Quadrant article
Brave New Green World
by Merv Bendle
December 14, 2009
As the Copenhagen conference unfolds it is possible to detect the outlines of the grim future dystopia that will emerge if the stealthy and remorseless proponents of global eco-fascism are allowed to remake our world in their image. Consequently, the opportunity exists for an artistic and literary critique of the Brave New Green World these fanatics wish to impose on us all.
Once again we face the totalitarian temptation that has bedevilled modern history, that all-encompassing will-to-power that possesses ideological fanatics and drives them to transform themselves (and all of us) into mere components of a great Totality, an immense unified and holistic system where every person becomes an obedient and unquestioning functionary mobilized in the pursuit of a single goal, an ultimate solution: in the twentieth century entire generations were sacrificed to ensure the triumph of the race, the Volk, the people, or the proletariat; in the twenty-first century similar demands are being made for sacrifices on a mass scale to appease the earth goddess Gaia, conceived as the wrathful, relentless, unyielding, and omnipresent source of all life, value and meaning. Gaia – She who must be appeased.
In such a time of acute danger there is a crucial need for imaginative virtuosity, for writers and artists who can capture in words and visions the inherent madness of such a monstrous quest. In the past, when earlier incarnations of totalitarianism lurched onto the stage of history, courageous voices exposed and denounced the logic of domination that drove the totalizing ideologies of communism, Nazism, fascism, and socialism. Writers like Evgeny Zamiatin, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Arthur Koestler, and Ayn Rand depicted with chilling imaginative genius the regimes that totalitarian apparatchiks lusted to impose upon the world. In books such as We, 1984, Brave New World, Darkness of Noon, and Atlas Shrugged, they laid out in detail the inherently destructive tendencies of such hyper-centralized collectivist regimes, only, of course, to be denounced by the supine Western intelligentsia as renegades and reactionaries.
Unfortunately, at the present time, similar writers have not yet appeared to combat the latest eco-apocalyptic manifestation of the totalitarian temptation. At precisely the moment when we need an Orwell to remind us that “one does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship” (1984), we are subjected to endless Green propaganda in every form of the media, exemplified by the offensive and inane video that began the Copenhagen conference, recalling in its exploitative appeal to children the cynical propaganda techniques of the Nazis and the Soviets.
Nevertheless, the basic lineaments of the Brave New Green World are beginning to emerge and some of the more obvious themes for imaginative exploration can briefly be noted. To begin with, the Green future will follow traditional totalitarian practice and impose a massively bureaucratized existence upon us all, with ultimately every single human action being monitored, measured, and assessed – not this time for their real or imagined subversive effect on the Volk or the Party, but rather for their supposed toxic impact on the environment, conceived as the omnipresent body of Gaia, whose purity cannot be defiled by unauthorized human activity.
It will also be a newly pagan world, where the great monotheisms have been torn down and denounced as patriarchal sky-gods in a campaign of eco-iconoclasm. Such religions will be depicted as destructive and disrespectful of Gaia, and as mere projections of human hubris, arrogance, and presumption that dared to propose that human beings could aspire to transcendence over the material world. Christianity, in particular, will be suppressed or tolerated only in some mutated form as an eco-friendly cult amenable to the ruling regime, with leaders who mouth politically correct platitudes and homilies. In the place of these once great spiritual traditions there will be a ramshackle ‘parliament of religions’, embracing a realm of earth deities, totemism, animism, nature worship, and sacrifices, culminating in the cult of the earth goddess Gaia, built around mindless subservience to the amoral brute forces of nature that humans will be required to worship and obey.
It will also be a Darwinian world. At best, the human species will be barely tolerated and reduced to the status of merely another animal battling for survival within a self-imposed legal and political system that requires it to yield to every parrot, slug, toad, or beetle that takes up residence in the vicinity of some useful resource. At worst, humanity will be depicted as an evolutionary dead-end, an unsuccessful experiment in sentience that has become a malignancy that the wrathful Gaia will shortly suffocate and excrete from Her system.
It is likely also to be a very postmodern world, where truth is entirely relative to the requirements of the regime; knowledge is valued only for the power it bestows; science is collapsed into ideology; and politics is simply an exercise in the manipulation of images and emotions. At the level of the global masses, it will be a realm of intense resentment and envy, where nations that have been betrayed by their leaders and have made nothing of their human and natural resources will clamour to denounce, steal, dissipate, and destroy the wealth of those countries that have laboured for centuries to make something of their opportunities. And at the heart of the system there will be the vast administrative apparatus of fiercely committed eco-bureaucrats, possessed by visions of the eco-apocalypse, and committed to stifling all scepticism and dissent in the name of Gaia. Above all, there will be no aspirations towards excellence and transcendence of the material realm - and to even imagine such an ideal will be a crime. Instead, there will only be the profound ordinariness deemed appropriate for a wicked species in well-deserved decline.
Above all, the coming eco-dystopia will be a fanatically anti-humanistic world, a regime where the tremendous achievements of humanity are not merely forgotten but actively suppressed and erased from memory in a global act of psychic repression that will allow the implementation of a new Dark Green Age, within which vast new systems of social control can be imposed. In this near future dystopia, a new Green mythology of history will be promulgated, and human potential will not only be denied but denounced as a dangerous delusion to which no one can be allowed to aspire. In particular, the heroism of humanity’s ascent from primordial poverty to technological virtuosity will be demonized and will survive only as a repressed memory to be constantly monitored and eventually expunged. Ominously, our education system is already designed to ensure such an outcome.
These are dark themes – inklings of a future that may well come to pass - but hopefully they will soon be excelled in works of imaginative genius that this new age of totalitarian threat demands. As the great seer, W. B. Yeats, so brilliantly prophesied, a great rough beast is indeed rising up, struggling to take shape and to impose its shadow upon us all. Clearly, the worst remain full of passionate intensity, and those that would resist must once again call upon all their conviction.
To paraphrase Orwell in 1984: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a gumboot stamping on a human face – forever”.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Noel Pearson 16 September 2009
A Radio National transcript 16 September 2009
Noel Pearson at the Brisbane Writers Festival
This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.
Good evening and thank you very much, Jane and Jonathan, for your kind invitation for me to talk this evening. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners and the Indigenous people of Brisbane. I think I set some kind of record tonight. I must be one of the few opening addresses that generated a crowd out the front.
I've broken a record before, one that I never intended to, but one that I'm surreptitiously very proud of. I wrote an essay in memory of Charles Perkins, on the occasion of the inaugural address at Sydney University, and it was published by Quadrant and Arena. And um...Guy Rundle was severely apoplectic about that and has never forgiven me. One thing the crowd out the front are absolutely correct about, is that you have invited a philistine amongst you tonight.
There's a heap of thoughts going through my mind that I want to share with you and I might just indulge myself, by taking the opportunity to go through these thoughts.
One thing that I think is particular to our view of the future of Indigenous people and our thinking about policy from Cape York Peninsula, is that we apprehend the world of the whitefellas, in a way that I think illustrates a bit of a distance that we have, a perspective on the way non-Aboriginal people and people outside of our community conduct politics and think about politics.
My own view is that the great schools of political thinking - conservatism, socialism and liberalism - we came to view those three great traditions as really, they're each necessary in defining a good society.
The only reason these three traditions are at each other's throats, is because whitefellas at large, have interests in emphasising one of those traditions. People are animated by their interests in either emphasising conservatism or socialism or liberalism. The kind of driving metaphor for our development plans in the Cape York Peninsula is a metaphor that arose out of our thinking about the question of how it is that disadvantaged people might rise up in the world, how the most miserable people might take a decent place in society.
And we understood from the outset, that we no longer live in the splendid isolation of our classical culture. We live in a pyramid and we occupy the very bottom place within that pyramid. We live down in a very miserable trench, at the bottom of a relentless pyramid, where all good things go upwards and there's a huge force of gravity keeping people where they are. And once you're down in the trenches, it's very hard to get up.
So we began thinking about what are the rules for progress in the pyramid. How do people rise up in the world? And our basic metaphor was the staircase. A world dominated by liberal capitalism is a world where the rules are run by a staircase. And our three-part metaphor asked the question, "What are the essential elements of this staircase?"
Well, firstly, good stairs need strong foundations. People who prosper in the world are people who have strong norms, culturally and socially. People who rise up in the world have very strong communities. They bring up their children and they respect themselves and their neighbours according to accepted norms. So that was the first part of our metaphor - the strong foundations upon which peoples or communities rely.
The second part of our metaphor consisted of the infrastructure underneath the stairs, the things that support the staircase. And we were taken with Amartya Sen's definition of capabilities. People need capabilities to rise up in the world. Good health, good education, housing, infrastructure, opportunity. The important thing about Amartya Sen's insight about capabilities, was that it exposed the liberal conceit that rising up in the world is just about good choices and good positions and people acting in their own interests for a better life. What Amartya Sen's insight exposed was that in fact, in order to have choice and in order to engage the power of choice, you need capabilities. Capable people make good choices and those capabilities at a fundamental level, is the capability brought about by good health, good education and so on. A community that invests in the capabilities of its members provides good supporting infrastructure under the stairs. Of course, the agenda of investing in capabilities is largely resonant with socialist tradition - redistribution of opportunity. So Social Democrats very much identify with that part of our metaphor on how society works.
The third part, though, is a more ephemeral aspect of our metaphor. It is the stairs and the rational reasons why people choose to climb upwards. People are motivated by incentives. People climb stairs, because they see better prospects higher up and they make rational decisions in their own self-interest, to improve their lives. So the liberals are right about the importance of choice and how much of a power it is for progress.
But the other thing our metaphor told us, was that it's individuals who climb stairs. Entire communities don't walk upstairs all at once. That's not how the world works. Stairs are climbed by individuals clutching their children to them and taking them a few rungs up the stairs. And the people in this room are people whose great-grandparents climbed those first few miserable rungs out of the potato bog in Ireland or the coal mine in England. And they set Grandfather up, to climb a few more stairs. And Father had the opportunity to go to university in the 1950s. And we are all now at university and our kids are heading there too. So we've climbed the stairs of opportunity and we've done so out of our own interest. We've utilised the power of choice to make our lives better.
One thing I woke up about, very midway through this consideration, was the fact that aside from the truth that only individuals climb, I woke up to the fact that there is no social justice forklift yet invented, to lift entire communities up to a better life. Liberal capitalism in this globe does not work via mass elevators. People progress in the world because individuals are animated in their own interest, to seek something better for themselves and for their children and it is a power of an engine. Let me try and stand between Jane and her daughter's interest. It is a jealous interest and it is a power for good. The liberals are correct about that.
You want social progress? Well, social progress is the sum total of many thousands of individual progress. You have lots of individual progress, you have social progress. You have social progress, you have social justice. But stop dreaming that social justice is about one day, some beautiful person in government is going to invent the forklift that has hitherto not arrived. And yet we from the Liberal left, have long harboured, long harboured vague hopes that one day we're going to hear the diesel engine kick over and a suitably, and a suitably sympathetic government is going to mobilise the means of mass uplift.
Conservatives cling. When they look at the stairs, they have a prejudicial perspective, that largely focuses on the conservative dimension of this picture. They do so out of their own interests. But the thing about our view, is that we're highly resonant with the conservative parts of the picture. We're not going to rise up in the world until there are norms restored in our community, where people take personal responsibility. Because you can't build capabilities, unless you take personal responsibility.
You see, the Social Democrats got it wrong when they said, "It's just about redistributing opportunity." Nah. You want capabilities, the equation is this - "Opportunity plus personal responsibility equals capability." You can have a school, but if your mother does not take responsibility for sending you there, you're not going to develop a capability. Somebody has to take responsibility.
The Social Democrats have a view on progress that is prejudicially slanted on the infrastructure that needs to support progress - the provisioning of opportunity. And it's an important part of the equation that resonates with us, as well. But what we would say is that you can't just chuck social investment and social distribution willy-nilly. You've got to have regard. You've got to have regard to the fact that it doesn't just happen through social investment. The social investment has got to support individuals making their own choices, because that's the engine of progress. It's the self-interest of individuals that is the starting point.
So I wanted to first say that in our view of political economy and the three great schools of political philosophy, we are completely promiscuous. We think that the three traditions have got important things to say. The second thought I wanted to share with you guys this evening, is I'm absolutely...I'm very taken with the discussion about self-interest and its relationship with altruism. You know, Adam Smith's discussion about self-regard and other regard and the relationship between the two and our capacity as human beings to have regard for things other than ourselves and our own interests. I want to make two observations about this. The problem with a lot of contemporary thinking about the whole question of self-interest and altruism, is that too many left liberals think that we can somehow abandon our self-interest, that we can be completely altruistic. And we forget David Hume's point that self-interest is present at all times. We never for a minute, abandon our own self-interest. It figures in all of our calculations, it is the starting point when we get up in the morning. And yet we carry on with a conceit that somehow we are singular in our capacity to transcend our self-interest, in favour of the interest of other members of society, in favour of the environment, in favour of a whole lot of important causes. But as the old leftist would say, we engage in false consciousness. We're kidding ourselves, when we think that we are singular in our ability to cut a link with our self-interest.
Yes, we are human and we have that extraordinary human capacity to transcend our interests. But we are never cut off from them. And my great truculence in relation to the whole environmental debate and people's concerns about the state of the planet and its...the destruction of biodiversity and climate change and so on, is that too much of this discussion takes place as if we are uniquely capable of putting aside our self-interests. We are not. We engage in conceit when we think we can. The minute our interests start getting affected with the changes that are sought, is the minute we will buck up.
