Bishop Hill Sustainable development and meaningless drivel
Jun 24, 2012 Greens Booker pens a post-mortem on the Rio Conference, boldly declaring that the global warming scare is over.
The great global warming scare has long been dying on its feet, but that sad fiasco of a conference in Rio last week saw it finally dead and buried. “It’s pathetic, it’s appalling,” wailed a spokesman for WWF, one of the thousands of green activists who flew to Rio, many at taxpayers’ expense, to see the last rites read over their lost dream. Their cause has even been abandoned by one of its most outspoken champions, the green guru James Lovelock of “Gaia” fame, who now admits that the warming scare was all a tragic mistake, and that talk of “sustainable development” is just “meaningless drivel”.
When I spoke in St Andrews the other week, I noted that you can now get a degree in sustainable development. Edinburgh runs a similar course too.
I wouldn't like to be studying for that qualification now.
Reader Comments (87)
I agree with earlier posters who do not believe the battle is over. In the UK the legislation and regulations remain. The wind farms continue to be built and planned. The bureaucracy (DforE&CC and DEFRA) and its powerful political supporters (including Cameron, Clegg, Letwin and Davey) are still deeply embedded in government. Miliband may have apologised for Labour immigration policy but he (wisely) remains silent about climate change legislation and calling doubters "flat earthers".
Many of the alarmists knew their arguments were flaky five or more years ago. That is why theu adopted a PR strategy of talking as though CAGW was true, even if they could no longer prove it. That is why they changed the language of alarmism from CAGW to just "global warming" or "climate change", but with the implication that man might be responsible and that the precautionary principle (remember that?) should apply. It has been quite an effective strategy. The latest language, of "sustainability" and the related calls for population control are further stages in the evolution of the PR strategy driving this movement. It is not dead yet.
It was ever thus:
Tertullian ca155-ca230 http://tinyurl.com/76wax52
"Most convincing as evidence of populousness, we men have actually become a burden to the Earth, the fruits of nature hardly suffice to sustain us, there is a general pressure of scarcity giving rise to complaints, since the earth can no longer support us. Need we be astonished that plague and famine, warfare and earthquake, come to be regarded as remedies, serving, as it were to trim and prune the superfluity of population."
World population at that time is estimated at around 300 million
What Rio conference? I haven't seen anything of it in the mainstream media here in Thailand. I was rather hoping to see something of it.
Maybe all the greenies were scared by the propect of cold weather. I always thought that they should have engaged Piers Corbyn's expertise in scheduling where to hold the party.
I tend to agree with Booker. CAGW is crashing and it wil burn with nary a thought to the CO2 pollution it leaves behind. Reality has caught up with it.
And you know what, they never even managed to teach me how to suck eggs.........
All that money wasted.......
Bitbucket-
[Geronimo] "tell us what you believe sustainable development is"
Once people start thinking it through, many of the words/actions of the "sustainable" persuasion look more and more vacuous.
An example: if/when the last drop of oil has been sucked from beneath the earth, why should that matter to polar bear? They weren’t going to be using it themselves. The CO2-based arguments are largely wrong in my opinion, but the only thing directly affected by fossil fuel depletion is the human race.
Likewise, I haven't seen many Camels mining phosphate in Morocco. The geographic footprint [area] of these activities is tiny, and in time is reclaimed by the biosphere itself.
Don't believe me? Next time you take a lengthy train journey above ground just look out of the window and see all the wildlife that you see reoccupying the "wasteland" without any help from humans.
Bitbucket
Your ideas on sustainable development would be echoed by everyone on this blog (I believe). However that is not what these people are trying to achieve. I have now read about half of Agenda 21 which is what the UN got governments to sign up to at the first Earth Summit many years ago. Agenda 21 defines what the UN means by "sustainability"
What they want is for humans to live in harmony with nature and what that means to you is the loss of the right to own property, the right to travel freely as you are able to do today, the right to eat the food you prefer as opposed to your new right to "safe, nutritious food". It goes on.
If you ask your local County Council in the UK you will find they have signed up for Agenda 21.
This means that they have agreed that NGOs now (by law) have the right to participate in the formulation and IMPLEMENTATION of policy.
With Agenda 21 the precautionary principle is enshrined in law and nobody will be permitted to object to a policy simply because the underpinning science is not proven. The first time I contacted my MP (who is on the DECC select committee) about the stupidity of plans to mitigate climate change; the first thing he mentioned was the precautionary principle.
You think it is all over? Think again folks.
