Were we wrong to save the Franklin?
Andrew Stevenson
December 18, 2007

Greenies are not the only group in society who revel in the mistakes of the past - those follies committed or intended by past governments, departments and companies in the names of greed or even honest misapprehension. But they do love it and, in their line of work, looking back in anger and confusion and frustration comes easier than it does for other people.
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But with the world looking to Bali as the Arctic ice cap melts and as Pacific nations measure their future in decades rather than centuries, I wonder whether the perspective of passing time will smile as kindly on Brown as it currently does. Might, just might, the former Tasmanian premier Robin Gray - perhaps for all of the wrong reasons - have been right? Might Brown have been the environmental vandal?
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So, on one side we have an industry, tourism, that actually produces nothing, that lives off the fat of a wealthy society and which, for dollars earned, comes at a massive cost in carbon. And, on the other, a power plant that might have helped secure a cleaner energy future.

I wonder when it will be time to do the sums?

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Gus: Andrew! Andrew... no, we were not wrong to save the Franklin River...

I have seen a lot of Australia (and a lot of the world) but I have not been to Tasmania yet... but I can say from experience that we need to protect lots more... Lots more...

Saving nature, from the destruction or change designed to power human advancement, is often an act of kindness — towards nature first and towards ourselves second... But from whatever mindset we decide to protect an area, whether for god, for ourselves, for nature itself, or our relationship with nature, the mindset exists and is important to uplift our mind, beyond that of being the rapists of the earth... Tourism is only a very small aside in the equation of the Franklin River... Sure, tourism can be (and is) a scourge on the integrity of the planet, but tourism does not have to exist, even if we "save" or "protect" places of natural beauty...

So I hope most of Andrew Stevenson questions have been asked in jest, otherwise should humanity's thinking be taken over by such sad ilk, I will dare to say the planet is in trouble — big trouble. What a lot of rot...

The Royal National Park, south of Sydney, is one of these famous places that could have been overtaken by human development. A city like Sydney could do with growing over it, or could it not?... New Australians (wise poms at the time, something like 128 years ago, in 1879) saw and admired the amazing raw beauty of the place — no matter if people went to see it or not... and decided to preserve it as it was for posterity as a National Park. It was finally declared as the second National Park in the world after Yellowstone National Park. The Royal National Park could have been the first NP in the world were it not for some delay in the formulation of its existence.

There are many places where the sheer size, the sheer appearance and the sheer harsh natural unspoilt beauty of their integrity is stylistically essential for our relationship with nature. A hydro scheme can become but a blot that serves not much other purpose than to illuminate a few inane tubes, we call television.

I know some very dedicated conservationists on both side of the fence, Liberal and Labor, who still deeply mourn the destruction of Lake Pedder in Tasmania. Many still have a large photograph of the place before it was flooded for the hydro scheme.

Lake Pedder had fabulous unique features... Unique means something strong and very special. nowhere else in the world could such beauty and natural status be found: habitats... species... sands... shape... delicate beach... geological history. Important? A gem. But Lake Pedder's magic is gone forever under megalitres of water to feed a few street-lights, illuminate a few idiot boxes, and to power sawmills and mines...

We need to raise our minds above the mundane and should we need it rather than build environmentally sound stuff to consume more, we might need to consume less and preserve what we can admire of nature's accidental powerful or delicate works. We should be the guardians of nature, because we are grown from nature, not its rapists...
We need to find different ways to "energise" our "needs" including reducing these needs...

Moises Naim is an idiot. 

Being the editor of deliriously misnamed Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s (sic) flagship publication, Foreign Policy, we expect Moises Naim to be an idiot.  

In fact, we expect him to be well nigh an exalted grand poobah of idiots, a knave among knaves, the peddler of interventionist nonsense so thick and syrupy it sticks to just about everything around it and makes walking, or even motion of any kind, impossible.  

As one of an intellectual (sic) cabal of chief justifiers of U.S. intervention, an aspiring world manager who sees himself as senior advisor to actual world managers, we expect nothing less but well-crafted and impressive idiocy from the likes of Moises Naim. 

In a Wednesday piece in the Washington Post, "A Hunger for America," Moises Naim does not disappoint. He displays his idiocy, proudly and unashamedly, for all to see. 

The world wants America back. 

For the next several years, world politics will be reshaped by a strong yearning for American leadership. This trend will be as unexpected as it is inevitable: unexpected given the powerful anti-American sentiments around the globe, and inevitable given the vacuums that only the United States can fill. 

This renewed international appetite for U.S. leadership will not merely result from the election of a new president, though having a new occupant in the White House will certainly help.  

Almost a decade of U.S. disengagement and distraction have allowed international and regional problems to swell. Often, the only nation that has the will and means to act effectively is the United States. 

Oh my. It takes the breath away. "The world wants America back. ... a strong yearning for American leadership."  

These are heady and mind-altering words.  

They make one dizzy like the kind of smoke one might breathe in an opium den in Guangzhou or the sweet fumes one might inhale from a paper sack while crouching behind a 7-11 in Rancho Cucamonga, California.  

A Hunger for America? Really?