful and clear cuts are not therefore the ugly must be removed. The worst clearcut is still better for the world than any grain farm out there.

If I were to write a book, I would call it neither right nor left but ahead. A politics of rationality and scale, a politics without emotionality. A politics without fear, a politics of sense and not stupidity. The rise and fall and sovereignty and why this is a good thing. The time of the nation state has to come to an end. The concentrated power must be redistributed. The idea of the sovereignty of the nation does not flow from democracy, but from the minds of the dictators of the past. The sovereignty of the nation state is nationalist and is therefore fundamentally wrong.


What is wrong with taking the sov from the nation state? It only gets by taking it from people and groups of people. Every level of government and every group of people has a degree of sov, why do we worry about the nation state having any?


So the anti-globalisation protests are about fear and emotion and reduction of the nation states sov. Funny thing is that in the past the anti nationalism was a left wing idea and all moves towards world government were strongly supported by the left - now the left seems to fear global institutions and powers and want to protect their nations - are we seeing a new national socialism?


Ah yes, the Ethyl corp case, a blatant case of discrimination and use of unfair govt power has become a case for how sov has been attacked. Talk about a strawman argument.


Occasionally one has an epiphany in life when one realises one is on the wrong side of an argument Problem is that everyone you know and like are now on the wrong side of the debate and you are agreeing with the enemy


Could I do an article for this about the environmental movement is elitist and anti worker/poor and anti union


Fear and conspiracy aspect of the enviro movement = reports suppressed, cabals working together


Is there some human need to see conspiracies??? Is there a human need to have fear or have a Cassandra like reaction to things?


In the late 1980s David Suzuki said we had ten years to turn things around, well as far as I can see it has happened, the dire predictions are not happening.


What is the role and purpose of E-groups of they achieve their target?


The Egroups can not act from an interest base or set an agenda because then it can be met and answered and then they have no reason to be.


If I chose to write this, I will be accused of every terrible thing by the people in the e-groups side - the attacks will all be ad-hominem (witness Patrick Moore)


Why does the public allow itself to be lead by people without the facts? There is creation of tribes of Us versus them, you gain an ownership of hte group that you cna betray it.


It is amazing the stories that people believe, that large old growth trees are cut to make pulp - this is insane as the value of the tree as pulp is 1/4 of what it could be otherwise, no one would allowed to throw away money like this.


The problem is that I can go hike in a magical place and then have it cut down a week later and then it will never look the same in my lifetime - human life is shorter than the cycles of the forest.


It is the responsibility of the state to look after people who can not do it themselves, but then it is also the responsibility of people to provide for themselves and their family and friends and community as much as they can.


The world of modernity was heavily hit by the work of Rachel Carson - silent spring revealed how little we did know about the world and how world worked. But now some 40 years into the future and the modernists are the environmentalists. The people that see the world as black and white are the environmentalists.

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