Conservative Conservation
Socially Right, Environmentally Left is Prudent
Why be prudent, you ask? So that we don’t have to be. Believers in economic growth have a hard time making sense of ‘shrinking to abundance’.
Julian Cribb, AM is an Australian science writer and author of six books on the human existential emergency.
If humans are to have any chance of avoiding the collapse that is now so powerfully indicated, then it is only by the individual citizens of the Earth, led by women, joining hands to do so — despite the corruption of rulers, the ignorance of oligarchs and the self-interest of corporations, ethnicities and beliefs.
Julian Cribb, SPA Newsletter 158
Mr Cribb and I, as fellow supporters of Sustainable Population Australia, agree on the most important challenge facing our species; we cannot continue growing the human enterprise on our finite planet.
There is no doubt we are heading for a Great Simplification, which is not all bad, but what we want to avoid is a damaging Crash. However, I believe Mr Cribb’s roadmap around collapse takes three wrong turns that actually serve as a more direct route to it.
If we regard whole swathes of humanity as ‘unfit’ participants, as he does, we are very likely to be dooming ourselves to a horribly Swift Descent. He does this by pitting the sexes against each other, hunting for racists and excluding the elites. I’ve no doubt his intentions are noble, it’s just that these ideas are old, tired and need to be reassessed.
WOMEN
Which women does Cribb what us to be lead by, I wonder? Women like Margaret Thatcher, who warned against climate change and undue immigration? Or perhaps he’d prefer Chief Executive Carrie Lam who oversaw the dismantling of democracy in Hong Kong? Or would women like the Mayor of Ipswich (Queensland), Teresa Harding and the Premier of Victoria, Jacinta Allan, who encourage and celebrate population explosions in their respective jurisdictions, be more appropriate?
Presumably Mr Cribb thinks that women are better suited for leadership in the times we live because they are better nurturers and/or because we need a feminine touch in politics. This must be based on the assumption that there are behavioural differences between the sexes, which I agree is so. But whether women are, by virtue of their biological sex (and thus social conditioning) better suited to political leadership is peculiar. It is hard to find any evidence for it. I wonder if it misunderstands gender differences? Based on my experience in behavioural science, women tend to be more attuned to interpersonal relationships and tend to be more agreeable. Men tend to be more attuned to the action that can sometimes be usefully challenging and straight forward communication.
Nurturing is a talent both mothers and fathers can have. Or not. For example, an over-empathizing mother, or father, can be a disadvantage to the child that leads to over protection and spoiling. Being more acculturated to personal relations and empathizing does not give women an advantage in child-rearing because it is just one aspect of socialization. Men can bring order and consistency to child rearing. But to the best of our knowledge most of these are acquired traits, and people can modify their behaviour. The different approaches to nurturing that men and women bring to a family or public life is what makes them both valuable. It’s the mix that helps.
A good example of this is how the Teals have reportedly brought more civil discourse to federal parliament since their gains in 2022. However, in the Senate the worst behaviour has been that of female Senators Lydia Thorpe and Fatima Payman toward veteran Senator Pauline Hanson.
ELITES
I’ve come to despise the labels ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’. It leaves many people, like me, out. For example, Batya Ungar Sargon explains in this video “ How Elites Betrayed Working People “ that middle class American working families want better health care and lower immigration, but the two major parties only offer opposites of both; less health care with lower immigration (Republican) and better health care with high immigration (Democrat). What a conundrum. In Australia, you only have to be socially moderate or old school liberal to be regarded as far right. As a dedicated environmentalist I’m far left, apparently. Economically, my views are centre in so far as they’re social democratic, but post growth economics is completely unrepresented.
I agree with Mr Cribb that our elites are, for the most part, selfish. Most of them seem to be corrupt in one form or another and although many are ignorant, I’d say they’re blinkered, not stupid. But not all of them deserve to be written off. One super wealthy group in the United States calls itself Patriotic Millionaires. This is a small minority of rich people who show some sign of integrity. In their letter Proud to Pay More, they have been asking the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, to tax extreme wealth for several years ( ABC). I first became aware of this listening to Nick Hanauer’s TEDTalk Beware Fellow Plutocrats: The Pitchforks Are Coming. If we tar all elites with the same brush, we will overlook some important ones and miss an opportunity to support their attempts to influence their more nefarious colleagues.
Impossible, you say? Maybe, but it has happened before. Medieval Debt Jubilees occurred numerous times to reboot economies that were strangled by gold coinage concentrating into too few hands. In the early 20th Century, a small group of elites convinced the rest of their privileged clan that it was in their interest to spread the wealth around to avoid what they all feared — a communist revolution ( Peter Turchin). During the Great Compression, the highest income tax bracket in the United States went up to a staggering 90%. Those were the glory days of America’s mid century Nordic model economy. This was achieved because the elites agreed to shut down — or at least slow down — the wealth pump. It was a deliberate strategy to preserve their privileged position by sacrificing some of it. It seems very unfamiliar and unlikely in today’s complex globalized economy. But the Great Compression was unprecedented in size and scope. It spanned the Western world, because of course elites are truly international and know no borders.
