Hippies, Green’s and things…

22.2.2014

 

When I was a kid, “environmentalists” were called hippies; people who moved on from make love not war and ban the bomb to save the whales and big trees in Tasmania. They seemed to have a valued cause as many have over the centuries, suffragettes looking for the right to vote late 19th century, African Americans marching in the late 50’s early 60’s to gain not only voting rights but to be able to lead a life without racism, hate and violence. The for and against abortion, Gordon River in Tasmania both hot topics in their day both involved violent skirmishes with those of oppositional views, what happened to anti violence? The list goes on.

Hippies also spawned vegetarians, vegans, pescetarians and any other “tarian” you can muster. All banging to the beat of a new drum or drums.

Ban live exports, ban circuses, support animal rights, stop animal cruelty, no more caged chickens, and eat organic and free range eggs. There is a never ending barrage of anti everything propaganda.

Every day someone posts on Facebook or other cyber world, save such and such an animal from death. Should I be posting pictures of myself cooking a barbeque of a huge steak with a catchy caption? “Eat more meat, build your muscles and the economy”, better still a bumper sticker “steak and cage laid eggs Yum” no I should, not because my liking for meat is mine alone and not something I feel I should inflict on others..This is a fact that seems to escape the green brain of all the leftist vegans of the world.

Plastering any available space with their anti whatever propaganda. I don’t care what you eat, or want to protect; I just don’t want to see the stickers and posts about it everywhere I look.

Now back to environmentalists, there was an obituary in the paper last week a man who was a great proponent of winter burns to manage the fuel loads in our state forests. Gasp, not making smoke and affecting asthmatics, how could you think such a thing, was the outraged cry! Well, yes burning does entail smoke! Over the past couple of months houses and lives have been lost to huge bush fires across our great country. Yet there is still mindless bleating about smoke.

The obituary was written by a chap named Roger Underwood, another proponent of prescribed burning. In his article flaming idiocy he states “until green politics and academic abstractions clouded official thinking, Western Australia was the prime example of how best to minimize mega bushfires, destruction of life and property”. Now we burn like the rest of Australia.

This is a mantra I grew up with and have over the years discussed at length with “green folk”, I know to no avail. The discourse involves “you can’t burn the forests, what about all the lovely trees and animals”. Well, yes you can and the aboriginal people have done for thousands of years. Burning gives new life to forests to support the animals who move to the greener feed. Maybe this information will fall on deaf ears until we lose our forests, farmland and outer urban areas to fire. What can I say!!

But let me tell you, nothing will deter my fondness of meat, so bleat on hippies, maybe communes will come back into fashion and you can all live happily ever after in a green utopia…….