It's a pity that some of the commenters above didn't read the rest of my piece in today's Sunday Telegraph (though one or two did) before rushing in to claim that I am being 'too optimistic' about the colllapse of the AGW scare.
The whole purpose of my piece was to remind readers, as I have done many times before, that, although the science behind the scare has been crumbling apart, we are still lumbered with the colossal regulatory and tax overkill it has led to, notably the Climate Change Act, passed lmost unanimously by Parliament in 2008 and committing Britain, uniquely in the world, to cutting CO2 emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
Although I have many times written about this. what was new about today's article was that it reported on replies received from (now nearly) 60 MPs in answer to letters from my readers asking them how this target can be achieved without closing down virtually all our fossil-fuel and computer-dependent economy. As I say,not one of the MPs even attempted to address the question, They merely repeated what Dr Lovelock might call the 'meaningless drivel;' they have been fed by government (among those MPs who replied were three Cabinet ministers). Of course the real problem for some time now has been not the scientific case for AGW but the fact that our politicians seem completely oblivious to the scale on which this has collapsed. but just carry on regardless with all their ridiculous proposals for 'de-carbonising' our economy,
This was the point of the title I gave back in 2009 to my history of the AGW scare The Real Global Warmng Disaster: Is the obsession with climate change' turning out to be the most costly scientific blunder in history? The real problem with scares like this (as I had already discussed in an earlier book, Scared To Death) is always not the scare itself but the incredible damage done by the political response to it, which continues long after the reasons given to justify the scare have been discredited.
Atlhough Andrew did kindly link to today's column in his post, it can be found on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9350678/MPs-have-no-idea-how-to-meet-the-carbon-target-they-voted-for.html
,
I read the whole article Mr Booker and may you live a long life and continue to help us understand what is being done to us because it is hard to keep tabs on it all.
@DaveS: Others may recall a substantial (in column inches) piece by Letwin in the Telegraph ...
Isn't Overseas Aid a merry-go-round scam whereby said 'aid' cycles back into the coffers of preferred/connected suppliers in which the Establishment has its retirement expectations invested?
In order to understand what the UN is trying to achieve, you have to investigate three different areas they have defined; Climate Change, Sustainability and Bio-Diversity.
On the basis of Bio-Diversity, activists in the USA almost got a project called "Wildlands" passed into law. This project would have meant that about 50% of the land in the USA would have become permanently off limits to humans. A further 15% would have been off limits to almost all humans. Nature is more important than humans.
Dung: seconded. I'd pointed others back to the article, Christopher. for precisely the reasons you give. The 'colossal regulatory and tax overkill' itself needs to be killed. You've led the way.
Methinks the road to hell might now be paved with sustainable development.
Hilary:
Brilliant finish. The question is how dangerous is SD now that the CO2 scare is dead (as I describe the situation). Not that much, in my view. Climategate made a very real difference. Thanks, FOIA.
(It's a view and it may be wrong. I honour that watchmen on the walls now even I go off to church and to watch England play in the Euro quarter finals. We all enjoy so much because of those now and history that have remained vigilant for freedom. Think Strider when Frodo first meets him in The Lord of the Rings, if that helps. Christopher Booker would be able to help you more.)
we need an online affiliation that identifies RENT SEEKERS and exposes them thoroughly.
Case in point re the discussion here are the real estate landlords (Sir Reginald, city councils,..) and the wimmill "employers"
England doing well in Euro 2012
And the non appearance of Neo Nazis mayhem
Has kept Rio+20 off the front pages and lead items on the news channels
Cameron didnt go to Rio+20 even though he was available and next door in Mexico at the G20.
So he sent Nick Glegg instead
If England do beat Italy in 3 hours time
He will be at the Semi final against Germany
Who will you be booing most for.
Cameron or Angela Merkel
There is surprising little impartial coverage from Rio+20, most of the commentary is from people who weren't even there. Ron Bailey was at Rio and Rio+20, check out his coverage: http://reason.com/people/ronald-bailey/all
Booker's column in the Sunday Telegraph paper edition reached half a million homes this morning, probably a million readers for starters. It's also heading up the 'most viewed' list in the online edition.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
(1) The Climate Change Act has built in mechanisms for quiet self-emasculation and need not be a barrier to abandonment of the actions it appears to mandate. There is no need for any open political U turn; instead the mechanisms can be invoked without fuss, maybe buried in different business, and heigh ho! The Bill will commit nobody to anything.
