Recently, I challenged Dr Ian McLean, one of two Green candidates in October's local body elections, to examine reasons for their electoral failure. I proposed the Greens have cried wolf too often.
In attempting to portray worsening, on-going environmental disasters, they've destroyed their credibility.
They appear committed to a scenario of environmental doom that the rest of us see as unrealistic and wrong.
Dr McLean's response (The Sun, November 8), is I have '...raised several points worth debating...”. Then he avoids the debate all together.
The Greens continue following a recipe typified by Stanford University's Dr Steven Schneider in 1989. 'We need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public imagination... we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have...Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest,” he said of scientists trying to communicate complex issues.
Fear tactics, misinformation and overstatement have led the Greens to a political dead end. Some recognise this.
The UK Guardian's George Monbiot confessed the Greens anti-nuclear position is wrong and misleading. Monbiot states: 'We [Greens] have done other people and ourselves a terrible disservice”.
With review of Green propaganda underway, it's worth considering their whole ethos - the environmental state of the planet is bad and getting worse.
Readers should read Bjorn Lomborg's game-changing book ‘The Skeptical Envoronmentalist'
I've great respect for Dr McLean's qualifications, but I'd value an acknowledgement that Green environmental concern is a masquerade and their underlying political purpose is wealth redistribution.
Ex-Australian Prime Minister John Howard recently said: 'climate change has become a substitute religion for people with a nakedly political agenda, which has less to do with saving the planet than it does with reining in economic growth and wealth redistribution” (UK Telegraph November 8, 2013). Or, as HL Mencken said: 'The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it”.
Greens haven't got broad-based support or captured public imagination. I wonder if Dr McLean and his Green colleagues will change tactic accordingly?
M Houlding, Ohauiti.