Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The recent State election in Queensland, Australia has thrown up some interesting voting patterns.
Votes for green leaning left wing candidates seem to have mostly concentrated in high density urban areas. The electorate of Maiwar in Brisbane, the one seat the Green Party seems likely to win, is one of the most heavily urbanised regions in Queensland.
Brisbane has beautiful green spaces, such as a lovely strip of parkland along stretches of the Brisbane River – but these green spaces are mostly carefully manicured and well tended gardens.
Outside these managed gardens, the natural environment in Queensland can be brutal. The lush coastal bushland especially is dripping with threats to human health, ranging from deadly paralysis ticks, to snakes ranging from the relatively harmless green tree snakes to deadly browns and taipans. If you go more than a few hundred miles north of the Capital, there’s a real chance of meeting a crocodile, vicious, highly intelligent ambush apex predators which usually kill by dragging their prey underwater and holding them until they drown. In Australia crocodiles can grow up to 6m (18ft), more than big enough to kill a human.
And of course there are a range of lesser pests like vicious biting horse flies and vast clouds of mosquitoes which occasionally transmit debilitating chronic diseases such as Ross River Fever.
Away from the carefully manicured town gardens, the Queensland bush is not your friend – its a vicious fast growing source of sometimes life threatening pests, which has to be fought on a regular basis to stop it overrunning parts of your yard or farm which you care about.
Support for the climate skeptic One Nation Party was stronger away from manicured urban areas. Though One Nation may not win any seats, they won a substantial share of the vote in many electorates, over 30% in some areas.
Amongst other things, One Nation campaigned on a platform of liberating farmers from onerous restrictions imposed by city based greens. People who have daily contact with the true face of the tropical Queensland bush almost universally rejected green party candidates.
My question – are green supporters mostly people who have an utterly romanticised view of nature? People who rarely come into contact with the real thing?
Does this observation match your experience in your state or country?
In New South Wales the Green Vote is concentrated in the suburbs of Balmain, Annandale, Redfern, Surry Hills, Camperdown, Enmore, Petersham, Darlington, Stanmore, Chippendale, Lewisham, Erskineville, and Newtown. These areas are about as far as you can get from any evidence of natural landscape and its severe dangers. They are the natural habitat of the Green Beast. .Green supporters are people who have an utterly romanticised view of life, society and nature. They loathe the real Nature.
Many will leave if they can. They will find a rural community that is family safe and friendly simply because it has not been afflicted with Green values.
Then the rot will start anew because they will bring their vote of course with them to overwhelm the very thing that attracted them in the first place.
This has happened in many communities across the US.
Incredible, but the hippie and yuppie refugees from the hellholes created by progressive policies don’t get it, and try to recreate the same hellishness in the refuges to which they’ve fled.
Kind of like Metastasizing cancers
As in Vermont as well? Just for one example?
Vermont. Gov, July 9, 2015
Scroll down to:
‘Gov. Shumlin Signs Landmark Climate Change Agreement At Climate Summit of the Americas’
Climate Summit of the Americas, Toronto, Canada, July 7-9, 2015
More information on this topic online.
http://www.vermont.gov/portal/government/archive.php?start=200&source=11
The Gay community own a large slice of Balmain.
They’re in entertainment, senior public service or the legal profession.
They’re a mixed bag of narcissistic virtue signalling sociopaths almost without exception maximising the ‘live off the masses money’ culture.
They all vote green or left.
The only constituency in the UK to elect a Green is Brighton Pavilion.
Brighton has long been noted cor having a sizeable gay population so there could be a connection there.
Definitely correlation, maybe causation. This is a chicken or egg situation.
That’s utterly politically incorrect to point out about homosexuals. Which is precisely why I endorse it wholeheartedly.
“Does this observation match your experience in your state or country?”
Yup. Largely. Then there’s the large and growing contingent who live off the bounty that governments pilfer from those who must contend with the laws and rules of nature in addition to the regulations and restrictions that are imposed by parasitoid governments fiat while being real live economic producers whose efforts make them the providers for all.
My experience is that he most numerous skeptics are those who are deeply and honestly skeptical of the motives of governments and of governments’ officialdom (or dumb).
Then there’s The Goracle. If there’s someone who is not skeptical of his motives they just are not paying attention plus they don’t really care.
This 2016 Election Map pretty much defines the Trump āruralsā verses the Clinton āurbanitesā.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/statemap1024.png
Samuel C Cogar on November 27, 2017 at 4:26 am
That is the state by state map. Check out the county by county map: content://media/external/file/14668
Sorry but I can’t get a picture to post with my phone. Google “election map 2016 by county ”
Astounding
The county by county map is more of an indicator because most of the blue dwindles down to urban cities. It really defines the blue to show how little blue is really there.
Here’s the 2016 election map by precinct. Cheers –
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/04/is-this-the-ultimate-2016-presidential-election-map/521622/
Takers vs. Makers.
Dependants vs. Independants
Try this link to Dave Leip’s Atlas of US elections. But, BE AWARE: For reasons that I’m sure he understands, on his maps by state and by counties he has reversed the typical ‘red’ and ‘blue’ representations of the Democrat and Republican parties which I can be a bit confusing to those who are accustomed to Republican/Red and Democrat/Blue on maps.
https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/
If the map indicates that a non-urban county voted Democrat, you can just about bet that there is a large state-supported university located in the country.
This is an interesting web site. He took this Atlas back as far into historical elections as he had the data to go.
@Thomas J
The first map that used colors was for the 1976 election of Ford v Carter. The Republicans were blue and the Democrats were red. This was displayed on NBC. My personal bias, but I think Democrats as red is very appropriate.
Here is the 2016 election map āby countyā ā¦ā¦ which pretty much defines where the Democrat lefties and liberals maintain a strong presence in the urban areas of dense populations, to witā
Western Australian greens have the inner city demographic (Green self Guilt types) and one area which is the only real wooded/forest area (where the true green alternative eco warriors go). I have no real issue with the later group the major issues for them are about the area they live.
However yes we have the same green guilt inner city type as you describe but the green vote only ever hovers between 5-8% and they have never had any real politic power even in tight parliaments.
I should ask in other parts of Australia and the World are these Green Self guilt groups easy to pick up Statistically .. AKA the “Goat Cheese Curtain”
The term was derived because you can identify the areas these types hang out by a simple question do you regularly have goats cheese in your refrigerator. Melbourne curtain is pronounced
https://imgur.com/gallery/4HSbo
Perth has the same centred on Dalkeith, Nedlands, Claremont.
You also see that the Electoral Commission changes boundaries to create green hotspots. In the state election mentioned for Queensland the Greens averaged less than 10% at 9.66% but had members in every electorate.
One Nation failed to gain a single seat as of the latest counts but only represented 61 of the 93 seats and had 13.68% of the vote. This means that One Nation averaged over 20% in the electorates it competed for but failed to gain a seat but a group with less than half the % gained a single seat and would have probably won Milton as well if the LNP hadn’t made it clear they don’t do deals with the Greens and thus kept the unsavoury Labor member of that seat in (Jackie Tran, instead of answering questions on corruption and nepotism in appointing union heavies to high government positions without due process she called the male questioner ‘fat’ much to the enjoyment of the main stream media types… ‘woman power etc’)..
