Chinese Communist Party Influence in Australian Universities
Recent events at the University of Queensland have brought into sharp relief the Chinese Communist Party’s influence activities on Australian campuses. Tensions arising from the mass protests in Hong Kong have prompted democracy activists in the West to speak out, but they have also inflamed nationalist sentiment among some Chinese students, to the point where […]
Understanding China’s Threat to Australia’s National Security
We are only now becoming aware that Beijing’s interference in our political system goes well beyond the activities of wealthy, Party-linked donors. In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party, through its global United Front network, has been actively encouraging trusted members of Chinese communities in countries like Australia to become directly involved in running for […]
Sharp Power – Autocratic nations threatening democratic nations like Australia in the 21st century
With a Labor government likely within a few months, Gareth Evans’ references to “the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment” and “hyper-anxiety” about “Chinese influence” becomes more worrying because if his view influences senior Labor ministers then it would be a godsend for the CCP.
Lecture to Ascot Vale ALP
The Theodicy of the “Good Anthropocene”
To the dismay of those who first proposed it, the Anthropocene is being reframed as an event to be celebrated rather than lamented and feared. Instead of final proof of the damage done by techno-industrial hubris, the ‘ecomodernists’ welcome the new epoch as a sign of man’s ability to transform and control nature. Although the […]
When Earth Juts Through World
With the arrival of the Anthropocene we must now be suspicious of all ideas developed in the last 10,000 years, including James Lovelock’s notion of Gaia which, it turns out, is a child of the Holocene. The Anthropocene is a reversion to the unruly and chaotic conditions before the Holocene’s 10-millennium epoch of calm. Now […]
Gaia Does Not Negotiate
Gaia Does Not Negotiate A contribution to “The Situation Facing the Moderns After the Intrusion of Gaïa: A Philosophical Simulation”, the final evaluation conference of the project An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (AIME) Amphitheatre Caquot, Sciences Po, Paris, July 28-29, 2014 by one of Gaia’s Chargés d’Affaires invited to a diplomatic workshop. Gaia does […]
Can humans survive the Anthropocene?
So profound has been the influence of humans that Earth system scientists have proposed that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The new epoch marks the end of the Holocene, a 10,000-year period of climatic stability and clemency that permitted civilization to flourish. What does it mean for humankind to inscribe […]
What Would Heidegger Say About Geoengineering?
Abstract Proposals to respond to climate change by geoengineering the Earth’s climate system, such as by regulating the amount of sunlight reaching the planet, may be seen as a radical fulfillment of Heidegger’s understanding of technology as destiny. Before geoengineering was conceivable, the Earth as a whole had to be representable as a total object, […]
Theories of Climate Change
“In the end Koch‘s retro-Marxism, Beck‘s utopian internationalism and Giddens‘s climate third way cannot come to grips with the planetary scale and millennial lifetime of climate disruption. In the Anthropocene, political analysis can no longer be grounded in an environment that can be taken for granted, a natural world that provides a mere backdrop for […]
The Philosophy of Geoengineering
Geoengineering can be understood as the fulfillment of the entire technological project, because, in geoengineering, the Earth as a whole is represented as an object available for human regulation. The thinking that gives rise to geoengineering is the same thinking that first creates the world as an object suitable for technological manipulation. A contribution to […]