There are an increasing number of people who are making the finite planet argument. This was unheard of just five years ago.

The site tends to look at everything through a political lens which makes it hard to have good discussions of social policy. Hence all the "why now?" remarks.

The range of ideas is quite limited. People latch on to one of the popular themes of the day and do little thinking of their own. Thinking is hard, repeating easier.

Having said that, repeating is useful, it helps people solidify their own thoughts and creates momentum.

While it is useful to keep repeating the same basic themes, since there are still many not yet well informed, I think it is time to take the next step.

What I think this is, is to recast arguments in terms of goals and ethics. The standard framing up to now has been in terms of process: will this tax, finance or investment program lead to economic growth?

This needs to be replaced with: if we had, say, unlimited, almost free power what would we want to do with it? Do we want to increase the material wealth of the world even more? Do we want to continue the imbalance of wealth? Do we want to mitigate the differences? Do we want to allow the new resources to be used to further increase population? Or do we want to do something entirely different?

Societies which were able to meet their basic needs with little effort (such as the South Sea islands before the white man) didn't work too hard. If you had all you needed (not wanted) with modest effort what would you do with your time?

What I'm saying is that it is time to start talking about where we want to end up, not just how to get there.


Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape