The New Dark (Green) Age
By Viv Forbes, Chairman,
Last week while driving, I happened to hear part of the farewell speech of Senator Nick Minchin. We will sorely miss people like this stalwart senator. It struck me that this one sad event was like the bell tolling for the new Dark Age to come. In the next few weeks, unless a miracle occurs, and for the first time ever, dark greens and their fellow travellers will gain control of the both houses of parliament in Australia.
No doubt we have won the battle for the minds of the Australian people – every poll shows a strong majority is opposed to the tax on carbon dioxide. And there is growing scepticism for the claim that man causes climate change. But the green elite, who have never won majority support in their own right, are determined to pursue their destructive goals.
Their long-term agenda is to destroy human industry and reduce human population. Thus they are opposed to farming, mining, fishing, forestry, exploration and cheap power.
Their preferred strategy is to divide and conquer. Their tactics are to grab any real concern and magnify and divert it into another reason to destroy or hobble the industries they hate – cattle, sheep, mining, oil and gas, uranium, farming, forestry, fishing and land developers. Their greatest success is achieved when they harness and inflame one industry and use it to ram another – use farmers to destroy the gas industry, use animal lovers and meat workers to destroy live exports, use small business to attack big business, make all industries compete against one another for a dwindling supply of emission permits, get farmers to fight food retailers, cry crocodile tears about the loss of fertile land, and then lock up grazing land in trees, heritage areas and other sterilised ground. And all the time they use their domination of the government media and education empires to spread their half-truths.
They know that the best way to encourage fights is to destroy all vestiges of defined property rights and to encourage poorly defined and overlapping rights, so that eventually nothing can be done on any property without approval and adjudication from the local green committee.
The Green Guards are coming, and they will be far more oppressive and destructive than Mao's Red Guards.
What do we do?
There is no choice. As Churchill said once, it is best to fight now, while we are still on our feet, or we will be forced to fight later, when we are on our knees.
If, as appears likely, they manage to ram a carbon (dioxide) tax down our throat, we must continue the fight to abolish it together with all the other climate taxes, subsidies, mandates and bureaucracy.
At the start they will use the favoured Fabian tactic – make the introduction of the new tax as painless as possible, just to get the principle established. Years ago, when the Whitlam government proposed virtual nationalisation of the medical industry, he was asked "How will you overcome opposition from the private doctors?" His very perceptive answer: "Stuff their mouths with money", which he did.
So we can expect that the initial carbon dioxide tax will be at a low rate, it will have many exemptions, and there will be massive bribery of consumers, taxpayers and pensioners.
Then when no industries close immediately on introduction of the tax and there are no sad stories of aged pensioners freezing in the dark, people will forget about the carbon tax and the big squeeze will begin.
No matter what happens in the next few months, we must fight to stop/abolish the tax and make sure those planning to live off the carbon tax teat are warned of the risks they take. For example, directors who waste shareholders money on things like wind farms or carbon sequestration should be warning their investors that there is a distinct risk that all the subsidies, tax breaks, market mandates and protected high prices may go immediately after the next electoral rout.
The alarmists want to ration our access to cheap energy and cheap food.
Their promise is a New Dark Age – a dark green age.
No comments:
Post a Comment