And in my view, the great function of the Western environmental movement - it will not have the function of effectively confronting and solving the problems of environmental catastrophe facing the world. I don't believe. All that the Western environmental movement will do, is that it will try to shift the costs to those who can least bear it. The Western environmental movement will try to shift the cost and it will have, in the analysis of the old left, it has the function of attempting to shift the cost to those who can least bear it.
The minute the kinds of changes that are sought affect your interests here in this room, is the minute you will turn against those changes. And this kind of schizophrenia about us not wanting our material well-being to suffer, whilst at the same time wanting a whole lot of fundamental changes made to the way we deal with the environment, is an absolute reflection of the fact that when it comes down to it, whatever we might profess is at odds with what our actual interests are.
The other point I wanted to discuss is that in consideration of the predicament of Indigenous Australians, our analysis has not just got to take into account the horizontal division between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians - the race division. We can't understand what is going on here, unless we also understand the vertical stratification within the Indigenous community and so on. This is not just a question of race, this is also a question of class. And this is one of the issues that I address in my quarterly essay. I am not just an Aboriginal Australian. I am, in truth, a middle-class Aboriginal. And there are many, many Indigenous people who share that class position with me. And a real challenge for us is the challenge in relation to whether many of the things we believe in, represent our interests in our class status. Or are we unique in our ability to abandon our interests in being members of a class? And it seems to me that that is another conceit that we engage in. There is a middle-class black Australia and in my quarterly essay, I seek to discuss what comes down to a real challenge to the black middle-class and to the white middle-class left.
In my view, the middle-class left is, by definition, an oxymoron. There is no true middle-class left. It is within the definition of the tradition, an impossible category. And in my quarterly essay, I seek to articulate my argument in relation to this. My own view about political economy is that the left-right divide, right-left, has swung over time. It's polarised around this way. They're not true left and right positions, because the original critique of liberal political economy that was advanced in the nineteenth century, which was a radical critique, is not the critique that the left advance today. So the winds of political economy have swung over the past century and a half such that yes, there is a...there is a cultural and political animus between left and right today, but it is not an animus onto the original plane. It is the left's critique. It is not a radical critique, such as when it was first invented. The threatening radical critique that was developed in the nineteenth century, in response to liberal capitalism, is not the left's position today. And so we get to the really curious situation, where we find ourselves in relation to the predicament of Aboriginal Australians.
I've been an absolutely unrelenting advocate for the land rights of my people in Cape York Peninsula. We have been relentless in insisting on the land justice and land entitlement of our people and we've recovered a lot of lands under state legislation and under the Mabo Decision and the Wik Decision. We've over the course of the past 20 years, made great gains in restoring the land rights of our people, and Mabo was extremely important in that, as was the Wik Decision. Now the agenda for our development is an agenda that embraces both land rights and reform - development reform, welfare reform, our people taking responsibility for our lives, rebuilding families, rebuilding the strength in our people and never succumbing to victimhood. And we've been at odds with so much of the progressive thinking around what was right for Aboriginal people.
In my quarterly essay, I discuss the kind of rule of thumb that I've always had. And the rule of thumb that I've had over the past ten years is one that says, "Whatever the progressive nostrum is in relation to a particular issue, we have got to look approximately to the opposite of it for the solution." And it's always borne out. In searching for the right way forward, our rule of thumb is almost always borne out. If we do almost the opposite of what is prescribed, it's almost the right thing to do. And that's a strange state of affairs. It is strange that on too many issues, the progressive position is regressive. The progressive position would see us further unravel and make no progress. We actually need more law and order, in order to have freedom. But the progressive position is 180 degrees away from that. And in my writings over the years, I've sought to articulate this issue about how it is that the sails of progressive thinking are set almost entirely in a way, that I would be able to argue, is contrary to our interests.
I could give many examples of it, but one of which is say, the position in relation to welfare. My position is that we're not entitled to welfare. We're entitled to a fair place in the economy like you people. How is that you...you...you've convinced me that I have a right to $12,500 a year, per annum, average? How is that I have been convinced that I have a right to $12,500 per year, per annum? I've got a greater right than that. I have a right to a share in the country, like the rest of you. I have a greater right than welfare. But you see, if you condition a people to think "Jeez, we have a right to welfare and we're going to defend it to the death," you're defending your right to remain at the bottom of the pyramid. (EXCLAIMS IN ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE)
With complete obedience, you accept your position down there and we in Cape York say, "No. We've got a better right than welfare. We have a right to take a real place in the economy, just like everybody else." And so on numerous policy settings, we set the sails in a completely different position from the progressive prescription. And when I think about it, when I think why those sails are set in ways that could not be more calculated against our interests, against what is really in our interests, I shake my head as to how it is that a culture can produce currents that get oppressed peoples to accept their oppression, to get oppressed peoples to accept that they have a right to welfare.
And the kind of...I never thought I'd see the day. Never thought I'd see the day when Aboriginal people are protesting with young, white, middle-class greenies, that blackfellas shouldn't have the right to say what happens to their land. Our position is that if you have a mine on Aboriginal land, you have a farm, you have a national park, the traditional ownership give consent to it. There should be an agreement about that. There's such a thing as an Indigenous land use agreement, under the Commonwealth Native Title Act. We've always said that when it comes to miners, the miners shouldn't do anything unless there's an agreement.
And yet we come to the situation where you get Aboriginal people together with middle-class greenies who go home to their nice home with Mum and Dad, jobs, cars in the driveway, privileged good school, saying that the Aboriginal people shouldn't be in a position to consent to an environmental arrangement, because that is self-evidently something that nobody should object to. The circle is joined in a really bizarre way, such that the Queensland Government is unilateral, without consent, in position of Wild Rivers in Cape York Peninsula, is uncritically supported by an Aboriginal rights movement that is completely disoriented as to the meaning of rights. Completely disoriented. If they were as radical and if they were as rights-principled as they claim they are, they would understand that the first thing is the Taior should give their consent.
And you know, the whole land rights movement here in Queensland, as it was all over Australia in the 1970s in particular, was all directed at trying to stop government from taking Aboriginal land. That was what the argument was over, that there was to be no repeat of what happened at Mapoon. So the Bjelke-Petersen Government finally relented in 1984 and legislation was passed that said there can be no taking of lands set aside for Aboriginal people in this state. Joh finally was brought over the line by Frank Brennan and the churches here in Brisbane, together with Aboriginal activists. They forced the National Party Government to legislate that not one square inch of Aboriginal land could be taken, unless special legislation was passed to do that.
Anna was there! Anna Bligh was there. That was what the whole argument about inalienability of Aboriginal land was all about. Inalienability. That Aboriginal people should only have land taken from them if they gave consent to it. And of course what the Wilderness Society managed to do, was that it convinced the Bligh Government that it could deliver electoral support down here in the south-east, if we were able to create on a unilateral basis, Wild Rivers in Cape York.
You guys haven't seen a map of the Wild River areas. No-one in this room has seen a map, other than perhaps the Minister. But these are not rivers. These are not lines on the map. These are quasi national parks. They cover entire areas of land. 80% of Cape York will be covered. You see, it is because the Greens define a wild river area as a catchment. And a catchment, by definition, is anywhere where rain falls. And so, I spend ten years fighting the Conservatives for the Wik Decision, ten years calling John Howard a racist scumbag - all for Anna Bligh to take it off me in five minutes. And all because she has a sacred cause behind her. And not a word of support has been uttered by those who believe themselves to be in the cause of social justice. Not a word has been uttered.
The Wild Rivers legislation. The most cutting part of it is that of all of the responsibilities that have been taken away from Aboriginal people, this is the last dignity. The dignity of being responsible for looking after their country is now taken away from them. It is sought to be given to young 16-year-olds who run around in koala suits, then go back to their parents who work for university departments and businesses and so on, in an economy fuelled by coal and everything else. The carbon footprint of the average family of a Wilderness Society campaigner is incomparable, compared to the carbon footprint of an average Cape York family, and it absolutely disgusts me. It disgusts me that the responsibility for the country is sought to be taken away from the traditional owners and given unto the hands of...of these environmentalists. And this is after we have created in Cape York Peninsula, the largest national parks estate in this entire state.
Over the course of the last 15 years, we have created...we have doubled the size of national parks in this state. Aboriginal people have, through a process of consent, been creating new national parks and this process still goes on. But the problem with the Greens is that the 50/50 deals that we've done and it was on that formula 50/50 - 50 for the national park, 50 for the Aboriginal land - the problem with the Greens after 15 years, is they've said, "We've got our 50. Now we want 90% of your 50. Thank you very much for the 50 you've given us. Now we want 90% of the remaining part." And the offence that this causes to the traditional owners, and the obscene thing about all this - I'm conscious that I haven't persuaded many people in this room. Let me tell you about the obscenity of this.
We're suffering for the sins of the farmers in Central Queensland - the people who have pulled ball and chain between bulldozers. We in Cape York, where 99% of the vegetation is still intact, are suffering for the sins of what happened in the Mulga country. But now think about this. The people out in the Mulga country, who ball and chained their properties, can now participate in the new carbon economy when they replant their properties. They participated in the old economy and they've got an opportunity in the new economy. But the blackfellas, who have never participated in the old economy, because all the vegetation is still intact, won't even be able to participate in the new economy and be given credit for the preservation of the environment, because they've got nothing to trade. All of the land is locked up already. So blackfellas lose out in the old destructive economy and they have no foothold in the new carbon economy. We're dispossessed at both ends, from any economic participation. And yet if you destroyed your property in 1930 or 1950 or 1980, you're completely allowed to go back, plant new trees and get green credits in the future. The lockout of Indigenous opportunity to develop any form of economic base, even to be given credit for preserving the environment, is completely obscene.
And I...I was invited in the throes of the negotiations of the Native Title Act in 1993 and then again in 1998. I was invited to Anna Bligh's preselection. I spoke in the cause of Wik, upon her ascension to Parliament. But it's an extraordinary change of circumstances here, where the Bligh Government in pursuit of what the Wilderness Society can deliver at the elections, has basically sold us up the river. It has been a huge torpedo in the momentum that we've created in Cape York Peninsula, to get on top of our problems. It has been a huge torpedo. I have been utterly, utterly preoccupied with the Wild Rivers, when there are more important causes - children to be protected, schools to be fixed up, violence to be addressed. Those are the agendas that we'd focused on. We didn't want to be dealing with issues that we thought there was fundamental understanding about. And the Bligh Government has completely torpedoed the momentum that we had in Cape York Peninsula in addressing our problems. And we've had to return to the fight on land rights. We've received completely absolute silence from progressive people and those who consider themselves in support of the cause of Aboriginal advancement. Absolute silence.
And you know, I just want to say that...to the organisers of the festival, that this has been a completely undeserved opportunity on my part, to speak at the opening of this festival. Possibly in retrospect, you'll feel that it was a momentous miscalculation to invite me.
But I've...I've...I feel like I've come home to my...the hometown of my youth here. And I wish all participants at the festival, this weekend and this week, all the very best. Thank you.
Noel Pearson - lawyer, activist and director of The Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, speaking at the opening of the Brisbane Writers' Festival last week. Thanks to the festival for permission to broadcast that speech. Noel Pearson's quarterly essay, Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia, is soon to be published by Black Inc.
Noel Pearson at the Brisbane Writers Festival
This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.
Good evening and thank you very much, Jane and Jonathan, for your kind invitation for me to talk this evening. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners and the Indigenous people of Brisbane. I think I set some kind of record tonight. I must be one of the few opening addresses that generated a crowd out the front.
I've broken a record before, one that I never intended to, but one that I'm surreptitiously very proud of. I wrote an essay in memory of Charles Perkins, on the occasion of the inaugural address at Sydney University, and it was published by Quadrant and Arena. And um...Guy Rundle was severely apoplectic about that and has never forgiven me. One thing the crowd out the front are absolutely correct about, is that you have invited a philistine amongst you tonight.
There's a heap of thoughts going through my mind that I want to share with you and I might just indulge myself, by taking the opportunity to go through these thoughts.
One thing that I think is particular to our view of the future of Indigenous people and our thinking about policy from Cape York Peninsula, is that we apprehend the world of the whitefellas, in a way that I think illustrates a bit of a distance that we have, a perspective on the way non-Aboriginal people and people outside of our community conduct politics and think about politics.
My own view is that the great schools of political thinking - conservatism, socialism and liberalism - we came to view those three great traditions as really, they're each necessary in defining a good society.
The only reason these three traditions are at each other's throats, is because whitefellas at large, have interests in emphasising one of those traditions. People are animated by their interests in either emphasising conservatism or socialism or liberalism. The kind of driving metaphor for our development plans in the Cape York Peninsula is a metaphor that arose out of our thinking about the question of how it is that disadvantaged people might rise up in the world, how the most miserable people might take a decent place in society.
And we understood from the outset, that we no longer live in the splendid isolation of our classical culture. We live in a pyramid and we occupy the very bottom place within that pyramid. We live down in a very miserable trench, at the bottom of a relentless pyramid, where all good things go upwards and there's a huge force of gravity keeping people where they are. And once you're down in the trenches, it's very hard to get up.
So we began thinking about what are the rules for progress in the pyramid. How do people rise up in the world? And our basic metaphor was the staircase. A world dominated by liberal capitalism is a world where the rules are run by a staircase. And our three-part metaphor asked the question, "What are the essential elements of this staircase?"