We will probably find the boundaries remain fairly static for these green areas whereas movement is normally expected from election to election. The greens zone mentioned above including Fig Tree Pocket is designed specifically to maximise green votes while not reducing Labor held zones all that much. The zone I am in has gone from Oxley to Gatton to Ipswich to Springfield etc. The recent changes to the electorate actually was designed to weaken One Nation voters splitting them up with Labor heavily populated zones. It is a type of Gerrymander that is more subtle than what was seen during the days of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, but one none-the-less as it is designed to change the chances of smaller parties depending on ideological differences.
South Australia is the one to watch for Gerrymanders though
Urban areas are kind of like college “safe zones” in the US
Yes, very likely to be true that the urban lot are more apt to be green socialist types than rural people. Probably almost goes without saying. City slickers have lost any connection to the land, and that type of common sense from living closer to nature that rural people identify with is missing in the city. Plus city folk, especially the younger crowd, are usually already liberal leaning, so much easier to sway, especially when the teachers are all mostly committed greens and socialists to some degree or another. Plus immigrants tend to vote for the party that allowed them in the country to begin with, and many times those are liberal or socialist parties. The indoctrination is much easier to pull off in the urban city scape, just because it is already heavily leaning in that peer culture. Those who are against the grain in the city are much more apt to be ostracized from the ‘herd’. It is always easier to go with the flow, than buck the majority. Rural people are already much more independent just by their lifestyle and hence therefor so is their thinking. So it will now be an uphill battle to educate people in critical thinking, because there is many more city folk than there is rural people, at least in western democracies.
In New Zealand, the Green Party vote is concentrated in mid-city Wellington, the capital. This is an area largely populated by youngish public sector employees who have little to fear and much to gain from proliferating environmental regulations. It’s an interesting parallel that most public broadcasters/journalists are likewise concentrated in central metro areas.
Wellington (was the best city in the World) but now it’s a left-wing cesspool!
NZ 75% hydro; could’ve been 99% but the green lobby got in there 20-years ago and put a stop to evil hydro.
Madness!
Yes, a dense concentration of public sector employment is probably an essential ingredient in baking a green seat, but also an alliance of so-called “progressives”, such as this from Brighton, the sole seat in the UK with a “green” MP:
“On Wednesday night, the Lib Dems announced they would not put up a candidate in Brighton Pavilion at June’s General Election. The aim? To help Green MP Caroline Lucas keep her seat.
Many local Lib Dems were expecting the Greens to return the favour by standing aside in Lewes. So imagine their surprise when the Greens announced a Lewes candidate, Katie Hawks.”
Progressives = cheats and liars.
“So it will now be an uphill battle to educate people in critical thinking,”
The sad part is that so many, for so very long have been thought not to think but to “feel”. I teach beginning HVAC and have discovered that even a simple deduction that A causes B is beyond many to follow. The thoughts of this law professor seems to sum it up.
http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2017/11/teaching-millennials-how-not-to-think-stupid/
It seems that an urban dweller is much more likely to believe that humans have profound influence on the environment simply because that is what they see in their day to day life. Even though they know that their urban and suburban environments are but a tiny island by area in a geographic sense, it becomes an abstraction that becomes easy enough to ignore.
One nation? Really? A more crazy and dysfunctional bunch of politicians in Australia has yet to be found, and the bar is set pretty damned high, I can tell you.
I was asked if I knew who I was voting for by someone. I said I did, but I didn’t know why.
When I voted I realised the real question is so are you putting at the bottom of the list, since we have preference voting. The answer Queensland gave to the above question was a firm “Not one nation”.
And an even firmer vote of NO GREENS
One Nation out polled the Greens by 40% !
A new formative party, out polling the pathetic Greens and nearly almost half the vote of the two major parties. REMARKABLE.
Greens are gradually being consigned to the dustbin of history.
One Nation.
Run by ordinary (and some extraordinary) people has more to offer than the major parties dancing to the tune of every vested interest to the detriment of the common Australian.
One Nation despite its shortcomings is doing well for many.
Laugh all you like this form of party is at the forefront of a White Man’s revolution (excluding the French and Germans).
Andy, my next to last vote was greens. The first time I didn’t put em last š
After the Rudd/Gillard debacle, I’ll always put Labor last. The greens will forever be second last now.
I wish that were true AndyG55 but they will fight on. Certainly though the further they are from nature, the more they “love” it and know whats best for it. I rather think actual environmental intelligence follows the same law as light – Inversely squared proportional to the distance from real nature.
What’s the difference between a politician and a flying pig?
The letter ‘f’
At least the pig tastes good when properly roasted.
There may be some people in Amazon forests, on New Guinea and in Micronesia who have a more informed opinion about the taste of properly roasted politicians.
How can you tell the difference between a dead snake on the road and a dead politician on the road?
(There are no skid marks in front of the dead politician.)
My preferred variant of that joke…
With a snake, the cars go rrrrrrrrrr thump thump rrrrrrrrrr
With a politician, the cars go rrrrrrrrrr thump thump screech (gear change) rrrrrrrrr thump thump screech (gear change) rrrrrrrrrr thump thump screech…
Davidhofferās joke about cars and snakes is fact – in Egypt car drivers outside Cairo make a point of running over snakes sleeping on the warm road surface, then reversing over them and then running over them again. The reason is simply that peasants working in the fields are often bitten and suffer serious hurt through snake bite. I expect 5his is common sense practice in the tropics and Africa. Of course were a green activist to see this, he/she would probably rush over and try to put a splint on the snake. Rural and educated folk know better.
Moderately, I used to do that here until I realised the largest snakes here are pythons. They’re pretty harmless (to us) and tend to keep the rodent population down too.
Once we found a 2m python curled up sheltering, obviously having had a substantial meal. Our cat (the usual rodent control chief) was eying it but not getting closer. I could see them both thinking the same thing: “maybe that’s a bit to large…” That mexican standoff lasted all afternoon!
Yes. Ecology freaks are mainly city beasts. I attribute it to most colleges are in/near big cities and tend to be the petri dish of people that want to tell you what to do to please them without thinking of the consequences. City dwellers also seem to be more idealistic because they have access to anything they want within reason and have alternatives for everything. They can tell you how to treat a chicken before slaughter but they’ve never seen a live one.
I think that the power grid should be organised so that when black outs occur due to lack of generating capacity or over reliance on ‘renewables’….areas that voted Green can be the first to be switched off!
(Also worth noting that this John Cook of Skeptical Science’s turf)
Here in the US the widespread installation of smart meters makes this eminently practical.
The main stream Center right party, the LNP, passed legislation about 4 years ago to protect the rural sector from the Green ideology (i.e., vegetation magagement laws). The LNP also funded the bush with infrastructure and much more. This rural support was stopped by the Labor/Green alliance once they got voted in last term. The LNP policy is to return benefits to the bush as equal citizens of the state. One Nation tries to pretend it is their idea, and some believe it. One Nation is no true friend of the bush with some populist ideas that lead to disaster. They are mainly known for their very divisive racial opinions. Their other policies on the bush, debt management, job creation, is just shallow fluff.
Opps, I forgot to confirm.. As a Queensland voter, I say yes the main Green vote come from upper end Brisbane inner city Southside. They have no connection to the bush they wish to rule.
The people have a utopian outlook of the world. They live in a cess-pool of traffic and crime, but they believe that the world should just love one another and get along. These are the greens. They have no connection with reality, and can’t understand why people mock their ideals.
Rather than ‘racial’ they are more divisive on ‘cultural’ aspects, at least in the second time around.
