Jennifer Marohasy

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Environmentalism & Politics: A Question

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I am a student studying Australian Politics as a course at University, and I have an environmental question to give a presentation on:

“How does environmentalism challenge how we think about Australian Politics?”

I’m at a bit of a loss, can anyone help me on this?

Shannon Tonkin

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Comments

  1. Jim says

    Shannon,

    From Encarta;

    “Environmentalism – politics  the movement, especially in politics and consumer affairs, that works towards protecting the natural world from harmful human activities”

    I’d agree ; environmentalism is a political movement.

  2. Chthoniid says

    “How does environmentalism challenge how we think about Australian Politics?”

    I don’t think about Australian politics all that much.
    Environmentalism does strange things.

    It takes one of your most important partners and Pacific-allies (Japan) and treats them like the enemy (over whales).

    It is the perfect vehicle for politicans, as it is one area of government action where it is judged by the elctorate over the amount of money that will be ‘spent on it’, not results (as these typically won’t be seen well past the regular election cycle).

    It makes it okay to dump nuclear waste in the NT, but not have safari hunts of crocs, as safari hunting might scare the tourists off (personally I’d like the option of carrying a gun if I was in saltie-territory). For some reason, tourists aren’t supposed to be put off by nuclear waste.

    It’s turned many important decisions on wildlife management, into an issue of public opinion (not science). Duck hunting is banned in NSW following an animal rights campaign. Duck numbers have also fallen since hunting ceased.

    Chthonic ruminations

    B

  4. Neil Hewett says

    Australian politics are supposed to be constitutionally constrained by the fundamental principle of representative government, ie. government by representatives of the people who are chosen by the people.

    Environmentalism is almost always directed from the parliamentary representative dominance of metropolitan areas towards individual outlying rural electorates.

    These electorates have no representative right of veto and in most cases the implementation of the enviornmental objective is long on illusion and short on practicality.

    Local communities disenfranchised by environmentalism feel politically betrayed, disempowered and invariably robbed.

    Government is often criticised for neglecting communities in the bush. In a way it binds the community of interest together, but I suspect that clawing beneath the well-represented exterior of metropolitan Australia is a longing for nature that is every bit as irrepressible as rural Australia’s contempt for political betrayal.

    Approximately eighty-five per cent of Australians live in cities and major towns. In this era of political correctness, it is hardly surprising that many share a common concern for the natural environment. Harnessing these innocuous individual concerns and multiplying them across the body politic derives environmental power. Fanning the flames with incendiary propaganda is the modus operandi of popularist environmentalism.

    In its own right, environmentalism is divisive and anti-community. It campaigns on the basis that either you’re with them and green or against them and red-necked.

    It is worthwhile separating the ‘enviro’ from “mentalism’ and considering the latter against its deviation from due processes.

  5. Boxer says

    Environmentalism doesn’t change how we think about Aus politics because environmentalism is just one part of the political spectrum that has always been there.

    Primarily it serves as a refuge for those who could not easily vote for any of the major parties, for people who believe they are disenfranchised. This function provided to Australian politics has been served by a number of parties such as the communists and the Democrats. My theory (for what little it’s worth) is that the Democrats have vanished because they tried to become mainstream and so they no longer appealed to many of their supporters, who were principally voting Democrat as a protest against the major parties.

    For this reason, when Bob Brown claims he sees a role for the Greens as a major political party, I think he better beware of that which he wishes for. As soon as the Greens become close to mainstream, they will not appeal to the bulk of their supporters. Because many of the supporters of the “fringe” or minor parties need to be on the fringe. They identify themselves as disenfranchised as a form of reverse snobbery. “I don’t fit into the mainstream, I am unusual, more aware, more discerning, so I support the non-mainstream” and so on. That’s why I didn’t have a haircut between about 1970 and 1978. I thought it was some sort of statement, but meantime other people couldn’t really have cared less.

    So why do doctors’ wives vote green? An act of mid-aged naughtiness. They should have got it out of their system when they really where adolescent.

  6. cinders says

    Shannon,

    A good summary from a political insider on how the pursuit of voters comitted to environmentalism, changed Australia’s politics.

    If you thought that politics was about making wise choices based on detailed scientific evidence and what is best for society, the economy and the environment. This opinion piece by a former Federal Minister shows what influence the adoption of the dogma of environmentalism has done to our political system.

    It is of interest that this opinion piece was written prior to the 2004 Federal Election, that saw the ALP adopt all the demands of the environmentalists, a desertion of forest workers. Perhaps leader Mark Latham should have taken the advice of Peter Walsh.