Well, firstly, good stairs need strong foundations. People who prosper in the world are people who have strong norms, culturally and socially. People who rise up in the world have very strong communities. They bring up their children and they respect themselves and their neighbours according to accepted norms. So that was the first part of our metaphor - the strong foundations upon which peoples or communities rely.
The second part of our metaphor consisted of the infrastructure underneath the stairs, the things that support the staircase. And we were taken with Amartya Sen's definition of capabilities. People need capabilities to rise up in the world. Good health, good education, housing, infrastructure, opportunity. The important thing about Amartya Sen's insight about capabilities, was that it exposed the liberal conceit that rising up in the world is just about good choices and good positions and people acting in their own interests for a better life. What Amartya Sen's insight exposed was that in fact, in order to have choice and in order to engage the power of choice, you need capabilities. Capable people make good choices and those capabilities at a fundamental level, is the capability brought about by good health, good education and so on. A community that invests in the capabilities of its members provides good supporting infrastructure under the stairs. Of course, the agenda of investing in capabilities is largely resonant with socialist tradition - redistribution of opportunity. So Social Democrats very much identify with that part of our metaphor on how society works.
The third part, though, is a more ephemeral aspect of our metaphor. It is the stairs and the rational reasons why people choose to climb upwards. People are motivated by incentives. People climb stairs, because they see better prospects higher up and they make rational decisions in their own self-interest, to improve their lives. So the liberals are right about the importance of choice and how much of a power it is for progress.
But the other thing our metaphor told us, was that it's individuals who climb stairs. Entire communities don't walk upstairs all at once. That's not how the world works. Stairs are climbed by individuals clutching their children to them and taking them a few rungs up the stairs. And the people in this room are people whose great-grandparents climbed those first few miserable rungs out of the potato bog in Ireland or the coal mine in England. And they set Grandfather up, to climb a few more stairs. And Father had the opportunity to go to university in the 1950s. And we are all now at university and our kids are heading there too. So we've climbed the stairs of opportunity and we've done so out of our own interest. We've utilised the power of choice to make our lives better.
One thing I woke up about, very midway through this consideration, was the fact that aside from the truth that only individuals climb, I woke up to the fact that there is no social justice forklift yet invented, to lift entire communities up to a better life. Liberal capitalism in this globe does not work via mass elevators. People progress in the world because individuals are animated in their own interest, to seek something better for themselves and for their children and it is a power of an engine. Let me try and stand between Jane and her daughter's interest. It is a jealous interest and it is a power for good. The liberals are correct about that.
You want social progress? Well, social progress is the sum total of many thousands of individual progress. You have lots of individual progress, you have social progress. You have social progress, you have social justice. But stop dreaming that social justice is about one day, some beautiful person in government is going to invent the forklift that has hitherto not arrived. And yet we from the Liberal left, have long harboured, long harboured vague hopes that one day we're going to hear the diesel engine kick over and a suitably, and a suitably sympathetic government is going to mobilise the means of mass uplift.
Conservatives cling. When they look at the stairs, they have a prejudicial perspective, that largely focuses on the conservative dimension of this picture. They do so out of their own interests. But the thing about our view, is that we're highly resonant with the conservative parts of the picture. We're not going to rise up in the world until there are norms restored in our community, where people take personal responsibility. Because you can't build capabilities, unless you take personal responsibility.
You see, the Social Democrats got it wrong when they said, "It's just about redistributing opportunity." Nah. You want capabilities, the equation is this - "Opportunity plus personal responsibility equals capability." You can have a school, but if your mother does not take responsibility for sending you there, you're not going to develop a capability. Somebody has to take responsibility.
The Social Democrats have a view on progress that is prejudicially slanted on the infrastructure that needs to support progress - the provisioning of opportunity. And it's an important part of the equation that resonates with us, as well. But what we would say is that you can't just chuck social investment and social distribution willy-nilly. You've got to have regard. You've got to have regard to the fact that it doesn't just happen through social investment. The social investment has got to support individuals making their own choices, because that's the engine of progress. It's the self-interest of individuals that is the starting point.
So I wanted to first say that in our view of political economy and the three great schools of political philosophy, we are completely promiscuous. We think that the three traditions have got important things to say. The second thought I wanted to share with you guys this evening, is I'm absolutely...I'm very taken with the discussion about self-interest and its relationship with altruism. You know, Adam Smith's discussion about self-regard and other regard and the relationship between the two and our capacity as human beings to have regard for things other than ourselves and our own interests. I want to make two observations about this. The problem with a lot of contemporary thinking about the whole question of self-interest and altruism, is that too many left liberals think that we can somehow abandon our self-interest, that we can be completely altruistic. And we forget David Hume's point that self-interest is present at all times. We never for a minute, abandon our own self-interest. It figures in all of our calculations, it is the starting point when we get up in the morning. And yet we carry on with a conceit that somehow we are singular in our capacity to transcend our self-interest, in favour of the interest of other members of society, in favour of the environment, in favour of a whole lot of important causes. But as the old leftist would say, we engage in false consciousness. We're kidding ourselves, when we think that we are singular in our ability to cut a link with our self-interest.
Yes, we are human and we have that extraordinary human capacity to transcend our interests. But we are never cut off from them. And my great truculence in relation to the whole environmental debate and people's concerns about the state of the planet and its...the destruction of biodiversity and climate change and so on, is that too much of this discussion takes place as if we are uniquely capable of putting aside our self-interests. We are not. We engage in conceit when we think we can. The minute our interests start getting affected with the changes that are sought, is the minute we will buck up.
And in my view, the great function of the Western environmental movement - it will not have the function of effectively confronting and solving the problems of environmental catastrophe facing the world. I don't believe. All that the Western environmental movement will do, is that it will try to shift the costs to those who can least bear it. The Western environmental movement will try to shift the cost and it will have, in the analysis of the old left, it has the function of attempting to shift the cost to those who can least bear it.
The minute the kinds of changes that are sought affect your interests here in this room, is the minute you will turn against those changes. And this kind of schizophrenia about us not wanting our material well-being to suffer, whilst at the same time wanting a whole lot of fundamental changes made to the way we deal with the environment, is an absolute reflection of the fact that when it comes down to it, whatever we might profess is at odds with what our actual interests are.
The other point I wanted to discuss is that in consideration of the predicament of Indigenous Australians, our analysis has not just got to take into account the horizontal division between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians - the race division. We can't understand what is going on here, unless we also understand the vertical stratification within the Indigenous community and so on. This is not just a question of race, this is also a question of class. And this is one of the issues that I address in my quarterly essay. I am not just an Aboriginal Australian. I am, in truth, a middle-class Aboriginal. And there are many, many Indigenous people who share that class position with me. And a real challenge for us is the challenge in relation to whether many of the things we believe in, represent our interests in our class status. Or are we unique in our ability to abandon our interests in being members of a class? And it seems to me that that is another conceit that we engage in. There is a middle-class black Australia and in my quarterly essay, I seek to discuss what comes down to a real challenge to the black middle-class and to the white middle-class left.
In my view, the middle-class left is, by definition, an oxymoron. There is no true middle-class left. It is within the definition of the tradition, an impossible category. And in my quarterly essay, I seek to articulate my argument in relation to this. My own view about political economy is that the left-right divide, right-left, has swung over time. It's polarised around this way. They're not true left and right positions, because the original critique of liberal political economy that was advanced in the nineteenth century, which was a radical critique, is not the critique that the left advance today. So the winds of political economy have swung over the past century and a half such that yes, there is a...there is a cultural and political animus between left and right today, but it is not an animus onto the original plane. It is the left's critique. It is not a radical critique, such as when it was first invented. The threatening radical critique that was developed in the nineteenth century, in response to liberal capitalism, is not the left's position today. And so we get to the really curious situation, where we find ourselves in relation to the predicament of Aboriginal Australians.
I've been an absolutely unrelenting advocate for the land rights of my people in Cape York Peninsula. We have been relentless in insisting on the land justice and land entitlement of our people and we've recovered a lot of lands under state legislation and under the Mabo Decision and the Wik Decision. We've over the course of the past 20 years, made great gains in restoring the land rights of our people, and Mabo was extremely important in that, as was the Wik Decision. Now the agenda for our development is an agenda that embraces both land rights and reform - development reform, welfare reform, our people taking responsibility for our lives, rebuilding families, rebuilding the strength in our people and never succumbing to victimhood. And we've been at odds with so much of the progressive thinking around what was right for Aboriginal people.
In my quarterly essay, I discuss the kind of rule of thumb that I've always had. And the rule of thumb that I've had over the past ten years is one that says, "Whatever the progressive nostrum is in relation to a particular issue, we have got to look approximately to the opposite of it for the solution." And it's always borne out. In searching for the right way forward, our rule of thumb is almost always borne out. If we do almost the opposite of what is prescribed, it's almost the right thing to do. And that's a strange state of affairs. It is strange that on too many issues, the progressive position is regressive. The progressive position would see us further unravel and make no progress. We actually need more law and order, in order to have freedom. But the progressive position is 180 degrees away from that. And in my writings over the years, I've sought to articulate this issue about how it is that the sails of progressive thinking are set almost entirely in a way, that I would be able to argue, is contrary to our interests.
I could give many examples of it, but one of which is say, the position in relation to welfare. My position is that we're not entitled to welfare. We're entitled to a fair place in the economy like you people. How is that you...you...you've convinced me that I have a right to $12,500 a year, per annum, average? How is that I have been convinced that I have a right to $12,500 per year, per annum? I've got a greater right than that. I have a right to a share in the country, like the rest of you. I have a greater right than welfare. But you see, if you condition a people to think "Jeez, we have a right to welfare and we're going to defend it to the death," you're defending your right to remain at the bottom of the pyramid. (EXCLAIMS IN ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE)
With complete obedience, you accept your position down there and we in Cape York say, "No. We've got a better right than welfare. We have a right to take a real place in the economy, just like everybody else." And so on numerous policy settings, we set the sails in a completely different position from the progressive prescription. And when I think about it, when I think why those sails are set in ways that could not be more calculated against our interests, against what is really in our interests, I shake my head as to how it is that a culture can produce currents that get oppressed peoples to accept their oppression, to get oppressed peoples to accept that they have a right to welfare.
And the kind of...I never thought I'd see the day. Never thought I'd see the day when Aboriginal people are protesting with young, white, middle-class greenies, that blackfellas shouldn't have the right to say what happens to their land. Our position is that if you have a mine on Aboriginal land, you have a farm, you have a national park, the traditional ownership give consent to it. There should be an agreement about that. There's such a thing as an Indigenous land use agreement, under the Commonwealth Native Title Act. We've always said that when it comes to miners, the miners shouldn't do anything unless there's an agreement.
And yet we come to the situation where you get Aboriginal people together with middle-class greenies who go home to their nice home with Mum and Dad, jobs, cars in the driveway, privileged good school, saying that the Aboriginal people shouldn't be in a position to consent to an environmental arrangement, because that is self-evidently something that nobody should object to. The circle is joined in a really bizarre way, such that the Queensland Government is unilateral, without consent, in position of Wild Rivers in Cape York Peninsula, is uncritically supported by an Aboriginal rights movement that is completely disoriented as to the meaning of rights. Completely disoriented. If they were as radical and if they were as rights-principled as they claim they are, they would understand that the first thing is the Taior should give their consent.
And you know, the whole land rights movement here in Queensland, as it was all over Australia in the 1970s in particular, was all directed at trying to stop government from taking Aboriginal land. That was what the argument was over, that there was to be no repeat of what happened at Mapoon. So the Bjelke-Petersen Government finally relented in 1984 and legislation was passed that said there can be no taking of lands set aside for Aboriginal people in this state. Joh finally was brought over the line by Frank Brennan and the churches here in Brisbane, together with Aboriginal activists. They forced the National Party Government to legislate that not one square inch of Aboriginal land could be taken, unless special legislation was passed to do that.
Anna was there! Anna Bligh was there. That was what the whole argument about inalienability of Aboriginal land was all about. Inalienability. That Aboriginal people should only have land taken from them if they gave consent to it. And of course what the Wilderness Society managed to do, was that it convinced the Bligh Government that it could deliver electoral support down here in the south-east, if we were able to create on a unilateral basis, Wild Rivers in Cape York.
You guys haven't seen a map of the Wild River areas. No-one in this room has seen a map, other than perhaps the Minister. But these are not rivers. These are not lines on the map. These are quasi national parks. They cover entire areas of land. 80% of Cape York will be covered. You see, it is because the Greens define a wild river area as a catchment. And a catchment, by definition, is anywhere where rain falls. And so, I spend ten years fighting the Conservatives for the Wik Decision, ten years calling John Howard a racist scumbag - all for Anna Bligh to take it off me in five minutes. And all because she has a sacred cause behind her. And not a word of support has been uttered by those who believe themselves to be in the cause of social justice. Not a word has been uttered.
The Wild Rivers legislation. The most cutting part of it is that of all of the responsibilities that have been taken away from Aboriginal people, this is the last dignity. The dignity of being responsible for looking after their country is now taken away from them. It is sought to be given to young 16-year-olds who run around in koala suits, then go back to their parents who work for university departments and businesses and so on, in an economy fuelled by coal and everything else. The carbon footprint of the average family of a Wilderness Society campaigner is incomparable, compared to the carbon footprint of an average Cape York family, and it absolutely disgusts me. It disgusts me that the responsibility for the country is sought to be taken away from the traditional owners and given unto the hands of...of these environmentalists. And this is after we have created in Cape York Peninsula, the largest national parks estate in this entire state.
