Overpopulation AND Overconsumption.

[pan]

Both.

[Mouse]

[BO]

"Anyone who understands this and still considers that population, not consumption, is the big issue is, in Lovelock's words, "hiding from the truth." It is the worst kind of paternalism, blaming the poor for the excesses of the rich."

Is that your quote, Mark, or the author's?

Whoever it is that's using Lovelock to defend their position that population doesn't matter--when he himself doesn't believe that-- is simply being disingenuous.

Here's a direct quote from James Lovelock...

"If we were hunter-gatherers and this was a bigger planet we would be all right. But we're not: we're farmers and that's what's screwed us up. There are just too many of us living the way we do. Our wrongdoing has been to take energy hundreds of times faster than it is made naturally available."

Using a quote from someone--taken out of context-- to justify a point of view that that person wouldn't even agree with, is the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty. And yeah, I'm calling someone a liar here. Because lying, is what it is.

[Mark]

It's Monbiot's quote, so I guess you're calling him a liar and he isn't here. Had I interjected thoughts of my own in that post, I would have set them off so that people would be able to tell.

Here's the page about Monbiot on wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Monbiot

I don't know him and I haven't read his books, although I have read quite a few articles he wrote. From what I can gather from his bio, he isn't using Lovelock or anyone else. He doesn't have to. He seems to be one of those weird people who develops their own ideas based on their own research and experience.

Monbiot is quite well known and although he is outspoken and controversial, he doesn't say things that he doesn't believe. In fact he doesn't even say things based upon what somebody else told him or what he read somewhere. In addition to writing a column for the Guardian and several best selling books, and the various degrees, honors, and awards he has received, he is an activist who is often on the front lines and also an investigative journalist.

For me, there could be few greater compliments than having Monbiot's writings mistaken for my own.

The assumption that somebody said or did something because they read something, must be quite common in academia and the business world, where critical thinking is rare and generally discouraged. To discount a person's entire life experience, would only be done by somebody who themself has little or no life experience and bases their thoughts and beliefs on what other people have written.

I just looked at Lovelock's wiki, and in addition to being in favor of nuclear power, there's this little paragraph:

After the development of his electron capture detector, in the late 1960s, Lovelock was the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere.[5] He found a concentration of 60 parts per trillion of CFC-11 over Ireland and, in a partially self-funded research expedition in 1972, went on to measure the concentration of CFC-11 from the northern hemisphere to the Antarctic aboard the research vessel RRS Shackleton.[6][11] He found the gas in each of the 50 air samples that he collected but, not realising that the breakdown of CFCs in the stratosphere would release chlorine that posed a threat to the ozone layer, concluded that the level of CFCs constituted "no conceivable hazard".[11] He has since stated that he meant "no conceivable toxic hazard".

The guy seems to be a corporate shill and he's been wrong before. Monbiot wouldn't base anything on the writings of anyone who is that irresponsible. If you want intellectual dishonesty, is saying that by "no conceivable hazard," he really meant "no conceivable toxic hazard" intellectually honest? Are toxic hazards not conceivable?

Neither Monbiot or I would fuck Lovelock with your dick, BO. But I have to admit that you can never be accused of being intellectually dishonest. Dishonest, yes. ;)