Perseus and Ludwig,

FYI, At the bottom of the following post at my weblog

http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000990.html

is a link to an unpublished report by Bill Burrows on some of the politics of regrowth/vegetation thickening in Queensland. Cheers,

I agree Perseus!! Less than half of clearing in Qld is forest clearing….. if you include reclearing of regrowth and some clearing of non-forest vegetation. Remnant is not (all) old growth….. presumably you inadvertently left a word out there, and regrowth is very substantial in Qld. But this is beside the point of our debate. And again you have completely avoided the core issue on which we find disagreement, which I put straight to you in the third paragraph my last post.

Enough.

Regarding your comments on Jared Diamond in your first post; He is not guilty of demonising Australian farmers. There have been many bad practices undertaken by our society since 1788, of which farmers and graziers have played their part. Yes, people on the land are partly to blame, but not wholly, for issues like overclearing, overgrazing, soil-loss, salinisation, thickening, the spread of weeds, etc. All of society is to blame; politicians, those who elect politicians, businesses who put profit first, those who consume the produce won off the land or gain from exporting that produce, and those who care about environmental issues but fail to address the big issues (yes I have a real beef with ’greenies’ as opposed to true environmentalists or ‘sustainabilityists’). Diamond was levelling due criticism, and not demonising anyone.

You wrote; “If he shows his hideous face around here again it will be eggs and tomatoes big time”. Well! Now isn’t that a bit extreme? The fact is, Jared Diamond is pretty much on the right track, and I’m sure if you read his books, you will sympathise with someone who is trying to break us out of our mind-numbing complacency over issues that we should collectively be putting as much energy into as the allied countries did under threat of invasion in World War II – an unmitigated full-on effort. OK so you disagree with some of his stuff. But taking such a polarised condemnatory stance can only work against your credibility, in the eyes of all who read such statements, no matter which side of the fence they may be on.

Ludwig, your capacity for apparent denial is breathtaking. All of my posts went to the point that the amount of actual forest clearing that took place was overstated by at least 100% (ie. less than 50% of recorded clearing was actually forest clearing) A large portion of the actual forest clearing was partial clearing that left a forest still in situ. And the excellent work of Bill Burrows, backed up by more than 1400 sample plots across Qld, makes it clear that thickenning is present over more than 60 million hectares of pasture and woodland. For you to then suggest that it is inconceivable that new forest formation could not match or exceed the rate of forest removal suggests that you either have a retention problem or a simple ideological one.

Your disembling on the issue of blame for so-called environmental crimes does not alter the fact that the impacts have been grossly exaggerated and that the blame has been laid at the feet of farmers.
It is government and a science community with vested interests that have manufactured the bullets and the fact that greens and "yellow science journalist" have fired those bullets does not refute the fact that farmers have been the target.

And your pathetic little sermon regarding my attitude to Diamond may have had the barest touch of plausibility had it not come on the very morning that I was informed that another farmer had just blown his head off in despair at his treatment by an officialdom completely devoid of a capacity to empathise. If he had been a public servant he would have spent the past two years on stress leave with full pay.

His name was Joe Camilleri. He was a good man who deserved a whole lot better than he got. It is Remembrance Day. I'm going out to buy a poppy, and I have nothing more to say to you.

Perseus wrote : "And your pathetic little sermon regarding my attitude to Diamond may have had the barest touch of plausibility had it not come on the very morning that I was informed that another farmer had just blown his head off in despair at his treatment ..."

I fail to see the necessity for holding either Jared Diamond or Ludwig morally culpable for this tragedy.

It's obvious that we will all have to pay a high cost to repair the serious degradation of our natural environment, or we will pay even more dearly in years to come.

It is probaly inevitable, that in the possibly overly bureaucratic attempts by governments to forestall environmental catastrophe, some unfair burden will be placed on some farmers as seems to have happened to Joe Camilleri to whom Perseus referred.

The answer is not for governments to give up, but, instead, to find better, fairer and more transparent ways to regulate the behaviour of farmers.

Furthermore, there should be alternative means for farmers, who cannot farm sustainably, to earn their livelihoods.

One suggestion has been that the Government simply pay farmers to look after the land. As a community we would pay for this service through our taxes

However, such as sensible solution is forbidden by the 'small government' dogma which is promoted by Jennifer Marohasy and the Institute of Public Affairs for which she works.

Thankyou Jennifer for the Bill Burrows referral.

I agree with him that there has been massive thickening since the ‘disappearance’ of aboriginal burning practices. Some of this has resulted in complete ecosystem change, but the vast majority hasn’t.

I disagree that remnant vegetation should represent pre-European vegetation. This is his primary basis for labelling the management of tree-clearing in Queensland a “dumb legacy”. There is no way that we should be basing the whole Vegetation Management Act on pre-European vegetation. That is simply crazy. Coming up with reliable concepts of vegetation as it was at that time and mapping it across the whole state would be just impossible. Mapping existing vegetation is enormously complex enough. Vegetation that has changed due to one natural ecological factor; fire, should be considered to be just as natural now as it was then. It is no less pristine.

Anyway, there is facility within the Vegetation Management Act to treat thickened vegetation.

Tighter restrictions have been placed upon us due to past irresponsible practices. This is happening in many facets of our society, it is by no means restricted to tree-clearing. It is an inevitable consequence of the demand on our resource base getting horribly out of sync with the ability of that resource base to keep supplying that demand. Unfortunately, those who cleared irresponsibly, under a government that allowed them to do so, and even compelled them to do so, have got away with and it is others who now suffer. But again, the same applies across our society. And we ain’t seen nothin’ yet in this regard.

The Beatty government has made a genuine attempt at reform in one of the most needy areas – wholescale environmental destruction. And they have attempted to base it on good science. They need to be commended.

Landholders had all the warning and all the time in the world in the lead-up to the implementation of tree-clearing restrictions in September 2000. Many took advantage of that, and clearing rates soared. Those who didn’t can’t accuse the government of inadequate opportunity to ‘take care of business’

Gosh, Daggett, you certainly have the official line down pat. Which department do you work in? "forestalling catastrophe" indeed. It is the classic rationalisation of the perpetrator of injustice, otherwise known as spin. I made no accusation that either diamond or Ludwig were directly involved in Joe's death. Let me spell it out for anyone with an unencumbered wit.

The character, scale, intensity and significance of tree clearing in Queensland has been grossly exaggerated by a bureaucracy that has surrendered it's independence to the political arm. It has been aided in this misrepresentation by a science community that has recognised where it's bread is buttered and delivered the specified product as demanded.

This gross misrepresentation of fact has been used to justify measures to address the issues, as they appear to those who have been subjected to the misrepresentation. And commensurate measures were then implemented.

The inescapable conclusion is that a measure that has been implemented to deal with a grossly exaggerated problem can be nothing else but a disproportionate response to the real situation. And a disproportionate response can be nothing else but an unreasonable response to the circumstances. And when such unreasonable responses are enshrined in policy and law it can be nothing else but injustice and persecution.

Joe Camilleri died, unable to cope with the systematic persecution and injustice meted out to him by the State. Truth is, indeed, the first casualty in war and it follows then, that those who would make truth a casualty are engaged in the same act of war as those who have a more direct hand in the killing.

Time and again through history, ordinary men and women have shown that they are only capable of meting out injustice after someone else has demonised the victim. "by their deeds shall ye know them"