Fed Farmers President on Environmentalists

Language can be all important in debates, and the certain environmental groups have done very well at protraying themselves as pro-environment and anyone who disagrees with them as anti-enviornment.

However in reality most New Zealanders are envrionmentalists, and the professional activist environental groups no more represent the only pro-environment viewpoint that Destiny Church represent the only Christian viewpoint.

Therefore when Charlie Pederson attacked environmentalists, he was not attacking the environment, but what he no doubt sees as the equivalent of the Destiny Chuch. And in fact the comparison is not unfair, as Pederson calls them “Missionaries who despise mankind”.

Pederson says the solution to environmental challenges is to “encourage innovation, science and our own good scientists to uncover the solutions to our problems” and not “a road that will lead to the capping of food producers’ productive capacity.”

My major gripe with some of the environmental groups in NZ is that they are more into preservation than conservation. They want to freeze NZ in a time-warp. Every new dam is oppossed. In fact every new source of energy is oppossed, as if somehow this will force us to use less and revert to pre-industrial times. Every mine is oppossed. Every major RMA consent is pushed out so it takes year not months.

True environmentalism is about sustainable development. With rare exceptions, too many environmental groups have forgotten about the second word.