Hypocrisy Personified.

This truly is the most hypocritical statement I've ever seen.

Apparently, only wind farms in Tasmania kill birds.  Astonishing hypocrisy from this man.



Former Greens leader and veteran activist Bob Brown is campaigning to stop a $1.6 billion wind farm development in Tasmania because it will spoil the view and kill birds.

Despite the criticisms levelled at former prime minister Tony Abbott and treasurer Joe Hockey for describing wind turbines as “ugly”, Dr Brown said the Robbins Island plan was, visually, a step too far. “Mariners will see this hairbrush of tall towers from 50km out to sea and elevated landlubbers will see it, like it or not, from greater distances on land,” Dr Brown said. “Its eye-catchiness will divert from every coastal scene on the western Bass Strait coastline.”

Dr Brown, who fought against Queensland’s Adani coal mine, said the world needed renewable energy to replace fossil fuels, and fast, but the Robbins Island wind farm “is an aileron too far”.

Link


12 comments

Absolutely agree with you Darcy. Hypocrites abound when there is work to be done.  

Another academic hypocrite and DH.

 

moama jock

Like all the Greens, another hypocrite. He doesn't want coal He advocates renewables as long as it's not close to where he lives or spoils his view :(

""We all know that there is a considerable amount of noise pollution from wind farms but that has not prevented Brown from being an advocate for them for a long period. I had never believed that Brown could become a NIMBY.""

Graham Richardson in todays'Australian.  Link

Even an old Labor stalwart can't believe the hypocrisy.    The Greens, including Bob Brown, should be embarrassed to even show their faces .   Labor too....as they have been in partnership with the Greens for a long time.   One can only wonder how many Labor MPs are secretly shocked by this brazen show of hypocrisy, but too timid to speak out as Richo has.

...have not seen it mentioned anywhere on the ABC...funny that!  I thought all news would be broadcast but apparently not when it is something to do with Bob Brown being a hypocrite!!

Ardnaher and Suze, I noticed also.  It's really quite sickening.

Thanks for your replies.

Image result for nimby

 

Yes it is interesting that this was not mentioned on the ABC 

I have contacted the ABC asking why no word of it on any ABC program?  guess what no response!!

 

 

As is said in the Spectator

"The only conclusion is that Bob Brown is now an official unperson at our ABC for this ideological crime of opposing a wind farm.

And further, even mentioning Bob Brown’s name in relation wind turbines could be a thought crime at the our ABC."

‘Unperson’. You know the word. George Orwell coined it for Nineteen Eighty-Four, as being someone erased from society, the past, the present, the universe, and existence.

LOL Craig Kelly sure has a sense of humour.

The picture has a Spectator link ..just click on this excellent article :)

But then

              Image result for cartoon don't kid yourself

and who said the ABC was not biased???  only reporting what suits their agenda perhaps??

...at last a mention of it on Insiders yesterday...a very wishy-washy  soft interview with Di Natalie about Bob Brown's comments...did not really get into the nitty gritty and the word "hypocrite" was never mentioned...don't know why the female interviewer even bothered raising it

Bob Brown 
The Robbins Island wind farm debate

The Australian moved in for the kill last week. Back-to-back front pages, on Monday and Tuesday, after I sounded the alarm about the impact on endangered birds if the Robbins Island wind farm in Tasmania’s north-west goes ahead. Backed up by the usual cronies at Sky News, the boilover raised a question about the impending extinction of measured public debate.

Graham Lloyd, the newspaper’s self-labelled “fearless” environment reporter, did not contact me on the issue before it went to print. He has not contacted me on an environmental issue for years.

He is, of course, always welcome.

The question that arises, though, is why his polemic is directed more at environmentalists than at threats to the environment. The answer is in the underlying cowardice of the activist right, and much of the establishment, in facing the awesome ecological tragedy being engendered by humanity. It is easier for them to shoot the messenger than to confront the complexities of dealing with that reality.