(2) I suggest that sustainable development will not succumb to accusations that it is all meaningless drivel. Certainly, top-down policies often produced by conferences and the like are drivel, but at a more mundane level the term has a meaning which should not be scorned. Examples are: ensuring that developments such as factories and machines can be operated and used for gain once the builders and manufacturers have gone, for instance because they do not require non-existent operators. Or that new housing will not wash away if drains block because no arrangements are made to keep them clear. Note that these actually refer to developments and not continuing processes like fishing. And I cannot understand the need for education courses, policies or conferences on such a basic idea. A lot of people, uneducated in the work, just do it as part of the daily grind.
Level Gaze says: Would someone please inform my Australian Prime Minister.
Jun 24, 2012 at 10:54 AM | Unregistered CommenterLevelGaze ...
Level G, You will have to wait until Julia's Gizzard is on the chopping block at the next election!
Then 90% of Australians will tell her where to stick it!
As for the other 10%...deport them! and send her back to Wales as a traitor.
Jun 24, 2012 at 8:26 AM | geoffchambers
Sounds like it was written by a bunch of hippies. Oh, I forgot ...
What came after hippies? They'll be at the top of the tree next.
I would like to offer an example of sustainable development: The English Countryside. People often look upon it as nature, but of course it has been managed into the green and pleasant land we enjoy by farmers and landowners over hundreds of years.
The important point is that this has been managed and achieved without any politicians making laws about it. Just people who love it (and understand the brutality of nature, and life and death, not tree-huggers). Sustainable development occurs only when indiviudals own the assets, not collectives (and here I would include government). I live near the New Forest. It has been successfully managed in its current form for 800 years (although New Labour had to turn it into a National Park - watch for the loss of individual freedoms that will follow).
To politicians and tree-huggers everywhere: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The primary weapon in the UN system and other NGO's push for sustainable development is education, preschool, K-12 and higher ed. As long as accreditation acts as the enforcer for this vision globally through the misunderstood quality assurance process, the UN doesn't need additional treaties or new vehicles to put its vision in place.
The Obama administration quietly announced last week that it is bringing the UNESCO influenced Bologna Process to change higher ed to the competences and qualifications approach that originated in UK and now has spread to Europe and Australia. Again in the US it is the accreditors spreading the poison by blackmailing higher ed institutions when they are up for accreditation renewal. Change how you educate or lose participation in the federal student loan program. That's a lot of leverage.
Sustainable development is ultimately about changing values and emotions and attitudes and creating a belief in global, collectivist thinking. All systems thinking being encouraged again by education is the schemers handmaiden.
This is a quote from one of the original Education for Sustainable Development documents put out by UNESCO:
"Through ESD, we should acquire a better understanding of the complex interdependence between human needs and the nature of the environment, between economics and culture, and between the local and the global. Ultimately, the Decade's goal is to integrate the values inherent in sustainable development into all aspects of learning to encourage changes in attitudes and behavior that allow for a more sustainable and just society for all."
With education globally on board and the US having this shoved down its throat through Race to the Top and the Common Core's real implementation and now the Lumina Foundation's Degree Qualifications Profile for higher ed, education for sustainable development and Green Growth is just cranking up.
But I really wish the UK had kept Michael Barber and Ken Robinson and Cambridge Education at home. They are really spreading much ed poison in the states now. Well paid for their trouble though.
The main problem with derailing the climate change gravy train is the big city self-congratulatory big-end-of-towners who have a vested interest in keeping things going. If the taxpayers' money keeps getting diverted their way their enthusiasm won't wane. I'm talking about the green NGOs, banksters, learned societies, universities, landowning rent seekers, big energy firms with a lucrative subsidised sideline in wind and solar, assorted spivs, charlatans and carpetbaggers and any others I can't think of at the moment.
This is a jam-packed Bombay train with people hanging out the doors. When it is finally brought to a shuddering halt the wreckage won't be pretty, for which the above have only their own greed and amorality to blame.
Jun 24, 2012 at 1:10 PM | Registered Commentershub
To anyone coming in at the end of this discussion, I commend shub's very perceptive post. In particular, he/she points out that establishing the process is the main game. As long as you are enshrined in the (undemocratic) process, setbacks do not matter. There will be another fully funded meeting, at another resort, where you can have another go, ad infinitum.
Then, Bitty tried to explain what 'sustainability' means, with all the usual catchphrases:
"An economy that doesn't destroy its environment. In no particular order: industrial processes that don't pollute the water, the air, and the ground; products that are recyclable or reusable; extractive industries that respect their host communities and leave the environment as they found it; farms that conserve their topsoil and don't overuse pesticides and fertilisers, that live with nature instead of obliterating it; fishing that doesn't destroy fish stocks; etc."
