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We have environmentalists to thank for raising awareness of green issues to mainstream, where people, policy and payment have come under capture to the green zeitgeist.

Over the last thirty years an ever-increasing crescendo of demand for improved environmental management of land, resources and biodiversity has seen the headline calls evolve from:

• Environmental sustainability – looking at attaining inter-generational equity in resource management; to
• Greenhouse – a misnomer as a risk, because greenhouses are pumped with CO2 to accelerate plant growth; to
• Global Warming – when predictions failed to appear over 20 years; which led to:
• Climate change – where every weather event is interpreted as a “climate change” in this land of historical fire, drought and flooding rains. We end up with social media morons when the Bureau of Meteorology is accused of fudging historical data and children are taught gender fluidity and evils of colonisation rather than history and geography based on facts; which now becomes:
• Climate catastrophe – the latest headline call to action signed up to by so many from the Global Shapers heads of industry preening their green virtue instead of minding their business, to the hyper-anxious child climate strikers, many who can’t make their own bed, give up their phone or responsibly dispose of their Macca wrappers. If their protest signs are anything to go by, many can’t spell either.

Going too far

Good intentions taken too far end in disaster, sometimes evil. What previously stimulated genuine concern for the environment and innovation has evolved to become a new climate change religion in which emotion over-rides facts. Virtue signalling takes hold. That is certainly true of the green zeitgeist which has captured all levels of government, especially the air-conditioned bureaucracies and nervous politicians.

Nowhere is this better borne out than with the bushfires. Many allege bushfires are caused by Australia failing to mitigate CO2 emissions said to be causing climate change, despite this country being one of the few meeting targets set for reduction and undertaking comprehensive environmental measures at great cost to the economy, every business and household.

The green narrative of climate change bushfires is spoiled when we realise there are already 183 charges of arson (with more pending) for starting the fires, ignition being one of the factors.

Another factor is fuel. Again green intentions have paved the way to hell for so many:

• Creating more national parks, locking them up, not allowing fire wood collection or grazing to reduce undergrowth, failing to maintain fire breaks, not allowing, or failing to conduct cool burns in winter; and
• Preventing farmers from managing their land sustainably, from widening fire breaks and reducing undergrowth, under threat of bureaucratic charges, legal process and massive fines.

We can’t change Australia’s known propensity to drought, which has made the unmanaged build-up of understory tinder dry, except by building dams, again objected to by the Greens. None has been built for 30 years, despite plans for a modified Bradfield scheme to channel to the interior flood waters from the east coast and Gulf of Carpentaria through the centre of the country into the Murray Darling Basin.

All too sensible for the latte sipping Greens of the inner cities hiding behind the goats cheese curtain, not out fighting the fires like much vilified former PM Tony Abbott. Note particularly, that virtually every Green policy prevents what the Quiet Australians would call sensible action to improve lives and livelihoods.

The hell of Green good intentions

While bushfires bring the hell of green good intentions into sharp relief, their Marxist influence marches an endless road through all our institutions:

• Renewable energy is yet another farce – a good intention the results of which we have yet to realise.

Touted as cheaper than base load (coal, gas) power and bolstered by $3billion/year subsidies, renewables attracted investment to feed at the public trough. Trouble is the renewable energy is intermittent and unreliable, requires back up batteries and generators, and causes untold environmental damage to birds, bugs and bats while blotting the landscape with ugly structures unfavourable to biodiversity.

That’s before even taking into account the actual and opportunity cost of their lifecycle: manufacture (one windmill takes 220 tonnes of coal and 300 tonnes of cement); transport; installation; maintenance (efficiency declines with age, especially solar, needing repair or replacement); lack of plans for recycling, especially of batteries. Then there are the health effects on those living in the vicinity, not to mention the transmission costs and inefficiencies where energy is lost. Most renewables are dispersed without ready access to the electricity grid, which is ill equipped to manage fluctuations in supply, whereas baseload tends to be located close to fuel source, with energy generated fed into the established transmission grid.

We are yet to realise fully what lies at the end of the road paved with renewables good intentions. So far it has cost South Australia days of blackouts without any power, has increased the cost of energy for us all, causing businesses to close and households to be disconnected for failing to pay their energy bills on times. Hell enough already for many of us.

• Protecting the Great Barrier Reef is yet another Green intention that has caused hell for many farmers and tourism operators who are intelligent, informed and best placed to protect the land, reef and waters on which their livelihoods depend. Under pressure from Green bureaucracies, farm practices have been modified to comply with the latest edicts to protect from runoff, the Reef located 100km east of the coastline. Tourism operators bend over backwards to comply with requirements for preservation of this ever evolving World Heritage site, that has shown amazing resilience in the face of occasional bleaching and naturally occurring cyclones.

Yet unfavourable reports of the reef’s condition emanating from cashed up researchers who’ve drunk the climate change kool-aid, discourage visitors who do not realise that the GBR stretches 2,400km longitude across several temperature zones and varies kilometres in width. Hell for the businesses relying on tourism dollars to show off our global icon, especially when the person challenging the veracity of reef science (Prof Peter Ridd) has been sacked by James Cook University, which has been found wanting by the Courts on 17 counts.

• Adani coal mine, located in the Galilee basin some 400 km inland from the coast (and an estimated 500km from the Reef) has been the headline target for greenhouse and reef activism. A better understanding of the geography of distance should allay concerns, but it seems nothing gets in the way of emotional green activism and their good intentions. Mine proponents have persevered through hell during the nine years it took them to walk the road to environmental approvals. In the meantime, poor Indians for whom the coal is intended to bring much needed electricity, have continued their short, disadvantaged lives, people wanting work have been thus far denied, development of the railway and other mines have been hampered.

Yet again, the Marxist Greens’ policy undermining our economy and social fabric by preventing progress, sensible development and jobs with their “good intentions” tends to hold sway. Quiet Australians need to speak up, loudly, sensibly, and often, to raise the banner on the valuable

environmental work being undertaken by the productive people of our society: the miners, farmers, firies and tourism operators.

For 2020

So in planning intentions for 2020, it would be wise to think through to the bounds of tolerance and goodwill and be prepared to call out flagrant extremes.

One practical way, would be to become a member of Green Shirts (https://www.greenshirtsmovementaustralia.com.au/, the organisation supporting farmers with factual information and lobbying government with sensible policies, respective of both the farms, the farmers, the reef and the environment. They need city members to join with them in their fight for better consideration. Peter Ridd is helping them to bring truth to the debate.

We know from experience that indulging a child creates an insatiable monster and that political appeasement allowed Hitler to flourish. Inevitably both eventually reach a point of violent realisation.

We now have proof of the bushfires to show that green good intentions which initially had value in raising awareness of environmental issues have been pursued too far along the road to hell for so many. No amount of sensible action, commitment of funds or good will ever satisfies ever escalating Greens’ insatiable demands. Like the people of Germany under the influence of Hitler, people have become swept up in the climate change mania. Time the public became aware that it is only responsible democracies like Australia that have shown any aptitude for saving the planet.

Let’s ensure that out of the disruption of 2019, in 2020 hope can be generated for those facing hell as a result of green good intentions and ensure that future plans for managing our environment are more sensible and less bureaucratic, to bring us all along.