Jennifer wants to bring us all back to "reason" and "reality".

Implicit in such a statement is that she (Jenniffer) and her right thinking clones at the IPA see things from a timeless universal non-biased point of view, free of any ideological bias or presumption.

In fact this sort of pretense is characteristic of right thinking propaganda hacks and think tanks altogether.

Whose "reason" and "reality"?

That defined by the one-dimensional clone factory the IPA?

That is the dismal soul-less, heartless and thus profoundly anti-human "reality" as defined by scientism----with a bit of old time archaic religion thrown in for consolation and to provide "religious authority" for the exercise in universal plunder being brought to one and all via capitalism.

Capitalism as part of "gods" plan for Humankind.

Old time state communism was of course worse, but both ideologies share the same dismal, ultimately destructive, presumptions about Humankind and the World Process.

What about Reality as a multi-dimensional quantum field of Indivisible Conscious Light in which everything is in one way or another inter-connected, and in which human beings are totally embedded and fully dependent on many processes of energy exchanges both gross and subtle----subtle in the sense that astrology is real and the subtle forces that Biodynamic gardening and agriculture harness, cultivate and use----and much much more besides.

1. http://www.dabase.org/broken.htm
2. http://www.fearnomorezoo.org

I used this reference in my last post but it sums up the anti-human world-view or ideology that (mis)-informs the IPA.
Man as separate from "creation",and "creation" being entirely "objective". ### see my last sentence below.

1. http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/asana_of_science/index.html

Plus this reference and related website provide a shocking description of where the SEPARATIVE ideology of scientism, and the "culture" created in its image has brought the entire world.

1. http://ispeace723.org/realityhumanity2.html

The last (IsPeace) reference is all about the inevitable results of a "culture" wherin everything is "objectified.

“The environmental lobby doesn’t work from a set of principles that accord with liberal values; rather it is philosophically anti-development and anti-industry.”

What??

It is NOT philosophically anti-development or anti-industry!

Crikey Moses Jennifer!

The environment movement is all about a balance between the rampant continuous unending expansion of industry and all things human that fall under the fuzzy umbrella of ‘development’. So they are necessarily against some forms of development and industry. But to label them as philosophically anti-everything is just absurd.

Howard had his good environmental policies. But quite frankly, they were incidentally environmental, with the prime motive being economics.

He was just about as anti-environmental as you can get, because he worshipped rapid continuous growth and as absolutely loathe to do anything that might in any significant way reduce this growth.

So while he set out to remedy some of the symptoms of our atrocious abuse of this continent, he also made sure that the abuse would continue at a rapid pace by boosting immigration right up, increasing the baby bonus, talking about rapid growth as though it was an unquestioned basic necessity and in short, upholding the continuous-growth paradigm to the hilt.

In so doing, he continued to undermine advances made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving efficiencies in all sorts of resource usage and waste production, and ultimately in us achieving a sustainable society.

In a couple of decades, we’ll look back at the Howard years and think that 1996 to 2007 was exactly the time when we really needed to change the way we lived and to wean ourselves off of the continuous growth ethic and onto a stable-population, dynamic steady-state economic basis, in harmony with our resource base and environment.

Was John Howard an environmentalist? Nope. Not in a fit.

Let's KISS and answer these simple questions.

In the reign of Howard:

How much Amazon rainforest was reclaimed?
How much Kalimantan rainforest was reclaimed?
What was the % drop in the purchases of ducted A/C, Plasma TVs and SUVs?
How many city commuters left their cars in the garage and took the train, bus, walked, ran or rode a pushbike?
How many airlines went bust due to falling patronage?
By how much did China reduce it's demand for coal from Australia?

You get the picture...

Jennifer, there were unfortunately a number of areas in which the Howard government failed to take a principled, evidence-based, public interest position, but took an ad hoc, vote-seeking approach, as with particular groups on environmental issues. My impression from meeting pre-PM Howard was that he had a good grasp of sound policy processes. Too often, however, he failed to adopt them in government; on balance, his "reign" was one of disappointing underachievement. He was prepared to stick to his guns on a few big issues (GST, Iraq), but too often sought short-term advantage. In part this reflected his view that the Australian people wouldn't accept much change and reform. That's probably a fair assessment, but change is inevitable, if we don't seize the day and use it to our advantage, we'll be steam-rollered by it. PMs need to take a leadership role in helping people to understand why certain changes are necessary and beneficial, but rarely do. Unfortunately, the determined changers included the very misguided Whitlam and Keating, which makes the pursuit of change harder for others. I thought at the time that PM Hawke was too much into consensus, but in retrospect he probably got the balance right, and was able to implement many changes with long-reaching positive impacts. Howard's achievements were modest compared to his opportunitites.

Howard failed because he tied the environment to the economy as in his $1 billion investment in 1996 being tied to the sale of Telstra. The basic question is how much public money went to R & D on sustainable energy and its implementation, the basic answer is not anywhere near enough.

Howard's first priority was his rich masters profit line, not the welfare of the Australian people as a whole, or humanity in general. He failed to realise the simplistic notion that if action was not taken Australia, indeed the planet would not have an economy, conservative thinking. We need progressive thinking, we can only hope Rudd is less conservative and more progressive than was Howard.

It is incorrect to say the EPBC Act was passed as "part of a deal to get the GST through the Senate." The GST and EPBC both passed through the Senate around the same period, but if anything the controversy over the decision of some Democrat Senators to support the GST made it harder for the EPBC to pass.

The strident attacks from the Greens and some environment groups made it politically damaging for the Democrats to pass the EPBC at that time. The party was already suffering from the perception of broken promises that accompanied Meg Lees' GST agreement.

I voted against the GST and would not have supported the EPBC, let alone carried the debate for the Democrats on the Bill through the Senate, were it not for the fact that the gain for the environment was too good to knock back, regardless of the extra political damage. The amendments the Democrats got to the EPBC made it far stronger than the law that previously existed.

Although some of the groups who attacked the laws (and the Democrats) most strongly subsequently used them to prevent destructive actions, the attacks no doubt contribute to why the EPBC is not recognised as an environmental achievement of the Howard government. However, there are other reasons, not least of which is that the government itself rarely used the strong new legal powers it was given by the Senate. The best wins through the EPBC have come about through court action undertaken by others. The government did not even provide the resources to allow some of the basic elements of the Act to be properly developed, let alone administered.

In any case, the main contributor to the EPBC Act from the Coalition was Robert Hill not John Howard. It is fair to surmise that the government would not have agreed to some of the strengthenings the Democrats achieved had it not been for the fact that Howard and others in the government were more preoccupied at that time with getting the GST passed and saving their political skins.