|
||||||
|
The eyes of the world’s environmentalists are increasingly turning towards the vast and relatively untapped oil resources of the Canadian state of Alberta, about which a policy debate is unfolding in multiple jurisdictions that could be a definitive moment in understanding mankind’s relationship with natural resources. The reason that the usually little considered topic of Albertan development . . . → Read More: Facts and fictions Biofuels Digest blotted its moral copy book in a recent article on palm oil development: The NGOs have manufactured yet another Western justification for the villages of Africa and Asia to be denied the very benefits of economic development that no sane Dane ever denied to Denmark. In moral terms, it reminds us of the man who . . . → Read More: In response to Biofuels Digest (@bdigest) on the World Bank, ‘World Growth’ and palm oil This in response to a post on Vinay Gupta’s blog. Vinay, I think that you’ve missed a fundamental point here. In both the UK and the USA, there is a sense in which these ‘supreme councils’ for the environment already exist – the Environmental Protection Agency and the Environment Agency in particular,and a handful of other quangos . . . → Read More: Response to Vinay Gupta’s musings about an environmental supreme court This post is a response to Vinay Gupta’s call to blog on submissions to The future we deserve. The following is the contribution from Andy Novocin, my reflections upon it are below: A systemic revolution, or, the need for a post-scientific approach I remember learning about the scientific method through an example in a textbook. The example . . . → Read More: The future we deserve blogathon – reflections on “A systemic revolution, or, the need for a post-scientific approach” If you are in a group of people, and you ask one of them their birthday, you can be relatively confident that they will not have been born on the same date as you. With 365 days in the year (not counting leap years), even if you were born at a popular time of year, the . . . → Read More: For every coincidence, how many near misses? The UK is currently in the grip of a ‘deficit crisis’. It is told that if it does not decrease public spending, then its economy will falter and, worst of all, it might have its credit rating reduced. These conclusions, promulgated by a Conservative Government that some might suspect of having an ulterior interest in downsizing . . . → Read More: The inconsistent tyranny of numbers Environmentalists and campaigners in general are subject to many calumnies and injustices, such as being decried as ‘hippies’ in a broadly pejorative sense and seeing the credit for the changes they have worked on so hard for so long given to Bono. However, one habit of industries feeling unjustly targeted by environmentalist is to complain that . . . → Read More: Why don’t the environmentalists have anything to say about…? The history of Britain’s quangos is a vexed one. They exist in a space where independence and unaccountability overlap – designed to work at ‘arm’s length’ from ministerial influence, depending on your perspective they can be regarded as released from political interference or as removed from democratic accountability. It is an open secret that, as with any . . . → Read More: Independently illegitimate? “One hundred years of refusing to acknowledge the world outside of their village had destroyed them; and races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on Earth.” BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up over two months ago now, and since that time the Macondo oil field has . . . → Read More: 100 years of oil spills? The human brain is a wonderful instrument. Despite being ostensibly evolved to deal with a set of tasks that to a very great extent most modern people are in general not called upon to perform, it has excelled it’s design specification with a powerful aplomb, giving us such wonderful insights into pure mathematics, philosophy and music . . . → Read More: The thinker thinks, the prover proves |
||||||
|
Copyright © 2012 The thinker thinks… - All Rights Reserved |
||||||
Thoughts of others
No comments.