He’s a sexist redneck bigot I could never vote for, but America’s President has got a few things right — Notes from a deep green conservative I was on a long drive with an old acquaintance recently when the conversation turned to politics. It’s a topic I usually avoid with this person because of his voluble support for wacky conspiracy theories favored by the extreme right. When he announced a…

The poor and elderly in rich countries are the main victims, which raises uncomfortable truths about the western cult of longevity at any cost IT’S EASY to see the current pandemic from an exclusively ‘developed world’ point of view. We’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that the mobile and healthy…

Donald Trump and other western leaders are desperate to wrest a white male, monocultural narrative for the pandemic from the World Health Organisation Notes from a deep green conservative I RECENTLY read a novel called Fever by well-known South African author, Dean Meyer. It describes the aftermath of a coronavirus pandemic which wipes out 95 percent of the world’s population. It’s a good read, if somewhat technocratic in its view of a post…

The good and bad of modern travel — I’ve really burnt up my flight miles recently. I’ve been truly “flygskamed” as the Swedes say, jumping on an off big jets to have a holiday with family on the other side of the planet. Had we been acquainted, Greta Thunberg would have given me a right dressing down. …

In an era of exponential and uncontrolled growth we need a new kind of politics that give pause to humanity’s role on the planet — OCCASIONALLY, on a good day, I’m asked what a deep green conservative actually is. I say occasionally because many people I encounter just assume it’s a political witticism. After all, labelling oneself ‘deep green’ is associated with the radical left, whereas conservatism is about resistance to change and nearly always…

Climate disruption and biodiversity loss are our biggest global challenges. But our smallest governments hold the key to doing something about it — Notes from a deep green conservative IN THE LATE 1860’s a Harvard College mathematics professor, Benjamin Peirce, undertook a curious study. He estimated that a prominent elm tree near his office had a crop of seven million leaves that, if laid next to each other, would cover a surface of…

We learnt from the 1969 moon shot that Earth is special and vulnerable. Yet we seem determined to ignore what astronauts have been telling us for years — Random notes from a deep green conservative I DON’T LIKE to rain on anyone’s parade. But as I am sure many people have realized, it’s rather contradictory to be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing when it took half a million gallons (1.9 …

The idea of humans subduing the earth is fast losing ground to more inclusive views — If or when Moses sat down to inscribe Genesis 1:28 he obviously had no idea of the trouble he would cause around 3000 years later. For just as we now know that Moses probably wasn’t the author, we’re also coming to realize that giving humans ideological dominion over all other…

Our obsession with growth is ruining the planet. There are better alternatives. Notes from a deep green conservative. What would happen if the world experienced a long period of deliberate zero economic growth? It happened briefly after the Great Depression, although it wasn’t deliberate. My grandfather, then an Australian public…