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The Forum > Article Comments > The Greens: illogical and treacherous > Comments

The Greens: illogical and treacherous : Comments

By Peter Ridd, published 12/5/2008

The Greens are less of an environmental movement and more of a left wing conglomeration devoted primarily to social justice issues.

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There is a lot to agree with here but some of it is a little extreme.

What is not commonly known is that the Greens nearly abandoned any population policy by simply not putting a new one up for consideration at the last policy review and it was only last-minute action by the SA branch that led to them still having one. (The policy was seen as too contentious by the people drafting the revised policies.) However, there has recently been as lot of talk among the Greens in SA about population (the water crisis makes the problems of population increase all the more obvious) and it is becoming much more easy to talk about it here. (When I first started addressing this issue I was publicly called an "eco-fascist" by another Green.)

I don't agree with the idea that nuclear energy can really help us. I hold a licence to work with radioactive substances so I am not knee-jerk against nuclear energy per se. However, when you see how they handled the Maralinga cleanup (eventually burying the waste under a few metres of earth) then you just know that, if we had a nuclear industry here, then pressure to reduce the enormous financial costs would lead to shortcuts in waste-handling being taken. When you are talking about storage for hundreds of thousands of years then that is just not good enough. The UK is currently finding that the costs of cleaning up its old reactors is now increasing far, far beyond all previous estimates. The only way to see a nuclear energy industry as viable is to ignore the responsibility for waste-handling and to push this onto future generations - that may literally not have the energy to cope! That is a risk we cannot take.
Posted by michael_in_adelaide, Monday, 12 May 2008 11:50:23 AM
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partTimeParent,

You claim that Senator Joe Ludwig is a member of Labor's left faction. I suggest you double-check those facts.

Although, I will tentatively agree (claiming no expertise on this matter) with the rest of your post.

healthwatcher,

There is a gentle irony on your post following mine. Just as I showed in policy that the Greens recognise the complexity of variables involved in population and the environment, you claim that they seek "black and white solutions in a complex world".

I really do wish people who do their research before posting.

Speaking of which, our good poster Peter Ridd is an interesting character isn't he? Science co-ordinator for the benignly-named Australian Environment Foundation.

Except, the AEF is a front for the Institute of Public Affairs, and is strongly associated with the logging industry lobby group "Timber Communities Australia". Indeed the head of the AEF admitted that the group was set up to protect timber interests (from an interview on ABC Radio station Triple J's Hack program).
Posted by Lev, Monday, 12 May 2008 11:54:15 AM
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Well said, Peter Ridd.

The Greens rose on their anti-population growth; now they don’t even mention the subject.

“The Greens nowadays are less of an environmental movement and more of an extreme left wing conglomeration…”

Yes, but they were never really sincere about population growth, and they have always been left wing extremists, hence their (thankfully) low vote.
Posted by Mr. Right, Monday, 12 May 2008 12:13:13 PM
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Dear Eyejaw,
Mea culpa. This was my mistake not Peter Ridd's. It has now been fixed.
Susan Prior - editor
Posted by SusanP, Monday, 12 May 2008 1:06:09 PM
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Mr Right. In the context of present time Australian, UK, Europe and USA culture (and indeed the entire world) what is a left-wing extremist?

Perhaps you could name a few and give us a well reasoned explanation as to why you describe them as such.
Not just a bunch of your usual cardboard cliches.

It would seem by your postings that everything is threatened by these left-wing "extremists".

Meanwhile out in the real world it is mostly those on the right, wherever they are geographically and culturally who are in to the applied (bloody) politics of extremism.

And who are preaching and practising hate and the applied politics of "purity". And arming themselves to the teeth and looking for scapegoats to dump their toxic emotions on to.

In the USA for instance those on the left dont have much to do with the "culture" of guns. Conversely those on the right are very much into the "culture" of guns, especially the dreadfully sane right wing militias, including the official ones like Blackwater.

In my opinion these militias are just waiting waiting for the right moment to dramatise their well rehearsed (and long expected) scapegoat politics. The USA body politic will be thus "cleansed" of its "toxic" elements and everything will be hunky dory again. Apple pie and motherhood will be restored to their righful place(s) just as in the Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post fantasy world or the dreadfully sane colourless "world" depicted in the film PLEASANTVILLE.
Or the tightly scripted "life" of Trueman in The Truman Show.
No REAL questions allowed---indeed no questions at all.

And "right"-thinking normals will again rule the world with their rigid binary exclusions. No ambiguity, paradox, shades of gray,or multiple perspectives will be thus allowed.

Just like in the 1984 nightmare world of Winston Smith.
And in the dreadfully sane "world" enforced by Agent Smith in the Matrix.
Posted by Ho Hum, Monday, 12 May 2008 1:18:00 PM
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Lev,

I read The Green party population policy and it is exactly the way I described it. It does not say that we must reduce immigration as a matter of urgency, and it does not give any indication of what Australia’s population should be (e.g 25 million peak). It is just a bunch of words, just like the 2020 statement. Instead it is full of social motherhood statements about, for example and I quote,

both global and domestic social justice and equity;
intergenerational equity;
multiculturalism;
international human rights obligations; and
decent wages and conditions for all workers.

The policy is far less about the environment than social issues.

In fact it is not just The Greens that don’t have a population policy of any value. The greens (i.e green organisations) virtually all fail the test. Check out the ACF, the Wilderness Society etc. They are all the same, they won’t touch population with a barge pole and should thus stop pretending to be green

Peter Ridd
Posted by Ridd, Monday, 12 May 2008 1:25:10 PM
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