Walter Starck: Why, Twenty-One Times Why?
Is there no limit to the demands of political correctness, the burden of hypothetical solutions to imaginary problems, and the detachment from empirical reality that can be imposed on a society? Here, a list of questions whose answers would be obvious were they not being obscured.
Why do we facilitate the largescale ongoing immigration of refugees from failed states with no assessment of the outcomes? In particular, it would seem worth trying to better understand the effect of a common factor for almost all of the failed states, which is the nature of the culture they share and how this may be affecting the successful assimilation of these immigrants.
Why is there such a political obsession in Australia with climate change and carbon emissions when no recent extremes of climate are outside the bounds of earlier natural variability, when the claimed warming trend is less than the margin of error in measurement and when this is the only developed economy in which the level of natural uptake exceeds the emissions. As Australia is a net carbon sink, why are we not then receiving credits from other nations who are large net emitters?
Why is there a massive drive for wind and solar power when they require three to four times more installed generating capacity than they deliver and, at current levels, are providing only about 10% of baseload demand at already exorbitant cost with increasingly difficult load management problems? Especially, when the full baseload capacity of conventional power is still required to provide backup for the highly erratic alternative power and it must then be running inefficiently in standby mode much of the time
Why the phobia about nuclear power when we have the largest reserves in the world, ideal conditions for it and, with current technology, can enjoy the cheapest, most reliable, safest and cleanest power of all? Better still, we also have vast areas of the most remote, geologically stable and driest places to store any waste.
Why do we ban the clearing of native vegetation and increasingly hamstring our farmers and graziers with myriad environmental costs, restrictions and demands? We used to have an abundance of some of the least expensive high-quality food in the world. Now we have some of the most expensive with increasing dependence on imports.
Do our eco-saviours have no awareness that ecology is above all holistic and that what we do not get in one place only shifts the effect to somewhere else?
Why is it that Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea et al. are always having to impose gross violations of human rights and subject their populations to severe deprivations for some higher purpose which remains permanently in the future? Might there not in fact be some fundamental fallacy in collectivist philosophy that renders freedom, prosperity and equality permanently unattainable?
Why is it that so many of those who profess such great concern over threats to the environment greet any evidence that something may not be as bad as they fear with anger and rejection, never with hopeful interest? Might it be that their real commitment is not to nature but, to displaying their virtue and pleasuring themselves with a delicious sense of self-righteousness?
Although the basic principles of logic are fundamental to the form of symbolic communication and reasoning we know as language, these are all too readily ignored where personal gain or emotional satisfaction are involved. Such disregard for truth not only varies between individuals, but also between cultures and within cultures over time. Currently Western Culture seems to be in a period of decline in this regard with the rise of post-modern political correctness playing a major role and with social media aiding and abetting the malaise through easy propagation and ready access to social affirmation for almost anything one might choose to believe.
Every day the news media spew an irrational swill of dubious opinion parading as fact. Even when directly conflicted by sound readily available evidence, it is simply ignored. Remarkably, and no matter how ill-founded it may be, much of this effluvium is swallowed by a large audience already primed for unquestioning acceptance.
That we should prefer to believe what we find satisfying and seek comfort and support in others of similar belief is understandable. What is difficult to comprehend, however, is our willingness to lie to ourselves with irrational conviction simply because we find the indications of reason and evidence discomforting in some way. This is especially remarkable in view of the repeated and disastrous consequences of beliefs clearly not in accord with the actual world in which we exist and/or contrary to the observable nature of our own being.
In short, is there no limit to the demands of political correctness, the burden of hypothetical solutions to imaginary problems and the detachment from empirical reality that can be imposed on a society?
That, at least, would seem to be one question for which we seem well on the way to a decisive answer.
A marine biologist, Walter Starck has spent much of his career studying coral reef and marine fishery ecosystems
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