Last week I wrote about how forest mismanagement in Australian forests has created an artificial water crisis. But the decision not to actively manage forests and to let forest debris and scrub build up has other consequences as well, particularly in a harsh environment such as Australia.
“This has meant a massive increase in forest undergrowth which looks absolutely lovely in winter with the rain settling on the pretty forests and absolutely terrifying in summer when the static spark from your nylon dress brushing the ground might be enough to start a raging inferno. There will always be fires in the Australian bush but the scope that we see today is off the charts. Inevitably this is put down to the other great new god of climate change. How could it not be so?”
Unfortunately these were timely words as a couple of days later the east coast of central Australia exploded into flames.
One of the towns that has been seriously effected by the fires is Nimbin. When I heard this my irony meter went into overdrive, as Nimbin is an old hippy commune town which is infamous in Australia. With a town of hippies you just know that they’re going to be green and woke, and sure enough they are. But their wokeness has been so bad and contributed so much to their own misery that one of their own has been forced to admit that they were their own worst enemies.
The greenies have a lot to answer for over the incendiary state of the Australian bush.
This is the view of Michael Balderstone, hemp candidate, deep environmentalist and leading figure in the Nimbin community, which is now beset by fire.
“They (greenies) own it,” Mr Balderstone said. “The Greens have to cop it on the head, they have been obsessed with no fires and no burning.”
Mr Balderstone says the lessons from indigenous land managers have been forgotten.
“The Aboriginals say it is country gone wild,” he said. “We were just blind to their knowledge.”
The hills of northern NSW are ablaze with an out-of-control bushfire that, with an expected change in wind, could on Tuesday race for the coast near Byron Bay.
Des Layer has for 30 years ridden his horses through hills now being ravaged by fire. For decades he has watched the structure of the bush change from what he says is poor logging and lax management.
Actually, as I wrote last week our forefathers knew these lessons well. The Greens and environmental groups in Australia have tried to pin this disaster on climate change but if they think that government policy can cause fires to burn less and rain to fall from the sky just when needed then they might as well go out and openly worship a Bolivian statue of a naked pregnant woman, just sayin’.
Environmental mismanagement is not the only reason that these fires have been so destructive. Our cities, swelled with the relentless influx of overseas invaders, have spread out in all possible directions. But whereas fifty years ago a new suburb would be properly created from the bush and integrated into a metropolitan area, now they are made “in harmony with the environment”, which is green-lunacy speak for, keep as much of the bush around the new homes because we must worship the great god Gaia and cutting down a flammable gum tree is awful and bad.
There have always been fires in Australia and there always will be. But our ability in the past to sustainably manage our environment so as to keep the risk to a level below that of catastrophic has been jettisoned in favor of feel good homages to imaginary environmental gods. Mother nature cares not one whit for our good intentions or feelings – if the scrub is too high then it will burn.
But even worse than this is the comprehensive council policies around Australia that forbid and fine landowners for managing their own land. It is not enough for the councils to not clear scrub from the sides of the roads. No, if a home owner clears his own scrub then he will be prosecuted. In other words, property rights have been steadily eroded in Australia under the blanket worship of imaginary environmental gods. It is now illegal in many states to gather dead wood from the side of the road for use as firewood. Not only that, last week the Victorian government banned all logging and use of native timber in the entire state. Couple that with the ongoing fixation to declare any piece of scrub a national park and the situation gets completely out of control.
Before the area became national park, Mr Layer said, he would get permits to collect firewood from the state forests. Since the national park was declared there had been no permits issued.
The mainstream media in Australia has been going all out to label this disaster as the fault of climate change, but ordinary people are not buying the bullshit any more. This is the direct fault of man, but not in our efforts to produce carbon. Rather, it is our abdication of basic responsibilities to ensure our communities remain viable and safe that is the issue here.
I am not one for lawyers but I think that the local councils who directly contributed to this mess along with the state governments who enabled them should be brought to account. Lives can be lost, homes can burn and forests go up in smoke, but the green lunatics do not care. The only way to solves this mess is to create a precedent so that these responsibilities are taken seriously again in the future and the lessons are not so conveniently forgotten.
This article was originally published at https://pushingrubberdownhill.com/, where Adam Piggott publishes regularly and brilliantly. You can purchase Adam’s books here.