Bitty, any economy, including in the natural world, 'destroys' (i.e. changes) the environment. Have you ever seen the aftermath of a plague of caterpillars, or locusts, or wood-boring larvae? Nature is profligate, wasteful and destructive on a scale that humans can barely imagine. Part of the conceptual problem that the 'green' movement has posed to rational folk is the notion that Nature is a kindly, nurturing, carefully balanced, fragile entity. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Like every other life form on this planet, our survival depends on taking what we can. There is nothing wrong, either morally or practically, with doing that. The planet doesn't care (as George Carlin brilliantly pointed out) in the least what we do - no more than it cares if glaciers cover much of the surface and kill everything in their path, as has happened in the past.
There are good as well as practical reasons for promoting things like clean air and water, not wiping out our seafood and so on. They do indeed underpin the survival of humans - but not in the way that green ideologues present it. We live longer and better lives if we have clean air and water, but that only happens if we use energy sources gouged from the uncaring mantle of the planet, at present. If/when they run out, history tells us that we will find alternatives - as we have done (nuclear) and are continuing to do. My personal view is that wind energy is a complete dead-end, abandoned centuries ago for good reasons, and it is just a kind of atavistic sentimentality to imagine otherwise. As for solar, while the whole planet is a solar energy power plant, after over 40 years of hearing about the breakthrough that is just around the corner, I am inclined not to invest my retirement savings in it.
I must disagree with the poster above who claimed, on behalf of us all, that everyone agrees with Bitty's cliches about 'sustainability'. I, for one, do not. I am thankful for the Industrial Revolution, which would never have happened in the contemporary regulatory regime. And, it is despicable that those who are basking in its benefits now seek to deny them to the poorest people in the world because they seek, like aristocratic families, to airbrush the awkward facts of their ascendancy from history.
"An economy that doesn't destroy its environment. In no particular order: industrial processes that don't pollute the water, the air, and the ground; products that are recyclable or reusable; extractive industries that respect their host communities and leave the environment as they found it; farms that conserve their topsoil and don't overuse pesticides and fertilisers, that live with nature instead of obliterating it; fishing that doesn't destroy fish stocks; etc."
And World Peace, you forgot World Peace.
I feel like a 10 stone weakling in a tag team with the world's best wrestler, but I'll try and add my own, inaritculate, twopenneth to what Rhoada has already said.
This is meaningless drivel without World Government, preferably unelected and run by Richard Branson and George Monbiot, by fiat of course else George wouldn't take the job, and we couldn't have that..
If a government, particularly a powerful government decides it wants to put the needs of its poor ahead of the planet and the needs of future generations then how are we going to stop it without Messrs Branson and Monbiot being given carte blanche to nuke the bastards?
Here's what sustainable development is to me, it is putting food on the tables indigents right now, providing health care for their people right now, providing their children with an education right now and giving them a say in how their countries are run right now. Whoops I've just described the evil capitalist Western industrial countries, who also have cleaner water, less pollution and try to protect their fisheries etc. etc. The very places where the most sustainable development is taking place are the pantomime villains of the green world, the Western industrialised, capitalist societies. The first target for destruction in the CAGW scam and the SD scam.
That's what we're objecting too, behind the meaningless drivel there is a genuine desire to take us back to some pastoral idyll that has never existed and never will. And on the road to this non-existent nirvana we'll take lots of money from people in the West and give it to Dictators and Despots to share with their people. As if.
Jun 24, 2012 at 5:37 PM | Richard Drake
Thanks, Richard ... This fits well with my preferred perception of myself as a diamond in the rough ;-) But, kidding aside ...
Notwithstanding the vale/volley of tears being shed by BIG green at the "outcome" of Rio+20, SD (IMHO) has the potential to be far more "dangerous" than the C02 scare in that it is less limited/limiting than "climate change <- C02" and presents an opening that one could drive a proverbial truck(load of "causes") through.
But, considering the UN's mediocre past performances - in practically any arena in which it has succeeded in insinuating/incorporating itself - this may well be par for the course.
I suspect that SD may well turn out to be orders of magnitude more "plastic" than Mike Hulme's depiction of "climate change"
To my mind, the beauty of Climategate (The Saint, whom you call FOIA, be praised!) is that it prompted so many more thinking beings to investigate for themselves the IPCC/UNFCCC claims as dutifully regurgitated by MSM meda mavens for far too many years.
