Wholesale theft in the name of carbon
By Jo Nova
Imagine a third world nation was mired in corruption so deeply that the ruling class were able to stealthily steal the rights to vast acreage of private property from landowners without paying any compensation.
Imagine that one of the victims of this injustice had approached every court of the land and had not even had his case heard, even after more than 200 attempts. In desperation, and with no other avenue available, having officially “lost the farm”, he starts a hunger strike, which has now gone for 28 days unbroken, threatening to starve to death if he has to.
Welcome to Australia — right on track for Third World Status.
Get ready to be shocked. This is an moving example of why “policy by accident” is a dangerous way to govern. In this case, innocuous feel-good laws end up crushing upstanding citizens. Peter Spencer is still alive (though he may only have 12 – 20 days to go) but how many other farming men were put through the environmental-ringer, and drowned themselves in brandy, picked up a gun, or crashed the car into the only tree near the road? None of these deaths would be recorded as victims of bureaucracy.
Peter Spencer bought a farm south of Canberra in the early 1980’s. In the mid 1990’s new laws rolled into action that prevented land clearing. That meant, even though the land belonged to him, Peter could no longer clear the regrowth. Eighty percent of what he paid for was effectively confiscated. He received nothing in return and there was no way out. He couldn’t sell the property — who would buy a piece of land they have no right to use?
But Peter still had a mortgage to pay, and no way of earning the money to do it. Recently, his last legal avenue was exhausted, and the sherriff gained a warrant to take the farm off him. That was the final straw…
Peter Spencer has issued the Prime Minister of Australia with a letter of his demands. He wants a Royal Commission and compensation for all the farmers who have lost the right to use their land.
Compensation would cost billions. But Kevin Rudd’s “stimulus package” (spend-for-the-sake-of-spending), was 42 billion dollars big.
This is what happens when big government gets your money. It gives a “free” handout of $950 per tax-payer to randomly “stimulate the economy”, and uses the rest to build school halls, even in schools which already had a hall, or in schools which desperately needed a library.
…
Spencer points out that the land-grab by the Australian Government meant the nation met it’s Kyoto commitments, a target that would otherwise have been blown away. The carbon stored in confiscated land amounts to about $10.7 billion in carbon credits. Probably the total value lost (with interest) from the productive use of that land would be many times higher.
Read the rest of this tragic story here at Jo Nova’s website.
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Here’s the most important question: How does the Australian Government account for sequestered carbon when much of this land is prone to bushfires? Do they reset their Kyoto carbon sequestration tally for that land back to zero when all that carbon goes back into the atmosphere?
I’m reminded of this story, also from Australia, where even clearing land to save your home from imminent fire is met with fines and legal issues by the government:
“We’ve lost two people in my family because you dickheads won’t cut trees down…”
The whole carbon scheme is insane.
NOTE: I’ve made a change to the title, based on some commenters objection to the use of the word “retarded”. While some saw it in the context of “mental retardation”, that was not my intent. I was thinking of the use of the word in the context of retarding enterprise and freedom. They have certainly “retarded” the ability of people to use their land. I’ve changed the word to “restrictive”. I apologize if this offended anyone. It was a poor word to use. – Anthony
UPDATE: News just in this evening via WUWT commenter “helvio”: ABC Australia says the Mr. Spencer has ended the hunger strike. Details here
If this is allowed to happen to even one person, you better beleive that you are next because what goes around comes around.
“Sell the land to the Nature Conservation Trust” means “confiscate the land for the government.”
Just like “Quantitative Easing” means “print money.”
Most people don’t know what it means until it is too late.
Food production absorbs CO2.
If food production is halted then that amount of CO2 absorbtion must be taken away from the level of CO2 absorbed by the wild growth which replaces food production to get any net additional CO2 absorbtion.
If any fire destroys the wild growth AT ANY TIME then that CO2 absorbtion over it’s lifetime is reset to zero, PLUS THE LOSS OF THE CO2 WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN ABSORBED BY FOOD CROPS.
In effect set-aside land like this could mean more CO2 in the atmosphere than would have been the case with food production.
