In my post about 9-11 remembrance today, I pointed out “freedom from tyranny” as something to remember and be thankful for. In Western Australia, licensing a simple farming operation has become the victim of government imposed tyranny. Jo Nova has covered the plight of Matt and Janet Thompson in their effort to get a cattle farm up and running again. David Archibald and I visited with the Thompsons during my Australian tour and can attest that Jo Nova has it right in these stories:
Tyranny: How to destroy a business with environmental red tape
The whole issue boils down to an arbitrary sniff test imposed by a local green organization. Was their supposed “environmental defense” (PDF) worth the death of an individual? David Archibald tells this tragic tale which is worth reading, because farmers worldwide are also under assault from overregulation. Witness what is going on in New Zealand with Carbon Tax on farmers. – Anthony
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By David Archibald
My experience of the global warming debate has been a lot of fun. I’ve written a couple of books, had a couple of original ideas, influenced the debate, provided succour to the rational faithful around the world and have met the good and the great: Professor David Bellamy and President Vaclav Klaus. Others haven’t been as fortunate. What follows is a tale of death and destruction that was visited upon one West Australian business as a consequence of the owners’ doubts about the new green religion.
Matt and Janet Thompson own a feedlot business about 4 kilometers outside the edge of the town of Narrogin, about 200 km southeast of Perth.
In June 2008, when the global warming scare was in full swing, Matt attended a beef industry meeting which talked about the cattle industry’s contribution to global warming. He expressed doubt in that meeting about the veracity of global warming and handed out some rational literature.
Not long thereafter, the West Australian Environmental Defenders Office took an interest in complaints by Narrogin greenies against the Thompsons’ feedlot. The volume of complaints rose and the receiving body was primed to receive them: the West Australian Department of Environment and Conservation.
The Thompson’s feedlot business started operating in 2003 at a rated capacity of 1,000 head and an ultimate design capacity of 15,000 head. There is a need for feedlot capacity in Western Australia to level out the supply of cattle to WA abattoirs. In the dry summer, cattle lose body mass just walking around to get grass to eat. Bringing the feed to the cattle means that they don’t lose condition walking to get it.
In 2008, the Thompsons applied to the West Australian Department of Environment and Conservation for an increase in their licence capacity to 15,000 head. Instead of the increase requested, or even maintaining their then licenced level of 10,000 head per annum, the DEC cut their licence conditions back to 6,000 head.
The feedlot needs economies of scale to be viable, so the new licence conditions effectively closed the business. The feedlot remains closed to this day. Right next door to the feedlot is a vast, intensive piggery which continues to operate. You can hear the pigs but not see them, because they are kept indoors. There is another piggery between the Thompsons’ operation and the town of Narrogin.
The Thompsons’ feedlot had 20 employees at its peak. One of them, Mr Lindley Boseley (shown above), took the closure of the feedlot rather personally and suicided. That reminds me of another accidental death at the hands of the State of Western Australia. Last year, an aboriginal being transported from Leonora to Kalgoorlie died from heat stress.
The guards transporting him were distraught, and the WA Government recently undertook to give $3.5 million to his near relatives, who still have the option of suing the State Government for negligence. Similarly, most likely the Environmental Defenders Office, the Department of Environment and Conservation and the greenies of Narrogin did not mean to kill Mr Boseley, but it is very likely that he would still be a productive member of society, if not a completely happy one, if they had not started their campaign to destroy the Thompsons’ business.
The Environmental Defenders Office is jointly funded by the West Australian State Government and the Federal Government. The State Government has now been in power for two years and is halfway through its four year term. It could do well to review its funding of ideologically driven NGOs which, by word and deed, work against the people of Western Australia.
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You can read about the farm here at their website:
http://www.narroginbeef.com/index.htm
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How much blood will the EPA have on its hands in the near future ?
typo ” New Zeland” – Shd be Zealand.
REPLY: Thanks, fixed, -Anthony
How is it possible that a small group of people with little if any mandate can take control of areas I’d our lives and then behave like dictators? Toe the line or they try to destroy you. They have little interest in the environment. They protect nothing and achieve even less. Apart from gaining money and power. This is not a question of science. This is a question of personal freedoms. Who is going to stand up to them?
You are equating a possibly onerous government regulation with mass terrorism. Hard to get more alarmist than that.
This is a dangerous period for dealing with governments. Most people will side with humans and oppose what happened. Today we also remember wickedness elsewhere.
The last election tells us eyes are opening and seeing regulation is choking business and people.
The war between Common Law and Political Law was proclaimed with the first recent Tea Party. The battle between freedom and tyranny has begun.
Knowing the many Ranchers that I do, they know their First Amendment Rights
are protected by the Second….