For those not familiar with the party this is it’s second time existing as a party first forming in 1996-7. While being led by the same person as now the people in the back room were those that you would expect to be at the top of Labor or Liberal parties … i.e. corrupt without any morals. This and very poor policies led to its first destruction. It took several years with other fringe parties appearing and disappearing before the last federal election signalled their return in the Senate with a strong showing (and what surprised the MSM a poor showing by their darling the Greens).
“Votes for green leaning left wing candidates seem to have mostly concentrated in high density urban areas. ”
no different than in most other countries.
Urban dwellers are easily prey to fear and scaremongering from Predator pols in pursuit of power. The Left lives on destroying the family unit, increasing crime with social programs, and then using the “community” to impose village rule.
The typical pattern though is the urbanites move-out, like rats from a sinking ship, looking for a new conservative, rural farming community to bring their political leaning blight to. Then a new rot sets in.
Expect the same thing in Australia. Liberals will move-out from the cities they have destroyed, and seek safe communities to settle in, and start the cycle anew. And they carry their Liberal ignorant vote with them of course.
The Left is like a metastasizing tumor.
Pretty sure that the only Federal seat the Greens hold is in inner city Melbourne somewhere.
As joelobryan said- they will metastasize.
In some ways, Barack Obama’s hard Left push for the US, with his Waters of the US rule from the EPA whereby every seasonal mud puddle could potentially become a Federally-regulated waterway if a bureaucrat wanted was his and Hillary’s undoing. The Left tends to over reach. But they expect this.
For the Left sees a 2 steps forward, 1 step back to incrementally imposing their Socialism on society.
The best thing a country can do is elect a Trump wrecking ball and push them back to swamp they came from. and then drain it of the thing they live on — tax-payer money.
Climateer science is no different. Like Dr Lindzen prescribes in a 90% cut to funding to climate science, eliminating feeding at the public tax-money trough is the first and best step to sending the cancer into remission.
Geography is a correlation. Education level is the cause.
Tony,
Wrong again.
The higher your education level, the more likely you are to be a “climate change” skeptic.
It’s geographic because urbanites are so divorced from the realities of nature.
“The higher your education level, the more likely you are to be a āclimate changeā skeptic.”
Unless they are an academic, swilling from the climate trough.
Andy,
I was speaking in the aggregate. Of course the trough-feeding, rent-seeking third rate academics who spew CACA because they can’t cut science or math at a high level perpetuate the lie, as their livelihoods and ideology depend upon the sc@m.
But for every art and lit major like Mosher, there are three medical, engineering or science grads who know enough to call BS on the whole corrupt ho@x.
Well done for completely ignoring my point.
Look it up. Green voters have a higher % of tertiary degrees.
Btw, nice own goal Eric.
Gabro
“The higher your education level, the more likely you are to be a āclimate changeā skeptic.”
As far as the UK goes, I’m not convinced that’s correct. Our ‘New Labour’ Tony Blair government of the 90’s wanted 50% of school leavers to go to university. Thereafter the country was swamped with useless degree programs in the most bizarre subjects you can imagine. Of course, it was all theory, with little practical application for many of the subjects, consequently, there’s lots of degree qualified 30 year old’s flipping burgers in McDonalds or spending life without a meaningful job. So, as far as they’re concerned, it’s everyone else’s fault they can’t reach their potential, not theirs, or the left wing government that developed an ideological education system.
And the problem with all this largely useless education is that it teaches people that theory is the route to success, and it’s always right. They rarely get the opportunity to actually test their theories in a proper working environment, and as we all know, real life is as far removed from university life as one could get.
Unfortunately, the ‘theory’ of AGW is quite convincing and pretty logical, on the face of it. So it resonates with their idea of ‘it must be correct because the theory tells us so’. But step into the World of WUWT and all the other good, sceptical climate blogs and of course, the holes in the simplistic theory are rapidly dispelled. But they don’t frequent contradictory blogs of any type because, of course, they are too well educated to consider the wacko ideas of people who have actually worked for a living over their lifetime and learned that university is the springboard to vital scepticism.
I have yet to find an older, well educated person, who didn’t at least consider the possibility of the AGW theory being wrong, because they inherently understand that a theory is a challenge to be knocked over, not slavishly adhered to.
Add to that, left wing education environments where, despite all the evidence to the contrary, left wing ideology is revered because, theoretically, it works, and it’s no wonder our youth is infected with naive, green idealism, and socialist ideology.
“the holes in the simplistic theory are rapidly dispelled.”
That should, of course, have been – the holes in the simplistic theory are rapidly ‘exposed’.
Too much haste, not enough speed.
š
“Green voters have a higher % of tertiary degrees.”
Arts, Social Science. Literature. Latte making !!
Gabro – November 26, 2017 at 9:45 pm
That is only a ātruismā for those persons who earned their Degrees pre-1980.
For the past 30+ years, via lefty liberal management, ā¦.. the majority of colleges and universities have morphed into ātaxpayer fundedā for-profit businesses ā¦ā¦.. of āselling Diplomasā to anyone with sufficient funds to pay tuition and expenses.
The highly privileged daughter with of an old friend of mine did modern languages at a nice university for her BA, because it was an easy degree to get. Then, at enormous expense to her mother, did a one year course at another nice university thereby gaining an MSc in “Environmental Science”. Of course, we know that a degree title that contains the word “science” really isn’t a genuine science at all but she thinks that she knows everything about the subject and doesn’t hesitate to tell us so. She lives in the middle of London and is the very worst sort of Green. I believe there is something seriously wrong with our education system, at all levels.
Tony mcleod on November 27, 2017 at 12:58 am
Well done for completely ignoring my point.
Look it up. Green voters have a higher % of tertiary degrees.
Forrest Gump had a degree. An educated idiot is still an idiot.
Check this out, ā¦ā¦. the University of Virginia offers 109 different undergraduate programs and degrees, ā¦ā¦ā¦ with 74 different āspecialtiesā within the different degree programs.
All are listed here: http://www.virginia.edu/academics/majors
āYou got the money, ā¦.. you can purchase Degree of choiceā.
Feeding at the public pork trough is the cause Tony.
The intellectual Left feeds at the pork trough with an eye to skew public policy to provide more pork in the trough. Power an money. A most powerful human motivator.
The honest climate scientist will assert natural variability as the likely main driver of the modern era warming.
The climateer scientist will assert that man’s activities as the likely cause of the modern era warming. A political opportunity is born.
One is potentially controllable and the other is not. Which one do you think the Exploitative Politician (can you say Al Gore?) will choose? Which scientist gets more funding?
So Tony, Which scientist gets no funding and disappears? Which scientist gets more funding?
You’ve been lied to Tony. Badly. And you’ve taken the decades of climate lies and incorporated them into your thinking. It is time to un-program those lies Tony.
“Youāve been lied to Tony. Badly”
The word is GULLIBLE !!
“education level”? Most of the Green activists I’ve seen are pasty faced city slickers that never spent a night alone in the woods or any wilderness anywhere! They don’t know crap about nature or living in it on it’s terms.
“Education level is the cause.”
How would you know anything about education level.?
btw, how’s your inner city leftist ghetto going, McClod?
Depends on what you mean by “education.”
Graduates in “humanities”? Don’t make me laugh.
Incredible fools in Academia are more of a rule than an exception.
Some of the most knowledgeable people I’ve met did a lot of manual labor in their past.
Dogma is pervades. Any existing knowledge is symmetrical in three dimensions: Narrow, shallow and short term.
And virtually every study to ever come out puts skeptics on the educated side. Certainly explains your stance.
