The greatest threat of the 21st century: not AGW but Eco-FascismJames DelingpoleThe Telegraph Jan. 10, 2010 |
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As you freeze your butt off in a winter whose severity the politicised weather forecasters of the Met Office utterly failed to predict, and as you wonder how you can afford gas and electricity bills which have been grotesquely inflated by taxes and legislation designed to “combat global warming”, spare a thought for a fellow victim of eco-fascism who’s even worse off than you. In a week or so this poor man could be dead. His name is Peter Spencer, he’s a farmer in New South Wales, and his livelihood has been stolen by the Australian government in the name of – you guessed it – “combatting climate change.” That’s why he is now sitting atop that windblown tower you see in the photograph, on sheep farmland rendered useless by eco-legislation, starving himself to death in protest at his government’s callous disregard for his property rights. This is his 46th day on hunger strike. Jo Nova has been following the story closely. Here’s the eco-political background: As a part of Australia’s commitment to protect native vegetation and to reduce carbon emissions under the Kyoto protocol, Peter Spencer and thousands of farmers like him, have been subjected to a government imposed ban on land clearing.Peter Spencer is among the victims of this legalised theft. He first told his story here in 2006. In recent decades, thousands of farms have become economically marginal and have gone out of business. What is not widely known is that this "marginality" has often been the result not of market forces but of government regulation. In particular, governments in pursuit of urban green votes have imposed a vast range of devastating new costs on farmers.The rest of the article shows that Peter Spencer was no whingeing slouch. As Jo Nova reports, he really did try everything before resorting to his final, desperate pass. After the land-clearing laws came into effect, Peter paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up ponds for trout fishing. But new water laws ended that too (and also without compensation). Tenaciously Peter then set up a fine-wool breeding program, but the bushfires of 2003 (that destroyed 500 homes in Canberra, and native forest near Peter) meant that hundreds of wild dogs were forced out of burnt areas. They over-ran his property, killing hundreds of sheep.Spencer gave a moving interview on ABC radio’s Counterpoint programme. Every one of my projects is destroyed, every one of my…it’s just disgraceful, Michael, I just feel sick. I was just thinking last night, I can remember going off to court, day after day, sometimes the last eight or nine weeks I would come back, spend one night [unclear], change all my files, back to Sydney again. I spent nearly five weeks there non-stop the last two months. And I’d watch sheep dying in the paddock and I couldn’t go round and shoot them because I had nobody left to help me. I had to let them die on their own, just kicking and struggling because they couldn’t stand up anymore, nothing to feed them with, it was just unbelievable.One of Spencer’s neighbours wrote to an Australian senator, describing the kind of man Spencer is: I have known Peter since 1989 when I became one of the Spencer Family's next door neighbours and the two families spent a lot of time together especially the children as living 42 kilometers from the nearest town..Peter Spencer is an example to us all. I’m not suggesting we all go on hunger strike but we ought surely to emulate his clear-eyed courage in facing up to the greatest menace of our age. That menace is not, of course, the illusory threat of AGW which our governments so cheerfully use to fleece us and impose control of over us. That menace is eco-fascism. It’s real, it’s terrifying and it’s time we fought back. I agree with Gerald Warner. The only way to get our message across that we’re sick to the craw of Green lies, Green taxes, and Green tyranny is to punish all the mainstream parties – and that very much includes Cameron’s Green Conservatives – at the polls. |