Sigh…another ‘Seriously’ anti-Green rant in which he once again puts out a tiny core of ideas and uses them to justify an unsupported mass of assertions with fallacious reasoning. 

Yes, petrol is under priced and higher prices may lead to its more efficient use. It will also shatter Tasmania’s farmers whose forward contracts do not take their costs into consideration

And none if it means that forestry burn-offs are OK. The thinking fallacy here is called ‘pointing to another wrong’. Just because car use has serious adverse consequences in no way excuses the institutional destruction of valuable elements of our biosphere to produce chips, heat and smoke.

SA doesn’t understand how the production of new cars wastes significantly more energy than the re-use of existing cars.

The Greens are only a tiny voice in modern life, yet SA is clearly sufficiently perturbed by them to make unsupported assertions about the whole green movement.

This kind of shallow attack might have a place in the pages of one of Tasmania’s PR papers, but it isn’t useful when trying to deal with complex, inter-related ecologies.

I hope that SA learns to think coherently before becoming involved in anything important.

Some valid arguments here, Super.  Points for effort.
Couple of questions: given the shudders experienced by the tourism ‘industry’ in Tasmania this week, will people will be drawn to Tassie in future to look at rows and rows and rows and rows of single-species tree plantations?

This, seemingly, is what “being committed to regrowth” means in our current lexicon of forestry practice.

But then, tourists have to arrive by plane or ferry, don’t they? Both of which are dreadful polluters.  Should we ban tourists, then?

Just curious.

Our anonymous writer has some interesting perceptions of the Greens. I would like to make some clarifications.

The Greens:
* do think increased petrol prices would be a good thing
* do think we need to redesign our cities, improve public transport, and reduce car travel
* do believe we can apply the use of science to improve our living standards, and the planet, but also believe in the precautionary principle
* do not believe plantations and plantation-like forests are anywhere near equivalent to the old-growth forests they replace
* are not a religious movement and all decisions are made based on rational thought

Many things need to be done at a societal level and it would be unfair and unjust for the Greens to be the only ones to, say, buy solar panels for their house when no-one else does. The Greens want changes to apply to everyone.

If it is a bad thing for people to live in the country and drive into the city each day then why just criticise the Greens for doing it? Blame Liberal voters too. Blame Labor voters too. We need to enforce some changes at a whole-of-society level.

And the Greens are a strong believer in promoting a tolerant society. Don’t confuse the desire to make changes as intolerance.

At some point in time I would like to see a proper debate about a couple of major points: 1. perceived “hyprocrisy” of Greens supporters. 2. Greens attitute towards science.

Maybe a Greens supporter will write an essay about each of those things and submit it for publication on this website.

Yes, roll on $2 a litre!!

“If it is a bad thing for people to live in the country and drive into the city each day then why just criticise the Greens for doing it? Blame Liberal voters too. Blame Labor voters too. We need to enforce some changes at a whole-of-society level.”

I agree, and we can certainly start with politicians showing the way.  The Greens have been trying to push for the government car fleet to change over to hybrid models, so far with little support from the other parties.  What does that say?  Shouldn’t this, in light of the current situation, be receiving tripartisan support?

SA states: “And this is where I also depart from the Greens. The Greens in general have a deep mistrust of science, scientists and technologists (see GM Trees and the Uni of Tas).”

Most Greens I know want to push for NEW technologies to ween us off the OLD technologies that are causing most of our problems.  Isn’t this anti-Luddite?

Many Greens are also very well educated, have degrees in a wide range of disciplines, and hold professional jobs.  To say that they have a “mistrust of science, scientists and technologies” is a broad generalisation and does not hold much weight. 

If the truth be told, where the mistrust may occur is in the way research can be manipulated by the funding bodies (industry or government-based) to satisfy their own agendas. I know of several cases where funding was pulled, or researchers were gagged under duress, because they uncovered data that was contrary to what was “expected”.  For instance,  senior scientists from CSIRO and NASA came forward recently with the story that they were gagged for years from releasing information proving global warming was a reality.

And this is NOT a conspiracy theory.  It happens!  I have personally turned away from a research project because of “interference” (see my post in: GM Trees and the Uni of Tas). 

However, having said this, let me end by saying that there is a lot of very good science being conducted in the world, by very reputable scientists working in often very difficult circumstances.

It’s about time “Super Annoyed” used his/her real name.

Tom Nilsson

The nub of my intellectual conflict with the Greens and supporters is less over policy at the end of the day, more with approach, attitude and hubris.

My conservationist views are probably in many ways more radical - people should live in cities, wilderness areas should be locked up (ie no people allowed access), cars should be almost unaffordable….

With regard to tourism, I do have a major problem - tourists and the tourist industry are destroying many wonderful parts of the world, including our own wilderness areas.

Why does the developed world demand access to every part of the world??

Air traffic is also a major consumer of resources and global polluter. On the other hand, I promote technology, globalisation and interconnectdness. It is difficult for me to reconcile these views sometimes and I certainly don’t have all of the answers.

“It is difficult for me to reconcile these views sometimes and I certainly don’t have all of the answers.”

I agree.  It is damn difficult and I also do not have all of the answers.  But we, each one of us, may have small pieces of the puzzle.  Now, if we just started working together….!