You got it, Tony, but not the way you think you have. Education was one of the first tools to be employed to spread neo marxsbrothers ideol. Core subjects to indoctrinate the young, then a plethora of new, worthless faculties to “occupy” the masses of substandard academic achievers that the “progressives” “empowered” when they threw out merit and threw the gates of higher learning open to empty vessels eager to be filled.
Here at WUWT, a paper from one of these newly minted, diplomaed, diversity-identity faculty graduates about Feminine Glaciology was reviewed with considerable concern about the decline, dumbing down and progressive (no quotation marks) corruption in ‘higher’ education, concern sprinkled with considerable ridicule to be sure. No comment needed on the paper here.
Tony you are one of the newly educated breed. However, although you are firmly comfortable in your world view and support the institutional pronouncements of the establishment, you are not a dolt. You take and give well and you are to be admired for exposing your mind to the critical thought available here, laced, I admit with over the top insults and putdowns that you absorb mildly and offer rejoinders that keep things going.
I’m sincere in this. WUWT gets all types with Luddites from both sides sprinkled through the many intelligent reads here. Forehead-stamped Committeds avoid such sites as these and are advised to do so, the fear being that all that lovely indoctrination could unravel. It is a great advantage to be able to look at both sides in one of the precious few that give voice to both sides. Don’t be afraid to admire the best of the articles, critiques and thought here.
Gary
“Education was one of the first tools to be employed to spread neo marxsbrothers ideol. Core subjects to indoctrinate the young, then a plethora of new, worthless faculties to āoccupyā the masses of substandard academic achievers that the āprogressivesā āempoweredā when they threw out merit and threw the gates of higher learning open to empty vessels eager to be filled.”
This is a load of paranoid, miss-informed claptrap. It can’t go un-challenged (memo to self: even though it will be fruitless to do so).
“occupy the masses”?
I’m going to ask you rhetorically, who? specifically – what are their names?
This cohort (I don’t suppose you think it is one person) who are pulling the strings, do you expect they are the richest and most powerful people on the planet?
All this is rhetorical mind you.
“Geography is a correlation. Education level is the cause.”
Education, like, the green politician with degree in Geography, who believed Japan to be in South Hemisphere…
Says it all, i think.
Who was that?
Someone not worthy to be remembered.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/blog/11119
Yes, environmental voters are indeed impractical romantics. Here in the US, for instance, it is a certainty that the desire to have mountain lions, bears or wolves is inversely proportional to the probability of encountering one in your daily life. No surprise. The misfortune for the poor guy who has to watch a flock of sheep or a herd of calving cattle is he could get killed or injured, or lose a lot of money, because of them, and he cant get anything done about it because he will be outvoted every time by the air heads in the city.
The sad part is for the last 50-60 years humans have lived without fear of coyotes or cougars in the Western US. That is slowly changing.
It exists because for a hundred years before and until 50years ago, coyotes and cougars were ruthlessly shot and eliminated from areas where human habitations existed. Their numbers were pushed very low.
Now today, environmentalists don’t want those animal eliminated So those predators’s numbers are slowly building. Today’s humans can’t understand why cougars and coyotes are becoming a problem that hasn’t existed in their life-time. Duh.
We live in a naive benefit of what our forefathers did to keep their children and livestock safe. That benefit is slowly waning.
In NE Oregon, the introduced wolf packs are all collared, so that you can log on to the Oregon Fish and Game site and look at the wolves watching you.
Cougars and wolves have taken livestock and domestic pets since their hunting has been effectively outlawed. Children, joggers and hikers will be next, as in California. But as long as urbanites can feel superior and good about themselves, it’s all worth it.
The other part of that equation is that many more people have continued to push out away from cities and towns seeking to build in woods and other places further away from urban areas. That is also a part of the reason for wild fires taking a heavier toll on housing.
IMO it makes no sense to allow urbanites not threatened by coyotes, wolves, bears and cougars to vote on the means of controlling their populations, but that is what has happened in OR and CA.
You forgot to mention the Drop Bears.
Seriously, Eric, you exaggerate the ‘dangers’ in the bush a bit much. You have to deliberately put yourself in danger to be taken by a crocodile- e.g. swimming where you shouldn’t, camping too close to the water’s edge. Most snakes will get out of your way and Ross River fever is just as likely to get you in the suburbs of northern towns.
Yes Greens mainly inhabit urban landscapes. Maiwar would also have a large contingent of UQ students and staff. But it’s not just the bush they idealise and are divorced from. They are completely unfamiliar with real life, creating wealth rather than living off it is unknown to them.
We have nuts on the right and nuts on the left. Labor got in on Green preferences, and the LNP lost seats because of One Nation’s policy of putting sitting members last.
Gawd help us.
Ken
LNP should have cut a deal ;-).
Seriously I never go into real bush without covering myself in bushmans (once got bitten by a tick in a nasty place), and you’ve got to look out for snakes. Had plenty of browns cross right in front of me, though haven’t been chased yet. They generally don’t give a stuff about humans.
That’s my experience too,Eric. Generally those who don’t respect the dangers of the bush either don’t spend much time in it, or don’t come off very well.
Simple things like enough water are just not understood by city dwellers, let alone brown snakes, and it costs lives unfortunately.
oh I dunno Ken
they forgot Hendra from the greentards best mates the fruitbats
and Lyssa virus from the same source as well
bats crapping and peeing all over suburban as well as rural areas..
need a few greentinged ones to get crook to wake em up maybe?
I recently followed an internet tip and got a copy of
Elizabeth Nickson “Ecofascists:how radical conservationists are destroying our natural heritage”.
It is centred on Canada and USA but anyone who has been touched by vegetation laws etc here in Australia will find very quickly that they’re in it too.
“City folk” might have a romanticized view of wild nature but this depiction of it as endlessly dangerous and hostile is equally inaccurate. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Wrong. Queensland bush wants to eat you. I’m not talking about the nice gravel lined paths through some park, I’m talking about real bush.
Its not certain death if you go for a wander through thick undergrowth in Queensland, but unless you apply plenty of bug spray there’s a good chance you’ll pick up a few ticks.
You’ve also got to look out for snakes, browns especially are not afraid of humans, and are almost impossible to see until you are right on top of them. They can be very aggressive if provoked, say if you accidentally step on one. Very deadly bite.
Spot on Eric!
I get ticks on me just gardening in our little bit of bush! Really gotta watch em because aparrently once they get your scent they hunt you down. Our cat & dog get em weekly too.
Your a wimp Eric.
Gosh Eric, you sound as paranoid as an inner city greenie.
I’ve knocked about the Qld bush for many years and don’t have too much trouble with it, or what’s left of it.
Trouble is much of the original bush is gone, what’s left is regrowth from failed farming ventures full of weeds such as lantana or shrubby acacia regrowth. And I’m still looking for a pristine patch of brigalow , amazing for a vegetation community that probably once took up a sixth of the State.
The browns are aggressive weather you provoke them or not. The red belly blacks are a lot calmer.
Please explain yourself Tony. These random snipes of yours are getting tiresome.
There’s an old Welsh saying, Ol’Tony. “Brave men are easy to find behind castle walls.”
In our day and age, they’re also easy to find inside city limits.
And anyone smart is a wimp when it comes to the possibility of envenomation.
