Coastal craziness

In a 1997 speech at a conference in Monterey, a radical environmentalist named Peter Douglas called for the U.S. Constitution to be amended to make courts the "arbiters" in what he called the "debate" over property owners' rights. It was just another day at the green pulpit for Douglas, who thinks government powers should be used to coerce individuals to "care with mind and heart for Gaia and all life she sustains."

Unfortunately, Douglas is in a position to use coercive powers in pursuit of his extremism. He is the longtime executive director of the California Coastal Commission, an institution whose hostility toward property rights makes the typical eminent domain-abusing redevelopment agency seem like pikers.

Consider the case of San Luis Obispo engineer Dennis Schneider, who hoped to build his dream home on a cliff above the ocean in a remote area north of Cayucos. Incredibly by normal cognitive standards, typically by Coastal Commission standards, the agency blocked his plans on the grounds that the home would be such an aesthetic affront to passing kayakers, boaters and surfers that it would violate their rights. We are not making this up.

Thankfully, on June 28, the 2nd District Court of Appeal said this was nonsense in a brisk 12-page decision that seemed perplexed at where the Coastal Commission comes up with stuff like this. The answer, of course: from the untethered imagination of its executive director.

Schneider's ordeal isn't over yet. After pondering Gaian case law and the need for kayaker empowerment, Douglas is pushing for an appeal. But of course he would - if the Coastal Commission doesn't feel obligated to take the U.S. Constitution seriously, why should it take a state court seriously?

Source. (HT Cheat Seeking Missiles)






GREENS REJECTED: WORLD HERITAGE COMMITTEE REJECTS CALL FOR EMISSION CUTS

The World Heritage Committee (WHC) has rejected a motion calling for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The WHC meeting in Lithuania heard evidence that 125 sites including the Himalayas and the Great Barrier Reef are at risk from climate change. Campaigners wanted the WHC to agree that the only way to protect such sites was by reducing emissions, which would have obliged governments to make cuts.

But in discussions on Monday this option was rejected by the UNESCO body. A further clause encouraging countries to draw on projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) when assessing risks to World Heritage Sites was also rejected.

Environmental campaigners have reacted with frustration, and blamed the move on lobbying by governments opposed to restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. "We are extremely angry that the World Heritage Committee has not taken any meaningful action to protect some of the most important sites on Earth from climate change," said Peter Roderick, co-director of the Climate Justice Programme. "They are good at drawing up wonderfully drafted documents, but the idea of actually doing anything seems to pose a problem. "The world is entitled to expect better from the Committee; bending over backwards as a result of fear of the US and Canada will tarnish its reputation."

Two years ago, Climate Justice co-ordinated petitions from environmental groups saying that three World Heritage Sites - Sagarmatha National Park in the Himalayas, Huascaran National Park in Peru and the Belize Barrier Reef - were being irreparably damaged by the impacts of human-induced global warming. The Sagarmatha petition was backed by Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hilary. Subsequent petitions were lodged concerning the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park on the US-Canada border and Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

A survey conducted by the World Heritage Committee among its member nations found that 125 sites are threatened by climate change. These include the Tower of London which could be damaged by rising sea levels. "The survey by the World Heritage Committee suggests that climate change is already impacting on scores of the world's most spectacular natural heritage sites," said Catherine Pearce, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth International. "Unless the international community takes urgent action to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases the situation will get much worse."

Source






GREEN-TINTED GLASSES

In my salad days to be labelled green would mean that you were deemed (dusts off old school thesaurus) gullible, ignorant, immature, inexpert, naive, starry-eyed, unworldly and wet behind the ears. Today many wear the green label with pride, as a sign of grown-up wisdom.

But I think the old meanings still apply. There remains a hole in the Doh!-zone layer between starry-eyed, unworldly policies of officials in green-tinted glasses, and the way that most people live in the multicoloured real world. For instance, this week the first person to be prosecuted for failing to recycle her household rubbish was cleared. Magistrates in Exeter ruled that there was insufficient evidence that Donna Challice, a mother of three, had put rotting food in the green recycling bin intended for cans, paper, plastic and glass. The council complained that they should not have to find “direct evidence of an individual contaminating a recycling bin”, and demanded that the law be changed to make it easier to hand out 1,000 pound fines for unproven offences, no doubt on recycled paper.

