When Heather du Plessis-Allan laughed in the face of a spoilt-brat “Climate Striker”, she was only saying out loud what we all know: these people are the biggest hypocrites on the face of the planet. It’s impossible, after all, not to notice just how selective the Climate Cult’s outrage really is.
The same people who want to ban air travel think nothing of taking relentless overseas holidays — or in the case of Teal MP Monique Ryan, racking up endless frequent flyer points in Business Class. The same people who chain themselves to the gates of coal mines swoon with joy at the sight of solar and wind farms — regardless of the environmental havoc the wretched things wreak.
The same people who’ll sit in a tree to stop it from being logged will stand happily by as precious remnant forest is bulldozed to make way for wind turbines.
There are only 83,000 hectares of wet sclerophyll forest left in North Queensland. Ark Energy is just a ministerial tick away from ripping into a thousand to construct an industrial wind turbine development.
Ark Energy, a subsidiary of Korea Zinc, will learn in September if Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek is prepared to disturb the tranquillity of the Chalumbin forest near Ravenshoe on the Atherton Tablelands to make way for 86 mega-wind turbines.
Does a climate activist live for overseas holidays?
If nothing else, this development will show up the green-left as the monumental hypocrites they really are.
Chalumbin is the new Franklin, a pivotal moment in political and environmental history that will shape the Australian landscape for decades. This time, however, there is hardly a tree-hugger in sight. There’s not been a squeak from the Australian Conservation Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth or any of the usual suspects.
In the most crucial environmental battle of our times, the Greens are deeply conflicted. So too are the teal independents whose campaigns were funded by individuals and companies deeply invested in the renewable sector. Nothing they say on the subject is to be trusted.
Most deeply conflicted of all will be Albo’s virtue-signalling Environment Minister.
Plibersek finds herself wedged. Knocking back Chalumbin will not help Labor ward off the challenge from the Greens in inner-city seats including her own. Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who has set the goal of erecting a 9MW wind turbine every 18 hours until 2030, will be curling his lips. It will be a test of Plibersek’s ability to make a dispassionate assessment.
If Plibersek stops the Chalumbin project, it will send a message that the government is not prepared to sacrifice the greater glider to save the polar bear. It will be a long overdue acknowledgment that the rapacious, land-hungry demands of the renewable energy sector must be balanced against the protection of biodiversity and the spiritual connection to the land of Aboriginal people. If she doesn’t, then anything goes. If this land isn’t sacred, what is?
Nothing is more sacred to the green left than their eco-crucifixes. If there was a wind farm planned for the Juukan Gorge, the Greens would be setting off the dynamite personally.
After all, this is a party whose own MPs happily bulldoze koala habitat if it gets in the way of earning them a few million more in filthy lucre.
Labor have come a long way from wanting Chalumbin World Heritage-listed, along with the adjacent Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.
Ravenshoe is no stranger to ugly environmental battles. In 1987, was punched and jostled by loggers angry that their industry was closing. Then-Queensland premier Joh Bjelke Petersen vehemently opposed Hawke’s plan to seek World Heritage listing. Bob Katter, then a minister in the Petersen government, said Cairns should seek sister-city status with Berlin because the city was “about to be imprisoned by a wall of rainforest from which they would never be able to escape nor visit”.
Chalumbin will complete the encirclement of the Ravenshoe with steel, concrete and fibreglass. It will destroy scores of acres of the forests [Bob Hawke’s environment minister, Graham Richardson] wanted to save. The newly constructed Kaban turbine development to the town’s north offers a foretaste of the destruction. The 28 wind turbines are three times higher than the Story Bridge. They sit in rock cuttings up to 15 metres deep blasted into the hillside. Giant piles of trees lie in heaps on the side of the road.
The forest is home to vulnerable native species, including the Greater Glider and the Magnificent Brood Frog. It is the hunting ground for the Red Goshawk, one of Australia’s rarest raptors. Their flight paths and unfortunate habit of flying towards hills to gain greater uplift make them peculiarly vulnerable to turbine strikes.
The Australian
And in a few decades, all that pristine forest bulldozed to salve the consciences of the Climate Cultists will be a forlorn wasteland of concrete and bramble — except for the open scar of the pit where the worn-out turbine blades will be dumped. Just as they have from the end-of-its-life Windy Hill Wind Farm. Dozens of 20-metre turbine blades have been dumped for years in Kidner’s Quarry, just 15 km from Chalumbin.
But, hey, they’ve got a planet to save.