Tree spiking = Beheading ergo Environmentalism = Terrorism
Moral equivalence is among the standard logical fallacies identified by philosophers. “It seeks to draw comparisons”, goes a definition, “between different, often unrelated things, to make a point that one is just as bad as the other”. For lecturers in logic seeking a perfect case study, one has just been published by the federal government […]
A New Kind of Human Being: Reply to Steve Fuller
An article I wrote critical of those who plan to build a spaceship to escape an Earth ruined by climate change attracted a response from Steve Fuller, who is described as the sociologist of the “space ark” project I had in mind. Fuller situates my commentary within my wider critique of “ecomodernism”. He writes that […]
Political Correctness: Its Origins and the Backlash Against It
Please note: This article contains a word some find offensive. Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.” In response to outrage at his statements like this one, Donald Trump replies: “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct”. On this vague platform Trump has made himself a serious […]
Damned Lies, Minister Hunt and Climate Models
If you believe what you read in the Daily Telegraph saving the planet must mean trashing the economy. That’s their story and they’re sticking to it, no matter what the evidence shows. If the numbers show the opposite, well, they have ways. And so last week the Murdoch tabloid took a bunch of numbers concocted […]
Australia’s Special Pleading on Climate: Kyoto deja vu
When the Climate Change Authority – of which I’m a member – concluded that Australia should reduce its carbon emissions by 40-60% below 2000 levels in 2030, and by 30% in 2025, it did not pick the numbers out of the air. Those target levels are the minimum necessary for Australia to contribute its fair share to […]
When Racism Masquerades as “Equality”: The Adam Goodes Furore
Throughout most of Australia’s modern history white society has worked hard to make Indigenous Australians disappear. In the early days it took the brutal forms of ‘dispersion’ and taking children from their families. But a people can be made invisible in subtler ways. Aborigines were declared a dying race, written out of the history books, […]
‘There is such confusion in my powers’: Is an ETS a tax?
Here is a definition in search of a term: what do we call a calculated political strategy to confuse the citizenry in order to gain an electoral advantage? For anyone who thinks clearly, and wants to minimise ambiguity in their communication, definitions matter. In political discourse certain terms have diverse interpretations so definitions are not […]
Crimes Against Nature: The Banality of Ethics in the Anthropocene
Among the great crimes of the twentieth century, the most enduring will surely prove to be human disruption of the Earth’s climate. The effects of human-induced climate change are apparent now and will become severe this century, but the warming is expected to last thousands of years. That is so because extra carbon dioxide persists […]
Australia’s Kyoto Escape Hatch Now Exploited
In the saga of mendacity that is the climate policy debate, no claim has been more audacious than the one now being told by the federal government about Australia’s “success” in meeting its Kyoto emissions target. Environment minister Greg Hunt now routinely makes statements like this: We are one of the few countries in the […]
“Humanity has disappointed God’s expectations”: Pope Francis’s Call to Arms
Pope Francis did not speak lightly when he said that protecting God’s creation is a service that “the Bishop of Rome is called to carry out”. And so his encyclical “Laudato Si’, on care for our common home”, released yesterday, reflects his deeply held convictions. While the encyclical’s message will require careful study to appreciate […]