What Is It With Miranda?

Miranda Divine's columns of late have been more irritating than is usual. Today's is no exception. Titled "Green Tape Can Endanger People's Lives," she starts off by bagging Peter Garret's views on uranium mining.

HERE we go. Peter Garrett, the ALP's great white hope for winning the greenie vote, is defying Kim Beazley's attempt to gently change Labor policy against uranium mining. Despite a global re-examination of nuclear energy as a possible cleaner energy alternative, Garrett refuses to budge.

No surprises there. Garret's been against mining uranium for his entire career. It's unlikely he'll ever change*. She goes on ...

It is hard to dislike Garrett. But he, along with the soft, utopian environmentalism that has so successfully infiltrated and warped 21st-century thinking and every level of our government and bureaucracy, are nonetheless dangerous.

She then attempts, and fails, to prove just how dangerous Garrett and his ilk are by referring to the coroner's enquiry into the Canberra bush fires of 2003, in which four people died.

On Friday [the coroner] adjourned the enquiry for the last time to consider her recommendations.

But no matter how much legalese and bureaucratic nonsense is employed to obscure the truth, two unpalatable facts remain. First, years of government kowtowing to green demands has meant NSW's burgeoning collection of national parks were mismanaged to the point where they became fire hazards and local bushfire brigades were hamstrung by green tape. Secondly, a preoccupation by the ACT Government and its agencies with media management and political spin led to the deaths of at least two people.

Divine produces little evidence to back up her first claim. She suggests the ACT's Emergency Services Bureau is influenced by 'green' groups, based on a reference to an endangered frog in a meeting prior to the fires arriving in Canberra. Nothing about how the national parks are mismanaged or how local bushfire brigades were hampered by 'green tape.'

The bulk of her article is mostly about the second claim, where she details the failings of the government agencies in informing the population of the dangers of the approaching fires. It has nothing to do with any 'green' issue.

This seems to be typical of her recent writing. She starts the article with comments and claims that are not relevant to, or proven by, the remainder.

*Footnote: Miranda has traditionally been a 'greenhouse' sceptic. It's interesting that she now acknowledges carbon dioxide is a 'greenhouse' gas.

[The fires] spewed 18 months worth of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere ...

Like many conservative writers, Miranda acknowledges climate change now that there's a conservative push for the adoption of nuclear power generation.