Patron of the Optimum Population Trust, neo-malthusian and miserablist to world governments, Sir Crispin Tickell went head-to-head with Austin Williams of the Future Cities Project on the question of “are there too many of us?” on Thursday. BBC Radio 4’s PM program has been featuring the question all week, leading to some interesting discussion. You can catch the program here. (It starts about 42 minutes in. And it’s only online for another week.)

The program’s blog has received a flood of comments from listeners (or just OPT activists) angered, not by Sir Crispin’s dark gloom, misanthropy, and pessimism, but by Williams’s challenge to it. It is interesting that some of the comments seem to reflect the idea that Sir Crispin’s ideas are radical, when in fact they are very much the establishment position. It is also interesting to see how challenges to environmental orthodoxy are met with expressions of outrage. It’s also interesting to note that, just a few decades ago, the one-child-per-family policy of China is something that would have been pointed at as an example of the nasty, controlling authoritarianism of the Chinese Government. Now, it’s something many aspire to.

Crispin Tickell was at York University recently, giving a lecture on “the future” – a nasty place, according to him, so we better do as he says. The lecture, hosted by the very interesting New Generation Society, who take as their inspiration JFK’s inaugural speech, was reviewed by Climate Resistance co-editor Ben for the society’s online journal.

The New Generation Society’s Kennedy Lecture aimed to embrace the kind of challenge that its namesake laid before the world nearly half a century ago.

“Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.”

President John F. Kennedy
Inaugural Address
Washington DC, 20th January 1961

In short, by pursuing humanity’s common interests, the New Generation could transcend its differences.

Enter Sir Crispin, who brings to this lecture as many years experience of dealing with the World’s problems as have passed since Kennedy’s speech. He is someone we might like to turn to for sober reflection on the issues that the next generation faces. He is an authority on many subjects, from the scientific to the political. So how do the words of the two men compare?

Read the rest here.

This is the first in a mini-series of posts about videos that really annoy us. First up – “The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See“:

Greg (we almost feel a little bit bad for having a go at someone who describes himself as “A high school science teacher in the process of burning out“[EDIT: especially now that Greg - not Gary - pointed out to us, much more politely than would have been perfectly reasonable, and to our embarrassment, and for which we apologise, that we got his name wrong first try]) presents “inescapable proof” that it is definitely better to “do something” (anything?) about global warming than to “do nothing”. That’s because, if global warming is happening, the consequences of not doing something are too horrible to contemplate, and if it isn’t, then hey, no great harm done. The thing is, this is just a reformulation of the Precautionary Principle, which, as Philip Stott notes, is itself just a reformulation of Blaise Pascal’s famous wager. Stott does a fine job of explaining why Pascal’s Wager (and, therefore, the Precautionary Principle, and Greg) cuts no ice in climate change debates.

We would only add that it is striking that Pascal was arguing the case for believing in something – God – in the absence of proof or evidence. We have pointed out before that once you remove Environmentalism’s scientific fig leaf, all you are left with is an embarrassment of blind faith and bad politics. Which is presumably why the video has been received and distributed so enthusiastically. Take out Greg’s sciencey-looking graphs and tables and what remains is an argument for embracing Environmentalism regardless of what science says. It is not science; it is theology – a theology written in the language of science, but which you’re not meant to take too literally or anything.