Ok, Divergence, I'll bite.

>>Pharyngula, one of the main biology blogs, got up a petition with 7,000 signatures to oppose the dam because of the threat to the Queensland lungfish, which is of great scientific importance.<<

What would be the impact on Queensland if this particular creature became extinct? It is not considered to be either a "threatened" or "endangered" species, and is of historic importance only. As far as I can tell from the documentation, there is nothing left that we can learn from it. Its status as a "living fossil" makes it interesting to scientists, but you would struggle to raise too much enthusiasm for it with the general population, I suspect.

As for the petition, I'm pretty sure I could get seven thousand property developers to sign a petition in favour of concreting over the entire Botanic Gardens, but that would hardly make a convincing case for it.

>>There will always be opposition to dams, regardless of the environmentalists and the Greens, because people tend to object to having their houses, towns, or farms flooded for pretty inadequate compensation (funny thing that!).<<

This frames the argument quite neatly as an economic one, with property owners objecting on economic grounds, and the greenies objecting on non-economic grounds. So once again, it is a case of having ones cake or eating it. If you want water in SE Queensland (or wherever) you need to choose between paying the price for it, or valuing the future of the Mary River turtle and the Queensland lungfish.

It's a straight political choice.

>> There would be nothing to stop the major parties from announcing that the dams were a bipartisan policy... If the politicians didn't go ahead with the dams, there were doubtless other reasons for it<<

Interestingly, in the case of Traveston, the Federal Minister for all things Green, Peter Garrett, unilaterally overrode the wishes of the Queensland people, as expressed in their own choice of government. Which would render your somewhat idealistic bipartisan solution equally irrelevant, don't you think.

<< Peter Garrett, unilaterally overrode the wishes of the Queensland people, as expressed in their own choice of government. >>

Hold on Pericles, that’s not right.

Just because the Queensland people installed that particular Qld government doesn’t mean they were predominantly in favour of the Traveston Dam being built, or any other dam, or of continuous rapid population growth. The government almost always gets elected because it is considered to be the slightly lesser of two highly evil choices!

<< While non-greenies might also object, they are far from being the ubiquitous presence that the tree-huggers display. >>

Sheesh, you and your silly pigeonholes!

Greenies, tree-huggers…. one gets the distinct impression that you consider them to be lower than a snake’s belly…. except of course when you’re being one of them… a la the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens right next to your abode.

You are willing to be a greenie, and a quite radical one at that, when it comes to the mooted privatisation of Sydney RBG. That’s classic NIMBYism by the way. And yet you completely denigrate people who do the same sort of thing, either as NIMBYs or with a much broader-minded view of environmental threats.

Something doesn’t add up there Pericles!

continued

You wrote:

<< "Only 17 per cent of Southeast Queensland is held in state forests and national parks, compared to 43 per cent of Greater Sydney. One obvious result is that the catchment areas for dams in SEQ are not a patch on the Sydney catchment areas."

That does put a limit on the government's ability to address the problem of water supply. >>

YES! That DOES put a limit on the government's ability to address the problem of water supply!!

But despite this enormously important limiting factor, the same government continues to facilitate the rapid influx of new residents into southeast Qld!

THIS is THE problem! NOT ‘greenie’ opposition to mooted new dams!

<< But once again, the problem is exacerbated by a complete absence of political will. >>

YES. But the all-important absence of political will is in relation to the absolute imperative to CURTAIL population growth in SEQ! And to therefore stabilise the demand for water, instead of letting it rapidly increase with no end in sight!

<< The desecration of inner-city open space is a world away from protecting the Mary River Turtle, don't you think? >>

Yes. But is it more important? If you lived in the Mary Valley, which would you consider to be the most important?

Crikey Pericles, you’re a NIMBY greenie, otherwise non-greenie. NIMBYGONG!! Not in my back yard!! Nothing matters unless it is in your immediate vicinity!! Dear oh dear!

That's an awful lot of exclamation marks, Ludwig, just to have a "play the man, not the ball" moment.

But let's have a quick recap.

>>Just because the Queensland people installed that particular Qld government doesn’t mean they were predominantly in favour of the Traveston Dam being built<<

Your State government does its best to supply you with water, and the Federal government - in the person of a dedicated Greenie - unilaterally overrules them. Somehow, this is evidence that Queenslanders were against the dam in the first place, and would have preferred, given the choice at the ballot box, to vote to preserve non-threatened creatures over an improved supply of water?

Seriously?

But we have wandered a long way from the topic, so it is probably best to leave it there, in its usual place. You want to exert immediate control over our population, and see everything - including the simple concept of GDP - as a reason to fire up your mantra.

We get it. Let's move on.

Incidentally, Divergence...

>>So far as the Traveston dam is concerned, Pharyngula, one of the main biology blogs, got up a petition with 7,000 signatures to oppose the dam because of the threat to the Queensland lungfish<<

Just how far, in your opinion, should a US-based blogger influence government policy in Australia?

My answer would be, "to exactly the same extent as an Australian blogger is able to influence US government policy".

But I would be interested to hear your views on the topic.

Pericles,

You are assuming that foreigners should have no say at all if a particular national government is allowing a species to be driven to extinction. National boundaries are temporary, while extinction is forever. It could be argued that all of the different species are part of the common heritage of humanity. In my own opinion, if a government is behaving like a collection of environmental vandals, with effects going far beyond its own term of office, then foreign governments are justified in applying economic sanctions and the like.

Incidentally, we are far from understanding everything about the lungfish. It is widely accepted, although there is still some dispute, that the ancestors of today's American Indians directly or indirectly wiped out 32 genera of mammals, just in North America. These included horses, genetically identical to modern horses, several species of camels, several species of elephants, etc. Those early American Indians couldn't think of anything better to do with them than eat them and hunt them to extinction. The lack of suitable animals for domestication really hindered the development of their descendants. Unlike you, however, they had the excuse of not understanding what they were doing.

Your argument that Queenslanders weren't specifically asked about the dams, most likely at the price of some extinctions, would have more force if they had also been specifically asked if they wanted such high population growth in SE Queensland and nationally. Not only have our federal politicians not asked us, they have concealed their intentions to further boost the population (like Kevin Rudd before the 2007 election) or actively lied to us like Julia Gillard before she was elected, when she said that she didn't believe in "hurtling down the track to a Big Australia", before doing the exact opposite when in power.