Over the course of the last 15 years, we have created...we have doubled the size of national parks in this state. Aboriginal people have, through a process of consent, been creating new national parks and this process still goes on. But the problem with the Greens is that the 50/50 deals that we've done and it was on that formula 50/50 - 50 for the national park, 50 for the Aboriginal land - the problem with the Greens after 15 years, is they've said, "We've got our 50. Now we want 90% of your 50. Thank you very much for the 50 you've given us. Now we want 90% of the remaining part." And the offence that this causes to the traditional owners, and the obscene thing about all this - I'm conscious that I haven't persuaded many people in this room. Let me tell you about the obscenity of this.
We're suffering for the sins of the farmers in Central Queensland - the people who have pulled ball and chain between bulldozers. We in Cape York, where 99% of the vegetation is still intact, are suffering for the sins of what happened in the Mulga country. But now think about this. The people out in the Mulga country, who ball and chained their properties, can now participate in the new carbon economy when they replant their properties. They participated in the old economy and they've got an opportunity in the new economy. But the blackfellas, who have never participated in the old economy, because all the vegetation is still intact, won't even be able to participate in the new economy and be given credit for the preservation of the environment, because they've got nothing to trade. All of the land is locked up already. So blackfellas lose out in the old destructive economy and they have no foothold in the new carbon economy. We're dispossessed at both ends, from any economic participation. And yet if you destroyed your property in 1930 or 1950 or 1980, you're completely allowed to go back, plant new trees and get green credits in the future. The lockout of Indigenous opportunity to develop any form of economic base, even to be given credit for preserving the environment, is completely obscene.
And I...I was invited in the throes of the negotiations of the Native Title Act in 1993 and then again in 1998. I was invited to Anna Bligh's preselection. I spoke in the cause of Wik, upon her ascension to Parliament. But it's an extraordinary change of circumstances here, where the Bligh Government in pursuit of what the Wilderness Society can deliver at the elections, has basically sold us up the river. It has been a huge torpedo in the momentum that we've created in Cape York Peninsula, to get on top of our problems. It has been a huge torpedo. I have been utterly, utterly preoccupied with the Wild Rivers, when there are more important causes - children to be protected, schools to be fixed up, violence to be addressed. Those are the agendas that we'd focused on. We didn't want to be dealing with issues that we thought there was fundamental understanding about. And the Bligh Government has completely torpedoed the momentum that we had in Cape York Peninsula in addressing our problems. And we've had to return to the fight on land rights. We've received completely absolute silence from progressive people and those who consider themselves in support of the cause of Aboriginal advancement. Absolute silence.
And you know, I just want to say that...to the organisers of the festival, that this has been a completely undeserved opportunity on my part, to speak at the opening of this festival. Possibly in retrospect, you'll feel that it was a momentous miscalculation to invite me.
But I've...I've...I feel like I've come home to my...the hometown of my youth here. And I wish all participants at the festival, this weekend and this week, all the very best. Thank you.
Noel Pearson - lawyer, activist and director of The Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, speaking at the opening of the Brisbane Writers' Festival last week. Thanks to the festival for permission to broadcast that speech. Noel Pearson's quarterly essay, Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia, is soon to be published by Black Inc.
The Left's flawed concept of society
OPINION: The Left's flawed concept of society
by Bill Muehlenberg
In September, in The Australian, a six-part series on the Left appeared. It is interesting to read these articles in light of what the Left was saying 20 years ago. The bottom line is, little has changed. These recent pieces are all united by the usual collection of clichés, platitudes and ethereal thinking.
There is very little which is concrete here, just the usual moralistic rhetoric and the usual buzz-words: equality, social justice, fairness, diversity, and so on.
What also binds these articles together is the usual leftist alliance on the state. For the most part, the state, not the individual or the family or the community, is generally viewed as the ultimate saviour.
While others will examine in greater detail these articles, here I wish to simply utilise broad-brush strokes. One way to proceed is simply to outline the ways in which Left and Right differ. Thomas Sowell has very nicely summarised the major differences between the two in his many works, especially in these three important volumes: A Conflict of Visions (1987), The Vision of the Anointed (1995), and The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999).
Sowell argues that the Left and Right operate from fundamentally different premises.
The two main visions Sowell discusses are what he calls the constrained and the unconstrained visions. The constrained vision (the conservative worldview) acknowledges that there are limits. There are limits to human nature, limits to what governments can do, limits to what can be achieved in a society.
The unconstrained vision (the radical or leftist worldview) tends to downplay limits. Mankind is seen as more or less perfectible; social and political utopia is to a large extent achievable; and evil is not endemic or inherent in the human condition, and therefore is able to be mostly eliminated.
The conservative vision tends to reflect the Judeo-Christian understanding that mankind is fallen, is limited, is prone to sin and self, and cannot produce heaven on earth, at least without the help of God. The left-liberal vision, by contrast, tends to see the human condition as innocent, malleable and perfectible, and tends to think that utopia on earth is achievable under the right social conditions.
Edmund Burke may best exemplify the former vision, with the American Revolution one of its main fruits. Jean-Jacques Rousseau may best exemplify the latter vision, with the French Revolution a key expression of it. Sowell argues that on the whole, the conservative vision, being much more closely grounded in reality, will usually produce better outcomes for those intended to benefit by them, than those of the leftist vision.
Of ultimate importance
What also should be pointed out is that in some respects the Left and Right do not differ so much on what they consider to be ultimately important. Both want to see such goods as justice, tranquillity, national well-being, and so on.
Both for example favour equality, but the Left tends to favour equality of outcomes, while the Right favours equality of opportunity. Are bureaucrats, ruling elites, social engineers and expanding state powers the answer? Or are individuals, mediating structures (church, family, community, etc) and free markets best placed to achieve desirable social outcomes? That is where the differences emerge.
Indeed, the Left does not have a monopoly on moral concerns. It is not just Julia Gillard who is "driven by indignation at injustice". Conservatives are also incensed at injustice. It's just that the Left so often seems to be highly selective in where its outrage is directed.
America, capitalism, globalism and the West in general tend to be its targets. At the same time, they seem deathly silent on the mega-injustices of such things as Soviet or Chinese Communism or Islamo-fascism.
Also of interest is the decidedly secular tone of this entire series of articles. Given that fact, it is interesting to recall the title used in the very first article: "A new light on the hill". Whether the author or subeditor realised it, the phrase was first used by the ancient Hebrew prophets.
The early Puritans and American founding fathers also utilised such terminology as they expressed their hopes of what sort of place that new land was to be. In both visions there was an overwhelming spiritual reality which lay behind the terminology.
What is remarkable about this series is the fact that there is not one religious or spiritual reference to be found anywhere. God is entirely left out of the picture.
To seek to bring heaven to earth without the author and source of such values and goods is an exercise in futility.
As C.S. Lewis warned in his book The Abolition of Man (1943): "You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that our civilization needs more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."
So while some of the aims and goals of the Left may be morally laudable, the question remains as to whether the worldview of the Left, and its proposed remedies and polices, will in fact usher in these desired outcomes. Fortunately we have history on our side here, and the verdict is not very favourable.
Bill Muehlenberg is a commentator on contemporary issues, and lectures on ethics and philosophy. His website CultureWatch is at: www.billmuehlenberg.com
by Bill Muehlenberg
In September, in The Australian, a six-part series on the Left appeared. It is interesting to read these articles in light of what the Left was saying 20 years ago. The bottom line is, little has changed. These recent pieces are all united by the usual collection of clichés, platitudes and ethereal thinking.
There is very little which is concrete here, just the usual moralistic rhetoric and the usual buzz-words: equality, social justice, fairness, diversity, and so on.
What also binds these articles together is the usual leftist alliance on the state. For the most part, the state, not the individual or the family or the community, is generally viewed as the ultimate saviour.
While others will examine in greater detail these articles, here I wish to simply utilise broad-brush strokes. One way to proceed is simply to outline the ways in which Left and Right differ. Thomas Sowell has very nicely summarised the major differences between the two in his many works, especially in these three important volumes: A Conflict of Visions (1987), The Vision of the Anointed (1995), and The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999).
Sowell argues that the Left and Right operate from fundamentally different premises.
The two main visions Sowell discusses are what he calls the constrained and the unconstrained visions. The constrained vision (the conservative worldview) acknowledges that there are limits. There are limits to human nature, limits to what governments can do, limits to what can be achieved in a society.
The unconstrained vision (the radical or leftist worldview) tends to downplay limits. Mankind is seen as more or less perfectible; social and political utopia is to a large extent achievable; and evil is not endemic or inherent in the human condition, and therefore is able to be mostly eliminated.
The conservative vision tends to reflect the Judeo-Christian understanding that mankind is fallen, is limited, is prone to sin and self, and cannot produce heaven on earth, at least without the help of God. The left-liberal vision, by contrast, tends to see the human condition as innocent, malleable and perfectible, and tends to think that utopia on earth is achievable under the right social conditions.
Edmund Burke may best exemplify the former vision, with the American Revolution one of its main fruits. Jean-Jacques Rousseau may best exemplify the latter vision, with the French Revolution a key expression of it. Sowell argues that on the whole, the conservative vision, being much more closely grounded in reality, will usually produce better outcomes for those intended to benefit by them, than those of the leftist vision.
Of ultimate importance
What also should be pointed out is that in some respects the Left and Right do not differ so much on what they consider to be ultimately important. Both want to see such goods as justice, tranquillity, national well-being, and so on.
Both for example favour equality, but the Left tends to favour equality of outcomes, while the Right favours equality of opportunity. Are bureaucrats, ruling elites, social engineers and expanding state powers the answer? Or are individuals, mediating structures (church, family, community, etc) and free markets best placed to achieve desirable social outcomes? That is where the differences emerge.
Indeed, the Left does not have a monopoly on moral concerns. It is not just Julia Gillard who is "driven by indignation at injustice". Conservatives are also incensed at injustice. It's just that the Left so often seems to be highly selective in where its outrage is directed.
America, capitalism, globalism and the West in general tend to be its targets. At the same time, they seem deathly silent on the mega-injustices of such things as Soviet or Chinese Communism or Islamo-fascism.
Also of interest is the decidedly secular tone of this entire series of articles. Given that fact, it is interesting to recall the title used in the very first article: "A new light on the hill". Whether the author or subeditor realised it, the phrase was first used by the ancient Hebrew prophets.
The early Puritans and American founding fathers also utilised such terminology as they expressed their hopes of what sort of place that new land was to be. In both visions there was an overwhelming spiritual reality which lay behind the terminology.
What is remarkable about this series is the fact that there is not one religious or spiritual reference to be found anywhere. God is entirely left out of the picture.
To seek to bring heaven to earth without the author and source of such values and goods is an exercise in futility.
As C.S. Lewis warned in his book The Abolition of Man (1943): "You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that our civilization needs more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."
So while some of the aims and goals of the Left may be morally laudable, the question remains as to whether the worldview of the Left, and its proposed remedies and polices, will in fact usher in these desired outcomes. Fortunately we have history on our side here, and the verdict is not very favourable.
Bill Muehlenberg is a commentator on contemporary issues, and lectures on ethics and philosophy. His website CultureWatch is at: www.billmuehlenberg.com
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Carbon dioxide isn't guilty
Carbon dioxide isn't guilty
by Jay Lehr
August 17, 2009
Address given by Dr Jay Lehr, Science Director of the Heartland Institute, on August 7, 2009, at the Institute for Private Enterprise in conjunction with the Australian Climate Science Coalition.
Global Warming – Why Carbon Dioxide Plays No Role
My primary concern with climate control legislation is the disaster it will have for the less advantaged. If we are going to see poor people throughout the world, particularly in Africa, advance and improve their standard of living it can only be by supplying them inexpensive energy. But with climate control legislation our energy will increase in value and their chances of improving their plight is going to diminish.
I am a strong believer in capitalism. There has never been a better economic system that can advance economic well-being. Socialism cannot work unless by force: you can't level the playing field for all people unless you hold a gun to their head, so capitalism is a better system than socialism.
But capitalists do not have any ethical advantages over socialists and part of our problem today is the greed of capitalist organisations that are at every turn trying to figure out how they can game the system and make money on global warming. So we are really not much talking about science, we're talking about money and political power. There are so many vested interests that are going to make money on carbon trading, which will become the number one traded commodity in the world. It will dwarf energy and oil and whatever grains we use as a traded commodity. The volatility of carbon trading will upset the market forever. We have about two hundred billion trading contracts today and it will grow rapidly to a trillion or more by 2020. People think they can make a great deal of money, unfortunately at the expense of less advantaged people.
Prince Charles supports a non-profit organisation that pays people in Africa not to develop anything, to stay poor, essentially it pays them not to advance. This for reasons that I don't fully understand other than he might feel a little daffy: he feels any human progress is negative.
At the same time, we can think of a green party, a green world, a religion that our kids have now been taught in their schools for a full generation. As standard religion seems to decline, the secular green religion comes on and climate change is just a major example of the green religion and it's very difficult to fight. I'm going to tell you how in basically three stages.
One, I will explain as simply as I can that carbon dioxide plays essentially no role in determining the temperature of the planet. Secondly, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and that without the carbon dioxide we have on the planet we could not exist because vegetation would not exist. Hundreds of millions of years ago when the dinosaurs roamed the world we had five times more carbon than we have today.
