Tolkien & the Sarehole Mill

Tolkien spent part of his childhood in Sarehole, England. He later wrote:

I could draw you a map of every inch of it. I loved it with an (intense) love...I was brought up in considerable poverty, but I was happy running about in that country.

One of the features of Sarehole is an old mill:

Tolkien had a happy childhood because he was blessed with a love of the beautiful countryside he inhabited.

I sometimes think that this is the true privilege: to feel closely connected to people and place, to family and nation, to the arts and culture, to masculinity or femininity, to the beauty of women, to one's history and heritage, to a church and to nature.

We lose sight of this when privilege is argued over endlessly in terms of degrees of political or economic status.

I do want traditionalists to contest for political and economic power, as without this we will remain forever marginalised. However, when it comes to what we use that power for, it helps to remember, I think, what true privilege means - that it is not status or power for its own sake, but for the sake of those things we feel meaningfully connected to and which inspire our love and commitment.

Feeling connected to your suburb is now a sin?



Rush at the station

Camberwell is one of the nicer historic garden suburbs of Melbourne. It is also also the boyhood suburb of comic Barry Humphries and the home of actor Geoffrey Rush. Both Rush and Humphries have taken part in movements to protect the heritage of the suburb from overdevelopment, including proposals to build a nine storey car park and office block over the historic railway station (they lost).

Their efforts to protect the heritage of Camberwell have drawn fire from a leading architect, Professor Kim Dovey. According to Dovey, people who resist modernity are ... well, racists and whatnot:

Melbourne University academic Kim Dovey has also accused some residents of trying to defend their patch from ethnic and class differences.

"There's an element of 'well, we're not racist, we welcome different kinds of people as long as they behave exactly the same as we always have," Prof Dovey said yesterday...

Prof Dovey said Rush had dramatised the issue by making people feel if they accepted change "they would be giving up something of themselves".

So bad luck if you feel attached to your lovely, green, historic suburb. According to Professor Dovey you're not allowed to try to conserve it for yourself or your children. If you do try, you're just resisting modernisation/globalisation and must be a racist. And Professor Dovey gets even more Orwellian. You're not even allowed to think, as your suburb gets transformed, that you're giving up something of yourself - that too is a forbidden thought.

More on green Anglicans

In my last post I reported that the Anglican Church in Australia, for green reasons, is calling for fewer babies and for less business related immigration.

I've only just remembered writing a similar post back in 2006 about the Episcopalian Church in the US (the American equivalent to the Anglicans). The Episcopalians commissioned a report to find out why they had lost 829,000 members between 1967 and 2002. The main finding was that the educated whites who made up the core of the Episcopalian Church had a low fertility rate of only 1.5.

So did the Episcopalians conclude that they should encourage family formation amongst their congregation? No, not at all:

Q. How many members of the Episcopal Church are there in this country?

About 2.2 million. It used to be larger percentagewise, but Episcopalians tend to be better educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children.

Q. Episcopalians aren't interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?

No. It's probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.

So environmentalism is being used here too to justify declining numbers and significance. It's as if the church leaders are saying, well we're not going to be a very significant church in the future, but that just shows how superior we are in our morals since we're demonstrating green credentials.

That seems hopeless to me. There are literally millions of illegal immigrants arriving in the US, fueling massive population growth. The environment is not being protected. So Episcopalians not having children is not serving any purpose at all. It's just hastening the process by which one population (of educated whites) is being replaced by other populations.

A global warming eye opener

Lawrence Auster isn't exaggerating when he begins his latest post on climate change with this advice:

This is must reading that will take you five minutes and alter your entire view of the warming issue.

I read the article he links to and it really is an eye opener. It explains how graphs showing movements in temperature can be terribly misleading. If we take only a recent slice of history then it does appear as if there has been significant warming. But the further back in time you go, the less significant the recent rise appears.

Read the linked article and you'll understand (the graphs in the article aren't ideal as they don't carry as far forward as they should and miss recent rises, but even with the half a degree change left out the basic point stands).

