With the benefit of hindsight, we could have prevented the collapse of several societies, or at least delayed it, as there were probably multiple potential causes of their collapse. We could have prevent the recent collapse of several large fisheries. I'm sure there are several other big mistakes we could have avoided that will cause us long term problems.

Sustainability is not about living in caves.

It does not restrict access to resources. The thing is, people don't know what sustainability is. It is crystal ball stuff. It basically asks what does a society have to do in order to remain viable and maintain it's standard of living. The tree hugging hippies do not have a monopoly on sustainability any more than the people who want a stronger defense force. Just because they claim we have to stop mining in order to be sustainable does not mean that they can support their arguments on the ground of either sustainability or the precautionary principle.

However, just because we can't pin it down exactly does not mean we shouldn't make it a priority. The alternative is the collapse of our society.

You don't think figuring out what our society needs to do in order to survive is a priority? Because we don't already know the answer?

There has been a significant change recently in the way we approach this problem. Until fairly recently in human history, the environment could safely be assumed to be an infinite resource. Of course, there are at least a few notable exceptions which are illuminating. Societies took an expansionist view point, especially in the Americas and Australia. Survival and wealth depended on expanding faster than competing countries. It was human labour rather than natural resources that were most often the limiting factor in economies. Now that is all changing, and our survival as a society depends on our ability to adapt to the new situation. Simply doing what our society has historically done in order to survive is bound to fail, quite spectacularly. Finding the right balance is only going to get harder in the future as our society and the problems which undermine it become more complex. There will be an increasing need to consciously choose the path of sustainability rather than deal with problems after they have begun to impact on society.

ESD - environmentally sustainable development?

As far as the party policy is concerned, it is not just the rate of change we have a problem with. In my opinion the left wing parties have a fairly sensible approach for global warming, and the coalition has a good approach on many of the local issues (eg the great barrier reef). It is the method of change that is our major policy. As far as global warming and the water shortage is concerned, the tradeoff between the environment and short term economic interests has been overplayed. The stern report backs this up. All parties have a tendency to prefer grand schemes where the government steps in and plays a role it probably shouldn't be playing. This looks good and most citizens can easily make the connection, but it comes at considerable economic cost. By 'pulling the right economic levers' the government could achieve the same thing at far less cost.

ESD - environmentally sustainable development?

Ecological Sustainable Development

In my opinion the left wing parties have a fairly sensible approach for global warming

Your kidding right? Emission reductions of 60-80% by 2050 but with no idea on how to achieve it? That isn't sensible, that's political pandering to those that least understand the logistics of change

freediver wrote on Apr 25^th, 2007 at 1:54pm:


People will cluster where there are resources so the population will grow according to availability.   But if you don't then build an economy (trade, industry etc) to suppport it eventually the resources will run out, the population will decline and an equilibrium will be found as they eat each other and the strong survive.

But cities are way too top heavy so an economy needs to be created to share resources, wealth, infrastructure etc.  The moment you make an environment more important than your population (which needs an economy) you face sidelining yourself and joining Bob Brown as a political toddler.

No one thinks a tree is more important than a family, except for the nutters who live off the dole (like the rent-a-crowd who use the economy they despise to survive) and those lined up at the trough like Bob Brown (who also uses the economy he despises to survive).

Good luck.   I'd say you're going to need it.    It ain't for me.

Well that was a great read.

I think what freediver is trying to say is that he wants mankind to look at the environment and then build the economy around it to protect the environment. This is extremely difficult to manage as the economic structure that you build around it would also use resources that would not have been accounted for.

I think the economy needs to come before looking at the environment because we will then know what impact the economy will cause to our environment.