A number of people had contacted our Hobart-based foundation about the proposed Robbins Island wind farm and its transmission line across northern Tasmania. As most Tasmanians knew nothing of the project, I wrote an opinion piece for The Mercury, which ran on July 8. It took a week for this article to reach Lloyd. I have no clue who the vector was, though incongruously enough, Lloyd did get comment from Eric Abetz.

At the heart of my article was this: “Besides the impact on the coastal scenery, wind turbines kill birds. Wedge-tailed eagles and white-bellied sea eagles nest and hunt on the island. Swift parrots and orange-bellied parrots traverse the island on their migrations. Multiple species of international migratory, endangered and critically endangered shorebirds use the wetlands for six months of the year: Australian fairy tern, fork-tailed swift, little tern, white-throated needletail, ruddy turnstone, sharp-tailed sandpiper, sanderling, red knot, curlew sandpiper, red-necked stint, great knot, double-banded plover, greater sand plover, lesser sand plover, Latham’s snipe, bar-tailed godwit, eastern curlew, whimbrel, golden plover, grey-tailed tattler, common greenshank, terek sandpiper and hooded plover. For which of these species will the wind farm be the thousandth cut?”

Environment reporter Lloyd, his correspondent Abetz and fellow critics, including state Labor leader Rebecca White and Liberal minister Guy Barnett, have at least one thing in common – none has looked into or analysed the plight of those species. I doubt any of them accept that Australia is well on its way to losing one-third of its bird species this century, let alone the ornithologists’ reckoning that human plunder is capable of eliminating three-quarters of Earth’s birds by 2200, or even this year’s United Nations-based report that one million species of wildlife face extinction because of what we are doing.

THE WIND FARM PROPONENT, HONG KONG-BASED UPC RENEWABLES, SAYS IT WILL PUT A ONE-KILOMETRE EXCLUSION ZONE AROUND THE TWO SEA EAGLE NESTS ON ROBBINS ISLAND. BUT WHO WILL TELL THE EAGLES NOT TO FLY MORE THAN THAT KILOMETRE FROM THEIR NESTS?

The wind farm proponent, Hong Kong-based UPC Renewables, says it will put a one-kilometre exclusion zone around the two sea eagle nests on Robbins Island. But who will tell the eagles not to fly more than that kilometre from their nests? The giant ailerons – those proposed for Robbins Island will spin to 270 metres high – driving wind turbines knock hunting eagles to the ground. Much like Adani’s plan to transfer critically endangered black-throated finches from the Galilee Basin mine site, now being bulldozed, to an “offset” woodland where they have not chosen to live, the exclusion zones sound nice but they are no more than greenwash.

Labor’s Rebecca White and Anthony Albanese followed the right-wing in accusing me of hypocrisy. Breathlessly, Guy Barnett said it was “breathtaking hypocrisy”. It is true that I have advocated renewable energy for years and there are more than 80 wind farms in Australia, with two more under way in Tasmania. None of the 80 was built without any social or environmental cost. All are part of the world’s dire need to replace burning fossil fuels with renewable energy in our era of climate emergency. Nevertheless, it seems to me that Robbins Island is on the wrong side of the ledger and I look forward to independent studies of all its costs and benefits.

At the heart of an informed public debate should be an allowance for moderation. But the right sits by the guillotine, with selective damnation for progressive thinkers who do not see the world in their absolutist terms. Curiously enough, they have seen no “hypocrisy” in Glencore or BHP, or Germany and New Zealand, declaring limits in this age of global heating, opposing more coalmines.

The penny has not dropped for Lloyd or his ilk that the Franklin Dam was to produce renewable energy. Along with so many others, I opposed that scheme 40 years ago because it would have devastated the wild river along with many square kilometres of forests and other habitat for wildlife, including birds. My reasoning against the Robbins Island wind farm has that much in common. The best option in both cases is energy efficiency on a national and global scale – a cheaper and more job-rich option for everyone – and then renewable energy, if it stacks up ecologically.