[Also note that any wild growth which dies will produce methane as it decomposes, 30 times more potent than CO2]
Joh4Canberra @ur momisugly 16:28:17
So you’re suggesting that the native vegetation conservation act 1997 (enacted 18th Dec 1995) was a direct result of the Kyoto protocol which was finalised in December 1997?
Tell us more of this wonderful time machine.
John Hooper, I agree with you to a point.
In this case, both sides of the political spectrum were involved for different reasons. Land clearing legislation is a state government responsibility…the motive of the mostly left of centre state governments was to stop broadscale clearing of both regrowth or remnant vegetation on both freehold and leasehold title. A lot of the driving force came from environmental groups. Generally speaking, the labor side of politics has more sympathy for the arguments put forward by those groups, and their point of view. They also need their political support. As you pointed out, the federal government of the day was Howard’s conservative coalition. While he refused to sign Kyoto, he maintained it was unnecessary to do so, as we were meeting our targets anyway (mostly as a result of the state legislation). His government never picked a fight with the states over the issue, mainly due to the fact that it was under pressure over the whole issue of global warming.
So there you have it…poor legislation, trampling of landholder’s rights, inadequate compensation, and rather poor environmental outcomes. Driven by the agenda of the left/green groups and their political necessity, and compounded the right giving in to their own political necessity. Disgraceful on both sides, and the AGW/Climate change issue was heavily featured in both, at the time and since. Anthony is quite right to link this story to the issue.
He ended the strike: http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201001/s2791255.htm
The government should actually be requiring burning, not banning it. The more frequent the burning, the more carbon is sequestered in the soil. Both charcoal and black carbon (carbon which doesn’t burn easily — only 20% of BC is lost in smoke) end up in the soil with low intensity fires. A ban only delays burning, and the resulting tinderbox burns hotter and deeper.
The government only sees the smoke from a cigarette, and ignores the ash… and what happens if the cigarette is damp when lit.
Sorry 18th Nov 1995
@Joh4Canberra: Thanks for those links. It will take me some time to go through all that is there, so you may not receive a response straight away. But I will read them and consider their content.
Simon
ACM
Oh, that’s just lovely, not only are you stigmatising disabled people by using ‘retarded’ in a pejorative sense, you are also insulting the very popular, democratically elected government of my country. You’ve outdone yourself this time Jo!
Disgusting.
REPLY: Jo wrote the article, the headline choice was mine. See the note at the end of the article. – Anthony
John Hooper (15:37:23) : “That’s right. The science isn’t settled on whether atmospheric CO2 levels have risen, says this report:”
Minor correction: The study says only that the alarmist-predicted saturation of carbon sinks hasn’t happened yet. Atmospheric CO2 continues to rise (a Good Thing if you ask me, but inexplicably our Governator hasn’t).
Anticlimactic (18:14:06) : “Food production absorbs CO2.”
Until the food is eaten, and then some is metabolized back into CO2, and some is “sequestered” as human flesh. Personally, I’m doing my best to sequester as much CO2 as I can from as many different yummy sources as I can, but alas it’s only temporary, like all biological sequestration. This is of course a Good Thing, see my reply to John Hooper in this post.
BTW, if Australia’s local governments want to sequester CO2, they should encourage tree plantations, lumbering, and large wooden house construction to sequester carbon for a few decades until fossil fuel use diminishes (which it will eventually, whether the greenies get their way or not).
“Popular goverment” can also mean “mob rule.”
Without checks and balances like proper constitutional rights and a judicial system that upholds those rights democracy is mob rule.
As long as property can be taxed, no one but the government, through force of arms, can own it. Ownership, in this context, is a privilage belonging to the most heavily-armed party. That is no longer the citizen.
@Dog B (18:17:21) :
No time travel is involved. I said “got the states to enact and use these laws”. If you want to get technical perhaps I should have said “and/or” as yes, in some states, the legislative framework was wholly in place before Kyoto. The point was that a main plank of the Australian Commonwealth Government’s Kyoto strategy was to (1) negotiate to get reductions in land clearing put into the Kyoto protocol for Australia (which they succeeded in doing: that’s what the Article 3(7) point was about) and (2) use state laws against land-clearing to meet Australia’s targets without having to make the kind of serious efforts to reduce CO2 emissions (eg from coal-fired electricity plants) that would otherwise need to be made. This strategy was actually adopted before the Kyoto negotiations took place. The Australian representatives didn’t turn up to Kyoto not knowing what they wanted. On the basis that they thought they would be able to use state laws against land-clearing they fought hard to get Article 3(7) in the protocol and then duly got the states to use native vegetation laws to this end.
