A Taste of the Unexpected

Posted on 18 June 2011 by Graham

Book Review A Taste of the Unexpected How to grow your own remarkable fruit, vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices and flowers

by Marc Diacono

Hdbck 192pp Quadrille publishing 2011

Marc Diacono runs Otter Farm in Devon, “the UK’s only climate change farm where we’ve planting olives, peaches, pecans, persimmons, apricots, szechuan pepper, vines and much more.” He is also leads the Garden Team at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage. He has worked closely with forest garden guruMartin Crawford whose influence in some of the choice of plants described here is evident, and the two appeared together on a recent R4 Food programme.

The notion of a climate change farm is an interesting one: facing the prospect of a warming climate Marc has started growing crops like those listed above that would have been considered marginal for Britain until recently. “The idea is beautifully sustainable” explains Marc- “if we can take advantage of climate change to grow food usually sourced from overseas we will be producing low carbon food for a domestic market – helping arrest the acceleration of climate change. As a result Otter Farm has become known as the ‘Climate Change Farm’.”

In this video clip from Jan 2009 Marc can be heard saying how mild the winters have become and how the grass doesn’t stop growing- this is quite surprising since it was in the middle of the first of the past two really cold winters we have had in Ireland at any rate, and I am wondering if he still thinks the winters are likely to be that mild, and whether he has lost some more tender stuff recently. For example, I lost many of my small Myrtus Ugni during the past two winters- and in this book, Marc does advise “if you live in a colder region, I’d be tempted to keep your plants undercover, at least through the colder months.” I live in a milder part of Ireland, and this is a plant that should be hardy to -10degrees C, so this does perhaps give an indication of the difficulties of adapting in terms of the plants we might grow to a climate that is unlikely to change in a linear fashion.

That being said, this is a sumptuously illustrated book full of good ideas and lots of sensible practical advice on both growing, preparing and cooking some really interesting food crops not found in the average allotment.

Marc’s philosophy is very simple and makes a lot of sense: why grow the same old standard staple veg like potatoes and cabbage, which can easily be bought cheaply (good old intensive industrial agriculture) when you could fill your garden with exquisitely delicious food crops like mulberries, Szechuan pepper, apricots and yacon?

he also advises to choose “easy winners” and going for perennials and plants that don’t need too much attention.

There is a great chapter on nut trees, in which he recommends perhaps surprisingly, in addition to chestnuts and walnuts- if you have space for them- also pecans which apparently he is having success with.

Under soft fruit he includes blue honeysuckle, autumn olive -Eleagnis umbellata- and fuchsia (ever tasted a fuchsia berry?).

Many of the plants he includes I am familiar with and am growing myself; one that was quite new to me is the perennial vegetable Kai lan, apparently a cross between kale, asparagus and broccoli, which sounds fantastic and definitely one I will try for next year.

All in all a lovely book, the perfect present etc., an essential addition to the forest gardening bookshelf and a great companion to Martin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden.

Posted in book review, climate change, Food, Forest Gardening | Leave a comment

Cat’s out of the Climate Change Bag

Posted on 17 June 2011 by Graham

(Update 21-06-11: Further discussion on Greenpeace and the IPCC at the economist. Steve McIntyre on conflcit of interest policy here.)

Mark Lynas- who featured on last year’s channel 4 documentary What the Greens Got Wrong- has put the cat amongst the pigeons with his recent criticism of the IPCC report on renewable energy. I know something of what this feels like.

In classic IPCC style the Summary for Policymakers was released weeks before the actual report, which means that the conclusions- that 80% of the world’s energy could be met by renewables by 2050- went round the world’s media before the study itself could be scrutinized.