The author of the article is not anti-environmentalist. He would still prefer to develop cleaner sources of energy through the development of new technologies:

Does this mean that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas? No. Does it mean that it isn’t warming? No. Does it mean that we shouldn’t develop clean, efficient technology that gets its energy elsewhere than burning fossil fuels? Of course not. We should do all those things for many reasons — but there’s plenty of time to do them the right way, by developing nanotech.

We are not living out the last days of planet earth. The recent rises in temperature are small and well within normal, modest patterns of climate change.

So there is no reason for us to be railroaded into a massive transfer of funds to a new layer of global bureaucrats and placeholders. Once we commit to sources of funding for another layer of officialdom, we're likely to be stuck with the financial drain and the political interference in the long term.

Well after global warming itself has long been discredited and forgotten about.

Climate change & the liberal mind

The Age newspaper is in full campaign mode right now. We've reached a critical moment in the climate change debate in Australia, with a significant number of Liberal Party MPs breaking ranks and opposing an emissions trading scheme. The Age wants to neutralise them politically and has published not just one but three opinion pieces devoted to this end in today's edition.

What is the message in these pieces? The argument being made is that the climate change campaign is part of the long history of liberal progress that is threatened by a conservative opposition to change. A response to climate change means change to society and this is a good thing as change means progress. The only people, so the argument goes, who would oppose change are those with vested interests and those who are instinctively, and therefore ignorantly, conservative.

Tim Colebatch, the economics editor, explains the disappearing consensus on climate change this way:

Every landmark step that has made us the country we are proud of has been opposed by people motivated by inertia, familiarity with the way things are, or by vested interest.

If you oppose an emissions trading scheme, argues Colebatch, you are no different to those who opposed the abolition of slavery:

Two centuries ago, when William Wilberforce led the campaign to abolish the slave trade, the counterparts of Nick Minchin and Barnaby Joyce fought to defend it as an area of legitimate business in which governments should not interfere. Yet who thinks we should allow slavery today?

Colebatch isn't even pretending here to be a dispassionate scientific type, arguing from evidence. He is committed emotionally to a kind of Whig interpretation of history, in which change brings about progress, and therefore idealistic, moral people see themselves as "progressives" driving on change, against the selfish or ignorant objections of "conservatives" (who drag their heels) or, worse still, against the resistance of "reactionaries" (who want to change things back).

I can understand the emotional appeal of this view. You get to attach yourself to a progressive cause (which climate change has become) and feel like you are doing something meaningful in advancing humanity toward some ultimate end.

I can also understand why the Whig view was once taken seriously. The idea of liberal progress must have seemed more reasonable when European societies were dynamically on the rise in the 1700s and 1800s.

Even in the mid-1900s there was still an advance in the material standard of life in most Western countries, which must have helped prop up the idea of linear progress.

But today? It's a difficult idea to buy into. The West is clearly in decline relative to the Asian powers. Family life is more unstable than it once was; fertility is below replacement level; the arts have become generally low-minded; and the male wage hasn't improved in real terms since the 1970s.

Liberalism today seems not so much progressive as suicidal.

Tim Colebatch is wrong. We needed people in previous decades to take a firmer stance against destructive forms of change. Let me give just one example. When I was in my mid-20s there was a change in the culture of middle-class family formation. Whereas people would once have thought of settling down some time after completing university (early to mid-20s), it became the norm for university educated people to defer marriage and family to some vague period in their late 30s. Even at the time I thought this was a crazy development and I naively expected the powers-that-be to step in to correct the damaging situation.

But they never did this and we now have large numbers of women regretting missing out on marriage and motherhood.

And instead of admitting that the change was misdirected, liberals routinely respond to the complaints of these women with the idea that the change was good and progressive but that some people would inevitably be losers (the idea that you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette).

One of the other columns on climate change in today's Age was written by a lecturer in politics, Dr Paul Strangio. His argument is that the Liberal Party was always a liberal rather than a conservative party; that John Howard swung it to conservatism; and that this is why a conservative opposition to an emissions trading scheme has appeared. The message to Liberals is that they are betraying the whole history of their party by voting against a trading scheme.

