Illegal logging

I've recently engaged with the work of the Environmental Investigation Agency on illegal logging in Indonesia. I find I react strongly on hearing about some of the situations they've been investigating in Indonesia. I find it deeply disturbing to hear details of this sort of environmental crime including the sheer scale of it! Sobering also to hear how such products find their way to Europe in spite of many companies' stated intentions not to support unsustainable forestry. So it's cheering to hear the US start to extend its own wildlife trafficking legislation - the Lacey Act - to include timber, wood products and plants. This would in effect prohibit the import, sale or trade of illegally harvested wood products. Responsibility will therefore lie with importers, retailers and traders in the US, not just with those doing the logging. Whether the bill will go right through and how such legislation would work in practice remains to be seen. To me, it seems long overdue and I hope there will be pressure for the EU and UK to do likewise. EIA, as a campaigning organisation, are facilitating individuals to call for such action. They've drafted a letter that can be sent to local MPs.

Reason - its use and abuse

Thanks to David Chapman for the link to this interesting set of articles on 'why people hate reason' from the New Scientist. An impressive line-up of authors offering some very different disciplinary perspectives. Quite a lot of common themes among the different contributors discussed in the Editorial

"The first problem our contributors have identified is not with reason itself, but with its abuse. The second unifying theme among our contributors is the concern that science and reason are increasingly seen as providing not just scientific, technical and military fixes, but answers to everything that matters in the world. Some of our contributors bring a third charge: that even on its own terms, reason must own up to some serious limitations."

....though it's concluded that

"some of the expectations of reason are ...unreasonable."

In our Open University Environmental decision making: a systems approach course we consider different approaches to decision making, some very rational others much less so. We need all the approaches so I see rational and less rational means more as a duality than a dualism. A few years ago I became aware of precision farming approaches that enabled farmers to move from intuitive to more rational approaches and findings that farmers' decision making was actually highly rational. Having worked through a lot of environmental decisions where Simon's ideas of limited rationality seemed to resonate very strongly, this research made me think, as I was becoming used to claims that we need to value intuitive approaches more highly than the strictly rational. I agree we need to accept the limitations of reason but not sure I hate reason - its clearly got users as well as abusers.

The trap of conventions

I've recently been reading Michael Maniates' analysis - Individualization: Plant a tree, ride a bike, save the world - in which he illustrates very well how we are trapped in our thinking into doing what is familiar rather than engaging meaningfully with our ability to do things differently, which could mean fairly radical social change. He talks about it partly in terms of limiting our collective imagination. The need for this 'second-order' change - doing things differently - rather than 'first order', i.e. change that amounts to doing more of the same, came up again in reading George Monbiot's posting on the proposed coal-fired replacement of Kingsnorth power station. Monbiot explains that whether we prevent runaway climate change hinges largely on us stopping using this most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and that there are a lot of issues of practicality and cost around 'cleaner coal'. I was struck by the phrase from the power plant's proposer E.on in alleged correspondence with a civil servant that " the government has no right to withhold approval for a conventional plant”. Aaagh! In this day and age how can such an argument hold? In this context ....conventional, traditional or familiar...doesn't necessarily mean good!

It's still summer

A visit to Hidcote's wonderful gardens and sitting admiring an early evening Oakham sky reminded me it's still summer...which stuck at my computer I sometimes forget!