Mood:
lazyTopic: ecology
Conservation has to be our nature | The Australian
We have read Allen Greer's public stuff for years and think he deserves a medal, or a hemp brocade perhaps.
He provides real courage in a public discourse that is scared of its moral shadow. But it's not just tragic professional science fearful of ecology as an intrinsic value.
Even the impertinent (snot nose?) Green Party - exemplified by this ambitious candidate in the local press (staffer for cfmeu trained [pdf] Senator Kerry Nettle) - are quick to sneer at "lentil eating hippies" presumably such as Greer above (?), or this 43 year old writer with a commercial law and zoology degree (?):
Don't forget your 'green' origins and betters indeed. Of course when we helped pioneer the NSW Green Party in 1994 we were just twiddling our thumbs when this candidate was .... a happy go lucky 10 year old. And when we lapsed our membership in 2000 it was because the ALP and cfmeu were so green and there was nothing for the Green Party left to do on the environmental side of things ....
Committed environmentalism of 'real greens' is thus a fairly marginal philosophy amongst the IR, minority (gay) rights, refugee, pensioner, health budget, war protest, teacher's union, public ownership, agenda in the official Green Party particularly in NSW, not to mention their fair share of spivs and grifters. We hasten to add these are all worthy concerns per se, yet we can't help thinking perhaps a 5 metre sea rise might resolve all these via the biggest human rights issue ever?
Yes there is the pulp mill in Tas that Senator Nettle has been picketing the Howard Govt over at the Phillip St Sydney CBD offices (when woodchipping of forest has been a taboo in NSW and not just in the Sydney Morning Herald), but it's mostly rival economics and Tamar amenity, with critters and trees an after thought, temporary election populism with a longevity of .... oh say till Nov 24? George Newhouse the ALP Candidate in Wentworth accepts the pulp mill and the seemingly unconditional confused (?) local Green Party preferences a full 2 months out from the vote. If Danielle Ecuyer's independent anti pulp mill candidacy didn't exist it would have been necessary to invent her.
Funny too how the ALP friendly ACF has no problem working with the ALP aligned Climate Institute but have to be at arms length from Ecuyer's political candidacy ...which could just split the ALP vote in Wentworth.
The Australian is instructive and worth extracting for the record here, (oh Don, we do like you but you are so nailed):
No politics, please
THE Australian Conservation Foundation has cut its links with the Women for Change Alliance because of Danielle Ecuyer's dalliance with federal politics. Ecuyer has decided to stand as an independent against her former partner and Labor candidate George Newhouse in Wentworth, the Sydney seat held by Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Ecuyer founded WCA last year. On Monday Strewth reported that the ACF and WCA were to co-host a $60 a head party with organic wines and nibbles next Wednesday to celebrate "stylish and sustainable living". Yesterday, ACF executive director Don Henry said his organisation was a non-partisan charity that was not involved in fundraising activities for any candidate or political party. "Late last week, ACF made the decision to conduct these events without the participation of WCA, as it became clear Ms Ecuyer may stand for election in the seat of Wentworth," Henry said. He said the events were only intended to raise awareness of environmental issues among the citizens of Woollahra.
At least the Greens are colour coded and thus hand cuffed to the environment one way or the other as per Nettle's return to the Green Party's roots outside Howard's offic, chained to it by their name and one of 4 principles in their original mission . All the other parties are grey, and in truth Godless vandals who wouldn't know the beauty of Creation from an Assembly of God/Hillsong Convention including 'earnest offensive Great Leader' aka Halo Kid aka farmer boy.
............
In an eerie coincidence see this parallel story in the Sydney Morning Herald just the latest tombstone in The Cheap Talk Cemetry on the road to ecological destruction (?):
Population pressure takes Earth to its limits - Environment - smh ...
Which reminds us of that great 'champion' of the environment for the local ALP Shadow Minister Anthony Albanese:
ALP local groupie MLC and Marrickville Cr Penny Sharp is in the other local press (The Glebe Letters 25/10/07) referring to the "hypocrisy and ruthlessness" of the Greens in a cute form of projection from MP Sharp by name, sharp by rhetoric.
This is head shaking 'takes one to know one' stuff: The ALP want to build a $5B mega tunnel with smog stacks similar to the M5 East stack nearby to service an expanded Port Botany, and exponentially grow diesel train traffic 24 hours a day, each worth 6,000 trucks in emission pollution .... in Marrickville.
And guess who is the shadow minister for "Infrastructure" with the job of soft selling this cancer promoting intensification scandal in his own Inner West for the ALP in order to ascend further up his tax payer funded greasy pole? Even as he fans with deadly accuracy the fear of nuclear reactors across Australia?
That 'champion' of the environment ... Anthony Albanese.
Just keep voting Green Party for any real hope of change not "me tooism" but remember they are all politicians. Truly biology is the dismal science and for those who know it's a recipe for clinical depression, bouts of alcoholic anaesthesia or in our case the therapy of blogging.
