Plainly, Theo, and we have both witnessed this in our own lifetimes, following the devastation of war people will invariably collaborate in social, civil and economic reconstruction; will join unions and professional associations, and will work to advance common cause. The reason they will do that is simply, and for no other reason, because they are all standing in the same shit.

Once things are back on track, however, once wage levels and working conditions are legislated, living standards have improved, education standards achieved; once the place is cleaned up, what gain is there either individually or collectively, for everyone to go back to living collectively as if they had all just emerged from war, with civil infrustructure collapsed around them, when that is plainly no longer the case.

One might reasonably anticipate that the nation will move ahead, new generations negotiating new forms of association consistent with their vastly improved world, and not be held back to the old world of hard struggle and low expectation?

The old, ossified structural/functionalist hierachies and power lobbies run by moribund executives, permanent heads and inner circles of lobbyists, brokers and apparatchiks, in business and government alike, have in fact long given way to global, broadly extensive networks of collaboration and information exchange.

My advice to young people these days is not to join a union but to get a life finally. Stand on your own feet, enjoy your inheritance, make something of it.

Otherwise the effort is wasted; we have achieved nothing and are headed nowhere.

I agree, anyone with or without formal qualifications (whatever those are worth these days) could have written this but why bother? How are we in any way enlightened or more informed than before we read it?

I wonder what the cost is to intelligent discussion in this country of having naysayers constantly whining about the need to develop strategies to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Perhaps if these naysayers had disappeared years ago, we would need less adaption and would have been able to mitigate far more cheaply.

The actual cost of people who can think for themselves is nothing because non of them are on the professional gravy train. But even if you are a bed wetter how does this article advance any argument?

Gil:"arguments posing binary oppositions between one 'point of view' and another,"

Unfortunately, as vast numbers of people with liberal arts degrees have been pumped out by institutions lead by people with liberal arts degrees, the whole concept of "argument" has become confused with that of "debate". That has lead to a debasement in the value we place on genuine empiricism, in favour of pseudo-rationalism. It's not genuine rationalism, because the people expressing the views haven't come to them from first principles in most cases, but as a derivative of their adherence to some political or social ideology and they most certainly do not want to have their views shown to be flawed, where a true rationalist is glad to be shown why his view is not rational.

Even to express questions or seek clarification about the views of such people is to be called a "hater" of some kind or other.

Our political/media axis is happy about this, it allows them to get away with expressing nonsense since anyone questioning that nonsense can be portrayed as somehow holding an opposing ideology rather than expressing genuinely rational thoughts.Of course, the current crop all come from that liberal arts factory described above, so it's hardly surprising their capacity for reason would be so poor. What's really surprising is that genuine thinkers have allowed it to happen with so little protest.

Craig Minns ~

Your observation goes a long way toward explaining the root cause of our crisis on Earth, including addiction to fossil fuel and an increasingly unsustainable drain on the planet.

Can I put it as simply as the need for honesty?

Dogma is essential to allow our current civilization to do what it does.

If we were to slam the brakes on and demand honesty, how many trained minds would know what to do?

It is like expecting a fundamentalist Christian creationist to embrace evolution.

The dogma of the mind overrides the truth revealed in Nature.

It is in this context that a more fundamental and dangerous form of climate change denial exists, of the cause of the carbon crisis and what we can do to win back a safe Earth.

It is a pretty basic observation that we have totally failed to keep a safe Earth, with a planet crisis that is only just beginning and holds the potential to threaten our survival.

Who is the paymaster of the current system?

Our civilization is built on carbon energy.

Did we properly examine an alternative energy option, when space based solar power (SBSP) was on the table in the 1970s, or did the carbon energy dogma dominate the debate?

With SBSP we could have kept a safe Earth.

By getting back to the future with SBSP we could win back a safe Earth.

With SBSP we could launch a stellar economy that sends poverty into history.

Are we stuck in carbon energy dogma, or are there enough honest people out there to change the direction of this juggernaut we have created.

Ultimately, this may be our survival on the line.

Kim Peart
http://www.islandearth.com.au/

Julie McNeill ~

There is a detail worth keeping in mind.

We have collectively and totally failed to keep a safe Earth.

The core problem is too much CO2 in the air, now 400 ppm and set to skyrocket, from further human emissions and also a generous contribution of greenhouse gases from Nature, with a fast warming Arctic region.

We have seen a little of what is to come, but we ain't seen nothin yet, as we look toward a very dangerous future.

In the 1970s I was involved in a space movement that included building solar power stations in space to provide energy for Earth and if this had proceeded, we could have kept a safe Earth ('The High Frontier' by Gerard K. O'Neill, 1977).

The carbon energy agenda won the power game and so we kept digging and drilling and fracking our way into hell on Earth.

Like the hair of the dog, the most direct solution to the carbon crisis, is to invest in solar power stations in space and with direct access to the unlimited stellar energy of the Sun, we would be able to extract excess carbon from the air and sea, to win back a safe Earth.

We would also be able to reprocess the carbon back into a useful resource.

Have we been sucked into carbon energy propaganda, to focus on the Earth for everything?

Rather than buckling under the propaganda, maybe it is time to hitch our wagons again and demand action on building our stellar civilization.

We have the simple choice of designing a stellar economy without poverty, which will contribute to peace on Earth.

Energy is the key to our survival and a safe Earth.

With the energy of human expansion released into space, we will be able to begin the work of winning back a safe Earth, a slow Earth, where airships may become the main form of long-haul transport.

I hope that enough of us will wake up, rebel and begin fighting for our cosmic survival, while we still have time to act.

This future rests on individual choice, beyond carbon propaganda and accepting our fate as convicts of a prison hulk called Terra.

With a vision of hope to run with, who would be agin us?

Kim Peart
http://www.islandearth.com.au/