Lynas explains:

Here’s what happened. The 80% by 2050 figure was based on a scenario, so Chapter 10 of the full report reveals, called ER-2010, which does indeed project renewables supplying 77% of the globe’s primary energy by 2050. The lead author of the ER-2010 scenario, however, is a Sven Teske, who should have been identified (but is not) as a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace International. Even worse, Teske is a lead author of the IPCC report also – in effect meaning that this campaigner for Greenpeace was not only embedded in the IPCC itself, but was in effect allowed to review and promote his own campaigning work under the cover of the authoritative and trustworthy IPCC. A more scandalous conflict of interest can scarcely be imagined.

To hardened skeptics this is nothing new, in fact it’s par for the course; what is notable is that Mark Lynas has decided to call the IPCC out despite being a climate change activist himself and author of the truly alarmist book Six Degrees (2008). Continue reading →

Posted in climate change | 15 Comments

Perennial Vegetables

Posted on 17 June 2011 by Graham

Here are a few perennial vegetables that I have been growing the past couple of years. We have some of these, and more plants, for sale at the Derryduff nursery. I will be away from next week until the end of July but if you are interested in plants contact me through the comments. Perennials have the advantage of not having to be sown from seed each year, so you don’t have to dig and prepare soil and weed so much, which means some of them are producing quite early in the season while you are still struggling to get your annual sprouts started. Although some are vulnerable to slugs in the first year, most are more resistant to slug damage than many annual veg once they are established. Most of these below I have established in forest garden situations, around or between fruit and nut trees. They have the disadvantage that they take at least a couple of years or maybe more before they produce much.

Siberian Purslane

Siberian Purslane- claytonia sibirica excellent perennial salad, beet-flavoured leaves, grows to about 8-12”high and wide, semi-evergreen in mild areas, ready to eat very early, from late February onwards; shade tolerant. Tasty!

This is a new one for me, only in its second year so I have not been eating from it yet. Growing here on a sandy bank through a ground cover of creeping raspberry Rubus “Betty Ashburner”. It seems to have been blown over by the wind or possibly knocked over by hares the little divils.

Good king Henry Chenopodium bonus-henricus -Perennial greens, can be eaten cooked like spinach (too bitter raw); Good ground-cover, happy in some shade under trees. This is a native wild edible, uncommon though- I’ve never seen it in the wild.

One of my favorites, Turkish Rocket Bunias orientalis is very easy to grow, highly productive tough perennial, grows 80cms high and 30-40cms wide; produces abundance of small broccolli heads from March, followed by edible flowers; quite a strong pepper-flavour, and the leaves are far too bitter to eat raw, maybe cooked they are ok but I don’t bother. I had a good few meals of this in the spring and then cut some of them back hard; they are now producing another set of heads. The strong flavour is not for everyone but I love them and this is a really hardy plant that can easily hold its own against weeds once established. Essential for the forest garden.

Pokeweed- phytolacca americana- a known wild edible from North America, this plant provides asparagus-like spears edible up to about 2ft- the plant itself will grow 6ft or more. Highly recommended by Martin Crawford of the Agroforestry Research Trust he warns in his book Creating a Forest Garden how to cook it:

The shoots are toxic when raw and must be prepared properly. Place in cold water, bring to the boil, then discard the water and replace with new boiling water and boil for 10minutes. The cooked shoots are delicious- like a larger version of asparagus- great with butter or a sauce.

I have a patch of pokeweed now in its second year, and tried my first shoots a couple of weeks ago- I found them very nice and tender. Much easier to grow than asparagus, productive and shade tolerant, and the extra hassle of boiling twice is no bother really- highly recommended.

Not really a vegetable, more a herb, Sweet Cicely Myrrhis odorata is worth growing as an ornamental for its show of white snowy flowers in the spring, aniseed flavored leaves- used for sweetening acid fruits and rhubarb- and crunchy seeds which are ready now like an aniseed sweet. The roots are also edible apparently. Seems very happy even in deep shade. Lovely! Grows to about 2-3ft high and over a foot wide.

In the forest garden. Chives and Turkish rocket in flower in the foreground beneath apple trees.