We have indeed increased the carbon capacity of our atmosphere from 270 parts a million up to 380 today, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it will rise to 500, hopefully in my lifetime. I say hopefully in my lifetime, not that I hope it will rise fast but that I will live long. To add to my optimism, and you may wish to take everything I say with a grain of salt, at 73 I consider myself at the peak of my career.
When I point out in a couple of different ways that we're not responsible for the warming, and that carbon dioxide is a good thing, not a bad thing, you will obviously recognise the pointlessness of having any legislation. However it isn't pointless for people that are going to make money out of it or gain power out of it. But I hope to give you a package of simple information that each day you can share with people at your dinner table, that you can share in social gatherings like this if you get together and chat, not in a particularly strong science way, but in a manner where you share with people who respect your judgment that you are convinced that man is not responsible for the either ups or downs of the planet. You don't have to teach science, you plant a seed of doubt in the mind of somebody who respects you and they will rethink the whole thing. So slowly and exponentially, if all of you talk to three dozen people in the course of a year, and some of them talk to three dozen people in turn, very slowly we can turn around public opinion.
I was asked at a conference in New York last March where public opinion has to be before we can turn government away from climate change. My answer was 70 per cent, and I believe that's the objective. We need 70 per cent of the public recognising this scam before the government will respond. In the United States we have risen in the past five years from 32-34 per cent recognising that global warming was not man-caused to right now around 54 per cent, so we've turned the corner, we have a slight majority, but not significant in terms of changing the politics of it because they're still not seeing the critical truth.
Let's start at the beginning now, technically. My career in science goes back 55 years but my career in climatology doesn't go back as far, it only goes back to December 3, 1973. Why do I say that? Because on December 3, 1973 a magazine I no longer read, Time magazine in the United States, published this magazine with the cover “The Big Freeze” because it was the beginning of the 70s and global cooling was the issue. But global cooling did not catch the fancy of enough people, did not scare enough people. Sometime in the early 1980s they moved to global warming. I have been studying the issue very seriously ever since.
I kind of like to think that you in Australia might be interested to know that in the United States the opinion of Australia is absolutely amazingly positive. I think I've never heard a negative word said in my country about your country. People in the United States hate France, and the French hate us. And we have mixed emotions about the Canadians; generally positive, but mixed emotions. I've never heard a negative word about Australia so we do think of Australia as an island of sanity.
So let me give you the information. First of all, the numbers. We have a television show in the United States called: “Are you as smart as a fifth grader?” I don't know if it's gotten over here. Well, I'm not going to push you that far, I'm only going to fourth grade arithmetic and here are the numbers that are not arguable. That of all the greenhouse gasses, 90 per cent is water vapour, 4 per cent is carbon dioxide, 4 per cent is methane and 2 per cent are nitrous oxide and a number of flouride compounds. (NOTE: these numbers reflect the estimated relative contributions of the gases to greenhouse warming.) So of all the greenhouse gasses that make this earth habitable - because without them all the thermal energy that comes from the sun to the earth would return back into space if this greenhouse envelope didn't hold enough heat for us to have a planet to survive - only 4 per cent is carbon dioxide.
The shocking number is that, of that 4 per cent, man only contributes 3 per cent. That's our power plants, our automobiles, our own breathing; everything we do on the planet contributes 3 per cent. 97 per cent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from the ocean and from plants.
Probably most of you are aware that Albert Gore, whose house is 20 times larger than any of ours here, uses 20 times more energy. It's okay because he buys dispensation from a company that plants trees somewhere. Nobody knows where but somewhere. It turns out that he owns the company.
But planting trees is a very interesting idea for the papal dispensation. It takes a tree about 10 years to get up to speed to absorb carbon dioxide. There are some aeroplane companies that will sell you a carbon credit so you don't feel so badly about flying. That's never stopped Al: he flies in a private jet everywhere. But it takes 10 years for that tree to grow up to where sufficient trees will equal your cross country in the jet. What happens when the tree dies? And what happens to the carbon dioxide? Right back into the atmosphere. There's no net change at all, it's all a joke that the public is not aware of.
If we take the 4 per cent of this carbon dioxide, and the 3 per cent of the 4 per cent that's man-caused - our cars and our factories - and you multiply them together, you will get a number that is 0.12 per cent of a per cent, or just over a tenth of a per cent. So our contribution to the carbon dioxide in the greenhouse gas envelope is just over a tenth of a per cent.
Now let's talk about Australia. Your country's total contribution to the amount of greenhouse gases that are put into the atmosphere by man is around 1 per cent. If you want to reduce it, we start from 0.12, now multiply that by 1 per cent, we're now I think at twelve thousandth of a per cent. And what is the new legislation? How much reduction is it you're aiming for? 5 per cent. So now 4 per cent, times 3 per cent, times 1 per cent, times 5 per cent. There's so many decimal places out there it's ridiculous.
I came here with Peter and he was saying: well, don't you think maybe there is some little impact of man here on the temperature? I said: no, there is none. We don't have instruments that can measure as many zeros out there with regard to what the carbon is. So whatever you do here in Australia will have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the temperature of the earth and you're asked to sacrifice your economic wellbeing in order to do it.
That's a story that has to be told to the public because I know that Kevin Rudd looks in the eyes of a few children and says “we want to have our national parks survive and if you do, you want to pass this, we need this legislation”. It's scare mongering at its worst. But if you want your parks to survive why wouldn't you want more carbon dioxide in your atmosphere? Everything on this planet is growing better than it has in our lifetime because we have added 110 parts per million of carbon to the atmosphere in the last 50 or so years. The yield of every growing vegetation on this planet has improved. Food is easier to grow.
When is the last time you saw a scary headline about loss of rain forest vegetation? Anyone has seen a headline lately? Really, what did it say? Brazil. Well, it's always in Brazil but the whole thing is dying down.
The fact of the matter is we are growing about two million tonnes of additional vegetation on the equator as a result of the increased greenhouse gases, and now the increased growth in the rain forest along the equator has far outweighed whatever amount of vegetation that was cut down by peasants in order to scratch some food out of the land. There was a loss of rain forests and now there's a very significant advancement of green energy in rain forest.
They're saying that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, then why do you drink Coca-Cola? Why do you drink champagne? Or why do you drink any sparkling beverage? Why would you go up to your loved one and kiss them? You're breathing carbon dioxide in their face. Why would you want to spread a contaminant? It's utterly absurd. The planet would not be lovable without it and it's better for having more. Everything is so upside down. The increase in carbon is all good, it's not bad. The increase in heat was all good – and we're not heating anymore.
Do you know, I don't know anybody in Canada who vacations in Norway. I don't know anybody in the United States that would not love to have the average temperature of their town get two degrees Fahrenheit warmer, and I don't know any old people who would rather live in a cold climate. Cold kills prematurely at five times the rate. Five times the rate. Life expectancy, as a matter of fact, in Norway is lower than most comparable countries. Cold is tougher. Diseases do not generally increase with heat so the whole thesis that carbon dioxide is a bad thing is absolutely false.
Science is done by observation. We measure things, we do experiments, we have hypotheses and we come up with proof, or we come up with no proof. Let me give you some proof of the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature. Let's start with what you know for sure.
We have been keeping temperature records since 1880. From 1880 to 1940 we had a slight increase in the earth's temperature. From 1940 to 1978 the temperature was very flat. From 1978 to 1998 the temperature went up. From 1998 to the present we have been cooling. What has carbon dioxide done throughout this entire time?
From around the turn of the century when Henry Ford invented his car and all the inventions starting coming on, the first industrial evolution, and then the second industrial evolution following World War II, carbon increases have just gone up in a straight line but the temperature went up, went sideways, went up, went down. There is no relationship at all.
And when we look at ice cores we have 900,000 years of dated ice cores. It's not rocket science. We can date ice when we drill into various glaciers, such as we have in the Antarctic and Greenland. Now, two chemicals are always found in different ice cores. One is carbon, and it will be carbon 14 and carbon 12. The ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 tells us how long it's been since that gas bubble was in the atmosphere. We can actually date an ice core to within 50 years. Similarly in the ice bubble there’s an oxygen isotope, oxygen 18, which along with oxygen 16 which is the oxygen we breathe. That ratio of 18 to 16 tells us the temperature when the air was frozen. 900,000 years of records to tell us what the temperature was in the earth all the way back then. And we also can measure the carbon in the bubble, the carbon dioxide itself in the bubble, and know how much carbon dioxide. So we now have this 900,000 year record and what we found is that throughout those 900,000 years it revealed two things.
One, there's been a 1500 year cycle that's gone on forever - while the temperature is going up 57 degrees Fahrenheit and down, up and down over 1500 years, and then we have tree rings to support that. But more interesting, we find that the temperature rise always precedes the carbon dioxide rise. It is temperature that causes an increase in carbon dioxide, not carbon dioxide that causes an increase in temperature. This is so logical, this is so obvious. Why is it obvious?
A temperature increase will drive carbon dioxide out of solution in the ocean. The ocean is the primary source of carbon. Well, water contains more carbon dioxide when it's cold than when it's warm. So when the ocean is warm the carbon dioxide comes out.
What happens? Why are you not drinking old, warm Coca-Cola or old, warm champagne? There's no carbon left in it. You keep it cold to keep the carbon in it. Maybe you didn't realise it, maybe you just like it cold. It's not the only reason. If you want to keep the carbonation in, whether it's wine or soft drink, you keep it cold. This is not rocket science. You can teach this to the third or fifth grade science, but the public does not understand.
So this is the observational data that we have.
Now let's see what the other side says. They have mathematical models. I said science is observation, empirical study of the universe. There is not one shred of empirical study, not one shred of evidence, to show that man is increasing the temperature of the atmosphere. What do they have? Why is this so perverse? Here is why.
In our country, we are funding climate models, mathematical model on climate to the tune now, believe it or not, in excess of five billion dollars a year. The climate modelers are mathematicians. Some of you may not be familiar with mathematical models. Well, if you don't understand the physical system you can write an equation that you think simulates how the physics of the universe works. You can write an equation with a number for cloud cover, cloud height, ocean circulation, topography, various movements of air and ocean water, incoming solar radiation, dust in the air, volcanic eruptions. You can write equations for anything.
I can write an equation to determine if and when a plant out there may change colour at the end of summer by knowing how much foliage is on the plant, the nature of the soil that it's growing out of, the moisture content of the soil and maybe I will be right. But if I write that equation about when that plant is going to change colour, and let's say you're judging me, can I go on telling you when it's going to change colour forever? You just watch the plant and see if I'm right. It's a mathematical model that can be proved right or wrong. But the climate modelers can't be proved right or wrong because with these models they're projecting decades; in fact 100 years out in the future. It's nuts.
How accurate is your weather report here in Melbourne for a week from tomorrow? How much money would you place on an event that you're going to do a week from tomorrow based on what the weather report tells you? In fact, we measure weather report accuracy, they're about 56 per cent accurate seven days out; they're really good at telling you what things are going to be like tonight and tomorrow and pretty good the day after tomorrow but their accuracy drops off with days and after seven days. And yet we are asked to believe an equation that cannot be tested. There is no date certain.
If I ask you: what was the last major scare that gripped society - and I will say that it happened in the last 20 years - what was the last major scare that turned out to have no bearing? Y2K. There's always a fear that grips society because fear sells. News loves fear, we know that fear sells. We are genetically predisposed to be fearful. The reason is our ancestors lived in caves - at least the fearful ancestors lived in caves. The ones who are not our ancestors didn't fear going out of the cave - they didn't survive to have us. So only the scaredy cats in the caves survived and they had children who were scared, who had children who were scared, and they had us. We are genetically predisposed to be fearful. The news media knows that, the politicians know that. Scare people.
But Y2K had a major problem that global warming doesn't have. It had a date, just like my foliage on the tree out there. When it's time to change colour, if it doesn't change colour you know I was wrong. We all woke up on January 1 2000 laughing at how we had been duped. But we had an industry that was developed, an industry of people doing research on computers to protect us from self destructing planes falling down, trains falling off the rails when all the computers were unable to go from 1999 to 2000. As evidence against global warming keeps coming forward they just say: uh, huh, we forgot in our equation to put enough weight on particular matter coming out of smokestacks so we're a little bit wrong and we're going to warm a little further out. Now, happily, it's becoming a comedians' joke; it doesn't matter what happens, it's global warming. And they're overdoing it a little bit and I think the joke about everything being global warming is why in the United States we've shifted from 32-34 per cent who don't believe in global warming up to just over 50 per cent.
Of course, I have heard people say that cooling is a result of warming: if it wasn’t for us warming, it would be cooler. I mean, talk about how many people want it both ways. If I ask myself, how many more years of cooling do we need to change public opinion, I don't know that I know the answer to.
I can tell you I'm a sunspot guy. Right now we have less sunspots than we have had in many, many decades and sunspots are more or less atomic explosions that create more heat on the sun than normal and therefore the radiation coming from the sun is reduced and the sun is just very inactive and into a cooling period. This affects the oceanic current, it affects clouds, it is very complicated and it clearly starts with the sun but, based on all the atmospheric physicists I have spoken to, it foreshadows cooling.
You need to know more about models. I told you about mathematical model, but its absolutely amazingly ridiculous because the only grid resolution they can use in a model is about three degree latitude and this means we're talking about hundreds of kilometres. The atmosphere changes in tens of metres to hundreds of metres, they have to average everything and ignore hundreds of variables because in fact if we were to list all of the variables and their interaction in a real climate model, there isn't a computer on the planet that can handle it so it's all about guesstimating and making stuff up to come up with an answer.
