I've got to stop posting so much.

So it's about time for my monthly post.

Not sure if anyone still reads what I write here given my habitual absence.

Despite that, I'm going to be topical and talk about the election, or politics/voting in general.

Before I go on...

In other news, I've been working on a short film for the Crossroads Inaugural Film Festival. Mums the word, but I can tell you that it is not

• a porno
• in a language other than English
• shorter than 30 seconds
• a home made music video for a Justin Timberlake song

That should give you some idea as to what it's about.

Back to politics.

First, the biggest steak on the plate: Environmentalism. Why are people concerned with the environment? People are concerned because 1) it is immediate and proximal 2) they like clean air to breath and notice when it's not and 3) they believe the predictions and reports about threats to their lifestyles and livelihood. These are mainstream folks, though.

Hippies, latte-sippers and some such have other or additional reasons for their environmental concern. These reasons aren't so easy to sum up, but they do revolve around the idea that the environment and/or its components are intrinsically valuable (not valuable for any utilitarian reason for example).

(Of course my analysis may be completely wrong the "average Joe" may well be an accidental deep ecologist. It's hard to know.)

Now that's out of the way, the real question is why should one be concerned about the environment. I'm not a deep ecologist*, I don't think the environment has value beyond it's use to humans.

It would be easy to misinterpret the above sentence as me supporting gross environmental exploitation, but that would be stupid. Don't load up "use" with connotations you feel it has.

If one's desire is to use the environment for the good of people, then it would be inconsistent with one's desires to use the environment irresponsibly. This is because there would then be no natural resource left to use for the Good.

This means that conservation of the environment is for the sake of humans, and this is why I think you need to be concerned about the environment.

What effect does this have on policy making? This means you start from humans and work outwards. Things like the proposed pulp-mill - the question to ask is "what effect will it have on the health of the people in the area"? (I've heard mixed reports, so I'm sitting on the fence. It has economic benefits, but it also has the potential to create air pollution. Who knows? Due to these epistemological problems I'm forced to be agnostic.)

Okay I realised that I have so much to say and so little reader's attention span...

So in dot points!

• Industry is a bigger consumer of resources than the householder. We should put more pressure on industry to be environmentally responsible, and less on families who don't have the financial resources (except for rich yuppies driving their Toorak tractors) to be "environmentally friendly".
• Humans need to use energy. To work is to be human, to work is to use energy. This is a good thing. Enterprise, technology, science, ideas, creativity, art, civilization and many of the other goods of humanity require energy. So we shouldn't be tight fisted about energy, we should instead "live it up", and actively seek ways to make renewable energy affordable.
• This is controversial, but I don't think you can be both an environmentalist and in support of the eradication of poverty. There's no economic benefit in going to extreme measures to protect the "environment" ( I have to put it in inverted commas now since I've said the word so many times my brain is beginning to deconstruct the concept. It does that). It costs everyone, and doesn't feed back into the economy (except in the small profit from ecotourism). I guess I'm talking in particular the measures being made against climate change. Basically Global Warming is a big casino sucking money out of the economy, and it's not paying any tax.
• The solution? Well, we probably need to do something to preserve the world for future generations. I mean, that's what it's all about isn't it? If you're not a deep ecologist, you're probably a conservationist because you want your great grandchildren to be able to breath, eat and not have to wear a 400+ sunscreen. I've been doing a bit of reading on the issue of future generations in Environmental Ethics by Robert Elliot. There's two arguments... actually, I think I'll write about this next post... it's quite long.
  
• I'm not sure the Greens are the best people to handle environmental matters. They're deep ecologists at heart, so what part of the environment are they going to want to preserve? We can't guarantee that they'll want something best for humans; maybe something for the good of the ecosystem as whole, whatever that is. Also, they might be obsessed with preserving one part of the ecosystem (eg trees) at the expense of another. Being "Green" isn't monochromatic, there are many shades, and this is not a good thing. The Greens need to have an examined and philosophically coherent position from which to act before they can be good environmentalists.
  
• Epistemological problems... I'll come back to this one. This post is way too long already. :D
  

*I think deep ecology and related positions are untenable. If you'd like me to explain why, I'm happy to do so in future posts.