Sue, I agree that the political direction in Australia, from both Liberal and Labor, at both federal and state levels, amounts to a dictatorial assault on our environment.

It is a crying shame that the Greens are also so far off-track in the way that they address this, or abjectly fail to address it, I should say!

There are two all-important things that you didn’t mention, which we need to be addressing::

Continuous rapid population growth. We absolutely need to be reducing immigration right down to net zero and ditching the baby bonus bribe and heading directly towards a sustainable population, and a sustainable society.

Separating government from big business. Get rid of political donations and take whatever other steps we can to give government the ability to make decisions independent of the enormous pressure from the vested-interest manically pro-growth totally antisustainable big business sector.

Then and only then, we might see some sensible environmental policies come out of our federal, state and local government arenas.

I actually think that many people in government want to take a much greener and more sustainablility-oriented approach, and that this would gel very well with the majority of voters, but that the pressure … and the financial support and all manner of other favours … from big business prevents them from doing so.

THIS is the sort of stuff that the Greens and all good environmentalists such as yourself, should be absolutely concentrating on!!

Ludwig:

Hear hear.

Sue,

Women have children as a business, to make a life, NOT for love. Those children have to make a life and short of stealing they are given a right of passage to chop down anything that grows and shoot anything that moves.
That in a nutshell is the cause of environmental destruction today. You can blame big corpoartions, who only work to the marketplace women's children create, but you can't stop them, for they are underwritten by WOMEN'S rights and needs.

In fact, isn't it true that while women have a vote, there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of stopping environmental degradation and biodiversity slaughter. This because women will always lip-sevice environment protections but vote against them when it comes down to their children getting ahead in life.

This grand fraud is your enemy and I know that not all women are so corrupt and self serving. But if YOU want to save Australia's environment you must demand that women no longer have a vote in Australian politics. Then institute, on behalf of the environment a one child policy like in China. While women can vote that will never happen.

Otherwise I am afraid you are wasting time in a losing battle with a very selfish, powerful and cunning force that will brook no REAL justice for any living creature great or small. NOT EVER!

Sue:

Unfortunately, there is NO political voice for the environment anymore. The so called "Greens" have all but abandoned the environment in favor of peripheral issues like gay marriage and boat people. The result is that the major polluters are literally getting getting away with murder. The murder of the ecosystem and inevitably, our grandchildren.

Sue, there is no doubt as to your commitment and passion to environmental causes, as is clearly the case with most Greens.

However, in the struggle to secure community support for your positions, can I suggest that it would be a good thing for the Greens to focus more on the real science relating to these issues - not the emotive propaganda that masquerades as science in many circles.

Take, for example, the "problem" of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. It is evident to the lay person that the inordinate attention to this issue has resulted in the imposition of a catastrophic carbon dioxide tax that is already damaging Australia's international competitive position in many industries (the sources for our jobs, income taxes and yes, support for bureaucrat salaries and green initiatives) and raising the cost of living for Australians, without actually having any discernible impact on the problem.

At the same time, when asked about the evidence that anthropogenic CO2 is a problem, the concerned advocates can only point to computer models that contain assumptions that don't accord with reality.

All that might be OK. But what worries me is that the inordinate focus on CO2 means that other much more damaging impacts of man's activities are being ignored. Deforestation, interference with natural water systems, industrial agriculture and many more human impacts are creating real problems in many areas of the world. It is these, and pollution from particulates, SOX, NOX, hydrocarbons etc that we should be focussing on.

Get real, and you will win support.

The Greens can't win. If they fight for the environment, they're slagged as a one-issue party. If they advocate for renewable energy, they're slagged as dangerously ignorant of economics. In fact, if they advocate for ANYTHING, they're slagged as dictatorial. If they expand their policies and activities into the social and economic arenas, they're slagged as abandoning their environmental origins.

May I remind the Greens-slaggers that the party has been in a tenuous junior partnership with an unpopular government for little over a year. Yet they're expected that be using that tenuous position to achieve overnight everything from stopping the boats to saving the bilby to peace in the Middle East.

Let's inject some reality into this overheated beat-up of a still minor party on the political scene.

Killarney, I have some sympathy for your position. What needs to be done is that the two major parties need to fragment from their anachronistic Boss-Worker traditions.

If we had more parties, then the Corporations would find it more difficult to control the Government and the Government, made up of diverse voices, would have to compromise more rather than follow the party line.

P.S. The suggestions from KAEP suggest he should seek psychological advice.

Our environment is not the most important thing in the lives of most people. They have other concerns, more immediate to them, like work and family and education. Governments have to respond to those concerns too.

