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Have the enviro-Nazis been emboldened?

February 10, 2007 on 7:15 pm | In Uncategorized |

One group in Australian politics has been consistently on the right track about environmental matters in general and global warming in particular for more than 30 years. When mainstream parties were ignoring the issue at best, or belittling it at worst, the Greens persisted in warning Australians that incremental environmental damage posed the most dangerous threat to human civilisation that has existed in recorded history, with the possible exception of thermonuclear war.

To their eternal shame, many people including the Liberal and National Parties held the Greens up to public ridicule. Labor tolerated them in return for their preferences and put shit on them behind their backs. Bob Brown was ‘The Green Queen’. Green activists were fanatics, loonies, out of touch with reality, on another planet … put it however you liked, the last thing anyone should have done was take them seriously.

Except that unfortunately they now seem to have been …. ummmmm …. right.

Actually they turned out to have a perceptive attitude to the nuclear thing too. Remember how the Greens back in the day wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons altogether? No exceptions, no trusting the USA to be the sole repository of virtue in a world prone to sin, no blind faith in non-proliferation treaties. Just … get … rid … of … them … all. If nobody had them, the global community would have an obvious and compelling interest in making sure that no country ever got them again.

Given recent developments, they seem to have been right about that too.

So have the mainstream parties learned anything from their miserable policy failures on the two issues that dwarf any others in their potential consequences for the human race? I mean forget ‘impact on your lifestyle’ and start thinking ‘impact on your prospects of staying alive’. Have mainstream politicians and media pundits had the ordinary decency and honesty to admit that they’ve been capital ‘W’ Wrong about nuclear weapons and environmental degradation and the Greens have been more or less Correct?

Hahahahahah as if.

Today the Greens called for Australia to stop exporting coal, as an obvious and effective way to begin reversing global warming. They didn’t mean close the mines tomorrow; they said exports should be phased out. No matter. Members of all mainstream political parties fell over each other in the rush to issue statements declaring absolute opposition to the whole idea. Absurd. Out of the question.

Coz they’re the loonie Greenies … what would they know about anything?