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The Forum > Article Comments > Dark green barbarians > Comments

Dark green barbarians : Comments

By Craig Emerson, published 25/8/2008

Enlightenment values must rebut superstition masquerading as science.

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runner wrote: "The response by most of the contributors just illustrate how right Mr Emerson is"

Isn't that the whole point of having the forum?

The fact that runner support him illustrates just how 'right' he is :-)
Posted by Sams, Tuesday, 26 August 2008 10:52:14 AM
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CJ,

What absolute rubbish. We have basically wall to wall labour gov'ts in this country. So much for your preposterous suggestion that people are leaving the party in droves.

What has actually happened is that the far left has lost its once prime position in the party. We should all be thankful for this. Rudd is, to an extent, attempting to go down Blairs New Labour's Third way. Having recognised the benefits of the market in bringing prosperity to the country, new labour can no longer hide its head in the sand and pretend that good economic policy and socialism have ANYTHING in common.

Emmerson is right to point out that portion of the green movement which is more interested in ending capitalism than in saving the planet. They exist and they do great harm to real green causes. Clearly anyone who opposes zero emission (ie geo sequestration) coal power has another agenda entirely.

But what is even more problematic is that any discussion of environmental issues like AGW is met not with reasoned argument but with howls of anger and claims of denialism (as if the world needed another "ism" that the left could throw around). It is this "Faith" in computer modelling that Emmerson is suggesting should be open to reasoned argument. Looking at the responses to his article it is clear he is totally correct.
Posted by Paul.L, Tuesday, 26 August 2008 11:20:37 AM
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What a strange article!? After riding into Government on the back of an environmental disaster movie style fear campaign (which Mr Rudd still ascribes to) here is Mr Emerson trying to introduce the concept that maybe some Green ideas aren't all that helpful after all.

Didn't you call the Liberals "deniers" when they expressed similar doubts ?

Guess the economic implications of your own party's adherence to extremist nonsense is hitting home and now you're seeking a more moderate approach to avoid the obvious economic downside. Well, no point in blaming it on the "Deep Green Extremists" its your own free range chickens coming home to roost. You're stuck with community expectations about a clean green world and you've just realised to live like that we have to live like The Flinstones. Good Luck Craig!
Posted by Atman, Tuesday, 26 August 2008 9:17:49 PM
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Could I just add....Thanks for telling us you sat on a report which told the truth because you were afraid of voter backlash. Anything else you want to tell us?

--> "We dared not release the results of the study for fear of being howled down as environmental vandals."
Posted by Atman, Tuesday, 26 August 2008 9:32:00 PM
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Emerson's straw man argument and clear thinking are mutually exclusive.
He seems to have forgotten that his government were elected to find another way one that empowers the individual…. ALL the individuals not a pale reincarnation of an inhuman elitist Justification

Even the term dark green acknowledges that ‘green’ as an ideal ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous.
There are extremists in any grouping and it serves no real purpose to focus on the extremes and extrapolate that they are representative of all people with green intentions! Bob Brown is representative of All greens….come on ….that’s like saying Brendan Nelson is representative of ALL Liberals. To then engage in such tendentious reasoning to address perhaps 2% of the ‘green inclined’ is high handed arrogance and intellectual dishonesty at their extreme.

As for the tripe about greens wanting to go back to pre-industrial conditions what errant nonsense! From a more rational point (one that is shared by most people) the problem is not the destruction of Economy but the changing of it to one that is less destructive of our environment. Dare I say one that is more sustainable?
Of course business is unimpressed it simply means that their much milked much exploited Buttercup (“Cash Cow”) has turned into one that NEEDS mandated veterinarian care. They simple don’t want to pay for it. Given they are

Climate Sceptics can obfuscate and bluster all they want but in the final analysis
THEY have polluted and over exploited OUR world for THEIR profits. Let’s call a spade a spade not a manual implement for terrestrial excavation, they don’t give a flying periwinkle about the big picture (us), their profit is more important.

Profit makes our capitalist world turn but without responsibility it is just another nail in our collective coffin.
Any wonder why I say… NEXT!
Posted by examinator, Tuesday, 26 August 2008 10:01:41 PM
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"Deep green extremists yearn for a return to a pre-industrial society, before the Enlightenment when faith and dogma prevailed over rational thinking and evidence-based science. In this gentle agrarian society (absent environmentally destructive hard-hoofed farm animals), human beings are tolerated, as long as they leave no carbon footprint. These deep-green crusaders have declared their opposition to coalmining even if emerging technologies were to reduce its emissions to zero, since coal is regarded as an ugly reminder of an industrial society".

Wonderful stuff! Here was I thinking that it was about ordinary, concerned people were worried about the climate going pear shaped, and the Government investing huge amounts of tax payers money in unproven and dubious technology instead of reliable renewables. Really though, it was just some fanatics lying awake at night in a cold sweat about the dark satanic mills of yore.

I wonder if the concerns of the people over the damage that coal mining is doing to our rivers and potentially our water quality is also just a paranoid fear springing from a race memory of the times before we knew about the importance of clean water. I'm really looking forward to Emerson's next article on it.
Posted by JL Deland, Wednesday, 27 August 2008 8:25:04 AM
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