The radical greens should spend World Environment Day doing penance for all the damage their mis-guided energy policies have done to the world's natural environment
The radical greens should spend World Environment Day doing penance for all the damage their mis-guided energy policies have done to the world's natural environment.
Probably the worst damage is being done by their mindless promotion of wind energy. Their demands for ever higher wind power targets can only be achieved when wind towers and their associated roads and transmission links scar and uglify every wild mountain and every exposed headland, and their whirling scythes have shredded bird and bat populations in all the wild places.
Then they should ask for forgiveness for their misguided campaign to turn plants into ethanol and biofuels. They should apologise for all the forests turned into regimented plantations producing palm oil and carbon credits and all the natural grasslands ploughed up for monocultures of ethanol crops.
Before the use of coal and oil for energy, the wild environment was being stripped of trees for firewood, crops and pastures were consumed by armies of horses and working bullocks, and whales were hunted for whale oil for lamps. Coal and oil saved the forests, the pastures and the whales. Today's "pretend greens" are turning back the clock to those dark days when burning biofuels to produce energy for heating lighting and transport was the only option for humans.
On this world environment day, greens should resolve to repeal all the silly energy policies that take us back to the dark days when the environment was stripped to provide fuel.
Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, has spent his life working in exploration, mining, farming, infrastructure, financial analysis and political commentary. He has worked for government departments, private companies and now works as a private contractor and farmer.
Viv has also been a guest writer for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Business Queensland and mining newspapers. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects.
