Why we need a new natural law that asserts all technologies have equally good and bad consequences
Notes from a deep green conservative
AS YOU MAY KNOW, one of Isaac Newton’s biggest days occurred in the 1680’s with his erudite thought-bubble that every action has an equal reaction.
It was one of Newton’s numerous insights that helped codify our understanding of the basic laws of physics that govern the natural world.
Wind forward several hundred years to Moore’s Law. Perhaps not so linguistically eloquent, but until recently it has proved to be stubbornly true - that computing power doubles every two years while halving in cost.
While being neither physicist nor computer engineer, I would humbly contend…
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 fulsome endorsement of Donald Trump I was not surprised.
What did surprise me were the reasons for his support, and the fact that I agreed with some of them.
It was a long road-trip, and what I distilled from our rambling conversation were five disruptive, but essentially positive initiatives liberals…
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 are spreading the disease to the old and sick. End of story.
Except it’s not. Because the developing world, the poorer countries, are generally suffering less than wealthier nations from Covid-19.
Western media tends to blame it on under-reporting, as if this is an obvious conclusion to draw about the…
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 super-pandemic utopia.
It turns out that the virologist mother of the surviving hero manufactured the virus, then distributed a vaccine to her family and a few essential comrades in a heinously narcissistic attempt to reduce the planet’s human population.
The really chilling factor, however, is Meyer’s acknowledgement at the end…
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. She has a certain way about her that girl!
She’s onto something though. The Swiss bank UBS recently reported that air travel numbers could halve if present ‘flight shaming’ trends continue. I bet the airline industry didn’t see that coming.
Mind you, we’d only just be arriving if we’d sailed on…
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 the preserve of the right.
So ‘deep green conservatism’ doesn’t really fit a contemporary political definition.
But the world is changing, and traditional left/right political lines are becoming blurred, sometimes inverted.
Aspirational wealth is stretching Earth’s resources far beyond her ability to provide
For me deep green conservatism just makes…
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 2 hectares (five acres).
Peirce’s study has recently resurfaced as a touchstone for local and regional urban planners keen to illustrate the vast potential of a single tree’s foliage to absorb carbon dioxide, emit oxygen and provide shade.
Yet local and city governments are still often characterised as political backwaters…
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 million liters) of concentrated fossil fuel and additives to blast three men to that little exoplanet and back.
I’m aware, of course, that it took great courage by the astronauts to sit on top of all that fuel and go where no human had ever been before.
It was also a great technological achievement.
But…
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 species was probably a bad idea.
Yet the words are quite beautiful: “And God said to them ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that…
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 servant, began working a compulsory three day week.
He had enough time to build a family holiday cabin on the coast, and spent a lot of time fishing. He lived to a ripe old age and often described those years as the best of his life.
Yet modern governments avoid…
P. K. Denton
Author, journalist and mentor. I call myself a deep green conservative.