As a corollary, I grew up in southern California and had a very romanticized view of sailing and the sea. Then I raced the TransPac and found out that THE SEA DON’T GIVE A SH*T. Thankfully, I was under the tutelage of some very experienced sailors. I’ve never looked at the world the same. My default now is to take a ‘normal’ scenario and say āhow would that work upside down, in the dark, under water, while getting pounded by nature, during a fireā, etc.
Real life can be a whole lot worse than what you can ‘imagine’. I would suspect that Willis E. would concur with this. (OK, I am name dropping there, I don’t know Willis, but have read of his adventures at sea).
Most of the people who are in favour of wind power live in cities and rarely, if ever, see a wind farm.
ACT, says its going 100% renewable.. (ACT is the public service territory that surrounds government house Canberra)
And I don’t think there is a single wind turbine within the boundary of the ACT.
Yes Andy. The ACT could be described as a Government Funded and Approved Safe Space for our Federal Bureaucracy. And what happens if you ever try to take away any of their expensive Toys and Trinkets paid with Other People’s Money.
Yes. Toddler Tantrums and Hissy Fits.
And their Carers…The Public Service Unions… always get their Toys back and make sure the Government buys them another, even more expensive set, on top of the originals.
Justice. ACT Style. Right On. Comrade!
In Ontario, the Green Energy Act was written by Liberals influenced by David Suzuki. Here’s the history to the mess we’re in:
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/11/09/planting_the_seeds_of_green_energy.html
Liberal voters in Ontario live in cities and are out of touch with the reality of people who live close to the land and have had to deal directly with decisions made by the people they elect.
Just hours ago this story came out of CBC:http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/electricity-prices-markets-auction-alberta-1.4417616
There are over 3,000 comments so far. A quick scan will give anyone interested an impression of the raging controversy.
There is one great truth that as yet has not materialised but quite possibly could and could do so with no warning beyond a few weeks at the most.
For all the time, those 12,000 years or so past, that mankind has been farming; ie producing food, there have been Farms even when there were no Cities.
There has Never been a time when there were Cities but no Farms.
————————-
Twice in my life of 79 years I have seen major world food shortages,
In 1948 at the end of WW2 and starvation in war devastated Europe when wheat reached 25 pounds a tonne, about 2.5 times the weekly wage of the day .
And again in 1974/5 when the world went from a global glut of grain in 1967 to a global shortage of food grains in 1974.
As told to myself by a very respected grower member of the then still highly respected, sole national seller of wheat, the Australian Wheat Board, 1974 / 5 was the worst time he had ever spent out the couple of decades on the Board, trying to satisfy all those nations who were literally begging for food grains and wheat from the AWB.
It will happen again as sure as night follows day and then unless there is a rapid recovery in global supplies of grain, there will be much weaping and gnashing of teeth at the destruction of the world’s farmer’s profitability and survivability by those same ignorant, arrogant, condescending inner city, Goat Cheese Circle greens.
I also grew a lot of grain in New Zealand from 1972 and I represented Maize { Corn } growers at a national level in the 1980s .
Arable farming on any reasonable scale depends on artificial nitrogen fertilizer and it is a fact that without the use of artificial nitrogen the majority of the worlds population would starve .
We now have the ludicrous situation that the green blob are calling nitrogen poison .They have no idea that to feed over 7 million inhabitants on the earth artificial fertilizer has to be used and the increasing CO2 is also helping .
Some are so stupid that when we tell them that rising CO2 is helping to feed the world with better yields and less water ..Their response is that weeds also respond .and will smother the crops .They know nothing about weed control and think that we still out there with a push hoe .
weve got enough crap we send out to sea and the animals confined to cafos to use on soils if heat treated properly to use on farms and elsewhere. would halp a lot to allow seagrasses to regenerate also if we stopped pumping sludge out to sea. seagrass/weed helps stop sand/coastal erosion as a bonus
I read somewhere the other day, “no farms have cities but all cities have farms.” Airhead greenies are the dangerous pests of the cities!
Australia the āinnovation nationā.
Our average electricity price (effective November) is now twice the USA; AU 32c/kWh (US 24c/kWh).
Electricity retailers are avoiding a revolt by making the first x-kWh less expensive.
Yep use more and the tariff goes up!
Our competition in China pay US 4.5c/kWh.
We simply canāt compete.
Many are turning to imports or sending machines to China (like us) where we know our intellectual property will be stolen in time . . . but we have no choice.
The greens are responsible for enabling the theft of valuable Australian IP on a grand scale.
Guess what – – they donāt care because many are lawyers and public sector types living off someone elseās fortune or misfortune.
In my experience this is pretty normal. In the cities people are protected by the infrastructure, and also very much by the state. It’s understandable that they want more state power (ie socialism).
In the country, people tend to look out for themselves, and each other. They generally have fewer state supports and less infrastructure, for example all we have is electricity, and theoretically I can live without that (and did for a week after the last cyclone, but I couldn’t run my pool heater, sadly).
I’m a country lad born & bred, lived a lot of adulthood in cities and suburbs (for money), and now I’m back on the country again, albeit the other side of the world. I’d choose the country any day of the week, and vote conservative too.
My daughter just flew to the UK on her own for the first time as an adult (sort of) aged 17, on a UK passport. UK immigration almost didn’t let her in to the country. That’s the level of bureaucracy they have now. Denying a UK citizen’s right to entry to the UK for no readily apparent reason, and they get away with it. Luckily my niece who was meeting her confirmed that she was, but sheesh! My son flew to Canada on his own aged 16 to meet effective strangers (Internet friends) and nobody batted an eyelid. (we are very well-traveled as a family)
This sounds very alarming. You can get in without a passport (just say asylum), but not with a valid passport? What is this?
Of course, it is not only about what the decision is, it is also how minors are treated and how threateningly people are handled in general. The Nordic countries have a strong bureaucratic responsibility, meaning there are lots of general requirements on how people are treated by government, but it appears now the border control is one the places where everybody is considered a suspect and that is bad for the moral of those who work there. My relative who was working at the airport complained that the security has changed threatening, instead of just noting that the metal detector beeps, the personnel kind of attacks to you instead of just boringly say “may I do the manual checkup, please”.
Yeah, I find the UK security at airports to be horrendous, and I travel all over the world. Gatwick is the worst. Little Nazis the lot of em in my experience.
“Jer0me November 27, 2017 at 3:41 am”
Next time you are at the border, of any country, ask the officers yourself. They may give you an answer, they may not.
“Jer0me November 27, 2017 at 12:49 am
Denying a UK citizenās right to entry to the UK for no readily apparent reason…”
At the border you are not a citizen of any country, as you are not in a “country”, yet! You have no rights, until *granted*. You are *REQUESTING* entry. At some borders entry is granted simply with a stamp in a passport, such as New Zealanders entering Australia, others not so “easy”. It’s why the border is sometimes called “no mans land”.
So it is a fallacy that, with a passport, or even a visa (Yes really) you can enter freely into another country. Not true. Now, I say this for usual law abiding people. Criminals on the other hand seem to be able to get anywhere they please.
Bollocks.
If you are a citizen of a country, you are a citizen, wherever you may be. Now, assertion of the validity of that claim may be an issue, but was not at all in this case.
Patrick, if you are carrying a valid UK passport and are attempting to enter the UK, the country of which you are a citizen and are carrying a document which says so, what right has Border Force to keep you out?
Substitute any country for āUKā and the same applies.
“Jer0me November 27, 2017 at 3:39 am”
“Newminster November 27, 2017 at 5:01 am”
Even with a valid passport at the border to a country that you are a citizen of does NOT GAURANTEE entry. I know it may sound impossible, but it is absolutely true.