Finally, couldn’t resist posting up this picture of one of the hares I share the land with, right outside the backdoor!

Posted in Forest Gardening | 2 Comments

All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace

Posted on 17 June 2011 by Graham

I only just recently got to watch Adam Curtis’ latest documentary, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, which I really enjoyed. As with Curtis’ previous work, such as The Power of Nightmares, a very wide range of different ideas and themes are linked together, perhaps too many if anything, and Curtis’ trade mark is the absorbing use of vintage news and documentary footage, combined with new interviews he has conducted.

The wikipedia article does a good job of relating all the topics covered in the three episodes, you might want to read that first if you havn’t seen the programs as I’m going to jump around a bit and pick out just some of the ideas that interested me.

The main theme of the series is that from the mid-20thCentury, new ideas emerging from ecology somehow hooked up with evolutionary theory, genetics and computer science to produce the idea that humans and human society, along with the rest of nature, can be understood as machines acting in a system, which are therefore controllable and predictable. Curtis sees this as a dangerous idea, that robs us of our human agency and makes us doubt the existence of free will, especially, the will to change things.

These themes converge dramatically in the Rwanda and Congo: -the Rwandan genocide is portrayed as the result of misguided liberal guilt of the departing Belgian colonialists, who had created artificial tribal conflict in colonial days by propagating the myth of Tutsi superiority; then encouraged the new Hutu government to rise up against the Tutsi minority who had oppressed them during colonial days. This was then exacerbated by misguided involvement of western aid agencies who set up camps which became breeding grounds for more violence; -meanwhile Dian Fossey studied Gorillas in Rwanda, ultimately coming to abuse the local people in efforts to protect the gorillas from poaching; -all this against a backdrop of the rise of computer technology which was fueled by the mining of Coltan in the Congo, spawning a war that has cost 4 million lives in the last 8 years- the computers being the machines which, according to some, then became the way out of economic boom and bust, the way to a stable society which could run itself- like a machine.

The series starts with a look at the influence of Ayn Rand’s influence on the modern world; I have to admit that I had no idea that her objectivist philosophy had had such influence on Alan Greenspan, who was one of here disciples.

While governments had been unable to provide stability in the markets, the advent of computers gave rise to the idea that human society itself could be modeled as a self-regulating system: computers became seen as a medium for liberation and equality. This idea emerged from Silicon valley in the 1970s at the dawn of the computer age. Environmentalist Stewart brand was one of the pioneers, providing one of the links between systems theory and ecology.

But prominent ecologists were already taking on the idea of nature as a self-organising machine. Jay Forrester was an early pioneer of cybernetics, the view that brains, cities and whole societies operated as networks of nodal connections, and that computers would be able to uncover their operating system.

The Odum brothers, Howard and Eugene, developed electronic models of ecosystems based on field data, which they claimed showed how nature self-organised towards balance: the idea of natural balance and the web-of-life. There models became accepted as fact within ecological science.

Although permaculture is not mentioned in the series, Howard Odum was a major influence on permaculture co-founder David Holmgren who dedicated his book “Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability” (2002) to him. He also references cybernetics as another strand of systems thinking, but goes onto say

the influence of systems thinking in my development of permaculture and its design principles has not come through extensive study of the literature, but more through an osmotic absorption of ideas in the “cultural ether” which strike a chord with my own experience in permaculture design. Further, I believe many of the insights of systems thinking that are difficult to grasp as abstractions are truths that are embodied in the stories and myths of indigenous cultures.

His reference to indigenous cultures provides an interesting cross-over of the role of systems thinking in actual machines- computers- to human society and nature- that there is an “intuitive” aspect to this understanding as well as an empirical one.

