The green inquisition

“When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.”  The truth of this adage, attributed to Chesterton, can be seen  throughout the Western world.

It seems our inner city elites are programmed to be religious. Having abandoned the traditional variety, their new religion is in a series of infallible dogmas. These are all related to their obsessive view of the environment.

Until recently their dominant dogma was that global warming is man-made. Our elites are endowed with an agility that would have impressed George Orwell. When the facts looked as though they were getting in the way, “global warming” was quietly amended to “climate change”.  So that if it is shown that the earth is not in fact warming, they will still say that any cooling, any drought, any flood, any hailstorm, any bushfire or the like is also the result of man’s activities.

Other dogmas include maintaining the pristine quality of the bush, thus making back burning difficult or impossible, and opposition to all commercial fishing and agriculture.

It is an essential requirement in these circles that common sense be suspended. Now common sense would tell you that any substantial increase in ground fuel in the bush will lead to an increase in the heat generated by a bush fire.

Common sense would also tell you not to have trees, especially eucalypts, too close to your house. Dare remove them, and the eco-friendly Council to whom you have dutifully paid your rates for years will see you in court where an eco-friendly magistrate will impose a penalty which will bankrupt you.

Common sense would tell you that if you declare vast maritime parks and forbid commercial fishing, you will then encourage sharks to follow the resulting increased number of fish into our harbours. If you then put a cap on the number of sharks to be caught by shark hunters, common sense would tell you that the number of shark attacks will also increase. On Saturday the NSW authorities told the ABC the increase in attacks was not their fault, and anyway people should, among other things, swim between the flags. Presumably the sharks are law abiding environmentalists and do not hunt people between the flags.

Common sense would tell politicians that with the vast increase in population, we must build new dams and harvest the water in those parts of the country which receive abundant rainfall. Common sense would also tell politicians to develop our ports so they can cope with the next boom, and to improve mass transport systems to move our increasing population around and between our crowded cities.

Common sense would tell the Federal government not to impose a tax on carbon, one which everyone agrees will have absolutely no effect on the climate. And in the meantime, we have just learned that the potential cost of signing Kyoto is now $870 million in acquiring international carbon credits from carpet baggers on some shonky international market.

Politicians at all levels of government are enforcing these dogmas for different reasons. Some are gullible enough to believe in them, but most are corruptly buying green votes or they are too cowardly to stand up to them.

They know what will happen to them. In their zealous pursuit of heresy, our elites have little to learn from Tomás de Torquemada.

Jeremy Clarkson tells the story of his review of the battery-powered Tesla sports car, "the red-blooded sports car and great white hope for the world’s green movement."  It was claimed the car could run for 200 miles, but after 55 miles the battery power was down to 20%.  They changed to a second car, but it overheated. They then went back to the first only to find that its brakes weren’t working properly.  

They showed all of this on Top Gear. His assessment, not unreasonably, was that the Tesla “absolutely does not work”.

Tesla did not complain, but ultra environmentalists complained to the world’s major newspapers.  “The Daily Telegraph said we’d been caught up in a new fakery row. The Guardian accused us of being ‘underhanded’. The New York Times wondered if we’d been ‘misleading’.”

Clarkson compares this to what happens to professors see when they deny man-made global warming. “Immediately, they are drowned out by an unseen mob, and then their funding dries up. It’s actually quite frightening.”

He concedes that the Telsa does work, but only at presumably inner city dinner parties. “Tell someone you have one and in minutes you will be having sex. But as a device for moving you and your things around, it is about as much use as a bag of muddy spinach.”

To repeat, our politicians are following this damaging agenda because they are gullible, corrupt or cowardly.  And it is the nation which is suffering.