I found myself captivated by Denton’s Enough Rope interview with Don Burke on Monday night.

Burke has always been someone that interested me in a funny, and not so home maintenance based way. He’s obviously got a massive intellect and can be a real task master. He made many insightful remarks, but the one that stood out to me was:

Occasionally in the early years they did, but somehow they’ve learnt, like anything else in the environment, to cope, and that is, what you’ve hit on now, is what the conservation movement doesn’t get. They keep saying that if you squeeze every muscle in your body real tight and you close your eyes and HOLD, the world will stay the same. It won’t and it’s changing. And to me, the challenge to a thinking person is - How do you create tomorrow’s Australia that allows us to live and raise our kids and all of that but allows the environment a chance to work with us.

Tim Lowe also makes this point and in many ways it exposes the conservatism of much of the environment movement as well as provides a very real challenge to environmentalists such as my self.