With respect to the Great Barrier Reef, which you see as 'threatened', I wrote the following passage the other day:

'In early June a UNESCO report expressed concern about port developments in Queensland that might threaten the Reef. That was followed by a conference of scientists in Cairns in mid July which said that the Reef was in great danger from climate change. Oh, and port development, shipping, ocean acidification, tourism, population growth, agriculture — you name it. The threats were dutifully reported in the media, because of the Reef’s status as an Australian ‘icon’ and our standard-bearer on the World Heritage List.

My long memory tells me that it was the Crown of Thorns starfish that was the first of the many ‘threats’ we now hear about, and that was in the early 1960s. We were told then that the reef would die, and both the Queensland and Commonwealth Governments put money into finding out more about the starfish and what to do about it. It is a widespread organism, found across the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, and infestations seem to come and go. The starfish doesn’t in fact kill the coral, and after infestations the infected reef recovers quite quickly.

But more to the point, the way we hear about the Reef is always as a threatened jewel. I doubt that most people have any real conception of what the Great Barrier Reef is, even those, like me, who have visited sites on it many times. It is, first of all, an enormous ‘structure’, 2,000 kilometres long, containing over 3,000 reefs and several hundred islands. Hardly any of it is regularly inspected or even visited. Most of it is well away from the coast, out toward the fringing reef at the edge of the continental shelf, and there is no great population centre anywhere near it.

(continued in a second post)

(continuation):

Wikipedia will tell you that anthropogenic global warming is the Reef’s great enemy, and that coral bleaching caused by elevated sea temperatures will become an annual event. It hasn’t done so yet, and a likely cause is a combination of winds and currents keeping warm water in place. In any case, the coral reefs near Papua New Guinea flourish in water that is a couple of degrees warmer than that in the southern parts of the Reef. And the threat caused by rising sea-levels is the silliest I’ve heard: corals grow, and you can see how much lower the sea-level was if you dive down a little on the edge of any reef. The sea has risen 120 metres since the end of the last ice age, and corals have coped by growing upwards. They would strongly dislike a lowering of the seas!

It is much the same with the other scares. All of them are possible, but none of them is as yet real. ‘Ocean acidification’, for example, is a scary way of saying that the seas may have become, on average, a little more alkaline over the past couple of decades. But we really don’t know, and the ph levels of the sea vary horizontally and vertically. Yes, ships come to grief in the Reef (forgive the rhyme), and more than 1500 have done so since Europeans began sailing there. Yes, oil has spilled (not much of it). But as we saw in the Caribbean, oil is seen as a food by other organisms, and they break it down quickly. It may or may not be true that the seas are becoming appreciably warmer — at the moment I think it is an open question.

(final continuation — sorry it's long!)

Yes, nutrients wash down the rivers, and so do pesticides, and so does soil and debris after floods. The Reef seems to take it all in its stride. Storms damage bit of it, as does bleaching, as do the starfish. But it is a giant system, and nothing yet seems to have occurred on a system-wide basis.

Let u by all means keep a watchful eye on it, but it would be pleasant if we heard bit less of ’imminent threats’, and a bit more of what is pristine and unspoiled in the Great Barrier Reef.There is a lot of that.

Labor and Julia Gillard surely are a "narrative of conflict" (not that the Libs are much better). How can anyone take this woman seriously? She whacks a whopping big carbon tax on our economy because of the climate "crisis", whilst overseeing the coal seam gas invasion onto farmland. She overreacts to a POTENTIAL environmental crisis, whilst fostering a REAL environmental crisis. The woman is a lunatic. Power at all costs is the only principle she appears to have.

The Great barrier Reef is not a reef. But rather a series of reef systems, or if you will a couple of submerged mountain ranges with bits of coral growing on the tops.
Coral that is repeatedly damaged by fierce tropical storms and natural events, like the recent record flood events.
There is already enough Co2 in the atmosphere to virtually guarantee the destruction of the reef?
Yet we continue to import and use fossil fuels, that produce four times as much Co2, than that which we and the world would use, if we but used the vast resources, locked up in the reef?
If the reef is to survive, we simply cannot afford to substitute Canadian tar sands etc, for much lower carbon producing products; produced, by actually mining the reef.
Tourism instead?
Try telling that to the bankrupt tourism operators/empty resorts, or redundant service providing workers.
Not all that long ago, greenies predicted the vast loss of marine habitat, with the exploitation of Bass Straight reserves!
Nothing further from the truth, with rigs acting as brand new habitat instead.
If we would understand, that the green element is the natural home of rigid recalcitrant radicals and cloud dwellers, we need look no further, than some of these posts?
We confront a global economy that is already teetering on the brink of a financial catastrophe; that could make the Great Depression look like a Sunday school picnic in comparison?
We need to protect ourselves and the global environment from this event as best we can!
We might be actually able to do that by providing recovering economies, with a range of comparatively low carbon, lower cost hydrocarbons; and, use the additional export incomes to create examples here, of vastly lower cost endlessly sustainable, energy alternatives.
We still could, even now, prevent the world from crossing a tipping point from which there is no possible return, by choosing lower carbon alternatives as an interim measure, regardless of where they come from!
Rhrosty.

