Botanic Gardens
Some shots, mostly from the National Botanic Gardens.
What If Inaction On Climate Change Is Deliberate?
Climate change is indeed the defining issue of our times. But the Rudd government could not pass an emissions trading scheme, leaving its biggest environmental achievements the establishment of a paltry Renewable Energy Target and some meager R&D funding. Carbon emissions continue to grow despite the effects being felt. Rhetoric is plentiful, but actual action on climate change has been terribly limited. We know the problem, but our response as a species seems to be to just hope it goes away. The typical consensus is that the power of fossil fuel interests, intergovernmental squabbling and short-termism are driving this inaction. Ockham’s razor suggests this is the most likely cause. However, I’d like to examine an alternative hypothesis – what if the rich and powerful see climate change as real, but as a positive for their own economic interests?
Floriade
The annual flower festival.
Bicentennial Park
Some photos from the park.
Queanbeyan River
A few shots from down by the river, near White Rock.
For Love or Money
I’ve always been keen to do work that I find intellectually challenging and worthwhile. If you have to spend half your waking life working, you should make the best use of that time and do something which will be worthwhile, both in terms of a useful outcome rather than a bullshit job and in terms of personal growth. Or at worst, one of the two. But it seems like I’m in a substantial minority on this, judging from the incredulous reactions I get to the idea of intellectual stagnation in a career. I’ll address that point once I get around to writing my treatise on intellectual stagnation and our society. But for now, I’m interested in looking at whether enough additional money can be sufficient to make up for a job which is unfulfilling.
More birdies
Some more birds, this time from the Jerrabomberra Wetlands.
Birdies and flowers
Some birdies and flowers from around Quangers.
A Couple Of Shots By The River
I’m still trying to get lucky with my new camera and a Platypus being in the same place, at the same time, but here’s a couple of shots from by the river in Oaks Estate anyways.
Australian Job Satisfaction
I’m pulling together some research for a longer post, but I came across a paper which merited a separate look by itself. Blanchflower and Oswald’s 2005 paper looked at reported satisfaction of folks in a range of countries, as a counterpart to the Human Development Index (HDI). Although Australia ranks highly on the HDI (now 2nd per the most recent data), they found that Australia performs poorly on a range of happiness indicators, particularly job satisfaction. Are we flipping the old stereotypes and becoming whinging Aussies, or are there other effects at play?