Hard on the heels of Lloyd’s article was a request for an interview from Melbourne’s 3AW for its afternoon drive program with Tom Elliott. But Elliott was not prepared for some questions in return. I asked him if he supported solar power, which he did. I asked if he would put solar panels over the Opera House. He said he probably would. It was the classic moment of a right-wing activist putting imprudence in front of his determination, in order not to be seen dissembling. I hope no one in Sydney reads about his plan for their World Heritage icon. Elliott’s thinking should also leave room for a couple of windmills working wonders on the arch of the Harbour Bridge. A good headline there for Lloyd.

Graham Lloyd himself does not stand unwavering on environmental issues. He can’t make up his mind on the cause of global heating. So, where’s his licence for demanding all-or-nothing ideology from fellow environmentalists?

We live in a materialist society, in which both equality and ecology are given short shrift. Eight billion of us are already using 170 per cent of Earth’s resources and want more, calling it “growth”. Gandhi’s observation that “the world has enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed” seems as irrelevant to the right-wing guard dogs as the Golden Rule. You won’t find Lloyd or Abetz addressing the global existential crisis. However, they are ready for the kill if someone else does.

The Robbins Island wind farm tests us. Should the profit-seeking multinational UPC Renewables be waved through, or should we draw the line on this farm in order to obviate its contribution to our self-made mass extinction crisis?

That’s not to sideline the question of Tasmania’s economic dividend from the Robbins Island project. Successive Labor and Liberal state governments have diverted billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies to resource-extraction industries such as those consuming a third of the island’s hydro-electricity, exporting woodchipped native forests or, more recently, lining up to build lodges at peppercorn rental rates in the heart of the public’s World Heritage wilderness.

Billions of dollars have poured out of Tasmania to companies or individuals that don’t give a damn about the island state’s relative poverty and mendicancy over past decades. This time, will the state profit more than UPC Renewables itself? The one gigawatt of wind power from Robbins Island will not warm one Tasmanian home. It will be exported into the mainland electricity grid, which is fine provided the island state gets a fair share of the bounty with UPC Renewables. The company says it is “developing a project pipeline of more than six gigawatts in Australia, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Taiwan, Korea and Tunisia”. Is that “pipeline” where the benefits will go, while Tasmania continues with high illiteracy rates and ambulance queues at hospital emergency departments that can’t cope? Where is the independent Robbins Island cost-benefit analysis? Mr Lloyd?

The right of the public to get informed public debate is at stake here. So, I don’t mind ruffling the feathers of the raptors of the right, even if, when all the information is in, it will be seen by some that my protective instinct for Robbins Island was for the birds.

It is important for considered and rational debate that discussions from any side are factual and informed.

Simply calling a stance hypocritical is only useful if that statement is supported by reasonable argument.

It's also worth the effort if you are taking a stance, either way, to limit your generalisations and take note of both sides of the argument.

So true. 

When humans have wiped out all bird, animal and insect life on the planet, and most likely much of our own species, I wonder if those who survive will still want to be here?

The invertebrates will most likely outlive most other species. 

The last person on earth will probably be asking a cockroach for directions.

Evolution will continue on its merry way until the planet is too close to the sun. 

Then its all ve red rover.

Give it a few million years yet. 

You and I will be long gone.

At some stage in the evolutionary process, a particular animal became self-aware. From that point on life for the rest became unbearable. The selfish genes that run our clockwork reduced the parameters for longevity. 

Life on earth began with a few molecules duplication themselves more than 3 million years ago.

At no point was any species considered more important than any other. It was cohesive and adaptable.

Then we began to appear in various forms.

The good thing is that if we do obliterate most life, including ourselves, some things will survive for a while and carry on the process.

Postponing the process is a selfish approach if it's just about humans. 

Personally, I'd like to see the birds and bees outlive humans.

The outcome for the future would be brighter.

Forget about the birds and the bees bro. Tardigrades aare our planet savior, they can live up to 30 years without food and have landed on the moon. 

Image result for tardigrades animated gif

Beside the Tardigrades the cockroaches will also survive

They are so like the human vermin .... breed and kill and destroy

      Related image

How interesting -- I had not heard of the Tardigrades

First described in 1773 and called water bears.

By a German Zoologist.

and there are over 1,150 species.

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