Dr Strangio is probably right about the liberal roots of the Liberal Party. He quotes one of the early Liberal Protectionist statesmen, Alfred Deakin, who dreamed of a party that was:

Liberal always, radical often and never reactionary.

I'm more sceptical about the claim that John Howard somehow stole the Liberal Party for conservatism. Howard has actually criticised his successor Rudd for being too little change-oriented:

The Rudd Government comes up very short. I can't think of a major thing it has done, except spend the bank balance that Costello and I left behind. Nothing else.

The final opinion piece is by a young woman, Amanda McKenzie who directs a "Youth Climate Coalition". She begins modestly by calling for environmental stewardship:

As a young person I have a simple request of the current generation of decision makers - please leave the planet in at least as good a condition as you found it.

This is a good start. It leaves out the liberal ideology in favour of a simple request for responsible stewardship. But then she becomes alarmingly alarmist, claiming that only 50% of young Australians are going to survive warming:

the best-case scenario in the Government's policy position gives young Australians a 50 per cent chance of enduring climate disaster.

No surprise, then, that she doesn't end with a simple request after all. She wants change. Big change.

In 2050, people will look back at 2009, at the actions of our leaders and know if they deserved that title. Did they make the difficult call to transform Australia and transform the world ...

So climate change ends up being used once again as a cause justifying the transformation of the world.

Just don't ask to see the data justifying this change. It's all been settled you know. Back when we had that debate, you know, that long open-minded debate we had back in ... well, I'm sure we had it some time ago ... didn't we?

An excuse for an international tax?

The UN is asking Australia for $7 billion a year as our "carbon debt" - and Kevin Rudd has indicated a willingness to pay.

Should we be disturbed by the payment of such a large "carbon tax" to the UN every year? Andrew Bolt has provided some information that makes me think the answer is yes:

What makes this demand so brazen is that the UN has repeatedly asked for this same 0.7 per cent of our wealth - but each time with a different excuse.

In 1970, the UN called on rich countries such as Australia to give 0.7 per cent of their wealth to the Third World - minus those handling fees- to ensure "human dignity".

In 2002, it called on rich countries such as Australia to hand over that 0.7 per cent for "development" and to "protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth's ecosystem".

In 2004, the UN called on us to pay that 0.7 per cent to ensure "collective security" and a "more secure world".

In 2005, the UN told us to hand over that 0.7 per cent to ensure "millennium development goals" and fight poverty.

No go again. So the UN is going for broke at Copenhagen, demanding once more that 0.7 per cent from us, but this time to prevent "serious adverse effects of climate change".

The long-term plan seems to be to get countries like Australia to bankroll the UN with a permanent 0.7% annual tax. The UN bureaucrats have adopted the same strategy we often see to achieve this aim: if they are knocked back, they just keep coming back with revised claims until they finally get what they want (the EU politicians have done exactly the same thing to get their way).

This is happening just when some of the climate change science has been shown to be falsified. Lawrence Auster reported last month that the Siberian tree ring evidence for climate change has been debunked: the scientists involved picked out the one tree which did seem to indicate global warming whilst ignoring others which did not do so (i.e. they manipulated the sample).

And just today Lawrence Auster has reported on the discovery of emails from leading global warming advocates in which the falsification of data is openly discussed.

So right now the science supporting man-made global warming should be coming under increased scrutiny. We shouldn't be signing over billions of dollars to the UN, when clearly the UN is making another attempt to get a 0.7% annual tax from countries like Australia.

(On a lighter note, I had to laugh when I saw this article at a site called UN Dispatch: Global News and Views. It's titled "Women will be hit hardest by climate change". I don't think it's a parody of feminism - I think it's meant seriously.)

Melbourne not so marvellous?

Melbourne doesn't have a stunning natural feature like Sydney Harbour, nor do we have an iconic landmark like the Sydney Opera House. What we do have are quiet, leafy, uncrowded suburbs, the best of which have attractive historic architecture, extensive parks and fine public buildings. Melbourne has been ranked twice as the world's most liveable city.

