Greens as environmental vandals

[erudito]

Tuesday night, went to an extremely lucid presentation by a forest scientist of great experience which showed, in a quite matter-of-fact way, what an environmental disaster the green take-over of environmental management in Victoria has been. A discussion at another meeting the next evening added further and better particulars

Comments

[pearl]

I had thought most environmentalists were aware of natural and aboriginal fire management by now.

As a recent graduate (twice now) in botany and ecology, certainly the young'uns know.

The debate about leaving everything alone, and burning, appears (in my opinion, and from sitting in lecture theatres) to be more about the issue of 'what is natural?' The first problem, is that when people say 'natural' it is a tricky concept. Do you mean we should revert back to what we were doing in the 1930s? Before white settlement? Before human settlement?

There are people who go for the 'before human settlement' approach, which means fire is entirely random, and we shouldn't touch anything (if you want to be smart, you can suggest removing all of the sclerophylls and trying to revegetate large swathes of Victoria with Northofagus species, but they often don't seem to care about the individual plants that make up an ecosystem, more about the conceptual feeling of reverting the environment back to nature as it should have been

[catsidhe]

Come now, you can't want to introduce actual facts about this process into the discussion, can you? I mean, mentioning how the training and education and experience of the upcoming1 generation of ecologists and park managers is nuanced and complicated by precisely those very facts that Erudito says are not just irrelevant but actively dangerous to wonder about2, how can that but distract from the overriding and vital message that Greens are dangerous, horrible people, and even if the problem was rampant managerialism3, it's still the Greens' fault.

Really, Lorenzo, this obsession with the Evil of Green looks like a religious article of faith in its own right. The obsession with the idea that anyone who is concerned with environmental issues is unreasonable and religious - they can't possibly have come to their position through reason and fact because if they did they'd agree with Erudito - looks like fundamentalism to that faith.

1. read: ‘most influenced by the Horrible Green Religion Just Ask Andrew Bolt’
2. “... More Research

[pearl]

read: ‘most influenced by the Horrible Green Religion Just Ask Andrew Bolt'I'll agree about being the 'most influenced.' I grew up listening to TV and radio talking about the coming dangers of acid rain, followed by the legislation of CFCs because of the hole in the ozone layer, and then the greenhouse effect (which is a phrase you very rarely hear any more) and now, global warming

[taavi]

You sound like Graeme Bird.

[quatrefoil]

I could go through this in detail, point out the problems with the arguments as your other commenters have done etc. etc. ad nauseam, but really, I have better things to do and it all boils down to this: 'don't be daft'. I'm not stupid. Nor are most of the people in the Greens (if you mean the party), or the environmental movement at large, or in environmental science. Most of us aren't evil either, and while I'd be the first to admit that the Greens of all persuasions have their lunatic fringe, at least that fringe is out saving cute things and hugging trees rather than figuring out how to torture and bomb people, which is more than can be said for the lunatic fringe of the extreme right.

As a considered response to your rant, I'm off to dreadlock my hair, hug trees, and tear up my PhD. Then maybe I'll fit the stereotype.

[tcpip]

For, according to the Green Faith, nature is benign, human action is bad and More Research Is Needed On Every Last Species before we consider Evil Human Intervention by burning

Such an attempt at parody will simply mean that any sensible argument you might be presenting will be overlooked. If you going to criticise Green policies you'd be better served by actually criticising real polices rather than strawmen best suited in a USENET flame war.

[catsidhe]

You assume it was an attempt at parody.

[taavi]

When faced with a greenhouse denialist complaining about others cherry picking science and claiming that "more research is needed", it's hard to conclude anything else, I suppose. The question is whether he's aware it's a parody, or is it unconscious?