I had also come across systems theory in the work of Joanna Macey and Deep Ecology, and had a vague feeling then that it was somehow at odds with the “holistic” “intuitive” side of things that Deep Ecology was supposed to be all about. Computers and machines seemed the exact opposite of emotional encounter groups that were the hallmark of Deep Ecology sessions. I see now that the cybernetics part was giving the movement scientific credibility- it was science, with models and graphs and studies to back it up, but of a “holistic” kind. There were also lots of references and general interest within Deep Ecology with New Science, Capra and the Tao of Physics, Buddhism and physics and David Bohm, and so on. (From there you are only a short step away from Deepak Chopra and The Secret.)

So these ideas were taken on by greens and the counter-culture without realizing that they came from something as dry and soulless and mechanistic as computer science- the very antithesis of what the movement imagined itself to be about. “Getting in touch with nature” was supposed to be about the emotions, and spiritual forces, not lines of computer code, a great irony in this whole story which I find quite fascinating.

The idea of human systems was also influential in the next part of Curtis’ narrative, the hippy commune, and one of the greatest migrations out of the cities in America took place during the 1970s as mainly young people flocked to the land to live in small utopian communes which were non-hierarchical -they were supposed to operate like self-regulating systems. Some communes did prosper and thrive and are still around today- like The Farm in Tennesee, although Curtis mentions only that most of them failed after a few months or at most a couple of years. Why? (I lived in two communes for short periods of time; they were both pretty dysfunctional and as was often the case had rapid turnovers of residents. A major course of conflict was the dish-washing rota.)

Perhaps the problem was with the underlying theory of stable, self-regulating eco-systems in the natural world which, as Curtis explains in the documentary, has not stood the test of time. The models that Odum had made were over-simplified; ecology has moved on from the notion of “natural balance” and most ecologists now agree that ecology is about constant dynamic change and adaptation. There may not even be such a thing as a distinct ecosytem anyway, since boundaries are always permeable. (The idea of the whole earth as a system was developed into the Gaia hypothesis by Lovelock, something Curtis only mentions in passing.)

There is no such thing as natural balance, and computer models cannot replicate natural systems very well at all. This is a theme explored by Aynsley Kellow in his book which I reviewed here.

So what does this mean for permaculture? I don’t know, but the idea of a design system based on natural systems does seem to me these days to be metaphorical at best: actually we don’t want our systems to be too much like nature for all sorts of obvious reasons. There are lots of good ideas in permaculture for design and the idea of self-regulation in a designed system makes perfect sense- collecting rainwater, managing perennial landscapes for food- this need not have anything to do with a natural system though. Still, it is interesting that the underlying theory may be based on a completely flawed view of nature.

This idea however went on to inform public policy quite profoundly long after the science had moved on. In 1972 the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, based on Forrester’s cybernetics. The report used computer models to forecast the point of overshoot when the population and consumption of people would outweigh the planet’s carrying capacity. This has become a seminal text, one of the foundations of environmentalism, and is still widely referenced today, eg in the preface of “Fleeing Vesuvius”.

Critics claim models are only as good as the data and assumptions that go into them, and that the modelers underestimated the ability of humans to innovate and adapt. Interestingly, Curtis does not mention climate change, although this would be an obvious extension to the narrative: a science relying heavily on models, but with sometimes poor data, trying to integrate human, ecological and climate systems in one huge model, a process that is itself having enormous influence on policy. It is almost as if we believe that, given enough data and computer power, we can predict the future.

Curtis takes these ideas through the east European revolutions in the early 2000s, that used the same idea of non-hierarchical organisation, but that went the same way as the communes: they failed to account for power and inequality already present and soon reverted back into corruption.

Richard Dawkins gets a mention as taking the theory further with the idea of the Selfish Gene (originally invented by William Hamilton): human behavior can be understood as being driven primarily by the impulse of the gene to survive. This doesnt make people selfish necessarily, but it does provide an explanation for things like the Rwandan genocide: from the gene’s point of view, it makes sense to kill our cousins, or at least those not too closely related but not too distantly related either.