One of the interesting things about modelling is that 10 years ago all the models had 7-9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer at the end of the century. Now they all say 2 to 4 per cent. How do they change so dramatically? They get together and they say: what do you want the answer to be? They change the equation to make them a little less scary and a little more reasonable.
I'll give you an example of stuff we know. The arrogance is breathtaking and it's actually all there. I do some work in biochemistry. Our minds have about 25,000 proteins and a protein you can think of as a machine in your body that does a function for you. DNA is a blueprint for all the proteins; basically that's what genes are. So the DNA tells the cell to produce a protein and a protein is an assembly of amino acids - there are 20 amino acids that are required for life.
Any vegetarians here? Very difficult to get healthy vegetarians. I maintain that to be a healthy vegetarian you need a PhD in nutrition because you have to combine non-meat foods to obtain the protein from the animal meat that has all the required amino acids. I talk about that a lot in lectures. A guy one day ran up to me and he says: you're absolutely wrong, I know three healthy vegetarians.
The proteins are very complex molecules made up of a number of amino acids. In order for them to do what they do, whether it's making your hair brown or making your toenails hard or whatever, what they do relates to their shape because after your body forms the protein, the protein folds itself into a shape, a very complex structure. If you took a piece of paper and you just squashed it like that, a lot of proteins look like that, folded in a weird way. No biochemist has ever been able to predict what a particular protein would fold itself into after it formed this chemical shape. Not one. And they see the protein in an electro microscope so they can have 1000 predictions and check 1000 end points and they've never done it. And yet the climate modellers project, with endless variables that no computer can handle, what the temperature will be.
So it's totally crazy. That's all they have. But it's about politics, it's about money, it's about power, and I have become an anti-capitalist. In the United States we have the Fortune 500, the 500 biggest corporations. There is not one of them that hasn't bought into global warming. There is not one of them that hasn't turned itself green.
I will end with a few comments on energy. Clearly we have enough fossil fuel, if they allow us to drill for it, for 200 years. The world will get nuclear energy you have probably the best supply in the world. It might take 50 or 100 years. Obviously France is already nuclear, China is building three new nuclear plants, and the United States probably will over the next 10 or 15 years. But wind and solar is what you're telling Australian businesses is their source of energy usage - and they're impossible.
The average coal fired power plant produces 1000 megawatts of energy (a mega is a million, a thousand million is a billion so your average billion watts). In order to duplicate that with wind requires 7500 windmills spaced out over 300 square miles: they can't be close together. And their capacity is limited because no windmill can produce more than a third, or 35 per cent of capacity. It can only produce 35 per cent because they only operate when the wind is over five miles an hour and below 25 miles an hour, they fall apart above 25 and then don't keep turning below five. And that doesn't account for the fact that the maintenance on them is terrible and they're down a huge percentage of the time.
So is solar a kind of saviour? You know, people talk about these fields of mirrors. Where does the sun shine most, the best place to put a field or mirrors? The desert. Ma'am, would you like the job of dusting those mirrors?
This is what we're saying: It's about money, it's about politics, we're losing. Now I hope the vote goes down on 13 August but it will come back three months later. I hope we vote it down in our Senate, but if we do it will come back. Ultimately, all of our countries, all the world is going to have to suffer economically. The real negative people say we'll never put it back together, we'll never undo it. I don't believe that. People tend to change their views when they're going down for the second time and we can turn the world around. So I have the sense I'm asking you to prepare to turn the world around. I mean, keep working trying to keep the legislation down over the next three months. If we win you do everything you can for the rest of your life, talking about the issue calmly and not striking it with people who respect you, ask them to spread the word and in some number of years I have little doubt that we will win the battle.
Note: Text has been edited for publication to remove asides and repetitions.
Jay Lehr has a degree in Geological Engineering from Princeton University and has written 19 books and over 900 journal articles on agricultural economics, agronomy and environmental science. He has testified on 36 occasions to Congressional committees.
by Jay Lehr
August 17, 2009
Address given by Dr Jay Lehr, Science Director of the Heartland Institute, on August 7, 2009, at the Institute for Private Enterprise in conjunction with the Australian Climate Science Coalition.
Global Warming – Why Carbon Dioxide Plays No Role
My primary concern with climate control legislation is the disaster it will have for the less advantaged. If we are going to see poor people throughout the world, particularly in Africa, advance and improve their standard of living it can only be by supplying them inexpensive energy. But with climate control legislation our energy will increase in value and their chances of improving their plight is going to diminish.
I am a strong believer in capitalism. There has never been a better economic system that can advance economic well-being. Socialism cannot work unless by force: you can't level the playing field for all people unless you hold a gun to their head, so capitalism is a better system than socialism.
But capitalists do not have any ethical advantages over socialists and part of our problem today is the greed of capitalist organisations that are at every turn trying to figure out how they can game the system and make money on global warming. So we are really not much talking about science, we're talking about money and political power. There are so many vested interests that are going to make money on carbon trading, which will become the number one traded commodity in the world. It will dwarf energy and oil and whatever grains we use as a traded commodity. The volatility of carbon trading will upset the market forever. We have about two hundred billion trading contracts today and it will grow rapidly to a trillion or more by 2020. People think they can make a great deal of money, unfortunately at the expense of less advantaged people.
Prince Charles supports a non-profit organisation that pays people in Africa not to develop anything, to stay poor, essentially it pays them not to advance. This for reasons that I don't fully understand other than he might feel a little daffy: he feels any human progress is negative.
At the same time, we can think of a green party, a green world, a religion that our kids have now been taught in their schools for a full generation. As standard religion seems to decline, the secular green religion comes on and climate change is just a major example of the green religion and it's very difficult to fight. I'm going to tell you how in basically three stages.
One, I will explain as simply as I can that carbon dioxide plays essentially no role in determining the temperature of the planet. Secondly, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and that without the carbon dioxide we have on the planet we could not exist because vegetation would not exist. Hundreds of millions of years ago when the dinosaurs roamed the world we had five times more carbon than we have today.
We have indeed increased the carbon capacity of our atmosphere from 270 parts a million up to 380 today, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it will rise to 500, hopefully in my lifetime. I say hopefully in my lifetime, not that I hope it will rise fast but that I will live long. To add to my optimism, and you may wish to take everything I say with a grain of salt, at 73 I consider myself at the peak of my career.
When I point out in a couple of different ways that we're not responsible for the warming, and that carbon dioxide is a good thing, not a bad thing, you will obviously recognise the pointlessness of having any legislation. However it isn't pointless for people that are going to make money out of it or gain power out of it. But I hope to give you a package of simple information that each day you can share with people at your dinner table, that you can share in social gatherings like this if you get together and chat, not in a particularly strong science way, but in a manner where you share with people who respect your judgment that you are convinced that man is not responsible for the either ups or downs of the planet. You don't have to teach science, you plant a seed of doubt in the mind of somebody who respects you and they will rethink the whole thing. So slowly and exponentially, if all of you talk to three dozen people in the course of a year, and some of them talk to three dozen people in turn, very slowly we can turn around public opinion.
I was asked at a conference in New York last March where public opinion has to be before we can turn government away from climate change. My answer was 70 per cent, and I believe that's the objective. We need 70 per cent of the public recognising this scam before the government will respond. In the United States we have risen in the past five years from 32-34 per cent recognising that global warming was not man-caused to right now around 54 per cent, so we've turned the corner, we have a slight majority, but not significant in terms of changing the politics of it because they're still not seeing the critical truth.
Let's start at the beginning now, technically. My career in science goes back 55 years but my career in climatology doesn't go back as far, it only goes back to December 3, 1973. Why do I say that? Because on December 3, 1973 a magazine I no longer read, Time magazine in the United States, published this magazine with the cover “The Big Freeze” because it was the beginning of the 70s and global cooling was the issue. But global cooling did not catch the fancy of enough people, did not scare enough people. Sometime in the early 1980s they moved to global warming. I have been studying the issue very seriously ever since.
I kind of like to think that you in Australia might be interested to know that in the United States the opinion of Australia is absolutely amazingly positive. I think I've never heard a negative word said in my country about your country. People in the United States hate France, and the French hate us. And we have mixed emotions about the Canadians; generally positive, but mixed emotions. I've never heard a negative word about Australia so we do think of Australia as an island of sanity.
So let me give you the information. First of all, the numbers. We have a television show in the United States called: “Are you as smart as a fifth grader?” I don't know if it's gotten over here. Well, I'm not going to push you that far, I'm only going to fourth grade arithmetic and here are the numbers that are not arguable. That of all the greenhouse gasses, 90 per cent is water vapour, 4 per cent is carbon dioxide, 4 per cent is methane and 2 per cent are nitrous oxide and a number of flouride compounds. (NOTE: these numbers reflect the estimated relative contributions of the gases to greenhouse warming.) So of all the greenhouse gasses that make this earth habitable - because without them all the thermal energy that comes from the sun to the earth would return back into space if this greenhouse envelope didn't hold enough heat for us to have a planet to survive - only 4 per cent is carbon dioxide.
The shocking number is that, of that 4 per cent, man only contributes 3 per cent. That's our power plants, our automobiles, our own breathing; everything we do on the planet contributes 3 per cent. 97 per cent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from the ocean and from plants.
Probably most of you are aware that Albert Gore, whose house is 20 times larger than any of ours here, uses 20 times more energy. It's okay because he buys dispensation from a company that plants trees somewhere. Nobody knows where but somewhere. It turns out that he owns the company.
But planting trees is a very interesting idea for the papal dispensation. It takes a tree about 10 years to get up to speed to absorb carbon dioxide. There are some aeroplane companies that will sell you a carbon credit so you don't feel so badly about flying. That's never stopped Al: he flies in a private jet everywhere. But it takes 10 years for that tree to grow up to where sufficient trees will equal your cross country in the jet. What happens when the tree dies? And what happens to the carbon dioxide? Right back into the atmosphere. There's no net change at all, it's all a joke that the public is not aware of.
If we take the 4 per cent of this carbon dioxide, and the 3 per cent of the 4 per cent that's man-caused - our cars and our factories - and you multiply them together, you will get a number that is 0.12 per cent of a per cent, or just over a tenth of a per cent. So our contribution to the carbon dioxide in the greenhouse gas envelope is just over a tenth of a per cent.
Now let's talk about Australia. Your country's total contribution to the amount of greenhouse gases that are put into the atmosphere by man is around 1 per cent. If you want to reduce it, we start from 0.12, now multiply that by 1 per cent, we're now I think at twelve thousandth of a per cent. And what is the new legislation? How much reduction is it you're aiming for? 5 per cent. So now 4 per cent, times 3 per cent, times 1 per cent, times 5 per cent. There's so many decimal places out there it's ridiculous.
I came here with Peter and he was saying: well, don't you think maybe there is some little impact of man here on the temperature? I said: no, there is none. We don't have instruments that can measure as many zeros out there with regard to what the carbon is. So whatever you do here in Australia will have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the temperature of the earth and you're asked to sacrifice your economic wellbeing in order to do it.
That's a story that has to be told to the public because I know that Kevin Rudd looks in the eyes of a few children and says “we want to have our national parks survive and if you do, you want to pass this, we need this legislation”. It's scare mongering at its worst. But if you want your parks to survive why wouldn't you want more carbon dioxide in your atmosphere? Everything on this planet is growing better than it has in our lifetime because we have added 110 parts per million of carbon to the atmosphere in the last 50 or so years. The yield of every growing vegetation on this planet has improved. Food is easier to grow.
When is the last time you saw a scary headline about loss of rain forest vegetation? Anyone has seen a headline lately? Really, what did it say? Brazil. Well, it's always in Brazil but the whole thing is dying down.
The fact of the matter is we are growing about two million tonnes of additional vegetation on the equator as a result of the increased greenhouse gases, and now the increased growth in the rain forest along the equator has far outweighed whatever amount of vegetation that was cut down by peasants in order to scratch some food out of the land. There was a loss of rain forests and now there's a very significant advancement of green energy in rain forest.
They're saying that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, then why do you drink Coca-Cola? Why do you drink champagne? Or why do you drink any sparkling beverage? Why would you go up to your loved one and kiss them? You're breathing carbon dioxide in their face. Why would you want to spread a contaminant? It's utterly absurd. The planet would not be lovable without it and it's better for having more. Everything is so upside down. The increase in carbon is all good, it's not bad. The increase in heat was all good – and we're not heating anymore.
Do you know, I don't know anybody in Canada who vacations in Norway. I don't know anybody in the United States that would not love to have the average temperature of their town get two degrees Fahrenheit warmer, and I don't know any old people who would rather live in a cold climate. Cold kills prematurely at five times the rate. Five times the rate. Life expectancy, as a matter of fact, in Norway is lower than most comparable countries. Cold is tougher. Diseases do not generally increase with heat so the whole thesis that carbon dioxide is a bad thing is absolutely false.
Science is done by observation. We measure things, we do experiments, we have hypotheses and we come up with proof, or we come up with no proof. Let me give you some proof of the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature. Let's start with what you know for sure.
We have been keeping temperature records since 1880. From 1880 to 1940 we had a slight increase in the earth's temperature. From 1940 to 1978 the temperature was very flat. From 1978 to 1998 the temperature went up. From 1998 to the present we have been cooling. What has carbon dioxide done throughout this entire time?
