Environmental Issues

My involvement with environmental issues began in the early 1980s, during that period when environmentalism became a global political movement and ‘global warming’ completely replaced Snowball Earth as the preferred apocalyptic vision.   Northern hemisphere temperatures had declined from the 1940s to mid-1970s, leading to fears of a freezing planet, but a rise in the temperature in the late 1970s had changed the game.

I worked on various ‘environmental affairs’ committees for the Australian Petroleum Exploration Society through the 1980s until the mid 1990s, by which time most of the industry’s policy positions were clear and the companies were focused increasingly on compliance with the ever-growing green tape. 

In 1990 I gave the opening address at the plenary session dealing with conservation and development at APPEA’s 1990 conference in Darwin. Researching that paper, and the talk based on it, was an important intellectual journey for me, akin to my experience during the Noonkanbah confrontation. It led me to the understanding that conservation and development are the same process on different time scales: conservation, to provide for the future; development, to provide for the present. It also led me to the concern that many who control the environmentalists’ agenda are driven by a pessimism about, and a distaste for, Western society, and a desire to establish a new world order. 

My booklet for the Institute of Public Affairs on oil in the marine environment was written to provide the layman with an insight into the chemistry of oil’s formation, the process of exploration, the ubiquity of hydrocarbons in our daily lives, and the impact of oil spilt into the ocean. Though written a long time ago, it is, along with the APPEA 1990 papers, still relevant and might prove useful to new readers. 

In retirement I have begun to write short articles on environmental issues and hope to do more, including an update of the APPEA and IPA papers.  

Attachments

Conservation, Development and Environmentalism - Historical Perspective and Future Imperatives — 1.4 MB PDF File Download
Muddying the Waters — 248.5 KB PDF File Download
Oil in Troubled Waters — 2.9 MB PDF File Download
Conservation, Development and Environmentalism Speech — 208.3 KB PDF File Download
Dead Whale Interview, December 2001. — 469.2 KB PDF File Download
Bear Facts, August 2008. — 1.8 MB PDF File Download