Winston Churchill famously wrote that a fanatic
is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject
I thought that as I read about the terrible fires sweeping through Australia. In an area north of Melbourne, fires have killed 100 people, per this BBC article.
The death toll from fires in southern Australia has reached at least 108, the worst in the country’s history
There are many reasons for these fires, including the fact that Australia is a very dry continent and that they have had a serious drought. But here is the most proximate cause from that same article
Arsonists responsible for lighting the fires could be charged with murder, police have said… The BBC’s Nick Bryant in Sydney said police suspect that in at least one case fires have been restarted by arsonists after being extinguished by firefighters
Thus not only are at least some of the fires being started by arsonists, but they are even being RESTARTED by arsonists after being extinguished.
So what is the response of the greens, when faced with a significant humanitarian tragedy (100+ dead, and many more seriously burned, not to mention the destruction of entire towns that have been burned to the ground with the associated destruction and dislocation), KNOWING that drought and arson were significant contributing factors?
The leader of the Green party, Bob Brown said summer fires would get worse unless Australia and other nations showed more leadership on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “It’s a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority our need to tackle climate change,” he said.
That is the definition of a fanatic, tone deaf to the sensitivities of the dead, the reality of the situation, and unable to change the topic.
[Comment deleted.]
For years I kept an open mind re. greenhouse gases and anthropogenic global warming. In the last two or three years I’ve come to believe that GW is the royal scam. One has to ignore serious evidence that indicates, for one, that CO2 follows GW by hundreds of years and inexplicable cooling trends in the face of ever increasing by-production of the gases, for another.
Crooks and boobs, crooks and boobs.
Even if someone was a believer, it was in incredibly poor taste to push the topic in the face of death and arson, to boot.
Well put. The insensitivity and the tone-deafness of the greens and AGW boosters has been evident in the few comments I have heard and read from them. On the Sunday morning after this I had to walk away in disgust from someone who crowed triumphantly “Now the deniers can’t say global warming isn’t happening.” None of the tragedy and pain and loss mattered, just the opportunity to try and impose his point of view.
It is disturbing to know that a leftist first response to a tragedy is going to be “see this proves we should have more power”. I remember the infamous, “chickens coming home to roost” rhetoric following 9/11. I think this is the reflex response of people indoctrinated in the post-modernist mindset that holds politics to be the highest good and the center of all human existence.