From around the turn of the century when Henry Ford invented his car and all the inventions starting coming on, the first industrial evolution, and then the second industrial evolution following World War II, carbon increases have just gone up in a straight line but the temperature went up, went sideways, went up, went down. There is no relationship at all.
And when we look at ice cores we have 900,000 years of dated ice cores. It's not rocket science. We can date ice when we drill into various glaciers, such as we have in the Antarctic and Greenland. Now, two chemicals are always found in different ice cores. One is carbon, and it will be carbon 14 and carbon 12. The ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 tells us how long it's been since that gas bubble was in the atmosphere. We can actually date an ice core to within 50 years. Similarly in the ice bubble there’s an oxygen isotope, oxygen 18, which along with oxygen 16 which is the oxygen we breathe. That ratio of 18 to 16 tells us the temperature when the air was frozen. 900,000 years of records to tell us what the temperature was in the earth all the way back then. And we also can measure the carbon in the bubble, the carbon dioxide itself in the bubble, and know how much carbon dioxide. So we now have this 900,000 year record and what we found is that throughout those 900,000 years it revealed two things.
One, there's been a 1500 year cycle that's gone on forever - while the temperature is going up 57 degrees Fahrenheit and down, up and down over 1500 years, and then we have tree rings to support that. But more interesting, we find that the temperature rise always precedes the carbon dioxide rise. It is temperature that causes an increase in carbon dioxide, not carbon dioxide that causes an increase in temperature. This is so logical, this is so obvious. Why is it obvious?
A temperature increase will drive carbon dioxide out of solution in the ocean. The ocean is the primary source of carbon. Well, water contains more carbon dioxide when it's cold than when it's warm. So when the ocean is warm the carbon dioxide comes out.
What happens? Why are you not drinking old, warm Coca-Cola or old, warm champagne? There's no carbon left in it. You keep it cold to keep the carbon in it. Maybe you didn't realise it, maybe you just like it cold. It's not the only reason. If you want to keep the carbonation in, whether it's wine or soft drink, you keep it cold. This is not rocket science. You can teach this to the third or fifth grade science, but the public does not understand.
So this is the observational data that we have.
Now let's see what the other side says. They have mathematical models. I said science is observation, empirical study of the universe. There is not one shred of empirical study, not one shred of evidence, to show that man is increasing the temperature of the atmosphere. What do they have? Why is this so perverse? Here is why.
In our country, we are funding climate models, mathematical model on climate to the tune now, believe it or not, in excess of five billion dollars a year. The climate modelers are mathematicians. Some of you may not be familiar with mathematical models. Well, if you don't understand the physical system you can write an equation that you think simulates how the physics of the universe works. You can write an equation with a number for cloud cover, cloud height, ocean circulation, topography, various movements of air and ocean water, incoming solar radiation, dust in the air, volcanic eruptions. You can write equations for anything.
I can write an equation to determine if and when a plant out there may change colour at the end of summer by knowing how much foliage is on the plant, the nature of the soil that it's growing out of, the moisture content of the soil and maybe I will be right. But if I write that equation about when that plant is going to change colour, and let's say you're judging me, can I go on telling you when it's going to change colour forever? You just watch the plant and see if I'm right. It's a mathematical model that can be proved right or wrong. But the climate modelers can't be proved right or wrong because with these models they're projecting decades; in fact 100 years out in the future. It's nuts.
How accurate is your weather report here in Melbourne for a week from tomorrow? How much money would you place on an event that you're going to do a week from tomorrow based on what the weather report tells you? In fact, we measure weather report accuracy, they're about 56 per cent accurate seven days out; they're really good at telling you what things are going to be like tonight and tomorrow and pretty good the day after tomorrow but their accuracy drops off with days and after seven days. And yet we are asked to believe an equation that cannot be tested. There is no date certain.
If I ask you: what was the last major scare that gripped society - and I will say that it happened in the last 20 years - what was the last major scare that turned out to have no bearing? Y2K. There's always a fear that grips society because fear sells. News loves fear, we know that fear sells. We are genetically predisposed to be fearful. The reason is our ancestors lived in caves - at least the fearful ancestors lived in caves. The ones who are not our ancestors didn't fear going out of the cave - they didn't survive to have us. So only the scaredy cats in the caves survived and they had children who were scared, who had children who were scared, and they had us. We are genetically predisposed to be fearful. The news media knows that, the politicians know that. Scare people.
But Y2K had a major problem that global warming doesn't have. It had a date, just like my foliage on the tree out there. When it's time to change colour, if it doesn't change colour you know I was wrong. We all woke up on January 1 2000 laughing at how we had been duped. But we had an industry that was developed, an industry of people doing research on computers to protect us from self destructing planes falling down, trains falling off the rails when all the computers were unable to go from 1999 to 2000. As evidence against global warming keeps coming forward they just say: uh, huh, we forgot in our equation to put enough weight on particular matter coming out of smokestacks so we're a little bit wrong and we're going to warm a little further out. Now, happily, it's becoming a comedians' joke; it doesn't matter what happens, it's global warming. And they're overdoing it a little bit and I think the joke about everything being global warming is why in the United States we've shifted from 32-34 per cent who don't believe in global warming up to just over 50 per cent.
Of course, I have heard people say that cooling is a result of warming: if it wasn’t for us warming, it would be cooler. I mean, talk about how many people want it both ways. If I ask myself, how many more years of cooling do we need to change public opinion, I don't know that I know the answer to.
I can tell you I'm a sunspot guy. Right now we have less sunspots than we have had in many, many decades and sunspots are more or less atomic explosions that create more heat on the sun than normal and therefore the radiation coming from the sun is reduced and the sun is just very inactive and into a cooling period. This affects the oceanic current, it affects clouds, it is very complicated and it clearly starts with the sun but, based on all the atmospheric physicists I have spoken to, it foreshadows cooling.
You need to know more about models. I told you about mathematical model, but its absolutely amazingly ridiculous because the only grid resolution they can use in a model is about three degree latitude and this means we're talking about hundreds of kilometres. The atmosphere changes in tens of metres to hundreds of metres, they have to average everything and ignore hundreds of variables because in fact if we were to list all of the variables and their interaction in a real climate model, there isn't a computer on the planet that can handle it so it's all about guesstimating and making stuff up to come up with an answer.
One of the interesting things about modelling is that 10 years ago all the models had 7-9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer at the end of the century. Now they all say 2 to 4 per cent. How do they change so dramatically? They get together and they say: what do you want the answer to be? They change the equation to make them a little less scary and a little more reasonable.
I'll give you an example of stuff we know. The arrogance is breathtaking and it's actually all there. I do some work in biochemistry. Our minds have about 25,000 proteins and a protein you can think of as a machine in your body that does a function for you. DNA is a blueprint for all the proteins; basically that's what genes are. So the DNA tells the cell to produce a protein and a protein is an assembly of amino acids - there are 20 amino acids that are required for life.
Any vegetarians here? Very difficult to get healthy vegetarians. I maintain that to be a healthy vegetarian you need a PhD in nutrition because you have to combine non-meat foods to obtain the protein from the animal meat that has all the required amino acids. I talk about that a lot in lectures. A guy one day ran up to me and he says: you're absolutely wrong, I know three healthy vegetarians.
The proteins are very complex molecules made up of a number of amino acids. In order for them to do what they do, whether it's making your hair brown or making your toenails hard or whatever, what they do relates to their shape because after your body forms the protein, the protein folds itself into a shape, a very complex structure. If you took a piece of paper and you just squashed it like that, a lot of proteins look like that, folded in a weird way. No biochemist has ever been able to predict what a particular protein would fold itself into after it formed this chemical shape. Not one. And they see the protein in an electro microscope so they can have 1000 predictions and check 1000 end points and they've never done it. And yet the climate modellers project, with endless variables that no computer can handle, what the temperature will be.
So it's totally crazy. That's all they have. But it's about politics, it's about money, it's about power, and I have become an anti-capitalist. In the United States we have the Fortune 500, the 500 biggest corporations. There is not one of them that hasn't bought into global warming. There is not one of them that hasn't turned itself green.
I will end with a few comments on energy. Clearly we have enough fossil fuel, if they allow us to drill for it, for 200 years. The world will get nuclear energy you have probably the best supply in the world. It might take 50 or 100 years. Obviously France is already nuclear, China is building three new nuclear plants, and the United States probably will over the next 10 or 15 years. But wind and solar is what you're telling Australian businesses is their source of energy usage - and they're impossible.
The average coal fired power plant produces 1000 megawatts of energy (a mega is a million, a thousand million is a billion so your average billion watts). In order to duplicate that with wind requires 7500 windmills spaced out over 300 square miles: they can't be close together. And their capacity is limited because no windmill can produce more than a third, or 35 per cent of capacity. It can only produce 35 per cent because they only operate when the wind is over five miles an hour and below 25 miles an hour, they fall apart above 25 and then don't keep turning below five. And that doesn't account for the fact that the maintenance on them is terrible and they're down a huge percentage of the time.
So is solar a kind of saviour? You know, people talk about these fields of mirrors. Where does the sun shine most, the best place to put a field or mirrors? The desert. Ma'am, would you like the job of dusting those mirrors?
This is what we're saying: It's about money, it's about politics, we're losing. Now I hope the vote goes down on 13 August but it will come back three months later. I hope we vote it down in our Senate, but if we do it will come back. Ultimately, all of our countries, all the world is going to have to suffer economically. The real negative people say we'll never put it back together, we'll never undo it. I don't believe that. People tend to change their views when they're going down for the second time and we can turn the world around. So I have the sense I'm asking you to prepare to turn the world around. I mean, keep working trying to keep the legislation down over the next three months. If we win you do everything you can for the rest of your life, talking about the issue calmly and not striking it with people who respect you, ask them to spread the word and in some number of years I have little doubt that we will win the battle.
Note: Text has been edited for publication to remove asides and repetitions.
Jay Lehr has a degree in Geological Engineering from Princeton University and has written 19 books and over 900 journal articles on agricultural economics, agronomy and environmental science. He has testified on 36 occasions to Congressional committees.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Love and Marriage
From Culture Watch http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/
Bill Muehlenberg’s commentary on issues of the day…
Love and Marriage
A very brief news item caught my attention just recently which is worth commenting on. It had to do with where modern marriage is heading, and how some people are seeking to change the usual marriage vows to reflect their own preference for non-commitment.
Here is what the news item said: “Couples are abandoning traditional ‘till death do us part’ wedding vows in favour of those with a get out clause in the event their love ‘shall falter or fail’. Newlyweds are increasingly acknowledging that love does not always last forever and pledging ‘as long as our love lasts’. A few are even making agreements to review the state of the marriage after as little as five years.”
Of course in one sense this is not new. Prenuptial agreements are similar, in that they provide and opt-out clause from day one. Both thus seek to raise the white flag of surrender even before the marriage is embarked upon. This is hardly the solid ground marriage needs to be built upon.
Of course part of the problem is modern man has managed to totally disconnect sexuality from procreation. Until recently, everyone knew that they went together, and one without the other was hardly even considered. As Ogden Nash once quipped, “The reason for much matrimony is patrimony”.
Thus marriage as an institution has always been about two chief social ends: the regulation of human sexuality, and the provision for the next generation that arises from that sexual union. And these two have always been bundled together.
It was especially because of the next generation – but not limited to it – that marriage was always seen as a lifelong social bonding. And almost all human societies therefore gave high value to marriage, knowing that a good marriage makes for a good family, and good families makes for a good society.
But the real problem with this whole concept of temporary marriage is the fundamentally faulty notion of love that underpins it. Today when we speak about love most people mean something like feelings, or lust, or sex. Love of course has something to do with these three things, but is certainly not the same as those three.
Love, in a more sober age, meant things like commitment, self-sacrifice and willing the best for the beloved. Indeed, most cultures have realised that mere romantic love is the least vital aspect about love. Love is so much more than feelings. Feelings of course come and go, and in that sense we fall in and out of love all the time.
But that is exactly why the marriage vows have been the way they have been for such a long time. It is exactly because we have known that the feelings and emotions of love are fickle, temperamental and temporary, that we featured the “till death do us part” clause.
Indeed, so different was our understanding of love and marriage until recently, that we could very rightly speak about “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health”. Real love was about dedication, loyalty, commitment and perseverance, not mere fleeting emotions.
Real love was about sticking with the partner of one’s vows, loving them to the end. It was always about true love, which always wills the highest good to the other person. It is the very opposite to selfishness and self-centredness. No marriage can work with two people fiercely clinging to their own rights.
A genuine marriage is about renouncing one’s rights and declaring one’s commitment to the well-being and good of the beloved. Thus marriage works on loving commitment, not selfish individualism.
But these new marriage vows clearly reflect such selfishness and me-first-ism. They are all about the individual, and not about the couple, or about any potential offspring of that couple.
Thus they are a perfect reflection of the age of self we now live in. We may well be one of the most self-centred generations in human history. Everything is about me, me, me. So we have taken an institution like marriage, which is fundamentally a social, giving institution, and turned it into a personal, taking institution.
Marriage both as a concept and as an individual union will not last with this fixation on selfishness. Of course it was never meant to. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once very wisely said in one of his wedding sermons, “Love does not sustain your marriage, but marriage sustains your love.”
That has always been the right way of looking at marriage. And without this way of looking at marriage, we will be in an awful mess. I probably have fallen out of love with my wife zillions of times. But I have also fallen in love with her zillions of times. That is the nature of human relationships.