My guess is that this was not part of "the plan" ... the gradual but inexorable elevation of IPBES (which has been waiting in the wings for its older sibling, IPCC, to fail) and perhaps significantly was actually mentioned in the outcome doc while IPCC was not, suggests that we might well see a folding of the IPCC tent as its pillars are merged into that of IPBES.
Pachauri's presence in Sustainia tent may be a harbinger of developments to come ... perhaps, well, faster than we thought ;-)
I have been writing about the Beverly Forum, managed by the US's National Science Foundation and the UK's NERC, and its involvement with UNESCO and UNEP in an aggressively named (by the schemers. I would have been more creative) Future Earth Alliance that is scheduled to go operational in 2013. It appears that the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme out of Sweden will be where that action is physically. Away from the prying eyes of British or Australian or American taxpayers.
Again the schemers need no more treaties. Just Western money without taxpayers noticing.
Also on the back to the idylls of the countryside, the new economics foundation's "human relationships instead of economic growth" is also getting exported globally through education initiatives.
Plus one of 21st Century powers the UN agencies want is to have preapproval over all innovations globally in every country before they can go to the production stage. That's de facto economic management and central planning being assumed right there. Nothing unacceptable to Their global vision is supposed to happen anymore.
Unless more of us better understand what is up in time, we will be telling our grandchildren--"I remember freedom to make my own decisions. I remember when literacy was widespread. I remember when average adults were well-informed and could explain their positions logically. Now everyone just feels and believes that is thinking."
Things are more precarious than they seem. Hence all the attention on "nothing came of it. Nothing at all."
I try to avoid sterile left-right arguments, (no, really) but I can’t let thinkingscientist get away with this:
No laws about the English Countryside? Apart from Enclosure acts, Corn Laws, and all the statutes laying down which part of your anatomy would be cut off for stealing a rabbit from His Majesty’s domains?And when it comes to understanding “the brutality of nature, and life and death..” the ancestors of today’s left, who were thrown off the land into the cities or round the world to the Antipodes (where they invented universal suffrage) knew a thing or two.
I love this green and pleasant land with its stout-hearted morris-dancing yeomen as much as the next member of the National Trust. But a justified hatred of Miliband and all his works is no excuse for rewriting history as a Rupert Annual.
What the middle-aged, never-had-a-proper-job-since-hippiedom, parasites and their teeny camp-followers who spew out this garbage aren't bright enough to realise is - that it's self contradictory.
The whole Mother Earth Gaia schtick is based on a primitive understanding of the fact that the forces that control nature are all-powerful and beyond our comprehension or control.
That's just a primitive way of saying that, with current and foreseeable technologies, we have no way of modelling such complex natural processes.
Notwithstanding that - they go on to demand huge, life threatening, sacrifices be made - to appease vaguely perceived natural threats.
They really are no different to Inca priest sacrificing virgins to appease the might of the gods.
I wish them luck with bio-diversity though.
If they've already failed to get public support by threatening people that their kids are going to starve, drown or fry - do they really think we're going to give up our standard of living to maintain their arbitrary inventory of creepy-crawlies.
Think of the placards:-
"Nematode species down to 500,000 - we demand action now!"
"Live & let live - bring back the typhoid bacillus!"
Perhaps they could photoshop a lonely typhoid bacillus, on a little island of culture gel surrounded by a sea of antibiotics, and get it on the front page of the Guardian - that'd be a tear jerker.
Foxgoose:
Another renewable resource that proved unsustainable..Despite Johanna's paean to selfishness, I somewhat doubt that she would put up with any unrestrained economic activity in the vicinity of her house. Try putting a windmill in her line of sight or fracking the rocks beneath her feet and she will suddenly find that developments that do not pay for all externalities are not so desirable.
Bitbucket
What you asked for is not unreasonable, is mostly already the law and I dont see what Johanna has to complain about. However what the UN is working towards has nothing to do with what any normal person would think of as "sustainable development", that is just a pleasant sounding objective within which to hide their true aims.
One of the great, thought-provoking BH threads, which is why I return early on Tuesday with some quick responses, in case anyone else should return, despite justifiable excitement with Nic Lewis's demolition of a central plank on the IPCC story, casting doubt on its commitment to little matters like the scientific method, replication and openness. (As an aside, I prefer Nic's way rather than mydog's. The first's dynamite is placed against a central pillar, the other's chewing gum is attached somewhere else, somewhere said to be deeper in the foundations. It might be very special chewing gum, of course, but it would be a pity indeed, before that was shown beyond doubt, if the chewing gum distracted anyone's attention from the dynamite even for a moment.)