Which raises a couple of interesting questions, because if genes mean that we really are like computers and the code is in our genetics, where then does lie free will? This is really the whole point of Curtis’ film, to question the validity of a theory that says, everything can work as an orderly whole, we are just cogs in the machine, so how can we really work to change things? Where can political action come from? Interesting questions, but I am not sure that free will’s existence or otherwise is a testable hypothesis.

Curtis is concerned that seeing ourselves as just part of a system with “natural balance” could be seen as a way of justifying discrimination and apartheid, as had been done by Field Marshall Smuts and his theory of “holism”- everything had a natural place, presided over by white men. In this sense then these ideas of basing human systems on natural systems and striving for some kind of pre-existing balance is far from liberating or progressive, but could lead to oppression and fascism.

So a lot of interesting ideas, covering science, environmentalism and policy. I’m sure I’ll return to explore more them more in the future.

Posted in climate change, collapse, consciousness, Environment, Permaculture, Science and Rationaltiy | Leave a comment

Open Letter to Rob Hopkins and Transition

Posted on 14 June 2011 by Graham

Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Towns movement, has posted some comments on my recent blog post The Hockey Stick Illusion in which he has challenged the change of course this blog has taken since its inception in 2006. Since Rob is such an influential figure in the environmental movement and he has chosen to bring in such a wide range of issues in a comment thread I feel my response is worthy of a separate post in itself:

Dear Rob

Thanks for your comments and continual engagement with z5 which I know you have been following since it began 5 years ago.

You point out that there has been a dramatic change of direction in my views over the past couple of years, taking the blog far away from its original purpose of promoting peak-oil doom and powerdown/transition strategies.

This is true and now seems as good a time as any to address this in the context of some of the issues that you raise.

However, you seem to forget that change of direction means that I am fully conversant with the views you defend, having been at least as eloquent and vociferous advocate of them as you good self for many years; it is therefore curious that you think you can tell me I don’t know what is really going on in the environmental movement or within Transition: I am in fact as you well know intimately familiar with these positions.

I’m not going to try to give fully referenced responses to every point you bring up- some I have already addressed in other recent blog posts and will continue to do so. Each issue deserves many posts and books and ongoing discussion so I am not in any way suggesting this is the last word on any of it. Continue reading →

Posted in climate change, collapse, Genetic Engineering, Peak Oil, Science and Rationaltiy, Transition Towns | 46 Comments

The Hockey Stick Illusion

Posted on 11 June 2011 by Graham

Book Review

The Hockey Stick Illusion- Climategate and the Corruption of Science by A.W.Montford

pbck; 482pp

Stacey International 2010

In this thorough and well documented book Andrew Montford of the Bishop Hill blog tells the extraordinary story of one of the icons of the global warming argument, the “Hockey stick” graph, originally produced by Michael Mann in an article for Nature magazine in 1998, known commonly as MBH98 after the authors’ initials- Mann, Bradley and Hughes.

Although not necessarily crucial in proving ACC one way or the other, as Montford makes clear later in his book, the graph- showing that global average temperatures have spiked upwards in the late 20th century, presumably in response to rising levels of CO2 caused by burning fossil fuels, claimed a central place in the Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the IPCC. Montford writes:

“Whenever the Hockey Stick appeared, it was bigger, bolder and more colourful than any other temperature series presented. Mann must have been thrilled with the report. The final icing on the cake was when the IPCC chairman, Sir John Houghton, announcing the publication of the report, sat in front of an enormous blow-up of the Hockey Stick itself. This was Mann’s moment of triumph: 1998 was officially the warmest year of the millenium, a stunning recognition of his work.” Continue reading →

Posted in book review, climate change, Science and Rationaltiy | 12 Comments

Virtuous Corruption

Posted on 6 May 2011 by Graham

Book Review

The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science

Aynsley Kellow

Edgar Elgar 2007

Hdbck 218pp

This book by Aynsley Kellow, Professor and Head of the School of Government at the University of Tasmania, Australia, is a provocative and in depth look at the degree to which the scientific underpinnings of environmental policy may be at times, and perhaps even chronically, be subject to a sort of “virtual corruption” in which results are biased consciously or unconsciously to fit what the researchers may perceive to be a virtuous cause of environmental protection; and how increasingly this is facilitated by the movement of actual scientific research away from direct observation and field studies towards a ‘virtual science’ of computer modelling.

