“There are signs that we may be reaching peak madness as opposition to cowboy renewable-energy development grows in regional and rural Australia…. Anger about the rampant spread of solar, wind and transmission development proposals has galvanized communities into action.”
“I’m dismayed by the indifference of Green activists to the fate of the Greater Glider and other native wildlife that is losing its natural habitat in the rush for renewables,” Nick Cater recently posted. He continued with the specifics:
The vast hectares of native forest being destroyed to install wind turbines along the Great Dividing range is well documented in environmental impact statements for projects like the Upper Burdekin (Gawara Baya) Wind Farm in Far North Queensland.
…Here’s an extract from the approval for the project given by Tanya Plibersek in April:
“To avoid and mitigate harm to protected matters, the Approval Holder must not clear more than:
“a) 605.3 ha of Sharman’s Rock Wallaby Habitat,
“b) 581 ha of Greater Glider (northern) Habitat, including:
“i) no more than 331 ha of Greater Glider (northern) Denning Habitat, and
“ii) no more than 250 ha of Greater Glider (northern) Foraging Habitat,
“c) 581 ha of Masked Owl (northern) Habitat,
“d) 614 ha of Koala habitat,
“e) 616 ha of Red Goshawk Habitat, including:
“i) no more than 331 ha of Red Goshawk Breeding Habitat, and
“ii) no more than 285 ha of Red Goshawk Foraging Habitat,
“f) 614 ha of Grey-headed Flying-Fox Foraging Habitat,
“g) 614 ha of Spectacled Flying-Fox Foraging Habitat
“h) 546 ha of Greater Large-eared Horseshoe Bat Roosting Habitat,
“i) 545 ha of Bare-rumped Sheathtail Bat Habitat,
“j) 614 ha of White-throated Needletail Habitat,
“k) 614 ha of Fork-tailed Swift Habitat, and
“l) 0 ha of occupied Magnificent Brood Frog Habitat”
These are vulnerable and endangered native species.
“Could both sides of the climate debate just agree that it is time for resiliency before the fact and adaptation after the fact in the face of weather extremes, whatever the cause? Alex Epstein, meet Michael Mann. Michael Man, meet Alex Epstein.”
On LinkedIn, I reposted Bjorn Lomborg’s “We could stop scaring people witless with climate exaggeration,” and added the comment:
Is there any good reason for climate exaggeration–particularly to the mentally weak prone to ‘climate anxiety’? Is this a good thing even to the climate activists?
One Benjamin Silverstone responded:
The mentally weak prone to “climate anxiety”? That is the most insulting, bigoted thing I have ever heard. Check yourself Mr Bradley, look long and hard and never use the term mentally weak try and support your argument.
I replied:
…Exaggeration and failed doomist predictions mark the climate debate.
“’I’m a businessman. I’ll take the [government green] money, that’s all I care about… I will move heaven and earth to get projects done over here’.” – James Quigley, quoted in Politico ‘s “Power Switch” (below)
In the mid-19th century, Claude-Frédéric Bastiat, a political economist, wrote:
Government is the great fiction through which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else. Every one is, more or less, for profiting by the labors of others. No one would dare to express such a sentiment; he even hides it from himself.
The Frenchman added:
…When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.