But for how long? A population boom fuelled by mass migration is likely to send Melbourne falling down the list of liveable cities.

Here is the kind of thing we get to read now in our newspapers:

Bulldoze the 'burbs

Melbourne must destroy the bulk of its leafy eastern suburbs in order to thrive, a leading planning expert says.

Target suburbs include Brighton, Camberwell, Balwyn, Ormond and Preston.

Mr Black says spacious suburban blocks should be levelled and the homes replaced with three to six storey apartment buildings.

This is not a call to demolish slum housing to improve the urban environment. It's the reverse: Jason Black, state president of the Planning Institute of Australia, is calling here for the demolition of the very best suburbs to make way for crowded, high-rise urban living.

It brings to mind a poem I wrote some years ago in which a Melbourne boy of the future tries to make the best of things in his bed time prayer:

As I lay me down I pray
in thanks to those who took away
our house at No 22
its seven rooms and backyard too.

For now I live at 20/39
up here the weather's always fine
for grey clouds pass us far below
and if they rise then we get snow!

And yes I miss my dog it's true
and Dad pines for his BBQ
and Mum preferred the flowers and trees
the singing birds, the humming bees

But who were we to block the way
of progress, for politicians say
that it is best, it must be so
to live like those in Tokyo

Now I must go, it must be late
for next door at 20/38
the telly's off, it is so still
I hear the eagles at the window sill

But I give thanks I live so high
to wave as QANTAS passes by.

Jean Devanny: liberty, science and more

This is the last in a series on Jean Devanny, a communist writer and activist of the 1930 to 60s. Having read her biography, Jean Devanny: Romantic Revolutionary, I was struck by the number of unresolved inconsistencies in her beliefs. In this post I'll list several more.

Pacifism

The communists of the era were big on pacifism. Devanny, for instance, had helped to establish a Peace League in Cairns in 1935 (p.130); in 1934 she had undertaken a propaganda tour for a movement against war (p.129).

Yet in her May Day speech in 1935 she "launched into a paean of praise for the Red Army". Reminiscing about a military parade she had witnessed in Russia she said:

I never before thought the bayonet a beautiful weapon. Depends on whose body it is intended to be used, doesn't it ... Then the loveliest sight of all. The tractors drawing big guns ... (pp.127-128)

Free speech

The communists peppered their speeches with references to free speech. We learn in the biography of Devanny that:

During 1934, the Workers' Weekly and the Party organisers widened the scope of their agitation on a range of issues, particularly freedom of speech. (p.118)

In that year, Devanny spoke to a large demonstration in the Sydney Domain on the issue of free speech, an event commemorated in verse:

The workers in great numbers gather'd on that afternoon
To pledge their right for freedom and for liberty of speech (p.118)

However, the party didn't defend free speech for its own members. At a meeting in 1942, Jim Comerford asked the party leader "to stop interjecting and to give him a fair go". Shortly after "a few of J.B.'s "loyal" followers threw Jim into the street." (p.197)

Another member, Joyce Batterham, recalled of this time that "When you were directed to do things, you just did it! ... There was ... not much freedom of choice." (p.197)

Devanny herself was not tolerant of opposing views; Hilda Essen wrote of her that "There's no argument, she's simply right." (p.161) According to the historian Stuart Macintyre, Devanny was the first in Australia to use the term "politically incorrect" in rejecting someone's views (p.161).

The climate within the Communist Party is suggested too by Devanny's fear of repercussions in publishing her autobiography. She wrote to Miles Franklin:

Sometimes I feel so sick about the whole thing, the shock to my family, the fear of what they might do to me (the P[arty] I mean) that I wish I had never started on it. (p.269)

Science & materialism

Marxists pride themselves on being scientific materialists and Devanny was no exception. A journalist, Nelle Scanlan, interviewed her in 1926 and was struck by Devanny's "preoccupation with 'scientific socialism'". Devanny told Scanlan that her most recent novel was based upon "the materialistic conception of history." Scanlan recorded that "Greater faith in the infallibility of science could not be found". (pp.38-39)

Yet throughout the biography we find evidence that Devanny perceived the world in other terms; she didn't write as a strict materialist examining "matter in motion", but instead chose to describe things using a "spiritual" vocabulary, and when praising individuals she took the inherent value of character as a real given.

