When we said to our sarcastic High School English teacher, ‘sarcasm is the lowest form of wit’, she snapped, ‘sarcasm is not a form of wit’. And indeed it is not, it is a way of being nasty while pretending you’re being funny. And when people complain about it you can sneer, ‘Can’t you take a joke?’
Instead of seeing the poetry and imagination in Bob Brown’s analogies, and understanding the truth of his message, that if we were renting the planet we’d never get our bond back, and probably be sued for trashing the place beyond repair, Babette attacks the messenger instead of attacking the problem that she doesn’t want to know about.
And what a put down of Indians to imagine that they’d vote for her just because she’s an Indian, rather than because of policies! Apropos of that, if everyone on Earth [or even in Australia] had one vote that counted, we would probably not be in this mess. It is because of election fraud and the denial of proportional representation that the bully girls and boys win and rape the planet.

ybgirp,

Hear, hear!

I must confess that when I read the retiring Senator's speech, my first thought was "at last, he is displaying his true nature". Until that moment, he was masquerading as a politician, while in his real life he is a dreamer, a poet, a hopeless idealist who would happily live in the wilderness eating roots and leaves. Our home-grown Thoreau. Persuasive in his imagery, but ultimately more picturesque than useful.

An attitude, by the way, with which I have no argument. There is absolutely no harm, as an individual, in having in mind for the human race some kind of prelapsarian innocence in Edenic surroundings. The problem occurs when these visions are translated into political policies, at which point they clash horribly with the nasty imperfections of real human societies.

Politicians owe it to their country to live in the present, and to make the best decisions for the nation based upon their citizens' wishes. If those wishes give "life on earth", say, ten more generations of living well, as opposed to twenty more generations living in mud huts and eating rice, then they should be respected.

A little more realism, and a little less dreaming, is going to be critically important to the next few generations and their way of life.

Prelapsarian! Pericles what a wondrous word evoking innocent men and women living in perfect harmony and plenitude in the natural world in which they evolved... and yet you don't want to go back there! You prefer to live in polluted air, eating poisoned food, drinking toxic water, in vast mega cities riddled with crime, corruption, violence and bigotry - as most of the world's population do, or in miserable, unserviced shanty towns and devastated villages slowly dying of disease and starvation thanks to the predations of wealthy war mongering 'developed' countries. You're either brave or foolish... perhaps both.

Nope, ybgirp. Neither.

>>You're either brave or foolish... perhaps both.<<

Just practical.

Y'know, feet on the ground practical. Reality-based practical. Even boringly, unsentimentally practical, if you like.

But I'm always prepared to listen to dreamers. If you can even hint at a way in which your world of innocence and abundance can be reached, I'll be the first to applaud.

In the meantime, though, I'll probably elect not to hold my breath, if that's ok with you.

Actually now you come to mention it Babette, there are disturbing parallels between the Australian Greens and the Dooms Day Cult of the USA. For those of you who may have missed it, the Dooms Dayers believed that the mothership would be passing Earth and that the select would be called to join it – the only catch was that to board the space ship you had to take poison.

The Greens version of the cult is the select will inherit a future world ruled by a world parliament. But to join the elect in this jolly green Eden you have to take poison:
--You have to adopt a Carbon Tax that no one else in the world will touch with a barge pole,and
--You have to open your borders to all and sundry.

And just as an aside:If you don’t want to be outvoted in the egalitarian Green commune of the future, you’d better plan on having 20 or more kids.

Ah, Pericles <<If you can even hint at a way in which your world of innocence and abundance can be reached, I'll be the first to applaud.>>
Of course the clock cant be turned back- especially to a time that has existed only in the collective imagination. Anyway human nature was never suited to paradise. I just think it's a pity to go on the way we're going, more and more people in larger and larger cities until we run out of everything. Then what?
Objectively, it doesn't matter in the least. We'll just be one of the shortest lived species in the history of the planet and I won't be here to see it, but it still seems a shame to defecate in one's living room.

"there are disturbing parallels between the Australian Greens and the Dooms Day Cult of the USA" Really? Australia should do nothing until some other country does it first? Like a carbon tax. Australia has a proud history of doing some things. Do you still oppose votes for women, widows pensions child payments, Australia was a pioneering country with many social reforms. The Sydney Harbor Bridge was a waste of money and the Vietnam War was a necessity according to conservatives at the time. History has a funny way of continually proving these people wrong.

Paul 1405,

Add this to your list of firsts: the first nation bankrupted by a carbon tax.

There’s an old Roman saying: S/he who is fixated on diving in first, will quickly find that the head is a poor battering ram.
http://tinyurl.com/7m98gfd

A disturbing analogy, ybgirp.

>>...it still seems a shame to defecate in one's living room.<<

One that is very difficult to expand upon without becoming somewhat distasteful.

So let me put it this way.

If one was the only person using the living room, you would be quite correct in suggesting that it would be a shame - the expression "fouling one's nest" also springs to mind.

But it isn't our own personal living room, is it? It is just a corner of a very large, errr, community hall, in which a very large number of people are already, umm, conducting their business. These people do not, and will not, respond to your cries of "cease and desist", without some form of alternative accommodation for their, aaah, waste products.

So I ask again, without hope of a response: what would you have us do? Practical, implementable policies, as opposed to pious hopes and wishes to return to a different period of history.