Kellow asserts that “a purely ‘scientific’ basis for public policy may be a chimera: there is rarely a linear relationship between science and public policy, with scientific understanding leading to only one policy option.” Continue reading →

Posted in Biodiversity, book review, climate change, Environment | Leave a comment

Fleeing Vesuvius: Collapse and the Church of Gaia

Posted on 18 April 2011 by Graham

Book Review

Fleeing Vesuvius Overcoming the risks of economic and environmental collapse

edited by Richard Douthwaite and Gillian Fallon

Feasta 2010 ppbck 417 pp.

The recent economic collapse is not just a financial and banking issue, not just an economic and political issue, not a result only of bad policies and lack of regulation, but actually precipitated by the passing of peak oil, which sent oil prices spiraling above $150/barrel in 2008 and is essentially sounding the death-knoll for industrial society. Not only will we never be able to return to economic growth, but we are now facing a chaotic period of decline and collapse. The peak of energy availability has passed and we are now staring into the abyss of continual economic contraction which will result in a vastly simplified society where human muscle power will progressively replace fossil energy, and we will return to the technologies of the Middle Ages or before.

Such is the fundamental of the oddly titled new book from Feasta the Irish-based think-tank on sustainable economics: Fleeing Vesuvius is not about responding to a natural catastrophe such as Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed Pompeii in AD79; nor is it about fleeing, for as editor Richard Douthwaite asks rhetorically, “We expect to get any clearer warnings of impending disaster than the people of Pompeii received. There are already financial fires around the economic cone. If we are to survive we need to move out quickly. Now. But which way are we to go? Is there a map? It would be a poor book about an emergency situation which did not provide one. So, for the final chapter, my co-editor and I asked the contributors to suggest actions which readers could take or support at four levels- personal, community, national and global.”

The book is layed out in seven parts: “Energy Availability”; “Innovation in business, money and finance”; “New Ways of using the land”; “Dealing with Climate Change”; “Changing the Way we live”; “Changing the Way we Think”; and “Ideas for Action”;

There are 28 contributors including economist Richard Douthwaite (author of The Growth Illusion and Short Circuit; julian Darley of the Post carbon Institute; Nate Hagens of the Oil Drum; and Reinventing Collapse author Dmitri Orlov; and with an introduction by Eamon Ryan of the Irish Green Party who had been minister for Communication, Energy and Natural Resources in the last government.

While the starting point is the same for each- the financial crisis and its connection to peak oil-, there are several wide differences of opinion expressed by the various contributors: some see a gradual decline which is worth trying to manage through Transition Towns and international treaties on climate change; while arch-doomer Dmitry Orlov for example pokes fun at such ideas, suggesting instead we should be more concerned with getting enough sleep, avoiding drawing attention to ourselves too much less we become a target for marauding gangs, and collecting things that dont lose their value that are easy to store such as bronze nails.

“Is there a reason to think” he asks when considering such community solution, ” that it is possible to achieve this radical simplification in a series of controlled steps? Isn’t that a bit like asking a demolition crew to demolish a building brick by brick instead of what it normally does? Which is, mine it, blow it up, and bulldoze and haul away the debris?”

While there are many worthwhile discussion in the book, I’m going to argue here that the general thesis expressed by all the contributors is based on an outdated and discredited concept of environmentalism rooted more in ideology than rational thought. Continue reading →

Posted in book review, climate change, collapse, Overshoot, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy | 12 Comments

Henry the Horse Hauls Timber

Posted on 10 April 2011 by Graham

I had a visit from Sandra of Horsepower In Irelandand her horse Henry to help me move my firewood from the meadow by the river up to my cabin.