For instance, she describes a visit to a tropical island as a day of "rapture" (p.259); she later declares that she is "a primitive soul" (p.275); she praises a friend as being "Utterly trustworthy, concentrated on things of the mind and spirit, the Doc's sagacity and sincerity could not but be an uplifting influence" (p.205); and she complains that after WWI people were "soul-emasculated" (p.44).

She doesn't seem to have been far from experiencing the transcendent through nature. For instance, in the following passage she writes of an ecstatic feeling aroused by the "unearthly" magnificence of a tropical sunset:

The sunset of this last day was of a nature to make one quake half in ecstasy, half in pain. So clear was the atmosphere that separate trees on the forward part of the mainland ranges stood out plainly ...

An incredible quiet and stillness fell: a glowing stillness, in which the world changed to the colour of old-gold.

Then, in one last ecstatic burst, Woody was let to even greater splendour ... A soft diaphanous veil of rose touched the waters of the main lagoon, the outer sea turned to forget-me-not blue and then dusk, moonless dusk, fell down as though some lordly hand, unable to bear longer the unearthly magnificence of it all, had clapped down a colossal lid. (pp.220-221)

Liberty & fraternity

Communism was supposed to be a movement for liberty and fraternity. However, once again communist theory didn't turn out well in reality. For much of the biography Devanny seems to have been most oppressed and tormented by her callous treatment by the party, rather than by the larger society.

Devanny wrote in 1953, having spent a few years away from the party that, "I am regaining the good humour which horrors and terrors deprived me of for about twelve years." (p.275)

She did have reason to complain. In 1941 Devanny was living in a small settlement at Emuford in Queensland with a group of communist workers. Some of the workers' wives began to spread rumours about Devanny; when she threatened to complain to HQ she was punched in the face by a male comrade. She then travelled to HQ to lodge a protest, but on her return to Emuford a group of comrades assaulted her so badly that she was taken by ambulance to hospital. There's some evidence that she was sexually assaulted.

Devanny was then ostracised by the party; when she had recovered she wanted to return to Sydney but the party wouldn't send the fare. It was finally a businessman who felt sympathy and gave her the money to return home. (p.190)

Not surprisingly, the idealism of the party workers tended to fail over time. The novelist Dorothy Hewett lamented of herself and her partner that "our original political idealism and belief in ourselves [had been] corroded by time, and bitter experience". (p.297) Devanny for her part confessed to Miles Franklin in 1953:

No good assuming that I have any ideals left, Miles. They are as dead as a doornail. (p.268)

My own surprise is not so much that Devanny lost her ideals, but that she lived for so long with such inconsistencies of theory and practice.

Flannery: a consistent environmentalist

News from Adelaide:

RENOWNED scientist and author Tim Flannery has fired a broadside at the State Government's push to attract more migrants to South Australia.

And he said the water crisis made any government's policy of increasing population unsustainable.

He questioned why the Government was bringing professional migrants to the state instead of training SA's unemployed to fill skilled-job vacancies.

"Why is it you would want to bring in more people when there are chronic unemployment problems in parts of Adelaide which must be addressed – (especially) in the northern suburbs towards Elizabeth?" said Prof Flannery, the 2007 Australian of the Year and former SA Museum director.

"In my view there should be more emphasis on helping those who are already there in the state than just bringing more people in."

Prof Flannery, who is principal research scientist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, said the policy of "aggressive population recruitment" had already been tried and failed.

He said the pockets of chronic unemployment – sometimes stretching across three generations – were created by bringing in people to fill jobs in a manufacturing industry which had proved unsustainable, as shown by the closure of the Mitsubishi car plant this month.

"I think South Australians should ask themselves whether that (migration policy) is the right model for the future," he said.