“In my experience this is pretty normal. In the cities people are protected by the infrastructure, and also very much by the state. Itās understandable that they want more state power (ie socialism). ”
I agree. People in big cities are much more dependent on government to supply their needs, so it makes sense that city dwellers would favor more and bigger government control and will vote that way.
The veneer of civilization is very thin. 1 week, perhaps 2, without grocery or fuel deliveries, watch what happens in the cities. This is not /sarc
In my experience greens strongly concentrate on areas.
The areas usually are near to highest education and far away from nature, factories, large-scale logistics, but near to significant architecture, cafeterias, bars, special shops, dance studios, art gallerys and such.
Greens tend to concentrate where the price of an apartment is pretty high per its area, and they tend to spend the money they get. They’re also young often without kids, which boosts the need for restaurants. As many of them belong to the elite even if they’re not necessarily very rich, they afford places that have nicely put public parks. They don’t like to move far, so they avoid areas with nice private gardens.
As greens themselves put it: nongreens are old, uneducated people from the countryside. All the three words are loaded with values. Young better than old person, educated better than practical working professional, and city better than horrific living in the bush.
If greens may decide, cities have expensive nice public parks, and the countryside is completely closed up and its people relocated to cities in high block houses.
Yes. exactly what I said about elitism. It’s the degree that counts, not if you are employed or useful. You read about philosophy and think you are the world pole that everything rounds.
Own goal, eh? What a joke.
For you an getting an education means becoming an elitist and reading about philosophy?
Do you think it might help with..actually, forget it.
I just did a quick trawl of some local councils in the South of Scotland:
Dumfries & Galloway (west coast rural, beef & dairy country) – no greens
Borders (east coast rural, more arable than west coast ) – no greens
East Lothian (just east of Edinburgh, rural, arable, fine malting barley country like the borders) – no greens
Edinburgh CIty – 8 Green councillors out of 63
And so it goes on, rural realists vs virtue signalling urbanites.
I also noticed that the rural areas have a fair proportion of independent (no party affiliation) councillors. Local people willing to make a contribution, and well enough known to get elected.
No independents in Edinburgh.
While it is true that most green voters world-wide are extreme urbanites (and most typically state-employed young female academics) the description of the horrors of the Australian bush is ridiculous though typical of the views of many Australians
.
I’m not an Aussie myself, but has probably spent more time in the bush than most australian townies, and I’ve found it a largely user-friendly environment. Sure it is often hot and there are crocodiles, snakes, spiders etc, but not worse than just about everywhere else in the tropics and as for mosquitoes and ticks Queensland is paradisical compared to e. g. Siberia. And there are no dangerous mammals and no dangerous tropical diseases.
Lyssavirus, dengue fever, Ross River fever. And while a crocodile is a reptile, it’s still a large, dangerous animal.
Exactly. No dangerous tropical diseases as I said. Ross River fever is unpleasant but not dangerous, Dengue fever can in rare cases be dangerous, but only with repeated infections while australian Lyssavirus has caused a total of three known fatalities, and you can apparently only catch it by being bitten by a bat.
Note: If you somehow do succeed in getting bitten by a Queensland bat, it might be a good idea to get a rabies shot. By the way this is a good idea outside Australia too, since bats can transmit rabies virtually anywhere.
By the way, the most dangerous thing in the Australian outback is probably getting lost, since the landscape tends to lack distinguishing features. Always carry a compass or GPS and a water supply when going more than a few hundred meters from camp/road/vehicle.
Tty, I would have to disagree. Although the bush is seemingly benign, it can harbour a great many dangers. Spiders, snakes, ticks that can actually kill you (albeit slowly), etc, and the deadly heat you refer to.
As for wild animals, wild pigs (boar) are not something to treat lightly.
Disturbingly, a great many aussies just disappear each year and oz is probably the only country in the world to actually lose a state leader! While many are undoubtedly taken by rip tides, I’m sure many are taken by the bush. The trouble is, we never find the bodies…
Tty – it is not just a good idea, it is absolutely essential that if you get bitten by a bat anywhere in the world that you urgently seek medical advice with the specific request that rabies immunisation should be considered. Bats are very adept at avoiding human contact and a bat that bites you is not behaving normally. There was a case in the UK of a woman bitten by a bat behaving strangely and being urgently treated for possible rabies.
If you do get bitten or scratched by a bat or any animal behaving unusually in the tropics wash the wound out immediately and thoroughly. Personally, if far from any medical help Iād be making strenuous efforts to open the wound out to make it easier to flush with water.
Rabies is definitely not something to take lightly. And donāt forget that bat or animal saliva on broken skin is also near enough to a bite.
“Moderately Cross of East Anglia November 27, 2017 at 3:23 pm”
In Aus bats are protected, and they carry a virus that is similar to rabies but is not. I can’t recall what it is called but even if you find your self being “bombed” by bat waste, seek medical advice.
Well, there has been two fatalities from spiders in Australia in the last 50 years. Bees are much more dangerous. Ticks transmit some nasty diseases, but the ones prevalent in Australia (Q-fever, Rickettsia) are not nearly as nasty as e. g. TBE in Eurasia which often causes permanent brain damage.
Wild pigs, well there is plenty of the original variety here in Europe, but unless you hunt and wound one, get between a female and her piglets or run into an adult with your car they are harmless. I certainly never worry in the least when moving through forests where they occur. I definitely get more nervous when I meet a Cassowary.
Snakes, yes, those are arguably nastier in Australia than in most other areas even though there are very few fatalties nowadays. Wear stout boots and look where you put your feet in dense vegetation. By the way I’ve run into both the brown snake, the tiger snake and the dugite a few times. Never seen the taipan though.
Odd by the way that you don’t mention poisonous comb-jellies since they are definitely dangerous and a Queensland specialty.
“Moderately Cross of East Anglia”
I couldn’t agree more. Rabies is extremely nasty.
“Patrick MJD”
Australian bats occasionally carry a lyssavirus (ABLV) related to rabies, and apparently as deadly, but there has been very few human cases reported.
Interesting question.
My bet is, that your correlation will hokd true globally.
It is also interesting to wonder what tgw deceptive impact of watching “Disney-esque” movies and TV shows might be.
Cities have outlived their purpose. They are simply dormitories for parasites these days.
“My question ā are green supporters mostly people who have an utterly romanticised view of nature? People who rarely come into contact with the real thing?
Does this observation match your experience in your state or country?”
The real thing in the US is quite different than the real thing in Oz. Unless you venture into grizzly country, or go snorkeling in places where water moccasins live, the dire threats to life and limb from wildlife are not there, or for the most part, are easily avoided. The wildlife in inner cities is far, far more dangerous. Many greens are nature lovers and spend a lot of time there. But for the most part it’s a luxurious experience (in comparison to Oz), where, for example, you drive to the river in your SUV, kayak down the river outfitted with expensive gear that makes the trip easy, drive to a restaurant to recharge and then back home to your safe space. While immersed in nature, there is virtually no threat from wildlife.
However, many urban people are clueless about nature and tend to vote Democrat, but most can’t be considered green by any means. But rural non-greens tend to vote Republican, so the same principle is at work that you described.
I would add that most greens who like to spend time in nature, do so as recreation from blue collar jobs. To a large degree they have no clue about clearing/grading land, raising crops/livestock, managing land, hunting, etc. Two entirely different things. The latter IMO tends to make one more of a realist.
