Conservatives never should have surrendered the ground of environmental conservation to the radicalised, collectivised, totalitarian Left.
Since becoming custodians of the environment, left-wing politicians, bureaucracies, and businesses have done little except monetise the rapid expansion of renewable energy which, ironically, is one of the most wasteful and destructive technologies in modern history.
Far from ‘saving the planet’, these environmentalists have made their intentions perfectly clear – and we should listen to them.
‘This is about system change!’ read the banners held aloft by the likes of spiritual leader Greta Thunberg and her pre-pubescent minions. She is the moral guide for a generation of children, teaching them to stand in the street screeching at the sky while the clunk of public money hits the pockets of the elite.
In Climate Book, Greta Thunberg describes the capitalist system as: ‘defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression, and genocide by the so-called Global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order.’
Who is going to tell her that capitalism has been the default economic position underpinning human trade since we wandered out of the caves? Would you trust a person who believes the West invented capitalism with the future of human civilisation?
This is a religion to absolve the guilty, not an economic policy.
It could not be clearer that those who lack an education will never be able to save the world from anything, let alone dangerous ideology such as this. The only thing brainwashed children are useful for are the votes they cast in adulthood.
By ‘system change’ what the activists behind the children mean is ‘communism’ – or even a new variation of collectivism that we are beginning to know as eco-fascism. The flavour of destruction depends on which group of activists you come across and what the personal beliefs were of its leaders before the arrival of the #ClimateChange hashtag.
Some environmentalists think a form of communism will ‘save the planet’ because only dictatorial governments have the necessary power over individuals and the economy to carry out ‘uncomfortable change’ (read mass theft of property and rights).
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is one such individual who is warming up to the allure of dictatorship: ‘There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.’ Before Trudeau gets too excited, someone should point out that China is the most polluted nation on Earth where the worst man-made famine in human history took place, all under the watch of communism.
Other activists have aligned themselves with international corporations whose influence over global politics dwarfs the democratic process. These are the suited class that sip their way around closed-door lobbying conferences like the World Economic Forum, pretending that innovation rather than political coercion is driving their eco-success. These environmentalists believe that an authoritarian marriage between the State and Corporate can deliver profit at a faster rate than sluggish market forces, held back by concerned citizens.
This magical fountain of money is to be ripped out of the general public via green taxes and unreasonable legislation. Like robbing a bank, no one has a plan for what happens tomorrow when there is no apocalypse and no capitalist economy creating public wealth. Perhaps they’ll start taxing the carbon in our bodies and air in our lungs to make up the difference in their parallel economy…
New Zealand offers a glimpse of the future, with socialist Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern proud of what is, quite literally, a race-based water management policy. Such incoherent madness would have been laughed off last century. Her propensity for hypocrisy allows her to demonise farmers for their emissions while pleading with America to send as many tourists as possible, via plane, to a volcanic sandpit which leaks greenhouses gases like an open valve.
The reason that no particular label accurately defines the modern environmentalist movement as a whole is because they are a fractured group of competing political ideologies, all of which are jumping on the ‘green’ bandwagon to elevate their sphere of power. It is time for rational people to see them clearly. These ideas are the weeds of politics, infesting Western Civilisation with the intent of colonisation and eventual suffocation.
Short-sighted businesses, unaware that the end game does not benefit them, think that ‘going green’ means that the government will both kill off their market competitors via legislation and make available fortunes of public money for ‘investment’ justified by the undefined label of ‘saving the planet’.
Politicians hitched a ride early on, seeing that universities and schools had been inundated by failed communists who, to hide the rapid decline in education standards, now elicit praise for raising ‘responsible global citizens’ (who cannot add, spell, or reason). Not only have political movements capitalised on Millennials, they are pushing to lower the voting age to prop up their regimes with children.
The Greens and Labor have never cared much for economic stability or civil liberty, so it was no surprise to see them lead the charge on this. It was similarly inevitable that a movement like the Teals would emerge comprised of bored, wealthy, affluent women funded by self-interested renewables billionaires. They get to virtue signal to the cafe class while their victims remain quarantined in the poorer suburbs.
What remains astonishing is how easily the Liberals and Nationals burned their principles, buried their morality, and scrambled up after unscrupulous Parliamentarians to get a piece of that green salvation.
To be clear, conservation is admirable – eco-fascism is disgraceful, and all we have seen of our politicians in the last decade is a race to install a carbon prison state.
Australians used to be responsible. Clean up Australia Day was one of those worthy initiatives that taught children to take care of the land. Now, instead of cleaning up their local area, kids are demanding that the world’s worst polluters ramp up operations because their teachers gave them a slogan that was never questioned.
How are children ‘making a better world’ by the installation of millions of solar panels and wind turbines destined for landfill within 20 years? Or hundreds of acres of battery farms that face the same fate?
Did any of them do the cost and environmental calculations on the mining, transport, manufacturing, installation, maintenance, and disposal of these ‘planet saving’ technologies? How many of them know that kids, just like them, are sitting in mud pits mining cobalt while entire nations are having their natural resources financially raped by China’s debt trap diplomacy leaving local residents impoverished?
Do they know that sacred sites and ancient communities throughout China’s ‘autonomous’ region of Tibet are destroyed for renewable mining operations, and that their first nations people are imprisoned if they protest? Are they aware that the oceans are facing danger from rare earths deep sea mining operations, or that rare earths represent the largest mining boom in modern history, triggering huge amounts of devastation?
Because it’s not ‘coal’, it doesn’t make the news… Speaking of fossil fuels, their demonisation is done without mention of the pharmaceutical industry which is wholly reliant on petrochemicals. You cannot have the socialist dream of free healthcare without fossil fuels.
Conservative parties had a duty to Australia to fight against destructive collectivism and to see through the cynical green cloak hiding its red core. Instead, they validated the incoherent, fanciful screeching. In their attempt to win a few elections, the conservatives kicked open the Pandora’s Box that formed the Teals. Affluent blue-ribbon seats never would have waded into this sick game without their friends in politics and business insisting it was ‘the right thing to do’. Those voters believed it without evidence, adopting Tealism as though it were a fashion trend.
Worse, these allegedly conservative politicians are still taking advice from the same green-eyed merchants of misery – the end result of which is Matt Kean.
As for the Nationals, there is no saving a party that sides with an international bureaucracy with policies devoted to the destruction of family agriculture. What farmer is going to vote for a local member who nods along while the United Nations demands herd culling to ‘meet Net Zero goals’? What food grower is going to sit by while Australia tries out the Sri Lankan approach to farming?
2023 is a new year, and if the conservatives want to have both an election future and a clean, environmentally friendly Australia – they have to apologise for adopting Net Zero garbage and immediately start a new course toward a genuinely sustainable future (that means, a future where Australians can afford to heat their homes and buy food for their kids).
Neither communism nor fascism does the environment any favours. Australia was clean and green when it was free of grifting activists rolling around in the hay of big business.
We absolutely should embrace conservation, but that is not going to happen if we impoverish, oppress, and starve Australians in pursuit of a Net Zero utopia. Utopias, by definition, do not exist.
Save the planet – ditch environmentalism.
Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.