This little case puts the bin-lid on the mixture of the absurd and the authoritarian in many green policies. Domestic recycling is a load of rubbish, a messy waste of our most precious resource — time. It is far too small-scale to make any real difference to big issues of waste disposal. The only result of these compulsory recycling policies is to sort people into two imaginary piles — the pious and the polluters. And when something like the Exeter case trashes such unworldly, simple-minded notions, the authorities attempt to bin the need for messy evidence before finding the ungreen guilty.

Or look at the Government’s Energy Review. All attention has been focused on the inclusion of the nuclear option. But what seems truly outrageous is the idea that so-called renewables, such as wind power and burning biofuels, could provide enough green energy to meet a fifth of the UK’s rising needs. That would surely not be realistic even if all of Britain’s hills and coastlines were covered with giant wind turbines, and the fields of this green and pleasant land were filled with garish yellow rape that makes it look as if some superhuman graffiti artist has run riot with a spray can.

Then last week MEPs voted overwhelmingly to impose new taxes on airlines — to punish them for carbon pollution and to curb the growth of cheap flights. Never mind that millions are now voting with their feet and expanding their horizons by flying around Europe and the world. Never mind that, as the airlines point out, the Euro measures are purely discriminatory and fly in the face of any realistic strategy. What do the ignorant and starry-eyed guardians of Europe care about such mundane matters, when they are doing the work of Gaia?

Only the gullible could believe that such eco-illogical ideas are a step forwards. Domestic recycling laws would bring back drudgery that should have been abolished with the invention of the municipal dustbin. Renewable energy means reversing history by spreading out energy production across the country again, instead of concentrating it in efficient power stations. And restricting air travel means trying to return the worldly-wise masses to a state of village idiocy. To see this garbage passed off as the progressive alternative is enough to make some of us feel green with nausea.

Source







New Australian nuclear reactor



Green groups have condemned the nuclear watchdog's decision to grant the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) an operating licence for a new $330 million research reactor. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) today gave the go ahead for ANSTO to operate the Open Pool Australian Light-water (OPAL) research reactor at Lucas Heights, in Sydney's south. However, the watchdog has imposed strict conditions on ANSTO's licence, including the need to provide regular safety and security reviews.

But green groups and local residents say the safety and environmental risks associated with the new reactor are too high and it should not be allowed to operate. Australian Conservation Foundation nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney said it was irresponsible for the facility to start operating amid a battle over the Federal Government's plan to build a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. "We believe for the federal regulator to licence the operation of what will be by far the largest generator of radioactive waste in Australia before there's an agreed management of that waste, is a deeply flawed decision," he said.

There are also concerns about giving the go-ahead to the new reactor just a month after four accidents occurred in one week at the existing Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. "That should have been a wake up call about how quickly things can go wrong with nuclear reactors," Greenpeace campaigns manager Danny Kennedy said. "Unfortunately, decision makers don't seem to be listening. "It's extremely reckless to introduce a nuclear reactor into a major growth corridor of our largest city."

Local residents have also accused the nuclear watchdog of ignoring the concerns they outlined in 11,000 submissions opposing the new reactor. People Against a Nuclear Reactor (PANR) spokeswoman Genevieve Kelly said residents were worried that there was no adequate emergency plan in place in the event of a major accident or terrorist attack. She said residents' fears were compounded by the fact there had been no independent assessment of whether the new reactor should be allowed to operate. "It is like having Dracula in charge of the blood bank," she said. "No one with any independence is appointed to protect the public in these matters. The Federal Government regulates itself."

But ANSTO defended the need for the new reactor and said it met the highest possible standards imposed upon the nuclear industry. "Not only will OPAL increase ANSTO's capacity to supply Australia and the region with critically important radiopharmaceuticals, it will provide world leading capability for our scientists to apply nuclear research to such areas as biotechnology, food and molecular biology, nanotechnology, health, environmental management processes and engineering," ANSTO executive director Ian Smith. "This research will result in tangible social and economic benefits for Australia."

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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