What role might Universities play in the “small-p politics” of the environment? This is the subject of a piece in today’s The Australian in which I am quoted as saying, academics should foster informed debate but not be “advocates of a particular perspective”.
Professor Peter Fairweather from Flinder’s University is quoted, “We (academics) have to primarily give the scientific view first because nobody else can really do that.”
I note the word “scientific view”. I would like to think it was a poor choice of words.
It seems to me that academics increasingly confuse evidence, facts, theories and hypothesis, from arguments, from knowledge. Then there is opinion and there are views. And then there is the truth.
The Professor goes on to suggest that, when scientists spoke in the policy debate they should make this clear since as citizens they did not “necessarily have any more importance than anyone else, because everyone’s got a view of what we should do policy-wise,” he said.
What waffle! There are views and views and views. But it requires discipline and knowledge to build a robust argument.
The piece in The Australian is reporting on a decision by the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee to consider a role for universities in environmental politics.
I do think it is good the issue is being considered. But let us not pretend that Universities are not already involved in environmental politics. I know a professor in a Life Science Faculty that has unashamably very publicly driven campaigns for WWF.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
“Jennifer Marohasy, head of the environment unit at the IPA, said academics should foster informed debate but not be “advocates of a particular perspective”.”
So if this is applied then academics cannot push the GW skeptic line either.
If “a particular perspective” happens to be scientific truth then academics should promote that truth.
Professor Fairweather emphasised the very reason that academia should be excluded from political lobbying, when he said, “We have to primarily give the scientific view first because nobody else can really do that.”
Unfortunately, the debate is about a decade too late.
In my part of the world, James Cook, Griffith and Queensland Universities have already joined forces with Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Wet Tropics Management Authority, Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy, Tourism Council Australia – Queensland, the Alliance for Sustainable Tourism, Balkanu (the operational arm of the Cape York Land Council), the World Wildlife Fund Australia and CSIRO Wildlife & Ecology, within the Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Rainforest Ecology Management or Rainforest CRC.
Within this confederacy, individual disciplinary lobbying efforts are multiplied and carry the full weight of the combined spheres of influence of the aforementioned environmental management agencies. Academia is already directing environmental policy.
In 2000, the Rainforest CRC won a $150,000 Daintree Futures Study consultancy, by arguing that they were the most appropriate organisation to independently advise government on the complex land use issues, by amongst other things, “Utilising appropriate modelling expertise as a framework for evaluating scenarios in a multi-objective, decision-making framework with feedback loops”.
When asked why their final report recommended the compulsory expropriation of development rights from 442 landholders to reduce traffic for cassowary safety, whilst simultaneously recommending the doubling of visitor vehicles, the academic consultant team leader replied, “What can I say; except Big Brother is alive and well in the Daintree.”
Balancing the academic scales of declining budgetary allocation has been hard-fought through entrepreneurialism, but at what price?
Neil,
essentially science has become politicised.
Is that what you want to state but cannot?
Thanks Louis, what would I do without a scientist to tell me my mind?
But then again, had I posted your inference, that ‘essentially science has become politicised’, I would not have revealed the substance of my observations and experiences relative to the original post, questioning academia’s part in environmtal politics.
My broader attitude to science is that it is suffering delusions of grandeur, driven in no small part by the belief of many scientists that they are superior to the rest of humankind because of their privileged insights into the very nature of life.
Not dissimilar to the beliefs of other fanatics in other religions, when it comes down to it.
Neil,
Yes, scientists seem to be the new priesthood in which an ability to fortell the future is now done with technical sophistication.
The Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfven remarked many years ago that the problem with science is that there are too many scientists. This leads to an adaption of the Peter Principle in which research expands to keep the scientists busy.
While geology is sensu strictu a science, it is essentially history, though of a broader scope than the normal usuage of the term. What geology does tell us is that nothing in the geological past has been able to give us a clue what the future might be.
No one would have thought from studying Cambrian tribolites that dinosaurs might appear on the planet. Yet they did.
This is why most geologists are disinterested in the current popular issues, knowing full well that most of it is hot air.
The crucial fact is that observationally the assertions of the global warmers has not been observed, but like priests referring to secret religious business, they refer to their secret computer models which purport to foretell the future. They seem to do this because they have never learnt or studied history, whether of human history, or of geological history.
Unfortunately the scientists you point to are the majority, and there is not much anyone can do about it except to point out the obvious.
Scientific delusions of grandeur are easily punctured in the mining game I might add.
Scientists are collectively (not individually) convinced that global warming may be between 1.4 deg C and 5.8 deg C over the next century, a variation of >400%.
How factual is that science?
Based on these guesstimates scientists are demanding some govts to spend vast sums of money whilst other govts are exempt.
No allowance has been made on the economic impact of these strategems.
I can see people in Australia reduced to riding push bikes whilst the Chinese drive the latest flash auto.
Riding push bikes from one billabong to the next….