The Real Howling Mob

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[A condensed and modified version published at Eureka Street, 7 Feb.]

The Australia Day “riot” at the Lobby restaurant in Canberra was the subject of hysterical misreporting – I know, I watched it.  We would be wise not to dismiss this episode as just another example of media sensationalism.  Rather, it is symptomatic of a growing nexus in Australia of fear, hysteria, racism and ignorant ranting.

These phenomena are rapidly degrading our capacity for decency, our democracy, and even our perception of reality.  We are moving rapidly away from the decent, laconic Aussies of our stereotyping, and into being a fearful, intolerant, nasty and brittle society.

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Aboriginal protest, rattled security and a dragged Prime Minister – Australia exposed

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[We happened to witness a demonstration last Thurday, “Australia Day”, which commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet, with convicts, and so of course also marks the beginning of the dispossession of Aboriginal people.  I gather pictures of our Prime Minister being dragged by a security man have gone around the world.  I have sent this account to media, we’ll see if it gets a run.]

[Posted on The Drum, 30 Jan.]

The bias, hysteria and divisiveness of our public political conversation is never far from view, but this week I encountered it first hand.  I watched the Aboriginal protest unfold at The Lobby restaurant.  The event reported in the media and reacted to by many commentators is a lurid parody of what actually happened.  Perspective and balance are hard to find.

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Lessons From a Radical Industrialist

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[My previous post, and many before, featured the example of Interface Carpet Inc.  The founder and guiding spirit of that exemplary new-paradigm company, Ray C. Anderson, died in 2011.  The world is much the richer from his bold and inspiring presence.  Here, from a free download, is the foreword from his recent book  Business Lessons from a Radical Industrialist.]

In memory, Ray C. Anderson

As I sit down to write this foreword, I have a lot on my mind. My company, Interface, Inc., has just marked an important milestone—ten years until our target year for Mission Zero, for zero environmental footprint, a goal for which we have set 2020 as our deadline. I’m immensely proud of Interface, and encouraged about our future. At the same time, I have spent the last year dealing with cancer, thankfully holding my own—barely.

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How Thriving Industries Can Save the Planet

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Recently we broke the glass carafe on our drip coffee maker.  Yes I know it’s very last-century, but I still like drip coffee.  A search on line revealed that that model was no longer manufactured, even though the basic design has been stable for decades.  The carafe of a related (read “different-shaped”) model cost about $35, excluding the hassle of ordering and delivery.  The local shop had a whole new coffee maker for about $40.  So of course we threw away the perfectly good old model, sans carafe, and got the new one.

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The Tao of economics

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[See this article at philosophers.posterous, adapted from the first chapter of The Nature of the Beast]

… Taoism arose from the close observation of nature and people.  It distills a higher wisdom than either of the crude world views that dominated the twentieth century.  We can aspire to create economies that transcend the crude and unhealthy economic systems that arose from those twentieth century world views, and that provide for and nurture a healthy balance in the lives of people and societies. …

From Greatest Greenhouse Polluter to Least?

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[This is the first of an occasional series on what we can do to make our presence on Earth tolerable to the rest of the biosphere, and mostly should do anyway, regardless of one’s view of the dangers or possible means of salvation.  It will be filed under ‘Solutions’.]

Australia is one of the largest emitters per capita of greenhouse gases.  We are also the world’s largest exporter of coal, which is the dirtiest fuel in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.  We must therefore be the world’s worst citizens regarding global warming.  However we could be rapidly cleaning up our act, and diversifying and improving our economy in the process.

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The Durban Roadmap to Extreme Climate Danger

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[Published on ABC’s The Drum Opinion 13 Dec]

Climate negotiators in Durban have agreed to a “roadmap” that would leave the world at high risk of severe or catastrophic global warming.  They have belatedly agreed to discuss adopting outdated targets that would not come into force until 2020, far too late by current climate criteria.

Recent studies require greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced much faster than previously proposed, to give us even a moderate chance of keeping warming below two degrees Celsius (2°C).  Meanwhile the climate science now says the threshold of “dangerous” warming is only 1°C.

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Real Climate News – Beyond “Dangerous” (Draft)

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[This is a draft.  Over the next week or so I will be revising, adding links and making other versions to send to any news outlet that might take them.]

Here is the climate news.  The real climate news.

So far the world has warmed about 0.6°C.  If currently advised reductions of greenhouse gas emissions were realised there would still be a 90% chance global warming will exceed two degrees Celsius (2°C).  2°C used to be regarded as the threshold of “dangerous” climate change, but new science has shifted that threshold to only 1°C.  2°C is now regarded as the threshold of “extremely dangerous” climate change.  At that level, global warming effects would be widespread and severe.

However, somewhere between about 2°C and 4°C lurks a tipping point, beyond which global warming will run beyond human control, driven by natural feedback mechanisms that drive temperatures higher, perhaps to 6°C or 8°C, no-one knows.  4°C would already be “incompatible with an organised global community”.  Higher temperatures could result in the extinction half or more of the world’s species and much of the human population.

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Labor and the Media: Obstacles to a Decent Society

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Two major Australian institutions are in the spotlight at the moment, the Labor Party at its annual national conference, and the media in an enquiry prompted by the Murdoch press’s excesses in Britain.  However the deepest problems with them are rarely acknowledged.  The Labor Party has become an obstacle to good governance and to a tolerable future for Australia.  The media have become more superficial, divisive, and regressive, and they are eroding our open and democratic society.

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