So do the politicians…
One of the benefits of living in the USA…
Anybody watch the latest Survivorman shows? In it he lives with those that are living in subsistence conditions. Your heart goes out to them and their daily struggle for food … existence. They spend their entire day trying to find food and water. My what a difference electricity would make.
I don’t think it was intended, but it portrays the perfect liberal life style. Watch if you get a chance, then scoot on over to “firemapper” and see through the eyes of MODIS what using wood for fuel does to the planet. The number of man set agricultural fires is astounding.
How long will it be before the official greenies (EPA) go after farmers using the “Eminent Domain” laws? Not long I suspect.
The tyran’s schemes are not only limited to shake people out by sky rocketing energy but include taking away their land and properties and starve them to death when they’ve lost all.
Charles S. Opalek, PE, September 11, 2010 at 1:03 pm is right.
“The battle between freedom and tyranny has begun”.
But at this moment in time tyranny is on a winning streak.
To many people are still ill informed and sleeping.
Sound the alarm bells, they are steeling your future.
http://green-agenda.com currently executed globally.
The exact same thinking is in California where they shut off irrigation water for raising crops. We are dealing with extremely irrational thinkers.
Pink slip as many of the bums as possible.
November to Remember.
There seems to be a discrepancy in the article. Early on it says: “The Thompson’s feedlot business started operating in 2003 at a rated capacity of 1,000 head and an ultimate design capacity of 15,000 head” yet later it says “Instead of the increase requested, or even maintaining their then licenced level of 10,000 head per annum, the DEC cut their licence conditions back to 6,000 head.”
So which is it? Were they initially licenced for 1000 head or was it 10,000? Because it makes a big difference if the intial licence was 1000, and that was increased to 6000, than if it was 10,000 and that was reduced to 6000.
As today is the anniversary of 9/11 when religious fundamentalists/fanatics attacked New York, we should also remember there are greenies and there are environmentalists. The latter are usually quite reasonable people, but some unfortunately turn fundamentalist and become greenies, aka Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc.
You can reason with environmentalists, but no one can reason with them once they have turned fundamentalist and become greenies.
The same logic applies to real scientists and climate ‘scientists’. The latter have a fundamentalist faith in an extreme version of AGW and it is impossible to reason or debate (also, they won’t turn up!) with them. One of the weaknesses of the human psyche is that the woolly and weak minded like to be thought of as being ‘chosen’ or ‘enlightened’ and are easily attracted to extremist causes.
Anyhow, we all end up paying for the stupidity of the greenies and the greed of their self-appointed leaders – usually in the form of greater taxation and large, pointless bureaucracies, but occasionally with our lives as in this instance.
Pat McLaren asks, “How is it possible that a small group of people with little if any mandate can take control of areas I’d our lives and then behave like dictators?”
I think the uncomfortable answer is “Because we let them.” Most people won’t stand up personally against tyranny. They just want to “get along”.
Mike @ur momisugly 12:44 pm:
~200,000,000 dead Third World residents, thanks to the “consensus-driven onerous government regulation” (Read: “banning”) of DDT, would beg to differ.
“You are equating a possibly onerous government regulation with mass terrorism. Hard to get more alarmist than that.”
Mike,
How many innocent people have been killed by terrorists, compared to Governments? Without getting to deep into the politics of the terrorist, illegal invasion of Iraq, and the blatant lies that led to it, there was a situation in which a 9/11 was inflicted on Iraq every month, on the back of a pack of blatant lies.
Even that pales into significance when you examine the words of the leaders of the world’s environmental movements. They want to kill BILLIONS of innocent people, just because they happen to be alive and consume Gaia’s resources. That is in their OWN words.
I shall not list all the quotes here, but this is a link to them and they are truly monstrous.
http://ken-hall.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-hitler-killed-millions-he-was.html
Do not talk to me about alarmism, when the Climate Alarmists want to make Al Qaeda look like the keystone cops by comparison!
Don’t think this type of tyranny isn’t being practices by the US Department of “Justice” in this Administration against Arizona.
The DOJ has three ongoing lawsuits or investigations against Arizona, the latest involves Colleges requiring non citizen job seekers to show their green card. This along with the investigation of the Maricopa sherrif and the recent Arizona law regarding police checking the immigration status of those stopped for traffic violations or criminal acts.
“Washington Post: The Justice Department filed another lawsuit against immigration practices by Arizona authorities, saying Monday that a network of community colleges acted illegally in requiring noncitizens to provide their green cards before they could be hired for jobs.”
http://lonelyconservative.com/2010/08/doj-sues-arizona-colleges-for-requiring-green-cards/
All this while the DOJ dismisses voting place violations against thugs at a voting place in Philadelphia during the last election while refusing to allow DOJ employees to testify on the incident..
B.C. says:
DDT was only banned for use in agriculture, not for control of disease vectors.