    OPINION
    Peter Walsh: Don’t fall for green fallacies
    March 19, 2004
    IN the late 1980s, Graham Richardson – recently converted to the secular green religion – took to the Hawke cabinet a proposal to forbid logging in a substantial part of Tasmania’s southern forests. It led to the Helsham inquiry, which recommended that 8 per cent of 283,000ha of forest be listed as World Heritage.

    The Greens, as usual, wanted the lot. And Richardson observed that the Helsham inquiry needed to be “fixed up”. Helsham’s report was sidelined and the 8per cent was boosted (by non-public and non-accountable processes) to 70 per cent. The Greens still wanted the lot.
    At cabinet discussions after the Helsham inquiry in 1988, professional foresters from the Australian National University’s school of forestry advised cabinet that the “world’s tallest flowering plants” – so dubbed by the Greens and part of the Helsham study area – were in a eucalyptus regnans (otherwise known as a mountain ash) forest about 400 years old. The species’ maximum life span was about 500 years.
    For countless millenniums, the forest was destroyed by wildfires, then regenerated. Green zealots demanded in the 1980s, and still do, that such icon forests be saved or preserved by government decree. Neither is biologically possible. Those who claim otherwise are guilty of culpable ignorance or wilful misrepresentation.
    The decision taken by the Hawke cabinet effectively ignored the highest quality scientific advice and instead succumbed to green demands based on secular religious fervour. That precedent was basically then adopted in forest management decisions made throughout Australia.
    In the mid-’90s, attempts were made to make processes less arbitrary and pay some attention to scientific and economic reality in regional forest agreements between commonwealth and state governments. RFAs were eventually signed in every state. Without exception they locked away from logging huge additional forest areas based on a belief that the Greens would accept a “compromise” heavily weighted towards their demands. In other words, appease them. It didn’t work with Hitler and it doesn’t work with Greens.
    In Tasmania, despite the reservation of 40 per cent of all public forest, 60 per cent of “old growth” forest and 95per cent of “high-quality wilderness”, the Greens are stridently demanding more. Every bit of government compliance with their demands becomes the launching pad for the next demand.
    And as it turned out, such demands have inflicted economic devastation on timber workers and communities. These losses, the Greens claim, can be offset by compensation and money to set up new industries, and by tourism. But although the Greens have a long record of support for tourism in the abstract, they have vociferously opposed specific projects. In 2001, remember, Bob Brown stridently opposed a proposed resort at Cockle Creek in Tasmania’s South West National Park.
    The Court government in Western Australia repudiated in July 1999 the RFA it had signed only six weeks before. Greens are now orchestrating a campaign to repudiate the Tasmanian RFA by unilateral commonwealth decree, to be upheld in the High Court as in the Franklin Dam case of 1983. Presumably the agitators believe they can pull the same trick. Though one should not underestimate the political engineering ambitions of vain High Court judges, I doubt whether the present court would concur.
    Which brings us to Mark Latham’s much publicised trip to Tasmania this week. Inadvertently or otherwise, the Opposition Leader has put wind in Brown’s sails by agreeing to inspect the Styx Valley with the Greens leader. To gratuitously give Brown such a windfall gift is peculiar, to say the least. Fortunately, Latham’s full-frontal solidarity with the timber workers on Wednesday suggests he has had similar thoughts. And although Labor’s final policy on the issue is far from fully formed, Latham appears to be backing clear-felling of Tasmania’s old-growth forests.
    On this issue and others, Latham has an opportunity to arrest and reverse the growing void between the vain, arrogant self-interest groups that have hijacked Labor policy in recent years and the working-class majority that votes Labor – or, more accurately, used to vote Labor.
    Of course, Green cheer squads will warn Latham that the road to victory in the next federal election could be paved with Green preferences. But this siren song fails to explain that the present Tasmanian Labor government policy – which includes continued clear-felling of the forests – was a high-profile election policy. It was rewarded with 53 per cent of the primary vote. And Commonwealth Parliamentary Library research shows the difference between Green primary preferences directed or not directed to Labor was negligible – at most 0.2 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. Surely this is a small price to pay compared with the loss of four Labor seats.
    Peter Walsh was a senator and finance minister in the Hawke Labor government.

  7. Siltstone says

    Shannon, expand the question a little “how does religion help us think about Australian politics”. Next, consider this, environmentalism isn’t a political movement, it is a religious movement. What if no god, but Gaia? Politics is about power, religion is about righteousness, however ill conceived. What model fits environmentalism best?