One Finite Planet

Sustainability alone is only buying time.

Might vs Right and Persuasion

First Published:

I have just started on this page, but will post updates over coming months. Updating my Facebook Dilemma thoughts today was a key driver to start this page.

There are many cases where fortunes come to hang on either:

  • persuading the general population that a product/service is “for the good of all”
  • persuade that claims of product problems or negative outcomes are false

Fortunes have been made while persuasion was successful. Are all huge sources of wealth always against what is right? No, but there certainly have sufficient examples where huge wealth has been generated by activities counter to best interests of the people that serve as a warning we should not just assuming those with ‘might’ are ‘right’.

Clearly it can turn out that activities that create great wealth have been hiding facts. How can we be sure even today there are not huge money making industries covering up their dark sides?

Are we now immune to being persuaded by wealth enterprises?

Examples products pushed as ‘for the good of all’ and the tactics:

  • Tobacco:
    • Fund ‘science’ supporting positive health outcomes and disputing negative health outcomes.
    • Advertise and promote sport to create an association with health activities
  • Gambling:
    • Advertise and promote sport to create an association with health activities
  • Alcohol:
    • Advertise and promote sport to create an association with health activities
  • Sugar Based Drinks:
    • Coca-Cola originally contained cocaine, but moved to the combination of high sugar and caffeine
    • Fund ‘science’ supporting positive health outcomes and disputing negative health outcomes.
  • Oil, Coal & Gas
    • Fund ‘science’ supporting positive health outcomes and disputing negative health outcomes.
  • Global Companies Promoting Population Growth
    • Fund campaigns arguing “the earth is not overpopulated”
    • Fund anti-extinction crisis ‘research’
    • Fund counter campaigns against environmental conservation

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Table of Contents

Categories

A different perspective: Humans maybe the greatest threat to life on Earth but also the only hope.

January 13, 2023 March 20, 2023

The title ‘one finite planet’ can be mistaken to be yet another proclamation of how we live on this amazing planet which could even be unique, and we humans are foolishly placing it all at risk. Boring.

No. Instead, the perspective is we are living on a planet that is naturally hostile to humans, where nature dictates only a limited total amount of life, can only exist for a limited time, and that time is almost at an end. When seen from this perspective, even the environment mission changes from just not interfering, to the more complex task of tackling the challenge of overcoming nature, while yes, quite importantly, not bringing life to an early end in the process.

Read More »

COP27: Climate change action sabotage?

November 16, 2022 November 17, 2022

Reports from COP27 seems indicate the key initiative this year to make wealthy nations cover the cost of the damages poor nations will incur as a result of emissions that have main originated from those wealthy nations.

The proposal as it stands has a missing an essential piece, and trying to cover for that essential piece, appears most to likely to increase emissions, and move COP away from a focus on solving the climate crisis and instead toward just fighting over the cost.

This is a troubled look at the key flaw in what has been put forward and the real solution that should be in place.

Read More »

Can Peter Dutton repair the democracy ‘loyal opposition’.

June 6, 2022 June 9, 2022

Democracy is under threat, and a significant part of the problem stems for the distortion of the current model of ‘opposition’. While the politics of division and polarisation of the USA Trump republicans vs Biden democrats attracts most attention on the world stage right now, what happens in Australia following the recent election which saw democracy strike back (page coming soon), has the potential to provide the world with an alternate blueprint for the role of the opposition party, which could reinvigorate democracy and spread to the US and elsewhere.

Is there an alternative to the current Republicans vs Democrats style, where ‘opposition’ is about each party demonising the other?

Read More »

News In Brief.

April 26, 2022 April 26, 2022

It is now war until the end for Putin. If Putin is to win in Ukraine, he would simply have to start a new war elsewhere, as relations with Russia could never again return to ‘normal’ without charges of war crimes being held.

Read More »