Friends think they’ll vote Green. Some already have...
I got big issues with the Greens and it’s not about climate change.
It’s the road to hell… paved with good intentions an’ all.
How can I talk them out of this? Should I want to?
The Greens have made major blunders that have been hugely consequential. And not in a good way.
To take just two:
1. The US presidential election of 2000: Ralph Nader represented the Greens in Florida. He won 99,000 votes. That took the state and all its electoral college votes from Al Gore and gave them to George W Bush. That one state was enough. It gave the victory to W. Bush.
Had Gore won, the strategy post 911 (we know because Gore was clear at the time) would have been to chase Osama Bin Laden with the Special Forces. There would have been no Iraq war, no “forever war” in Afghanistan, no space for ISIS to grow. Probably no Syria catastrophe.
Nader denies he affected the race in Florida. But that’s nonsense. He most certainly did, his Greens most certainly did. They’re just embarrassed to admit it. Alternative histories, counterfactuals, are usually debatable, but in the Florida 2000 contest, it’s crystal clear. Nader and the Greens cost Democrats the presidency and cost the world the decades of the War in Terror.
This is a major blunder by the Greens. It’s telling that they don’t admit it.
2. Anti nuclear. Back in the seventies the world was keen to develop nuclear power. If we had, we would by now have ten nuke stations for every one we actually have. That alone would have been enough to have carbon-free electricity. But the Greens, mainly via Greenpeace, scared the world into shitting down nuclear development. They were pretty much anti nuke no matter what, but then accidents at Three. Ike Islamd and Chernobyl sealed it for them nuclear was “too dangerous”. But it’s not. Deaths from nuclear energy are vanishingly few. It’s clean and reliable.
We should today have “net zero” electricity. The reason we don’t is the Greens.
If you’re thinking of voting Green think about these two major blinders. In Australia it’s highly unlikely that the Greens can ever be a viable government. Voting for them you deny their closest ally. The Labor Party your vote. You don’t want another Gore v Bush situation.
Nor do you want to stop movement to nuclear, do you? It’s a “climate emergency", after all. Why deny a major source of tried and tested energy because of Green scaremongering?
Major strategic blunders aside, what of the policies of the Australian Greens?
Here are some of the problematic bits, all from their website.
Quotes from Greens Australian website are indented. My comments are flush left.
ANIMALS
24.An end to commercial horse racing.
25. A ban on greyhound racing.
The UK predictions. Australian will be somewhat similar. But both US and Britain say that nuclear must be part of the mix. Greens are violently anti-nuke. Why?1. Net zero or net negative Australian greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 or sooner.
8. Electoral reforms that would enable:
- all Australian citizens over the age of 16 to be eligible to vote;
- all people incarcerated, irrespective of sentence length, to be eligible to vote
- proportional representation in the House of Representatives and local government
- fixed three-year terms for the federal House of Representatives;
2. Why should criminals have a vote?
3. proportional representation leads to gridlock
4. 3 year terms seems too short. Also: only one term?
- A moratorium on the further release of GMOs into the environment until there is an adequate scientific understanding of their long term impact on the environment, human and animal health. This includes the removal as far as possible of GMOs from Australian agriculture while the moratorium is in place.
- A rigorous assessment of the health and ecological risks associated with already released GMOs
All the science on GMOs finds them safe. They help feed the world. They especially help the poorest in the world. See my posts about GMOs here.
3. There is a strong link between the mining and export of uranium and nuclear weapons proliferation.
6. Nuclear power is not a safe, clean, timely, economic or practical solution to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
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9. Gender affirming medical care including access to surgical procedures, prescribed hormones, products and services to achieve authentic gender identity and expression all to be provided at no out of pocket costs.
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