I enjoy these articles. I should be working but I'll take five minutes to sort this one.

If you believe we live in a finite world, without imagination, inventiveness, technology, intelligence, adaptability, etc, then this story makes sense.

The fact that the writer wants to shut the gate now on 'sustainable tourism' is a slap in the face for all those tourist operators who have read Porritt and others and are eco-guardians of parks such as Kakadu.

Unlike Jonathon Porritt's narratives, articles such as this one are fundamentally anti-capitalist. They want to do to us what the Khmer Rouge did to Cambodia. And their arguments have about the same moral direction.

I've said it before, but they only serve to wedge Bob Brown's Green Party at the next election.

The author makes some good points about the effects of tourism on some regional areas - having lived in a "discovered" tourist town, I well understand some of what he writes about. But the point is, where I lived was indeed a town. A small, regional one, but a town nonetheless - not pristine wilderness.

However, he only uses this as a starting point from which he careens off the rails into the sort of all-encompassing, misanthropic diatribe that is sadly typical of that miserable, deep-green thinking that seems to hold humanity and all its works in loathing contempt.

Indeed, the telling line is in the very opening of the article, with the wishful thinking of "if we were to go extinct".

"How does a 'sensitive and well-managed tourism industry help preserve the national environment'?", the author asks. Because preservation of the environment is a luxury only a prosperous society can afford. A case in point might be the gorillas of Rwanda: until value as a tourist drawcard not trumped other considerations, they were at best irrelevant to the survival needs of the "locals".

I would point to my own state of Tasmania as a largely successful example of eco-tourism. The sight of large numbers of "flashpackers" in the summer months might pain some bushwalking purists, but resources made available to the area from strict regulation and management has had positive results for some areas. Places that were once a "swamp of t*rds", as was recently described to me, are now safe to drink from again, thanks to Parks management.

To argue that eco-tourism results in some kind of corruption of indigenous peoples, luring them away from an imagined idyllic "noble savage" existence into what the very priveleged and comfortable Al Gore gloomily derides as "dysfunctional" Western society, is a supremely arrogant fantasy.

Like Marie Antoinette playing at being a milkmaid at Hameau de la Reine, milking freshly washed cows and churning butter in porcelain churns painted in faux wood, rich comfortable green idealists might fantasize about "the simple life", but the truth is nasty, brutish and short.

Both Canada and Australia are relatively underpopulated.2000 yrs ago China's population was 20 million.Those over populated countries now see this attitude of Tim Murray as being elitist.Save the planet for a select few who want pristine environment with their comfortable Govt jobs.

Now is that the real oxymoron or is Tim just intent on giving oxygen to morons.

Cheryl wrote, "If you believe in a finite world, ..."

Actually, I do believe that the world is finite.

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Great article, Tim!

Indeed,a good article.A measure of that is how it got the Growth at any Cost troglodytes foaming at the mouth.

Some clouds have silver linings.The current and ongoing economic crash and burn will have a significant effect on the tourist industry.

That,and in so many other ways,is the only hope we have.