I hope that whenever the environmentalists get a complaint about animal smells in the town they can answer where it is now coming from as there are no cattle left at the Thompsons feedlot. They had a state of the art feedlot, waste control, wormfarm’s the lot. The smells weren’t coming from the farm, they attacked the wrong people.
It is a tragedy that another farmer has died, the greenies have a lot to answer for. Hopefully they will be found out now they have a seat in Australian Government, they will have to explain their policies instead of sitting on the fence. The Greenies want to close down the power stations, shut down intensive farming and bring back death taxes.
Greenies grow best in concrete, the representative that got elected lives in the midst of Melbourne, is about as far away from farming as it is possible to get.
B.C. says:
September 11, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Before someone jumps on you & says DDT wasn’t banned…
DDT was effectively banned by refusal of aid to 3rd world countries who didn’t ban DDT use.
DaveE.
Don Shaw says:
September 11, 2010 at 2:35 pm
I am not a US citizen. I think it would be remiss of any US establishment not to check my status before employing me, ie, checking my green card.
DaveE.
Don Shaw says:
September 11, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Actually…
Isn’t it illegal to employ an illegal immigrant?
How do you ascertain that without checking the green card?
DaveE.
This is exactly what happens to university professors in the sciences who dare to speak out in support of universe and living things that are the result of purpose, intent, and design by a creator. If you’re a scientist and you salute that flag in public you’re a I know dozens of such professors who have to keep their beliefs private out of fear of having their careers derailed; physicists and astronomers to geologists and biologists. I know several who didn’t keep their mouths shut and either got denied tenure and/or contracts not renewed, sources of funding dried up, conspired against by coworkers, in one case a biology prof with his doctorate for over 40 years and tenure for 30 teaching at the same university for most of that time had his classes cancelled, his lab privileges restricted, and his salary frozen for a decade finally accepted a buyout offer on his tenure 10 years ago. It’s horrible what ideologically driven environmentalists and anti-religion academics will do to innocent peers for failing to pay proper homage to the idols of their shabby soft science narratives. In all my years in the computer industry I never once witnessed behavior of this sort and until 5 or 6 years ago had no idea what kind of despicable bullying was going on. It makes me angry and at the same ashamed that the love of my life (science) has such a dark side. Maybe it was always there in one form or another and I just never saw it because in engineering with hard science and practical matters not esotoric unproven toy models and narrative paleo-reconstructions of the distant past. Our stuff either works or it doesn’t and if it doesn’t heads will roll if its a costly mistake because there’s no such thing as tenure in industry. One of the religious physicists I know whose been discriminated agaisnt works in the same building as Roy Spencer and has a long history with NASA in space exploration programs. Another guy, Guillermo Gonzalez at the tender of 30-something ready to be tenured, who pioneered the search and discovery of extra-solar planets, got the cover story of Scientific American for an article entitled “The Galactic Habitable Zone” (a well known term he coined), had more publications than the head of astronomy department, co-authored and advanced astronomy textbook used in many universities, had the temerity to write a book called “The Privileged Planet” which made the point of how exceedingly rare the earth is and how it is perfectly positioned for observing the universe and implying something that rare might be the result of design, which was then made into a documentary where both the book and the documentary were funded by an intelligent design organization (The Discovery Institute) was conspired against by his peers and ultimately denied tenure which amounts to getting a 1-year notice to find another job. Gonzalez was another victim of NASA. His name and work was plastered all over nasa.gov but as soon that controversial book and documentary were made his funding from NASA came to a screeching halt. I have no respect at all left for NASA between that and their participation in the CAGW hoax. NASA used to be a source of intense pride and admiration given I grew up watching the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs unfold. Today I’d vote to dismantle it from the top down and start over from scratch.
Sorry to rant but this is what got me involved in the CAGW wars in the first place. The same kind of shabby bandwagon science-dogma and despicable tactics to censor critics
Mike : “You are equating a possibly onerous government regulation with mass terrorism. Hard to get more alarmist than that.”
Well, you could start by seeing what Vaclav Klaus has to say about the similarities between climate alarmism and communism. http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/1664
Jim : “There seems to be a discrepancy in the article. Early on it says: “The Thompson’s feedlot business started .. at a rated capacity of 1,000 head .. yet later it says “.. their then licenced level of 10,000 head per annum ..”
So which is it? Were they initially licenced for 1000 head or was it 10,000?”
Maybe “rated capacity” and “licensed level” are not the same thing.
Peter Miller : “.. we should also remember there are greenies and there are environmentalists. The latter are usually quite reasonable people ..”
I hope so, I consider myself to be one. In an argument with local greenies/climate-alarmists, over a global warming article (“just another scare campaign“) that I had published in a local paper, I took some pleasure in pointing out my “green” credentials (mud-brick house, geothermal and solar heating, watercourse protection, wildlife corridor, tree-planting) where my critics had none.
Actually, I suspect that many or most of the posters on WUWT are environmentalists.