"Environment" Is Now a Meaningless Construct

The Greens Have Fouled Their Own Nest

Greenism has become so extreme in New Zealand that it has lost its way as a credible political force.  The Green Party now depends substantially on a protest vote of former Labour Party stalwarts who no longer find that party to their more radical taste.

The term "environment" and the phrase "environmental protection" has become so inflated in the hands of the Greens that they can no longer define it in any meaningful sense, except to say that it embraces and encompasses everything.  As the hapless Dennis Denuto so eloquently put it: " It's. . . um. . . the Constitution of Australia. . . . It's just the vibe of the thing.  It's all parts of it.  It's the vibe of it. . . .   It's the Constitution. It's Mabo.  It's justice.  It's the vibe.  No that's it.  It's the vibe.  I rest my case."

One struggles to imagine a more inept and inane response than Denuto's were members of the current Green Party of Aotearoa to be asked, "What is the 'environment' "?  It's so big, so vast, so important that it's everything.  "It's all of it.  It's the vibe."

The Government in New Zealand has put forward some modest proposals to restrict the more draconian provisions of the Resource Management Act ("RMA").  This pernicious act, under the guise of environmental protection, places huge impediments over the development of land in New Zealand.  In most cases land development is subject to an objection process which allows objectors to claim all kinds of environmental degradation if the development were to proceed.

But the Greens have so inflated the concept of the "environment" that it now embraces personal aesthetics and tastes and preferences of everyone else--or at least the aesthetics of Greenist fanatics.
  A breach of someone's personal aesthetic taste can be cast as environmental degradation, subject to the provisions of the RMA.  Environmental protection has been so inflated that it now includes the view out of my back window.  A change in the view can be construed as environmental degradation.  The end result is that non-owners of property are given de facto property rights that trump the actual owners' property rights.

Here is one of the Green's leaders, Metiria Turei expressing the opposition of the Greens to the modest proposed changes to the RMA.

The Green Party has criticised proposed changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA), saying the overhaul would leave many people out of the consultation loop. . . . The proposed changes are expected to reduce unnecessary red tape and speed up construction, which could help ease Auckland's desperate housing market. 

But Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei says the changes will leave too many people without the means to voice their opinion on changes in their neighbourhoods.  "The major part [of the legislation] will be locking people out of consultation and having a say," Ms Turei told the Paul Henry programme this morning.

"There are people who are affected by the decisions that other people make, they should have the right to say [something] about that."

The "environment" is now anything which affects other people.  It's the vibe, people.  That's it.  It's the vibe.  You, silly reader, thought the environment was flora and fauna, clean water and fresh air.  Not at all.  It is also aesthetics and tastes and personal preferences.  It's the vibe.

One blogger, based in Dunedin, provides an  example of the extremist idiocy to which Greenism has led New Zealand.  

This is already a real problem here in Turei’s electorate of Dunedin North, where people oppose building on the other side of the harbour to where they live (and other places) because they don’t like the look of it.  And it could get worse.

The Dunedin City Council is currently proposing a ‘second generation’ district plan. A proposal in that is to designate large areas of the city above the 100 m contour as a ‘significant landscape zone’. And that will significantly restrict what you can do with your land if it’s above 100m in those zones.  A lot of Dunedin is over 100m. . . .

The local Green dominated council and the Green Party want everyone to be happy before anything is built, and if someone doesn’t like the look of something in the distance then they can do more than have their say – they can stop people doing normal sorts of things with their own land.

The environment,  in the messianic hands of the Greens, has become so inflated, so broad, so all inclusive of human activity, that it is now effectively a meaningless construct.  A concept that embraces everything in the cosmos is vacuous, beyond definition.  It is also a religion--and a primitive, pantheistic one at that.