Ecclesiastical Uncle: you provide important correctives to much of what others are saying here. I think you're right on both points. Sustainable development can mean something very sensible. And in the hands of a frustrated UN plutocrat it is meaningless drivel - drivel that is intent on regaining the power these guys looked set to obtain through AGW drivel before FOIA came along and gave us release.
Foxgoose:
Brilliant and absolutely right. They are staring at colossal failure. It's not easy for them - many snouts in many troughs have been relying on them to pull something else out of the fire. Their impotent rage will be unpleasant for all of us to behold. Tee hee.
Geoff Chambers:
And that's exactly what is going to happen from here on in. With the CO2 scare gone, with sustainability and biodiversity limping along trying to replace it with something, anything ... we are going to have to start disagreeing with each other about the trade-offs that are the proper job of practical politics. But you're right, I hope, that we've learned the poverty of left versus right during this caper. May the best argument win.
Hilary: you're right that SD preceded AGW and that it could in theory be more dangerous. My own perspective is that when the New World Order for World Peace stuff failed in the 60s and 70s the power seekers looked to Mitrany's functionalism as a way to get World Government by the back door. (Or failing that, massive unjust profits. That's always the consolation prize for the poor wee bairns.)
But, as Foxgoose for me brilliantly demonstrates, there's no traction with the general public in what's left, now that so many eggs have been placed and smashed in the AGW basket. That egg's now on too many faces. What a great time to be a sentient human being :)
Perchance they'll contemplate the possibility of sustainable alarmism? As things stand, we'll hit Peak Alarm by 2030. We're probably only months away from a tipping point.
Despite Johanna's paean to selfishness, I somewhat doubt that she would put up with any unrestrained economic activity in the vicinity of her house. Try putting a windmill in her line of sight or fracking the rocks beneath her feet and she will suddenly find that developments that do not pay for all externalities are not so desirable.
Jun 25, 2012 at 3:32 PM | Unregistered CommenterBitBucket
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Bitty, do not twist my words. Please quote where I said that I support unrestrained economic activity, whether near my house or anywhere else. You can't, because I didn't.
I said that I am thankful for the Industrial Revolution, and anyone who hopes to live beyond the age of 40, and to have enough to eat, and decent shelter from the elements, should do the same. That doesn't mean that I think that the IR was a bed of roses - in fact, anyone with a functioning brain knows that it was ugly and brutal in many respects. But, to get a sense of perspective, you need to realise that all those poor sods who flocked to the cities to work in factories and mines were not escaping a rural idyll. On the contrary, they fled hunger, huge infant and child mortality rates and no prospect of improvement in the future.
I can't be bothered looking it all up again for a troll like you, but have previously researched statistics on life expectancy and infant/child mortality in the country vs cities/mining towns during the Industrial Revolution. Being a peasant in the country in those times was unquestionably a worse bet than taking your chances in the dark satanic mills. If I remember correctly, life expectancy alone was more than 10 years greater for escapees from 'harmony with Nature', from a miserably low base.
I suppose you think that John or Jane who was one of the 3 or 4 survivors of 10 children born to a poor rural family, who left to work in a mine or a factory, were being selfish. Well, you bet they were, and a good thing too. Of course, John and Jane's family were 'self sufficient', and their food miles were practically zero. Pity it meant starving in bad years. This is still happening to rural families in the Third World 200+ years later, and your loathsome ideology supports it.
Johanna: I've not valued anything you've written more than that. Robust compassion.
Johanna, I think you are confused: "I am thankful for the Industrial Revolution, which would never have happened in the contemporary regulatory regime."
You imply disagreement with "the contemporary regulatory regime" as it would have prevented the unrestrained economic activity of the Industrial revolution, and yet you are also against unrestrained economic activity itself. So you are somewhere in the middle then... Which regulation are you against; presumably nothing that affects raptors, as you are fond of them; but I guess pigeons are fair game (see Delingpole thread).
After your rant about Third World poverty, will you be telling China which bits of their industrial activity they should restrain, bearing in mind your objection to unrestrained economic activity and also your concern for the starving poor?
"...and your loathsome ideology supports it" - you have no idea of my 'ideology'. The Third World poverty you are so concerned about has more to do with Marxist/communist ideology and decades of dreadful government in those countries than with western environmental protection.