This is all a matter of public record. I fail to see what the controversy is about.
We are getting in to ‘interesting times’
With sugar prices escalating because so much sugar cane in Brazil is converted to ethanol
With the USA targetting 15 billions gallons of biofuel per year by 2015, mainly from corn
With the EU targetting 10% addition of biofuel in petrol and diesel by 2020
With set-aside schemes like the Australian one removing land from food production
With developing countries like India and China expected to increase food consumption, especially meat
With an expected cold period reducing food production for at least 20 years
… perhaps soon we will all be ‘survivalists’!
John Hooper (15:37:23) :
“That’s right. The science isn’t settled on whether atmospheric CO2 levels have risen, says this report:”
What is it with people and the Knorr paper? Just once glance at the paper and the figures therein, and you’ll see it doesn’t say anything remotely like what you think it says.
Putting a QED after that sort of self-defeating argument will only invite ridicule.
There’s plenty more to this story that you haven’t covered – for example, the members of his family who are accusing him of starting the hunger strike to escape his debts to them. Add to that the fact that he’s mentally unwell.
I’d be mentally unwell if someone tried to take my land too.
Simon (15:32:35) : “I realise my wording indicated an obligation, but Mr Spencer was free to choose whether to sell the land to the Nature Conservation Trust.”
I certainly agree with the pricinple that we all own land subject to certain restrictions. Normally one would know the planning and zoning of a property before purchase, understand those restrictions and buy only if those restrictions coincide with what the intended use of the property is.
I also understand that there was no obligation for Mr Spencer to sell the land, however, once his request was denied that effectively devalued his land and made it unsellable to anyone but the Nature Conservation Trust who most likely wanted it in the first place. Causing the devaluation of land in order to make it unsellable to everyone else but the party (or it’s cohorts) that devalued it is fraud. At the least, too much conflict of interest for my blood.
I don’t think land clearing issues were the real motive behind this protest. There is some interesting background to Peter Spencer’s protest. Graham Spencer the brother of Peter Spencer spoke to the ‘The Australian’ newspaper which outlining the background to this……http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/family-financial-dispute-helped-send-hunger-striker-peter-spencer-up-the-pole/story-e6frg6nf-1225817155039……
quotes:
“The sheriff’s office is expected to serve a notice this week following legal proceedings by members of Mr Spencer’s family to sell the Shannons Flat farm and recover a debt owed to them.
On Friday, The Australian reported Mr Spencer was deeply indebted to a fellow family member. Mr Spencer’s brother, Graham, said the farmer’s problems were only loosely related to land clearing laws that restrict how he can use his land.
Graham Spencer said his brother’s land was of “marginal” farming use and that his background was in public relations, not farming.
Unquote
Plus he has a history as an attention seeker.
@Ben Klijn
A lot of people who protested the confiscation of land during the Communist movement were declared mentally unwell and sent on a little vacation to Siberia to help them recover. Or they were encouraged to be “re-educated” in other ways.
It’s interesting how China and Russia and other former Communist countries have embraced freedom. They lived through the Red Terror and have learned many hard lessons as a group. I fear that “We” meaning the west in aggrigate, will have to go through that ourselves in order for everyone to learn.
Alas, it would be so much easier if everyone would just read Animal Farm and 1984.
He owed money to his brother? Big deal, probably half the people in this world owe money to thier brother.
Can we not all at some time in our lives be labled “attention seekers,” or “a little bit crazy,” or even, *gasp* “deniers?”
Calling his character suspect does not detract from the nastyness of LAND CONFISCATION.
Well, this must be something of a record for ‘Watts Up With That?’
Not only does bulk of the post bears no resemblance to reality and fact, I could only find one sentence which came close to the truth of the matter and that were about Spencer’s making demands of Rudd.
Re: jonk (12:58:55) & CodeTech (14:58:21)
Believe it or not, some of us are content with none of the political parties.