Tim Blair;

By modern standards, my grandfather would probably be considered an environmental criminal. To clear land for his farmhouse in northeast Victoria — and for his milking sheds, pig pens, chicken sheds, blacksmith shop and other outbuildings — he cleared hundreds of trees. And he cleared thousands more for his wheat fields, cattle paddocks and shearing sheds.
 
Old man Hobbs would probably be found guilty of cultural appropriation too, because he adopted the Aboriginal method of land-clearing. He burnt all of those trees. He also established fire-delaying dirt paths through surrounding bushland.
 
This was once standard practice throughout rural Australia, where the pre-settlement indigenous population had long conducted controlled burns of overgrown flora — known as ‘fuel’.
 
As those fires roared through Australia’s eastern coast, killing residents and volunteer firefighters and destroying hundreds of houses, a not-unrelated court report appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. It told the story of 71-year-old John David Chia, who in 2014 paid contractors to cut down and remove 74 trees on and around his property.
 
The judge in this case noted that Chia’s primary motivation for the tree removal was ‘his concern about the risk of fire at his property’, but found also the Sydney pensioner’s actions had caused ‘substantial harm’ to the environment. Chia ended up copping a $40,000 fine — more than $500 for each tree.
 
Similar legal rulings have become frequent in Australia, as a kind of ecological religious fundamentalism has taken the place of common sense. In 2004, Liam Sheahan was charged $100,000 in fines and legal expenses after clearing land around his hilltop property in Reedy Creek, Victoria. Five years later, that property was the only structure left standing in the area following the state’s deadly Black Saturday fires.
 
In 2001, electricity transmitter TransGrid sensibly bulldozed a 60-metre clearing beneath high-voltage power lines in the Snowy Mountains. The company took the view that high voltages and close-proximity combustible material is not the best combination, but duly lost $500,000 in fines and settlements paid to the New South Wales state government, which described the actions as ‘environmental vandalism’. Two years later, the journalist Miranda Devine reported that the TransGrid clearing became sanctuary for kangaroos, wallabies and three TransGrid staffers who were desperately attempting to create a wider firebreak against that year’s bushfires.

Drinking straw claims another life.

“Psst! Wanna buy a box of straws? Getcher sixty piece picnic cutlery here!”

Ottawa to ban single-use plastics as early as 2021: government source. Plastic straws, drink stirrers, plates, cutlery, plastic bags all on the list. PM, environment minister to announce plan in separate locations on Monday. https://t.co/Y3fLJNKEnm

— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) June 9, 2019

Fragging wing-nuts.

Rachel Carson was an American hero. In the early 1960s, she was the first to warn that a pesticide called DDT could accumulate in the environment, the first to show that it could harm fish, birds, and other wildlife, the first to warn that its overuse would render it ineffective, and the first to predict that more natural means of pest control – like bacteria that killed mosquito larvae – should be used instead.
 

Unfortunately, the PBS documentary neglected to mention that in her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, Carson had made one critical mistake – and it cost millions of people their lives.