Lushington D. Brady: Humans Are Good for the Planet

Earth is not a closed “spaceship”

As I wrote recently, contrary to the gloomy Malthusianism of the green left, we humans may effectively never run out of resources. There may not be a Planet B, but we probably won’t ever need one. The Earth provides and will continue to do so.

This, of course, flies in the face of the ruling doom-narrative. There can’t be infinite growth on a finite planet! wail the green Jeremiahs. To be fair, this seems self-evident. But is it true? Like many things that seem “just obvious”, in real terms it may in fact not be.

Brendan O'Neill: Environmentalism is austerity on steroids

The left claims to hate austerity and yet its eco-dystopia would plunge millions into poverty.

There are countless contradictions on what passes for the left these days. We’re against sexism, they cry, and then they’ll while away entire days hounding every uppity broad who dares to question the trans ideology. We’re anti-racist, they say, even as they yell ‘Uncle Tom’ at any person of colour who deviates from their white liberal orthodoxies. Be kind, they tweet, in between their venomous crusades against TERFs, gammon, boomers, deplorables, ‘semi-fascists’, you name it.

Viv Forbes: Put Foresters back in the Forests

There was a time when Australian foresters kept Australian forests safe and productive. They maintained access tracks bridges and fire breaks, undertook prescribed burning, cleared flammable litter from the forest floor, cut suckers, manned fire lookouts and maintained their own fire-fighting crews in decentralised districts. University-trained professional foresters were supported by tough experienced rangers who learned their job in the bush.

Almost every advance in bushfire management in Australia, from the science of fire behaviour to aerial burning was thanks to our foresters. Into the 1980’s they were regarded as international leaders.

Chris Trotter: The Message From Messenger Park.

Coasters Turn Out In Droves: It’s precisely the widening gulf between those with actual experience of things like guns, chainsaws and drilling machines, and those who regulate their use, that accounts for the angry crowd at Greymouth’s Messenger Park on Sunday, 17 November 2019. In the rarefied atmosphere where decisions to shut down whole industries are made, hands-on experience is not only rare – it’s despised. What do workers know about anything?

THE NUMBERS WERE IMPRESSIVE. Indeed, it looked as is half the Coast had turned out to give this government a piece of its mind.

David Unsworth: French Citizens Want Cheaper Energy, not Global Warming Elitism

French President Emmanuel Macron pursues his global warming agenda at his own political peril.

Diesel moves France. Whereas in the United States diesel is increasingly a rarity used mainly to fuel heavy trucks, drivers in France and much of Europe have diesel cars. In past generations, diesel was believed to be more environmentally friendly. Today, it turns out that is not the case. Diesel is actually far worse for the environment than traditional gasoline.

Seton Motley: Yet Another Leftist Anti-Energy Misdirection - hiding behind the animals

The entirety of the Leftist radical environmental movement is dangerous and stupid.

Dangerous: Because it costs many, many humans their lives when they can’t heat or cool their homes because the Left has prohibited – or rendered prohibitively expensive – the energy they need to heat or cool themselves.  

And because Leftist environmentalists routinely engage in violence in attempts to impose their will.

Stupid: Because their ideas for alleged energy – are awful, and awfully dumb.  Solar, wind, ethanol and the like – are terrible sources of energy…and are worse for the environment than the real energy sources they purport to replace.  “Green energy” – is neither green nor energy.

So when you have a terrible product to sell – your salesmen must incessantly lie their faces off.

Tom Harris: Now They’re Waging War On Plastics!

Earth Day Network (EDN) chose “End Plastic Pollution” as their theme for this year’s April 22 Earth Day. It is just the tip of the anti-plastic activism that now consumes environmental extremists. A Google search  on “Plastic Pollution Coalition” (a group claiming to represent “more than 500 member organizations” dedicated to “working toward a world free of plastic pollution and its toxic impacts”) yields almost 90,000 hits, including a video actor Jeff Bridges made for the campaign.

Even the United Nations has joined in, making “Beat Plastic Pollution” the theme of its June 5 World Environment Day, “a global platform for public outreach that is widely celebrated in over 100 countries.”

Bill Wirtz: Banning Plastic Bags Isn't Just Bad Economics - It's Bad for the Environment

In January, the British government announced its intention to extend their plastic bag tax to all shops.  As of now, only establishments which have more than 250 employees need to impose the charge on single-use plastic bags. In the United States, certain states or cities even go beyond a tax and put an outright ban on them. But the UK government's own research suggests that this is actually bad for the environment.

In 2011, the UK's Environment Agency published an earlier-drafted life cycle assessment of supermarket carrier bags. The aim: establishing both the environmental impact of different carrier bags which are in use and their reuse practice. The intention was to inform public policymakers about the impact that a crackdown on plastic bags could possibly have.  Needless to say, politicians had little concern for the actual assessment the report presented.

Matt Ridley: Bootleggers and Baptists in the countryside

Even Michael Gove’s enemies concede he is good at tackling vested interests. Even his friends concede he has a knack for making enemies in the process. In his new job as secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, if he is to achieve anything, he may have to do a lot of both. So here’s a field guide to the vested interests he will encounter in the countryside.

Bruce Yandle, the American economist, once coined a phrase to explain why the disastrous policy of prohibition became law in the United States between 1920 and 1933: “Bootleggers and Baptists”. A very effective coalition developed between high-minded, high-profile moral campaigners and low-mind, low-profile smuggling profiteers to push for the outlawing of alcohol. The result was legislation that was good for bootleggers and Baptists but bad for society as a whole.

Matt Ridley from the UK: British environmental policy after Brexit

Andrea Leadsom, the agriculture and environment secretary, is to set out her plans for the British countryside in two green papers: one on the environment this week and one on farming later. She should be ambitious and positive: the future, post-Brexit, could be bright and green.

