Riga 2012 Culture, Science, Environment and Strategies For Survival
Riga 2012 Culture, Science, Environment and Strategies For Survival
Riga 2012 Culture, Science, Environment and Strategies For Survival
Christopher Busby
University of Ulster/ Green Audit
Scientific Secretary: European Committee on Radiation Risk UK Ministry of Defence Depleted Uranium Oversight Board (DUOB) UK Dept of Health Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters (CERRIE) Leader: Science/ Policy interface; Policy Information Network for Child Health and the Environment (PINCHE; European Union). Guest Researcher: Julius Kuehn Institute, German Federal Agricultural Laboratories, Braunschweig Visiting Professor, Faculty of Health, University of Ulster, Ireland
christo@greenaudit.org c.busby@ulster.ac.uk
Everybody knows
Everybody knows the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows, the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor and the rich get rich Thats how it goes Everybody knows Leonard Cohen
Introduction
I will discuss some ideas present in two books which I have had a part in producing: 1. Green Economics Eds Miriam Kennett and Molly Scott Cato(Green Audit: 1999) 2. Manifesto for a Sustainable Society (Green Party of England and Wales 1989)
Diagnosis 1
The State of the planet Earth is critical and no one is addressing it. Without a major change in culture and human behaviour, human life is unlikely to survive. We will become extinct In the last 500 years there have been a few attempts to introduce new social systems, but all have failed. There are reasons for this. We are left with an uncontrollable free market dominated by a monster created out of undemocratic global cartels, undemocratic banks and infiltrated military power blocs.
Diagnosis (2)
Simple historical considerations reveal that we are now dealing with a system that is super powerful and instantly responsive to immediate changes but gives no thought to long term needs Historical considerations reveal that changes are driven by psychologically flawed individuals drawn from a human personality sub-class. Without dealing with this aspect of sociology psychology and politics, no novel system will succeed.
Prognosis
Without major surgery, the patient will not survive. The main danger is genome destruction with loss of fertility below replacement. This is already happening. It is not possible to incrementally change the current system A new ideological solution is urgently necessary
Prescription
It is not possible to incrementally change the current system A new ideological solution is urgently needed Such a proposed system must differ from previous historical systems (e.g. French Revolution, Marxism, US Independence) by dealing with (a) human nature and personality and (b) environmental constraints
tough
radical
Green Party UK 1989 Green Party UK Liberal Victorian liberals Anti-slavery etc
conservative
tender
Personality Types
Various classifications. Enneagram, Myers Briggs, Jung Introvert/Extravert Individual personalities defined by nature and nurture and can be found by questionnaire methods Research shows that the personality types drawn to become politicians and leaders are the wrong types for the welfare of human societies. They are proud, selfish, arrogant, insecure, untrustworthy and dangerous. It follows that democracy must fail as a method intended to secure human welfare if it does not take this into account This is true whatever the ideological system and is the cause of ALL the failures in history of political systems
Finally
The massive squandering of resources and energy which is the current system is impossible to sustain. Therefore it must stop. To make it stop is easy in principle and bloodless. The creation of a new system ideology, in the form of an influential book (e.g Rights of Man, Kapital) can influence people to stop buying unecessary things, and the current banking driven system will quickly collapse. The new system will then be there to fill the vacuum. This could have happened in the Hippie Revolution in 1969 (in which I was involved) but there was no alternative model, and so the bad guys took over again.