I used to think they won in areas where there was a lot of mental illness, but your theory is OK too.
Correlation or causation?
In England, yep. Sums it up. We don’t have any real threats to life & limb in our fauna. A few unfortunate people die after anaphylactic responses to wasp or bee stings. We’ve only one venomous snake, the Adder or Viper, who’s bite is alleged to be more akin to a wasp’s sting.
However, the Greens are all a bunch of city kids, have never visited a farm, believe that we’d all be happy & live longer, healthier lives if we would just go vegan, wear natural fibres & at the worst, drive an EV. They believe without any doubts, everything Greenpi$$ & Fraud$ of the Earth tell them.
There are only two animals (not bacteria or viruses please note) that are really dangerous i. e. humans and malaria plasmodia.
Pretty easy to continually spook them in a quick grab digital age-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/techandscience/scientists-say-intensifying-heatwaves-will-soon-make-australian-cities-āuninhabitableā/ar-BBFLMto
and those that actually produce the wealth are noticing they’re getting increasingly detached from the reality of what produces their lifestyle-
http://www.smh.com.au/business/mining-and-resources/mining-must-compete-with-the-allure-of-facebook-and-google-says-gold-miner-20171123-gzrhl6.html
I might add that ‘climate scientists say’ seems to come from Dr Elizabeth Hanna of ANU presumably here-
https://theconversation.com/profiles/liz-hanna-18032
and note “She swapped a clinical career in in Intensive Care to health protection, environmental health and climate change”, yada, yada, as you do because there’s clearly more tax bucks and kudos in preaching than doing nowadays-
http://www.climatemediacentre.org.au/spokespeople/president-of-the-climate-and-health-alliance-caha/
Wow you track down a presumed ‘climate scientist that says’ in a typical media scary puff piece and you come up with-
http://www.climatemediacentre.org.au/about/
“We connect journalists to compelling yarns, trusted voices and fresh opinion – fast!”
So take your pick if you’re in need of one of these compelling yarnists-
http://www.climatemediacentre.org.au/spokespeople/
The correlation is that leftists mainly infest large cities, and leftists are heavily invested in the global warming nonsense.
Here in Canada we have two tribes, urban and rural. To tell which tribe someone belongs to, just mention the word moonshadow. Rurals know that on a bright moonlit night you can easily see your shadow. Urbans, who live their entire lives surrounded by street lighting, will ask you where they can download their songs.
Alternatively, you can mention the word deer. Urbans will think Bambi or lords of the forest, depending on which television shows they watch. Rurals will think freezer fillers or traffic hazards, depending on where and when you meet them.
Greens are an almost exclusively urban phenomenon. It is a political philosophy about a return to Nature, a philosophy unsullied by the bias that tends to creep in when you actually know something about the subject.
I am sure you have plenty of this same thing in Canada. I went to a grizzly bear information meeting conducted by the state of Wyoming. The meeting was in Laramie and therefore way too close to the highly urban Colorado front range. Every remark was in some way pointed at avoiding the eventual need to kill grizzly bears. The presenter was very adroit in avoiding direct confrontation but in a back handed way he said categorically there is no way the grizzly bear can reoccupy it’s original range: it would take several million bison and you would have to get rid of all the people. That was followed by a brief sputter in the room. The truth sometimes must be spoken, sputter or not.
I wrote a couple of blog entries on this a while back as it relates to the urbanites voting biases and the narrow vertical they push in their self obsessed interests under the guise of saving the planet via renewables and so on. It’s a fascinating take on physical reality, denial and self interest – the opposite of their righteous talk. I don’t think they understand scale. A grain of sand and a 50 ton boulder seem to have the same importance to them – simply words connected by action verbs. As Alice said, “Feed your Head”. Real world STEM not required in that world.
https://notonmywatch.com/?p=1151
https://notonmywatch.com/?p=1185
Eric Worrall: “Does this observation match your experience in your state or country?”
Absolutely! I’ve been saying this for years! Those who spend time in the harsh, impersonal natural world quickly lose their sense of mankind’s power and influence. The more time you spend outside, the more the natural cycles and wide variation are ingrained in you. The more experience you have, the less rare events seem novel and unusual. The more years you spend outside, the more you begin to understand nature’s resilience and ability to adapt to changing conditions.
I’ve spent about three thousand nights in a tent in the Canadian wilderness and this experience, perhaps more than my science training, has given me the background to dismiss so much nonsense from city folks prattling on about what a tenths of a degree is supposedly doing to the natural world.
Urban dwellers are used to dealing with people, and know how people work. Threats, wheedling, attractive fantasies, and bribes are their tools. In the country, people have to deal with nature; threatening, wheedling, bribing, or fantasizing do not work on storms.
As you might expect, people outside of cities have a more realistic knowledge of the natural world. They may be conservationists, but they seldom are Greens.
“Threats, wheedling, attractive fantasies, and bribes are their tools.” – city slickers ; )
Yes Eric, having lived in a remote bush mountain area on a sizeable property for 20 years, along with a scattered community, I shake my head in disdain about the preposterous notions that city based greenies have about the bush.
It’s clear that none of them ever spend time in remote bush areas away from mobile phone coverage.
Given where they prefer to live, they should rename themselves The Greys.
Yep, Michael Berkman is currently employed as an environmental lawyer at the Environmental Defenders Office, Queensland.
Specifically, heās worked on the various ālawfareā campaigns against the Adani coal mine project.
The Guardian reckons heās also an environmental scientist.
https://www.edoqld.org.au/our_successes
Prior to that he was Principal Policy Officer, Office of Climate Change, Queensland Government.
He was interviewed on their ABC last night by Karina Carvalho.
At the end of the interview, Karina provided the disclaimer that Michael Berkman is the son of an ABC employee.
Gotta keep it in the family doncha know.
Jeez Raven ya want to be careful listening to that marxist station. Never know what crazy ideas might infect you.
No wonder unions have become less reliable voting blocks. At some point they have to look around.
I have a slightly different take on why the “green” vote is in the cities.
I think that urbanites are so disconnected from nature that there is some sort of deep feeling in the psyche (whether recognize or not) that there is something deeply wrong with their environment & that people are the cause – which is true of living in a big city. Thus also why they whole heartedly buy into CAGW – the meme fits the world they live in. And they feel helpless to change it (which is true) – so they need the government to rescue them.
As has been noted in many blog posts here, CAGW’ers tend to be anti-human, when you get down to the roots of their thinking. Again, living in the city, there are too many people. It is not natural. I think at some deep level they want less people , thus the anti-human tendencies. It’s like too many rats in cage – they start to eat their own.
In rural living, you need to be self-sufficient & you rely on your neighbors for help from time to time. People are an asset, not a problem. The government is not needed to rescue you. You are grounded in the land and know real problems vs. fabricated problems. You don’t have a deeply rooted feeling that something is wrong with the environment because you are not living in some sort of urban hellhole. You are surrounded by nature. Until very recently in human history, that is how everyone lived. That is how we evolved to live.
Just my 2 cents on the situation, having lived in both urban & rural settings over the years.
Insightful comment which makes me wonder if you can sort political leanings like that based on their ultimate holiday preference. I like the great Outback, no particular timetable and free camping under the stars but I’m well aware that scares the daylights out of many urbanites and they seem to prefer flying to far off urban destinations or closed resorts all booked and sorted. Loved motorcycling in my younger days too and naturally understood Pirsig’s, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance intuitively. Perish the thought you’d have wired music inside a helmet for company.
