Sorry about that. Norm said much the same thing. I realize that that paragraph was a tactical error. Nevertheless, I wish *someone* would address the content rather than the style of what I wrote.

Agreed, which was why all I asked for in my original post was something “a shared responsibility for the earths resources”. Then a little while later, I look at my site traffice, and find that its been filed at PooterGeek under “worse than Nazism”, which I definitely was not implying.

You’ve clearly gone to more trouble than most of your chums by reading the thing and discussing it point-by-point rather than playing the ‘Worse than Hitler’ card right off.

But you really are not going to get a positive response from Norm or anyone else if you start off with comments like:

“No-one’s going to love them very much because the attack on Afghanistan delivered next-to-nothing, Iraq is a full-scale strategic and humanitarian disaster, and the neocon US government are merrily on their way to nuking Iran”.

A statement like that is intended not to engage but to provoke.

However can’t see how a specific ref to US fossil fuel consumption could have been brought in without also including refs to China and India’s likely future contribution to global warming which is both potentially far more frightening and much harder to argue against (are they really supposed to stay in rural poverty forever?).

If your position is a reactionary green and anti-development one (I am not saying that it is) then the manifesto has been specifically written to exclude you.

If you think development and environmentalism are compatible then join and make your case.

Otherwise there is not much too add to what you’ve already said.

Oh, I’m certainly trying to join in the argument!

I am indeed complaining about a ‘sin of omission’… but one I beleive to be completely intertwined with issues that the EM authors did include in their document. Clearly Eric (above) disagrees with me on this, but he doesn’t say why.

At first glance to give a section to open source but none to climate change indeed seems odd.

I’ve no doubt there was a lot of discussion about what to call it and while ‘manifesto’ is in many ways preferable to ‘statement’ or ‘declaration’ one drawback is that it creates unrealistic expectations of what should be included.

However nobody is pretending that the manifesto is a political programme and the reason climate change does not feature is because climate change is NOT one of the issues that separates us from the rest of the left.

A number of us have similar gripes about ‘omissions’ from the Manifesto but see it as a potential forum for pursuing an ongoing argument within the left.

If you won’t join the argument because of something that is not in it (as opposed to something that is and which you fundamentally disagree with) - that’s your loss.

A lot of the thrust of the Euston Manifesto’s complaint is that anti-war leftists spend too much time criticising X but not enough criticising Y. If there’s validity in this idea of “sins of omission”, why doesn’t this apply to Eustonism as well?

Personally, I think it’s fine for Euston to avoid talking about climate change; talk about what interests you. But equally I don’t see any reason for someone to have to fulfill some sort of quota of condmenation of Saddam Hussein in order to be allowed to analyze and criticise the actions of the UK government.

That is no reason not to sign the document.

Whether you believe the environmentalists’ hype or not, its an issue that needs to be acknowledged, I think.

I reached the same conclusion. That’s why I didn’t sign it.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Funniest thing I’ve read this week.

I was certainly not calling the Euston Manifesto something as dangerous as Stalinism, etc. I was referring specifically to climate change. The fact that you and your colleagues did not refer to climate change in their manifesto was, I thought, an omission… but it obviously does not follow that you endorse climate change and its consequences, and I don’t say that.

‘Short on Climate Change’ would be a more appropriate summary of my response. It’s a corny pun and I wish I had thought of it earlier.

To repeat: I do think climate change needs to be addressed in the manifesto. In the document, you mention the phenomenon of anti-americanism, as if it is blind racism. In the case of some people this may be true, but I would suggest that much of the opposition to US policy in general, and the Iraq war in particular, stems from a perceived irresponsibility when it comes to fossil fuel consumption. Whatever the truth, and your own political opinions, you cannot deny it forms a crucial part of the debate.