Having some sympathy and regard for the more reasoned analyses of enviromentalists and libertarians, I thoroughly enjoyed South Sea Republic’s article Geolibertarians. Especially after stoushing with some of the more rabid extremes of libertarian at Catallaxy this afternoon.
A thoughtful and informative analysis, I especially liked the conclusion:
We live in a time of large governments, where legislation structures and directs many aspects of our economic and environmental lives. Now that the political and cultural ground on climate change has shifted, that means government will need to move too: it will be activist and dynamic reorganisation, or a failure. The ten tonne koala leviathan is on the move already, and when government moves, it usually moves power to itself. This week the Howard government proposed taking control of the Murray-Darling river system, without, of course, this being balanced by additional state autonomy in any other area. Soon the 500 tonne gorilla in the east Pacific will be on the move too. Without an environmental sensibility libertarians will be catapulted into further irrelevance. Without a libertarian sensibility green policies will be servants of a brittle, stifling, central state.
Filed under: Environment, Politics
The Dog's Bollocks 
Jeez mate you do well to survive in that schoolyard. I got abused early on and gave up quickly, life’s just not worth that kind of crap.
Plenty of experience in the schoolyard pays off I guess. I don’t indulge very often and I like to keep my powder dry for issues I think to be important and then try to put it simply and logically while trying not to get sidetracked by the nonsense. A bit like teaching a class, really
Some of the smartarse boys in the back row can get a bit excitable. You need to listen to what they have to say and then patiently draw them back to being on task. If you get them to explain their understandings to you, they are more intelligent than you would assume from their tendency to abuse and yell out irrelevancies which are off-topic and out of turn. Maybe we need to bring back the talking stick? Now, Graeme, slim has the talking stick and it’s his turn to talk.