I don't always agree with Tim Flannery. Some of his views on global warming seem overly alarmist to me. Nonetheless, he stands as one environmentalist who is consistent in his views: he believes that human populations are harming the environment and therefore he opposes a rapid increase in the population via mass immigration. He stands too as one member of the elite who thinks in terms of the local population rather than seeking salvation elsewhere.

Now a baby tax?

This is what the modern environmentalist movement has come to. Associate Professor Barry Walters has written an article for Australia's top medical journal dealing with the issue of climate change. The professor believes that a woman giving birth to a child is engaging in "greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour" and should therefore be hit with a "baby levy". He wants families to pay a $5000 baby levy at birth and an annual carbon tax of $800 per child. People who get themselves sterilised would be rewarded with a carbon credit. In the professor's own words:

Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a baby levy in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the polluter pays principle.

The professor is making this suggestion despite the fact that Australia has a fertility rate of 1.8, which is well below replacement level.

Nor is he alone in expressing such views. Dr Egger, the director of the Centre for Health Promotion and Research in Sydney has declared his support for Professor Walters. There is a list here of others who have advocated radical measures against human populations, including a Melbourne neuroscientist, Dr John Reid, who said last year that:

[one] human way to reduce the population might be to put something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system and would make a substantial proportion of the population infertile. Perhaps a virus that would knock out the genes that produce certain hormones necessary for conception.

I should say that I'm someone who loves nature and has chosen to live close to the countryside. Ordinarily, therefore, I would support efforts to preserve the environment.

But not when the movement is aimed at a power grab and not when it becomes a vehicle for misanthropes.

A new world order ... getting warmer?

What should be our response to global warming? This is what English environmentalist George Monbiot proposes:

We're not talking anymore about measures which require a little bit of tweaking here and there, or a little bit of political tweaking here and there. We're talking about measures which require global revolutionary change ...

And I'm afraid the second uncomfortable message I have to put out to you tonight is that when it comes to dealing with a problem of this scale, small is no longer beautiful. We have to start thinking on the biggest possible terms....

We have very very little time in which to act. We have very very little time in which to bring about the largest economical and political transformation the world has ever seen.

According to Mr Monbiot there is only one possible course of action and that is to accept a global transformation.

Is Mr Monbiot distressed by the thought of massive political and economic change? Well, no. In 2003 he published a book, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order. One sympathetic reviewer wrote of this manifesto:

Not for him any local, protectionist, small-focus reform initiatives ... Speaking for what he terms the "global justice movement", Monbiot argues for three macro reforms. He wants the establishment of a democratically elected world parliament, an international clearing union to discharge trade deficits and prevent the accumulation of debt, and a fair trade organisation "which restrains the rich while emancipating the poor" ...

He wants to change the way people act and think ("a metaphysical mutation"), and he understands quite clearly the dangerous exultation ("which Christians call joy") that accompanies such intense collective purpose concentrated by adversity.

Monbiot, in other words, believes in a New World Order as a matter of political morality. Little wonder then that he should conclude that global warming requires us to create ... a New World Order.

We need to be careful that global warming doesn't become a means of prising open society for the benefit of a transnational political elite.

Monbiot assumes that it will be the left-liberal elite who will benefit and that global governance will restrain the power of the large corporations. He doesn't seem to have noticed that the corporate elite has also eagerly signed on to the global warming movement. Laying the world open to a transnational elite is arguably just as appealing for them as for globalising leftists.

I'm not suggesting that concerns about the environment should be dismissed. If there is potentially a problem, then accurate data should be collected and the issue debated seriously and openly.

Let's understand, though, that there are those who have other motivations for promoting an alarmist view on the environment.

Sacrificing humans to the Earth God

Dr John Reid is a neuroscientist from Melbourne's Swinburne University. He gave a talk yesterday on ABC radio on the subject of global warming.

According to Dr Reid, we must take radical steps to avoid an environmental apocalypse. Standards of living in the Western world will have to be cut drastically. The number of cars will have to be reduced to 10% of the current fleet. Water and meat will need to be rationed and private property rights curtailed.

But even this won't be enough to avoid turning our beautiful planet into a "Venusian hell".

