Fires Expose Green Folly By Viv Forbes

     Green Folly locked up 11% of Australia in a tinder-box of bushfire fuel, much of which is now burnt or burning. Green Folly closed forest tracks and gates, expelled foresters and timber-workers and prevented property owners from removing flammable fuel from their own land and adjacent roads, parks and forests. Those responsible for these follies should face Class Action. Green Folly promotes electric vehicles but not one fire truck, dozer, water bomber, helicopter, ambulance or naval vessel ran on batteries. They all used hydro-carbon fuels - diesel, petrol or avgas. And with so many power lines down, electric toys could not have recharged their batteries anyway. Green Folly believed that widely scattered wind turbines, solar panels and their spider-webs of transmission lines would continue to produce power in gale-force firestorms and thick smoke. Many will be burnt. Blackouts are inevitable. Green Folly promotes “green” building materials like timber which adds fuel to fires while using fake CO2 scares to denigrate steel and concrete which won’t burn. For decades, Green Folly opposed every new dam proposal and wasted stored water on another Green Folly – “Environmental Flows”. Dams were emptied, farmers suffered, towns ran out of water, food prices increased and some fire-fighting water bombers had to take water from private dams. It was criminal Green Folly that babbled on about “the Climate Emergency” while they sponsored forest conditions that caused agonizing deaths for so many innocents - residents, firefighters, live-stock, koalas and other native animals, birds and insects. Australia cannot afford any more Green Follies. Politicians must stop sacrificing Australians on the Green altar.