With all due respect Don, and I really did like and agree with the bulk of your reasonable and rational post; ocean acidification is a lowering of alkalinity!
Try this trick at home, but proceed with care.
Use only earthenware that is heat tolerant and wear rubber gloves and eye protection!
Put a little bicarb, [an alkaline or base,] in a saucer, slowly drizzle a teaspoonful of vinegar,[ an acid,] on to it.
This process does two things, the first is a chemical reaction which first produces heat and a chemical compound or salt.
The second is a reduction of alkaline and the acid products that created the combination salt product in an equal reaction equilibrium.
However, if you were to keep drizzling vinegar beyond any salt and heat creating chemical process, you would change the contents of the saucer or PH values, from mostly alkaline to mostly acid.
That is what is meant, as I understand it, by the term acidification.
Cheers, Rhrosty.

Agreed, Rhosty. But 'acidification' is a much scarier word than 'lowered alkalinity'!

@ killarney. Well said. There is a current campaign going on of which Ms Arnold appears to be a part, to blame the Greens for all of the ills of the present government. One might be encouraged to listen more carefully if there was an acknowledgement, for example, that the National Party, rejoicing at 4% of the popular vote (one third that of the Greens) continues to wag the Coalition tail. Or that Family First got a senator in Victoria with less than 2% of the primary vote, thanks to Labor preferences who were desperate to keep out another Green Senator. Look at the grief that idiot caused for six years.

Rather than misguided and plainly wrong criticisms of Green policy Ms Arnold would have been better to have focused on the fundamental issue. In my view that is that there is precious little difference between Labor and the Coalition when it comes to raping the environment because both of them are beholden to rapacious capitalism. Does one seriously think that an Abbott led government will produce a better result for the environment?

The planet survived mightily well for over 3 billion years without humans. One would be very brave to bet on us surviving another three thousand years as a species let alone billions more. No doubt the last survivors of our species will be bleating that it is all the Green's fault for not being economically "rational" or for arguing for civil rights for all.

Don. No apologies for an extended, sensible and accurate post. Just a little common sense and scientific accuracy would have helped the above post.

The most stringent of environmental assessments and subsequent conditions dictate the construction of the James Price Point gas hub, (conforming to regulations developed by the environmental movement over many years), in addition negotiations resulting in immense employment, economic advantages and social benefite to the local traditional population.

What is the evidence of endangerment to whale populations there. I have read peer revied research that concludes the contrary!

Herbert Stencil accurately expresses the concerns I have for the 'opportunity lost' by the foolish concentration on CO2. Truly a 'bit player' in environmental issues.

As stated in a post above, a little more science and rational/economic argument, and a whole lot less emotive posturing would strengthen the post immensely.

Once again, KAEP leaves me completely bewildered?

funny how many of the Greens are happy to fly around to conferences on money produced by mining companies in order to say how wicked their source of living high is. Just like the thousands who flew at tax payer expense to CopenHagen and recently to Rio for their love fests. They produce nothing except idiotic taxes and backslapping. The author speaks about the small number of votes the Nationals receive but forgets conveniently that Pauline Hanson received far more votes than the Greens not long back.

The author asks 'Is Australia’s World Heritage worth fighting for ? ' No actually but looking after the environment is. If locking up places for a few left wing academics to speak about how 'sacred'the place is means world hertiage then the average Aussie is again being conned.

Thankfully the 'dictatorships' under whose oppressive yoke we suffer are the unique sort of 'dictatorships' that can be voted out of office within 3-4 years. Pretty piss-weak 'dictatorship' really. Not only do you not get brutalised or executed for voting for the opposition: there is actually an opposition to vote for. And if you don't like any of the opposing parties you're allowed to go and form your own and convince people to vote for you. If you convince enough people you get to make the rules for a while.

So why don't you go and do just that instead of wasting your time and mine with your stupid hippy platitudes? It certainly seems a more productive use of your lack of imagination than bombarding us with the same old tired hippy cliches about ancient/majestic/mystical reefs/rainforests/whales (circle one adjective and one noun to produce your very own hippy cliche).

Cheers,

Tony