Yes indeed. Urban folk have minimal contact with the real natural world. Their ‘experience’ with it comes mostly from TV so they are easily and constantly duped.
And when you have a mass of people living in thermostatically controlled 22 C conditions, anything outside of that range is ‘extreme’ so they are very easily fooled into believing the ‘extreme weather’ line.
Its all part of the plan – Agenda 21 – to pack the sheep into easily controlled settings.
The Scottish Parliament is elected using the Additional Member System of proportional representation. There are 73 constituencies which elect one MSP each using the first-past-the-post electoral system. In addition there are 56 MSPs elected in eight Regions. These 56 are elected in such a way as to make the overall result fairly proportional. Elections have been held in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2016. The Scottish Green Party do not usually put up candidates in any of the 73 constituencies. In 1999 they won one seat. This was in Lothian Region which is dominated by Edinburgh, Scotlandās second largest city by population. In 2003 they won two seats, one in Lothian Region and one in Glasgow Region. Glasgow means ādear green placeā and it does indeed have several large parks. But it is Scotlandās largest city by population and is hardly known for its wild natural environment. Since 2003, Glasgow and Lothian have been the only Regions in Scotland to have elected a Green MSP in every election.
The Green MSP for Glasgow Region is Patrick Harvie. Harvie identifies as bi-sexual, if that has any relevance. He seems to spend as much time, if not more, talking about sex than about the environment. Do a Google search on his name and what comes up is mostly about sex.
climanrecon
The Greens must have changed their mind in Lewes constituency as the result on the BBC website has voting figures for Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour but no Green. Anyway, the absence of a Green candidate did not affect the result as the Conservative candidate increased her majority significantly from 1,083 to 5,508.
There are currently 6 Green MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament). There is no mention on their Wikipedia pages of having attended any University for four of them. One of the four was formerly a police officer and another was a āwriter and researcherā. Patrick Harvie attended Manchester Metropolitan University but there is no mention of the subjects he studied. Wightman has a degree in forestry. And Greer studied Psychology and Politics but left University before graduating. Most of them (the six) seem to have spent most, if not all, of their working lives working for lobbying groups.
In Germany city folk embrace the return of the wolves, the sheep farmers have mixed feelings to say the very least. In the Netherlands farmers and their wives have protested against the annual starving of domesticated bovine (Heck cattle) and equally domesticated equine (Konik horses) in an undersized “natural environment” ( a man made semi-wetland (in the 60-ties where previously was a brackish sea), with insufficient feed and no predators which under the The Hague government pastoral doctrine is the apex of nature and for which negligence any farmer would be fined or prosecuted. Since the reintroduction of the European Beaver (castor) caused a headache in the defense of the dykes in the Netherlands and the reintroduction of the European Hamster (cricetus) cost a fortune (some 100.000 USD per specimen -for a rodent IUCN “least concern”-) thank goodness our regional government is unanimously opposed to a reintroduction of the otter (lutra) in Europe’s most densely populated country with the busiest railway and highway traffic.
Sounds stange. Beaver dams can certainly cause flooding but beavers only tunnel when building lodges, and if a dyke is so weak that it can be undermined by a beaver lodge, then it needed strengthening anyhow.
I live in Brisbane and the Greens were pretty smart this campaign. They hardly mentioned environmental policy. Instead they focused on kicking big business out of politics, and attacking the liberal party and one nation. BTW I’m not trying to defend Greens, they put the mental in environmentalist
I have a friend (ex-green) who thinks the same. He says that being a green nowadays is not a matter of politics, it’s a diagnosis.
In British Columbia, Canada, the only 3 Green party candidates come from the urban areas – with all of them from Vancouver Island and surrounds. So. They must think their tree-lined streets constitute nature… However, the 96% of the province that is reliant upon reality and resource development/management is overwhelmingly supportive of the only party which at best, can be described as not obstructive to resource development. Unfortunately, when I say 96%, I mean 96% of the land mass of the provinc, not 96% of the people… The majority of the people live in the densely populated SW corner of the province and do not vote in favour of any party which supports resource development – despite being intense consumers of resources!
The disconnect between people in urban areas and the reality of what sustains their lifestyle is increasingly more and more depressing.
I think you got a bit carried away about the perils of Queensland north of Brisbane. I lived 1,000 ks north of Brisbane for eight years and visited the north often after that and never encountered any of those nasties you describe.
The Greens recently easily won a by-election for the Victorian inner Melbourne seat of Northcote. This seat has been held by the Labor Party since being created over 100 years ago. Victoria currently has a Socialist Left, Labor government, with extremist policies on Green issues like renewables and social and gender manipulation. Obviously not extreme enough for the inner city concrete Greens though.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/greens-labor-battle-for-the-seat-of-northcote/news-story/c86c6031082b6990cfed9d2f1cb23b24
Wow- looks like the lefties gave the Conservatives and the racist-wackjob party a damn good dicking.
One Nation out-polled the Greens by 40%…..
Amazing result for a small party trying to establish itself……..
Only the LNP got pounded….. totally justified, because they no longer represent conservatives.
but hey, don’t let facts get in the way of your mindless rant.
Whoās ranting? Iām ecstatic! The One Nation nutters have managed to depress the LNP vote so much so that theyāre on track to lose 8 to 9 seats. That really is something for an opposition party and really the worst possible outcome for the LNP. At least if One Nation got one seat the public would see what a useless bunch of nutjobs they are. This way their mind boggling incompetence will at least not be on show until the next election. Personally I canāt wait until Labour fulfills their progressive agenda next term with a majority in their own right!
One Nation will have at least one member, Greens probably NONE.
Katter maybe three !
ALP may not get enough seats to form a majority.
The rascist wackjob party dick themselves, they don’t need anyone’s help.
It’s always amazed how Greens don’t live in the environment, and those who do live in the environment don’t vote Green.
Who’s ranting? I’m ecstatic! The One Nation nutters have managed to depress the LNP vote so much so that they’re on track to lose 8 to 9 seats. That really is something for an opposition party and really the worst possible outcome for the LNP. At least if One Nation got one seat the public would see what a useless bunch of nutjobs they are. This way their mind boggling incompetence will at least not be on show until the next election. Personally I can’t wait until Labour fulfills their progressive agenda next term with a majority in their own right!
“Labour (sic) fulfills (sic) their progressive agenda next term with a majority in their own right!”
I presume Bruce you refer to that progressive, socialist agenda we now see being imposed in Nicaragua?
The wonderful thing about Australia is you can spell it labor or labour and fulfil or fulfill and nobody gives a toss.
And yes, I was obviously referring to Nicaragua on a thread about Australian politics.
Concrete jungles to be precise and they are about as well grounded to reality as the fictional characters in the capitol of the Hunger Games story.
It is certainly true in Scotland where the only real support for greens comes from the very middle of Glasgow and Edinburgh. In other words, those most isolated from the appalling affects of the bird-mincers and social isolation caused by rising transport costs imposed on motorists by greens who profit out of subsided city transport.
Sorry … I forgot … there is a significant group of country dwellers who do vote Green … these are the retirees from Universities and other public sector jobs who then travel hundreds of miles into the wilderness, spend a fortune of money gained from preaching to everyone else about conserving energy … to build expensive and therefore highly energy consumptive houses (for the building materials) … from where they bombard the internet with green propaganda telling everyone else to stop consumption.
Progressive enclaves with little actual exposure to wildlife and nature?
Writes itself from there.