They have their ups and downs. But the truth is, a good marriage, like anything else worthwhile in life, must be worked at. Wonderful marriages do not pop out of thin air. They are the end result of two people who are committed to each other – warts and all –and who are committed to their marriage.
A marriage will never work with two people who are only in it for themselves. Marriage works when two people put the other first, and see marriage as a valuable and noble institution which must daily be worked on and improved.
Sure, there will be setbacks and progress, momentum and lulls, high and lows. And any married couple will have their fair share of fights. But the right attitude is the key. As Ruth Bell Graham once remarked, “A good marriage is the union of two forgivers.”
So if you are seriously considering marriage, my first word of advice to you would be to abandon any foolish thoughts about using such self-destructive phrases as “as long as our love lasts”. That is a recipe for disaster, and will pretty well guarantee that your marriage will be very short-lived indeed.
Bill Muehlenberg’s commentary on issues of the day…
Love and Marriage
A very brief news item caught my attention just recently which is worth commenting on. It had to do with where modern marriage is heading, and how some people are seeking to change the usual marriage vows to reflect their own preference for non-commitment.
Here is what the news item said: “Couples are abandoning traditional ‘till death do us part’ wedding vows in favour of those with a get out clause in the event their love ‘shall falter or fail’. Newlyweds are increasingly acknowledging that love does not always last forever and pledging ‘as long as our love lasts’. A few are even making agreements to review the state of the marriage after as little as five years.”
Of course in one sense this is not new. Prenuptial agreements are similar, in that they provide and opt-out clause from day one. Both thus seek to raise the white flag of surrender even before the marriage is embarked upon. This is hardly the solid ground marriage needs to be built upon.
Of course part of the problem is modern man has managed to totally disconnect sexuality from procreation. Until recently, everyone knew that they went together, and one without the other was hardly even considered. As Ogden Nash once quipped, “The reason for much matrimony is patrimony”.
Thus marriage as an institution has always been about two chief social ends: the regulation of human sexuality, and the provision for the next generation that arises from that sexual union. And these two have always been bundled together.
It was especially because of the next generation – but not limited to it – that marriage was always seen as a lifelong social bonding. And almost all human societies therefore gave high value to marriage, knowing that a good marriage makes for a good family, and good families makes for a good society.
But the real problem with this whole concept of temporary marriage is the fundamentally faulty notion of love that underpins it. Today when we speak about love most people mean something like feelings, or lust, or sex. Love of course has something to do with these three things, but is certainly not the same as those three.
Love, in a more sober age, meant things like commitment, self-sacrifice and willing the best for the beloved. Indeed, most cultures have realised that mere romantic love is the least vital aspect about love. Love is so much more than feelings. Feelings of course come and go, and in that sense we fall in and out of love all the time.
But that is exactly why the marriage vows have been the way they have been for such a long time. It is exactly because we have known that the feelings and emotions of love are fickle, temperamental and temporary, that we featured the “till death do us part” clause.
Indeed, so different was our understanding of love and marriage until recently, that we could very rightly speak about “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health”. Real love was about dedication, loyalty, commitment and perseverance, not mere fleeting emotions.
Real love was about sticking with the partner of one’s vows, loving them to the end. It was always about true love, which always wills the highest good to the other person. It is the very opposite to selfishness and self-centredness. No marriage can work with two people fiercely clinging to their own rights.
A genuine marriage is about renouncing one’s rights and declaring one’s commitment to the well-being and good of the beloved. Thus marriage works on loving commitment, not selfish individualism.
But these new marriage vows clearly reflect such selfishness and me-first-ism. They are all about the individual, and not about the couple, or about any potential offspring of that couple.
Thus they are a perfect reflection of the age of self we now live in. We may well be one of the most self-centred generations in human history. Everything is about me, me, me. So we have taken an institution like marriage, which is fundamentally a social, giving institution, and turned it into a personal, taking institution.
Marriage both as a concept and as an individual union will not last with this fixation on selfishness. Of course it was never meant to. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once very wisely said in one of his wedding sermons, “Love does not sustain your marriage, but marriage sustains your love.”
That has always been the right way of looking at marriage. And without this way of looking at marriage, we will be in an awful mess. I probably have fallen out of love with my wife zillions of times. But I have also fallen in love with her zillions of times. That is the nature of human relationships.
They have their ups and downs. But the truth is, a good marriage, like anything else worthwhile in life, must be worked at. Wonderful marriages do not pop out of thin air. They are the end result of two people who are committed to each other – warts and all –and who are committed to their marriage.
A marriage will never work with two people who are only in it for themselves. Marriage works when two people put the other first, and see marriage as a valuable and noble institution which must daily be worked on and improved.
Sure, there will be setbacks and progress, momentum and lulls, high and lows. And any married couple will have their fair share of fights. But the right attitude is the key. As Ruth Bell Graham once remarked, “A good marriage is the union of two forgivers.”
So if you are seriously considering marriage, my first word of advice to you would be to abandon any foolish thoughts about using such self-destructive phrases as “as long as our love lasts”. That is a recipe for disaster, and will pretty well guarantee that your marriage will be very short-lived indeed.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Angels
I hope Mums feel proud of their status at all times
A Newborn's Conversation with God
A baby asked God, "They tell me you are sending me to earth tomorrow, but how am I going to live there being so small and helpless?"
God said, "Your angel will be waiting for you and will take care of you."
The child further inquired, "But tell me, here in heaven I don't have to do anything but sing and smile to be happy."
God said, "Your angel will sing for you and will also smile for you. And you will feel your angel's love and be very happy."
Again the small child asked, "And how am I going to be able to understand when people talk to me if I don't know the language?"
God said, "Your angel will tell you the most beautiful and sweet words you will ever hear, and with much patience and care, your angel will teach you how to speak."
"And what am I going to do when I want to talk to you?"
God said, "Your angel will place your hands together and will teach you how to pray."
"Who will protect me?"
God said, "Your angel will defend you even if it means risking its life."
"But I will always be sad because I will not see you anymore."
God said, "Your angel will always talk to you about Me and will teach you the way to come back to Me, even though I will always be next to you."
At that moment there was much peace in Heaven, but voices from Earth could be heard and the child hurriedly asked, "God, if I am to leave now, please tell me my angel's name."
God said, You will simply call her, "Mum."
Anon
A Newborn's Conversation with God
A baby asked God, "They tell me you are sending me to earth tomorrow, but how am I going to live there being so small and helpless?"
God said, "Your angel will be waiting for you and will take care of you."
The child further inquired, "But tell me, here in heaven I don't have to do anything but sing and smile to be happy."
God said, "Your angel will sing for you and will also smile for you. And you will feel your angel's love and be very happy."
Again the small child asked, "And how am I going to be able to understand when people talk to me if I don't know the language?"
God said, "Your angel will tell you the most beautiful and sweet words you will ever hear, and with much patience and care, your angel will teach you how to speak."
"And what am I going to do when I want to talk to you?"
God said, "Your angel will place your hands together and will teach you how to pray."
"Who will protect me?"
God said, "Your angel will defend you even if it means risking its life."
"But I will always be sad because I will not see you anymore."
God said, "Your angel will always talk to you about Me and will teach you the way to come back to Me, even though I will always be next to you."
At that moment there was much peace in Heaven, but voices from Earth could be heard and the child hurriedly asked, "God, if I am to leave now, please tell me my angel's name."
God said, You will simply call her, "Mum."
Anon
Monday, March 23, 2009
Discipline overthrown by the new-found tyranny of niceness
Kenneth Minogue | March 21, 2009
Article from: The Australian
WHY have the British (and to some extent other Anglophones) allowed family and school life to collapse so extensively?
The collapse has not happened on all levels of society but it is widespread enough to affect everyone. The statistics, for what they are worth, are remarkable. According to Dispatches, a program aired on British television in January, a poll conducted for the National Union of Schoolmasters-Union of Women Teachers suggested that 97 per cent of teachers had disruptive children in their classes. Almost three-quarters (74.4 per cent) claimed to have problems with physically aggressive children, while almost half (45.5per cent) noted the disruptive behaviour of a minority was a daily occurrence.
In some British primary schools, each class is equipped with women who function as behaviour support assistants. They take over the disruptive children and thus allow the tranquillity needed for a little actual teaching. A difficult child, reported Dispatches, might be asked to choose -- choose! -- whether he was prepared to go back into class and behave, otherwise he would be shepherded into a "quiet room" without distractions to cool down. These children are 10 or younger, and the pathos of their being asked to make choices when they have never acquired the integrated mentality needed for that sophisticated act is piteous to behold.
Think back before the watershed 1960s and the contrast is instructive. Then, children had defined places in a classroom and learned rapidly the decorum necessary for school life. There was no question of choosing whether or not to behave because there was an order of conduct enforced by the teacher and it applied to everyone. The teacher was an authority figure and, like all authority figures, inspired a certain amount of fear, part of which depended on the possibility of physical punishment. Such punishment was seldom used, but it was part of an understood world. As a supply teacher in a variety of primary and secondary modern schools across Brixton, south London, for 18 months in those days, I only once had occasion to call for the cane, which was sent (with the caning record book) straight up from the headmaster's office. As I raised the cane over the offender's hand, a chorus came from the class: "Mustn't raise the cane above your shoulder, Sir, LCC (London County Council) regulation." These were children who had not yet been accorded the absurdity of rights, but they understood very well that they lived under a rule of law.
The insistent question is this: How is it that so many schools have moved from the orderly world of that time to the violent distraction and educational failure of today? It is a complicated story in which the causal links can only be speculative. We must recognise, of course, that we are a different society from that of two generations ago, better no doubt in some ways, worse in others, and the causal links we detect are only part of the story.
To lose one's grip on the centrality of punishment in our civilisation is to destroy the crucial balance between punishment and reward. Without the balancing severities of punishment and criticism, praise and reward take on the aspect of bribes, which demeans those who give and those who receive. But themanagers of our world increasingly resort to inducements.
Seventeen and 18-year-olds from poor families in Britain have been given educational maintenance allowances to induce them to stay on at schools after the age of 16. Schools reported that most of the beneficiaries exploited the system, turning up to the classroom only to qualify for the grant.
The idea that people should be paid to perform their duties is a pure case of the corruption that has doomed underdeveloped countries to poverty. The destruction of the punishment-reward balance is importing the same moral collapse here.
The niceness movement, then, is a central part of the answer to the question: How have we moved from the disciplined and largely successful schools we had before 1960 to the disorderly educational failure common, though obviously not universal, today? Much that happens in schools depends on family life, of course, and some of the most radical changes clearly have little to do with politicised compassion.
From television to the mobile phone, the enclosed character of family life has been opened to outside influences, of which the most powerful is probably the peer group. The peer group locks individuals into the much narrower experiences of contemporaries rather than the intergenerational wisdom of the family.
Nevertheless, the niceness movement has powerfully changed family life. Sixties' liberation detested the frustrating conventions by which (to put it crudely) sex had to be traded for commitment. Commitment is painful, especially to individuals with little talent for controlling impulse. Many restrictive conventions were abandoned so that the young should be free to follow wherever their impulses might lead.
Divorce became easier, yet the number of couples getting married dramatically declined. This left many of the resulting children in an unstable world, especially if they belonged to what was euphemistically called a single-parent family. Single parenthood often resulted from misfortune and could work well, but public concern has focused lately on one cohort of such abbreviated families: that of teenage pregnancy. In the past, the pregnant teenager faced painful options: the shotgun marriage, adoption or the backstreet abortionist. The state responded compassionately by providing accommodation and financial support to these young people.
But many of the children of such relationships grew up to be no less feckless and impulsive than their mothers. In the 1990s, the British government made a late start in trying to identify the fathers of these children, partly to pay for child support and partly to involve men as well as women in these problems. They have not had much success. The children of such unions have been prominent in the annals of gangland and delinquency. This is a classic case of compassion in one generation leading to misery in the next.
My argument is, then, that the collapse of family and school discipline largely results from a dominant moral sentiment that we may call "the niceness movement". Niceness as a political sentiment has many departments -- political correctness is one, for example -- but I am concerned largely with its sentimental undermining of authority in family and classroom. The selling point of this niceness was, as it were, that pupils would become a nicer, gentler generation, but in fact the disorderly tendencies that teachers soon lost the power to check have spilled over into the playground, where bullying has long been increasing, and from the playground this disorder has spread into the streets. Thus can politicised compassion lead to misery.
Moral vices prosper by dressing themselves as virtues. Niceness presents itself as benevolence but is often merely an evasion of hard decisions that the realities of human nature require. And it has spread throughout our societies because it is often popular with voters. The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions, and so is a good deal of democratic politics.
One last point about this moral corruption: it is in important ways irreversible. I have emphasised that the campaign against physical chastisement in schools and families is an important element in the collapse of discipline. But one cannot have discipline back merely by changing the rules because it would need a platoon of soldiers to deal with the riots likely to follow any revival of the cane. Nor could one withdraw the rights to sustenance that dependent mothers have acquired in the 20th century.
This does not mean that there will not be a backlash against politicised decency as its nastier consequences become intolerable. That backlash is likely to make the well-judged pains of past practice look merciful indeed. But that is what happens when moral structures collapse.
Standpoint
Kenneth Minogue is emeritus professor of political science at the London School of Economics. His publications include The Liberal Mind, Nationalism, The Concept of a University, and Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
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