Death by Delay
Viv Forbes
Recent news on energy

“The difference between taking a part of my life, and taking my whole life, is just a matter of degree.” (Anon)

There was a time, before the baby-boom generation took over, when we took pride in the achievements of our builders, producers and innovators. There was celebration when settler families got a phone, a tractor, a bitumen road or electric power. An oil strike or a gold discovery made headlines, and people welcomed new businesses, new railways and new inventions. Science and engineering were revered, and the wealth delivered by these human achievements enabled the builders and their children to live more rewarding lives, with more leisure, more time for culture and crusades, and greater interest in taking care of their environment.

Then a green snake entered the Garden of Eden.

Many of the genuine conservationists from the original environmental societies were replaced by political extremists who felt lost after the Comrade Societies collapsed and China joined the trading world. These zealots were mainly interested in promoting environmental alarms, in order to push an agenda of world control of production, distribution and exchange – a new global utopia run by unelected all-knowing people just like them.

Michael Gorbachev is a well-known example. Consistent open and covert support came from Hollywood, government media organisations and the bureaucracy.

The old Reds became the new Greens.

The new Greens used every credible-sounding scare to recruit support: peak oil, acid rain, ozone holes, global cooling, species extinction, food security, Barrier Reef threats, global warming or extreme weather. They used these to justify global controls, no-go areas and international taxes to limit human activities. Each cause spawned its dedicated bunch of activists.

However the public became disenchanted with their politics of denial, and their opposition to human progress, so they have now adopted a new tactic – death by delay.

They say “We are not opposed to all development, but we want to ensure all environmental concerns are fully investigated before new developments get approval.”

This is not what they are about. Their goal is to kill projects, bu imposing costly regulations, investigations and delay. Their technique is to grab control of bureaucratic bodies like the US EPA which, since 2009, has issued 2,827 new regulations containing 24,915,000 words.

A current example of death by delay is the Keystone Oil pipeline proposal. This would have taken crude oil from Alberta in Canada to refineries on the US Gulf Coast, which is better than sending it by rail tankers.

It was first proposed in 2005, but was immediately opposed by the anti-industry, anti-carbon activists who control the EPA and other arms of the US federal government. The proposal was studied to death by US officials and green activists for nine years.

This week the Canadians lost patience and approved an alternative proposal to take a pipeline to the west coast of Canada, allowing more Albertan oil to be exported to Asia.

Jobs and resources that would have benefited Americans will now go to Asia.

The Green delayers will also attempt to derail this proposal.

In Europe, shale gas exploration is also being subject to death by delay. In Britain, the pioneering company, Caudrilla, has been waiting for seven years for approvals to explore. In France, all such exploration is already banned.

Greens also attempted to impose long-term delays on all development on aboriginal land in Cape York using a new weapon – “Wild Rivers Declarations”. These declarations were recently dismissed by the Australian Federal Court. Warren Mundine, Executive Chairman of the Australian Indigenous Chamber of Commerce, was moved to say:

“It’s easy to oppose. It’s a lot harder to build something that delivers jobs, creates economic prosperity and gives remote communities a sustainable future.”

No wonder India recently accused Greenpeace and other delayers of being a threat to national economic security.

Viv Forbes



habitat21 / Jun 14

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