What is the countryside for? For most of human history, its job was to provide food, fuel, fibre and building material. Today, we get most of those things from factories supplied by comparatively tiny quarries or wells. Only food still needs a vast acreage, but even that is a lot less vast than it was. The area of land required to produce a given quantity of food is now just a third of what it was in 1960, thanks to technology.

Matt Ridley: Poverty, not wealth, is the greater threat to wildlife

As foxes move into cities and deer, badgers and otters grow ever-more numerous, along with birds such as ospreys, buzzards and red kites, you might be thinking much of Britain’s wildlife is doing well. 

Yet last week the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), together with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), published their latest assessment of the state of the world’s mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish: the Living Planet Report 2016. They found that on average populations of such animals declined by about 58 per cent between 1970 and 2012.

Viv Forbes from Australia: Green Energy Steals from the Biosphere

Earth has only three significant sources of energy.

First is geothermal energy from Earth’s molten core and decaying radioactive minerals in Earth’s crust. This energy moves continents, powers volcanoes and its heat migrates towards the crust, warming the lithosphere and the deep oceans. It can be harvested successfully in favourable locations, and radioactive minerals can be extracted to provide large amounts of reliable heat for power generation.

Bryan Leyland: Things you know that ain't so - environmentalists have brought huge benefits in health and welfare

"Things you know that ain't so - environmentalists have brought huge benefits in health and welfare"

It is commonly believed that, overall, the environmental movement has had positive effects for health and welfare. The reality is that many of their beliefs and actions have had seriously negative effects.

Matt Ridley from the UK: How to increase natural capital

Decoupling human activity from land and wildlife helps nature: review of Dieter Helm's book Natural Capital:

The easiest way to get a round of applause at a conference of ecologists is to make a rude joke about economists. Nature-studiers think money-studiers are heartless vandals who demand the rape of Mother Nature in the quest to build up piles of financial assets at the expense of natural ones. Dieter Helm, an Oxford professor, is a professional economist but he is bravely crossing the floor into ecology and wants to show how to build up “natural capital”.

Donald Kendal: Why Environmentalists Will Eventually Hate Renewable Power

The proliferation of renewable energy will never please environmentalists. In fact, the more efficient and inexpensive energies like solar and wind become, the more environmentalists will fear and eventually hate them.

Currently, arguments against renewable energy are based on the accurate claim they are too inefficient to become widespread. The technology behind solar and wind power are just not where they need to be to justify widespread use.

Frank Newman: RMA changes on way

In 1991 the Resource Management Act (RMA) was heralded as a visionary piece of legislation; one that would allow communities to enhance their future well-being while protecting what we have for future generations. Its political architects, Geoffrey Palmer and Simon Upton, were considered enlightened forward thinkers. It was also at the forefront of what would be a number of effect-based acts. In simple terms, the RMA replaced a bunch of Acts that prescribed what you could do, with one that said a landowner could do petty much anything on their property, provided the effects on the environment were no more than minor or could be avoided, remedied, or mitigated.

Time has shown those enabling visionary ideals to be fanciful and foolish hopes. The RMA has become disabling and a very large gravy train for the planning industry that has grown up around it. Even worse, the RMA has handed radical activist organisations (like the Environmental Defence Society and the government's own Department of Conservation) an effective weapon which they have cleverly utilised to promote their own anti-private property rights agendas.

Viv Forbes from Australia: Climate Alarmists turn back the Clock

Three centuries ago, the world ran on green power. Wood was used for heating and cooking, charcoal for smelting and smithing, wind or water-power for pumps mills and ships, and whale oil for lamps. People and soldiers walked or rode horses, and millions of horses and oxen pulled ploughs, wagons, coaches and artillery.

But smoke from open fires choked cities, forests were stripped of trees, most of the crops went to feed draft animals, and streets were littered with horse manure. For many people, life was “nasty, brutish and short”.

Viv Forbes from Australia: Wake Up Australia!

As Australia’s industrial capacity declines, Australia is becoming green and defenceless.

History holds lessons.

Back in Dec 1941, Japan suddenly attacked the huge US Naval base at Pearl Harbour. Three days later, two “invincible” British warships, “Repulse” and “Prince of Wales” were sunk by Japanese planes off Malaya. Soon Japanese armies were rampaging through Asia towards Australia. By Feb 1942, the British fortress of Singapore surrendered and Japanese bombs were falling on Darwin. By Sept 1942 the Japanese army had slashed their way down the Kokoda Track and could see the lights of Port Moresby. They were looking across Torres Strait to Australia. At that time, most of our trained soldiers were fighting Rommel in North Africa or in Japanese prison camps.

Matt Ridley from the UK: Bees and pesticides

The European Union’s addiction to the precautionary principle — which says in effect that the risks of new technologies must be measured against perfection, not against the risks of existing technologies — has caused many perverse policy decisions. It may now have produced a result that has proved so utterly foot-shooting, so swiftly, that even Eurocrats might notice the environmental disaster they have created.

All across southeast Britain this autumn, crops of oilseed rape are dying because of infestation by flea beetles. The direct cause of the problem is the two-year ban on pesticides called neonicotinoids brought in by the EU over British objections at the tail end of last year. 

Viv Forbes from Australia: Death by Delay

“The difference between taking a part of my life,
and taking my whole life, is just a matter of degree.” Anon

There was a time, before the baby-boom generation took over, when we took pride in the achievements of our builders, producers and innovators. There was always great celebration when settler families got a phone, a tractor, a bitumen road or electric power. An oil strike or a gold discovery made headlines, and people welcomed new businesses, new railways and new inventions.