Today, as was the case then, for a minority of insightful (even alturistic?) elites to succeed, there needs to be sufficient worry about impending doom for them to be motivated to act against their immediate wealth-hoarding interests. The ‘collapse that is now so powerfully indicated’ may be just the thing to do it. Tech billionaires are taking it seriously.
We will never get rid of elites entirely. So, to ignore them or pit ourselves against them and attempt to overthrow them is futile, even infantile. Like it or not, we have to pick the best of them and throw our support behind them.
ETHNICITY
This brings me to the third fatal flaw of standard progressive thinking. We. Who are we? Like it or not, humanity has — in recent history — spread around the world and adapted to niche ecosystems that have shaped our appearance and customs. Despite the slightest biological discrepancies, our differences are marked and they define how we see ourselves and each other. Our value systems result in the most remarkable behavioural contrasts. Learning what these differences are and how they came about — rather than seeking to eraze them — is fascinating to me.
Naturally, we warm to those we have much in common with because it is easier to get along and we can get on with doing things together. There is only so much of ‘being challenged’ that actually enriches our lives. It is only when we are well-rooted, culturally integrated and supported by our in-group that we can approach other ethnicities in an informed way and properly appreciate them. Oh true, its possible to mix blindly. Sometimes it seems easier to mix by ignoring or down playing differences, but that is a recipe for amnesia and history repeating itself. It is neopolitan sponge cake compared to carrot cake; colourful and bland tasting versus sublte, earthy and full bodied.
I’m not sure what Mr Cribb means by ‘the self-interest of corporations, ethnicities and beliefs’. It’s a broad stroke of the pen and open to interpretation. The self-interest of corporations seems pretty obviously profiteering, but what is the self interest of ‘ethnicities and beliefs’?
Perhaps self-promotion is something corporations, ethnicities and beliefs sometimes have in common. While advertising is standard practice for corporations, it isn’t for ethnic groups. Ethnic preservationism is normal around the world, except (remarkably) across the Anglo-zone.
Some ethnic groups certainly do promote themselves, especially the orthodox ones. Indian enclaves in Melbourne are getting place names changed through local Councils without community consultation. Orthodox Jews are behind the creeping expansion of Israeli settlements. NATO and the EU excuse themselves of broken promises to Russia not to expand east because the Baltic states ‘asked if they could join it’. How could they say ‘No’? These acts of self-promotion can lead to conflicts, which doesn’t help us live in harmony with each other. It probably doesn’t help us live in harmony with the planet either, but that is a longer story.
It’s hard to know if Mr Cribb is calling for an end to corporations and ethnicities or just the selfish aspects of their behaviour. If it’s the latter I agree wholeheartedly. Focusing on just ethnicities for a moment, Cribb calls for, ‘the individual citizens of the Earth […to join] hands’. This sounds like a clarion call to end ethnicities and nation states. If it is, Cribbs would not be alone in such delusional utopianism.
Ethnicity is our heritage and gives our lives meaning and can mitigate the desire for ever more wealth and power. That it is enriching is well understood when we talk of ‘diverse’ people. But for some reason it doesn’t apply to those of us from an Anglo-Celtic background. So if Mr Cribb is calling for an end to ethnicities, is he really concerned about all ethnicities, or just ours? And if so, why the double standard? Does he think that culture doesn’t bind middle-class Aussies together and make us content behind our white picket fences — the very contentment we need? For me, valuing my British Australian ethnicity is not just compatible with degrowth and contentment, it is a buttress. A rich cultural life supports minimalism and voluntary simplicity.
I look forward to the day when SPA recognizes that ethnic preservationists are allies and it’s the racial supremacists who are the problem. By the way, I’m far from being an ‘orthodox Anglo-Celtic Australian’. I recognize that the ‘melting pot’ is ultimately inevitable — it’s the pace of change that is counterproductive.
I may be an early adopter of this view, but I believe it is spreading and will help in the transition to degrowth. I call on the individual citizens of the countries of the Earth to join hands. Ethno-nationalism gives people a home and a sense of belonging. When it is too proud it is a problem and the best ways of avoiding that is by ensuring every individual has access to a good, basic education and opportunities to be rewarded for their contributions.
To do that we must shut down the wealth pump.
To do that was must STOP STATE CAPTURE.
Originally published at http://equanimity.blog on February 12, 2025.