Henry is an Irish Cob, experienced in ploughing as well as forestry and was more than able for hauling a lot of logs up the in parts quite steep narrow track. Horses really come into their own on a site like mine as there is really no other way of getting the wood up- usually I get unsuspecting visitors to bring it bit by bit which does workk quite well (although they usually decline a second visit), and I end up making many journeys myself with a log on my shoulder over the summer. Eventually it all gets up the hill but when Sandra offered Henry’s assistance I knew I could afford to cut a but more this year.

Most of the wood is birch and willow, some alder and a bit of birch. The wild willow coppices very well and can be cut after about 5 years. It burns fast but has kept me warm the last 10 years, so I’m not complaining!

Henry moved this pile in the day which I estimate to be roughly a cord of wood. I proably need at least another cord to keep me going through the winter- I burn very little wood from now until October/November.

Many thanks to Sandra and Henry for a fantastic amount of work in a few hours. I’ll have to get a lot fitter for the next time, running up and down the track trying to keep up behind Henry nearly killed me!

Posted in Horses | 2 Comments

Is a “Denialist” just Anyone who questions the Immorality of Progress?

Posted on 3 March 2011 by Graham

A lot of the commentary from skeptics blogs on the BBC Attack on Science programme was expressing the view that the Beeb was engaged in a one-sided attack on climate skepticism, and only plays to the environmental agenda.

I dont know if this is really true even though it might seem it after the Meet the Skeptics documentary also, but here at least from a year ago is a fascinating Radio 4 episode of Analysis asking Are Environmentalists Bad for the Planet?

Featuring Greenpeace chairman John Sauven, Jonathan Porritt, Professor of Climate Change Mike Hulme; the theologian and United Nations adviser on climate change and world religions Martin Palmer; Sociologist Lord Anthony Giddens; John Gummer MP and policy director of the New Economics Foundation Andrew Simms and others, the main theme is that, whatever about the science of climate change, climate activists are using it as a way of imposing their anti-modernist, anti-technology agenda:

PALMER: I think the core of what the environmental movement has done is it has taken sin, guilt and fear from religion and has used those very strongly. The problem is that in good religion – if I can put it that way – that is always combined with a sense of hope, a sense of liberational salvation and a sense of personal responsibility but not the kind of responsibility that makes you feel you are a victim of the weight of your sins and guilt. Bad religion ignores the hope, salvation dimension of it and seeks to create a climate of fear which then means that those in control of creating that climate of fear are in control of those people and become dictators and there is – and I hate to say this – but there is a very strong –it’s very small – but there is a very strong green fascism in much of the environmental world. I’ve heard it said at meetings I’ve been at – that climate change is so important – democracy has to be sacrificed.

This is indeed the view of for example Professor of medicine and IPCC author Dr. David Shearman who apparently argues in his recent book The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy that democracy is incapable of dealing with the global climate change crisis, and therefore needs to be replaced by an authoritarian world government with the power to force people to do what Shearman thinks they ought to do.

And here is Prof. Mike Hulme:

HULME: Some of the deep green movement would buy into this – that actually climate change is the best opportunity that we have got in order to get our political goal of a more egalitarian, localist, less consumer driven society onto the table. And we’ve seen over 40 or 50 years different tactics I suppose from some of these deep greens, eco-socialists if you like, to drive forward this idea and climate change is the latest and is an opportunity.

Increasingly it seems to me judging from the kind of reactions I’m getting, people get so vexed at any hint of skepticism, not because they feel it is contradicting established science, but because it challenges the religious conviction that the modern world of technology and growing populations is just plain wrong and doomed anyway. That’s what they really mean by “denialist”- not just someone who questions cutting CO2 even with no good alternatives to fossil fuels, but anyone who questions the climate of doom.

Well worth listening to the whole episode.

Posted in climate change, Environment | 2 Comments