According to Dr Reid we have to devise a way to achieve a large-scale and rapid decline in the earth's population. Dr Reid notes that war, pestilence and famine might kill large numbers, but he thinks only on a scale of tens of millions "which is not enough to solve the problem of over-populaton".

He suggests that a more effective and humane way to rid the world of large numbers of people might be:

to put something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system and would make a substantial proportion of the population infertile.

Perhaps a virus that would knock out the genes that produce certain hormones necessary for conception.

Which countries should be targeted first? Oddly enough, Dr Reid doesn't propose attacking those countries with the highest birth rates, but countries which already have a below replacement fertility rate. He suggests "fixing" the water supplies of the United Arab Emirates, the USA, Finland, Canada, Kuwait and Australia on the basis that these countries do the most environmental damage.

But if there were to be a drastic decline in the number of young people in these nations, how would the elderly be supported? Dr Reid has an answer. They wouldn't be. He states:

Societies will not be able to provide health care services needed to keep large numbers of unhealthy old people alive.

A triage approach will be necessary so that scarce medical resources go to those who can contribute most to the long-term viability of the planet. Consequently many middle-aged-to-elderly people will die uncomfortable deaths. Not every problem is soluble.

Finally, Dr Reid advocates the abandonment of traditional theistic religions:

The precepts of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam represent the quintessential perversion of the human mind. They must be abandoned and the notion of the sanctity of human life must be subjugated to the greater sanctity of all life on Earth.

What's to be made of all this? Dr Reid clearly has issues with traditional religion. Just as clearly, he wishes to substitute a commitment to "the planet" for these religions.

But a secular religion can be a dangerous thing. What is there in Dr Reid's secular earth religion to uphold a sense of the value of individual human life? What is there to place moral limits on how we serve the new earth god?

If you read the transcript of Dr Reid's speech you are struck by how readily his mind turns to darkly pessimistic scenarios of destruction, and by how coldly instrumental his solutions are.

Also striking is how Dr Reid's scientific humanism can be so un-progressive in recalling the crueller aspects of paganism, and so anti-human in degrading both the status and sanctity of human life.

When markets aren't enough

Property developer Harry Triguboff is one of the ten richest men in Australia. He recently told a journalist that Sydney has "too many forests and parks". He thinks that national parks should be developed for housing:

You go north and we have all these reserves and you go south and you have all the reserves and they are the best part of the coast. That is crazy. We should be building on this area. If they want to see trees, they can go to Katoomba, there are plenty of trees there.

Triguboff also believes in open borders. He thinks that Australia should admit 130 million immigrants by 2050, and that Sydney's ideal population by this time would be 20 million.

He doesn't care if these immigrants speak English or not:

What's more important for me - a guy who can fix my tap or a guy who can speak English.

It's easy to see why Triguboff would think that such measures are in his economic interest. If you're making a fortune building city apartments then having ever larger quantities of both land and people would seem to be a good way to increase your profits.

So if all that we were to follow was a free market mentality, then Triguboff might appear to be a reasonable man.

I don't think, though, that anyone who follows the free market alone can accurately describe themselves as a conservative.

After all, the logic of Triguboff's position is not to conserve the natural environment, but to develop for profit even the national parks fringing Sydney.

Similarly, the logic of his position is to overwhelm the existing population with so many immigrants that the established Australian people, culture and tradition would not be conserved.

What this means is that to be a real conservative it's not enough to follow the free market alone. The slogan of freedom and the market won't do by itself.

There must be other 'goods' we seek to conserve which aren't derived from individual profit seeking within a market.

It is a hollow rendering of our nature to see the market alone as constituting the good in human experience.

Most real conservatives, for instance, will be responsive enough to nature to want to live close to it - closer, anyway, than an occasional visit to Katoomba to see a tree.

And most real conservatives will feel connected to their own tradition and want to protect it, even if this means placing some limits on profit seeking within the market.

This is not to say that conservatives must be anti-market. My own position is that an intelligently regulated market is the best option. The ideal is to harness the power of the market so that it drives economic growth and provides a ground for healthy competition, without undermining other more important goods within a society.