Queensland turns the tide of environmental lunacy
Submitted by climaterealists on Wed, 09/05/2012 - 16:56
By James Delingpole
The Telegraph.Com (UK)
28 Mar 2012
Just a fortnight, now, before I fly to God's Own Country to promote (my latest book on environmentalism) Killing The Earth To Save It (Connor Court) and tell the Aussies some home truths about the great global warming swindle. But do you know what? I think, to judge by the Queensland election results, one or two of them might have twigged already. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that those Queenslanders have just won the climate war equivalent of El Alamein. (H/T Bob Carter, Stefan Bjorklund, Sonya Porter, Mark Hatherly)
"Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat," Churchill wrote after the war. It wasn't strictly true then and it isn't strictly true now: of course, there will be further setbacks. But the Queensland election result undoubtedly marks a turning point in the global struggle between climate realism and green alarmism, for it's the first one directly and unequivocally attributable to public scepticism towards environmental nonsense.
No administration was "greener" than the one run by departing Queensland premier Anna Bligh. She believed in environmentalism with such a passion she entrusted her beloved husband – Greg Withers: head of Queensland's Office For Climate Change – with the task of turning Queensland into the solar powered, low-carbon, eco-paradise it very nearly is today.
I say "very nearly" because incoming premier Campbell Newman has put a stop to all that. One of Newman's first priorities – which is why, of course, Queenslanders voted him in – has been to cancel most of Bligh's green boondoggle programmes. This may in turn have the delightful knock-on effect of undermining eco-lunacy at the national level. We learn via Jo Nova:
The showpiece of the Gillard government’s $1.5 billion Solar Flagships Program is now in jeopardy, after Mr Newman yesterday pulled the plug on $75 million in state funding pledged for the $1.2bn Solar Dawn solar thermal project near Chinchilla, west of Brisbane. Mr Newman yesterday declared his LNP government would axe seven other green schemes, on the grounds the carbon tax would make them redundant.Mr Newman announced the closure of the $430m Queensland Climate Change Fund, which provides $30m a year for climate change initiatives, and the $50m Renewable Energy Fund, which supports the Geothermal Centre of Excellence.The $50m Smart Energy Savings Program, which helps businesses improve energy efficiency, will be axed, along with the Waste Avoidance and Resource Efficiency Fund, the Local Government Sustainable Future Fund and Solar Initiatives Package. The Future Growth Fund – set up in 2006 with the net proceeds from the sale of state-owned energy corporations – will be axed. It had put $405m towards transport and water infrastructure, clean-coal technology and climate change projects last financial year. The LNP will retain the solar feed-in tariff, which subsidises households that generate solar power.
Better still, with a delicious sense of irony, refined cruelty and poetic justice, Newman has let it be known that he wants Withers himself to take charge of the dismantling programme. Withers may well have been hoping he would be sacked, in which case he would have been eligible for a $600,000 payout. But Newman's not letting him off that easily.
PREMIER Campbell Newman says reports that Anna Bligh's husband and a senior public servant, Greg Withers, had been asked to clear out his desk were false.Mr Newman on Tuesday said Mr Withers, head of Queensland's Office of Climate Change, would be asked to oversee the removal of carbon reduction schemes he had helped create, which the LNP has promised to axe.
As Andrew Bolt notes, this hardly augurs well for the prospects of Australian prime minister Julia Gillard come the next general election. Gillard's carbon tax is, of course, proving about as popular with Australians as a Sydney funnel web at a picnic. Really, I can't think of a better moment in history for an evil climate-denying bastard like me to be visiting Oz. It'll feel like Caesar's triumphant entry into Rome. I apologise in advance that, owing to current health and safety laws, I shan't be dragging Tim Flannery and Ross Garnaut in chains behind me, before having their eyes put out and thrown to the sharks in the harbour from the roof of Sydney opera house. No, I think I'll reserve that treatment for the authors of the $370,000 taxpayer-funded report suggesting that commemorations of the centenary of the Gallipoli landings - Anzac day – in 2015 might prove a "double-edged sword" and a "potential area of divisiveness" in multicultural Australia.
From Delingpole's next column,
April 22, 2012
April 22, 2012
Australia's green orchidectomy
A week into my Australian tour and I already I love the country and its people so much I could happily stay here forever. (Articles like this and this and this may partly explain why.) There's just one small problem – well, one b-----y big problem actually: the rampaging political correctness. How ever did the robust, no-nonsense pioneer spirit of the original settlers who carved an earthly paradise out of burning hell allow itself to be watered down, warped and wimpified by a minority of tofu-knitting greens and tight-sphinctered lefties?
For anyone in Western Australia trying to make a living outside the cities be it mining, tourism, the wine trade, fishing or farming, DEC is more vexatious a pestilence than a swarm of sand flies. What's more, local taxpayers must stump up an annual A$ 300,000 for the privilege of having their economy spavined, their businesses hamstrung and their liberties shackled by DEC's army of sanctimonious brown shirts.
And while I've seen and heard for myself how bad Western Australia is, I gather that the further east you go the worse it gets. No wonder the Queenslanders couldn't wait to get shot of the Greenies terrorising their beautiful state. Let's hope for Australia's sake the electoral carnage continues into 2013 when the Aussies have the chance to tell Julia Gillard exactly where she can stick her Carbon Tax.
What I realise, though, now that I'm here is that the Carbon Tax is just a fraction of the problem. There is, for example, the equally stupid Mining Tax which is punishing one of the most productive sectors of the Australian economy, killing jobs and driving business abroad. And then there all the Eco Fascists in local government poisoning the wells with their sustainability programmes and their pursuit of the UN's sinister Agenda 21.
And from his Anzac Day column:
How Australia surrendered to the wowsers
Today is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand. It seems an appropriate time to reflect on what Australia was and what it has become. (Sorry Kiwis: can't comment on you this time, though I wish I could. Please forgive me for not coming this time)
I said the other day what a marvellous achievement it was, the way those early generations of Aussies turned a relentless hell into a fair approximation of paradise on earth. What I see now, however, is a fair proportion of the current generation doing their best to reverse the process.
You can't move a car to a different state without having to submit it to about A$400 worth of checks to make sure it's roadworthy. You can't run a fishing boat without having about 12 different permits. You can't light a barbie pretty much anywhere unless you have at least two fire crews on hand with no less than 3,000 gallons of water, plus a doctorate in health and safety with regards to preparation of raw-meat products. You can't kill a crocodile even though their populations are expanding so fast they'll soon be overtaking humans. You can't study at "Uni" without doing a mandatory course module explaining what you're studying from the point of view of the "Traditional Owners" – (the people formerly known as Aborigines). You can't earn a living as a fruit farmer in the Murray Darling basin because a bunch of Eco Fascists from the WWF say you can't. You can't open a mine without being told that what you're doing is theft because, like, man, natural resources belong to everyone. You can't chop down the trees on your land because they're a "carbon sink" now, fulfilling Australia's obligations under the Kyoto protocol to deal with the non-existent problem of CO2 (a plant food). You can't have a thriving economy because that might discriminate against all the lazy bastards who don't want to work so what you have to do is shackle it and hobble it with a mining tax and a carbon tax in order to redistribute wealth in the guise of "saving the planet." I could go on.
I've been to Gallipoli. I have an idea what your ancestors went through in 1915. They did not give up their lives and limbs in order that you might surrender a century on to a bunch of wowsers.
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