On this day in 2014 the Queensland Resources Council (a club for the miners etc) decides to try to smear… WWF. Why? Because WWF has the outright temerity to say all might not be well with the Great Barrier Reef and that it ought to be protected a bit more. And here we are.
On same day – Milman, O. 2014. Mining industry accuses WWF of lying about threat to Great Barrier Reef. Guardian, 20 March. The Queensland mining industry has launched a blistering attack on WWF, accusing it of running an untruthful Great Barrier Reef campaign that could jeopardise the reef’s world heritage status. Michael Roche, the chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council, said he has noticed a “dramatic change in approach” from WWF since it joined the Australian Marine Conservation Society to launch the Fight for the Reef campaign.
Classy.
What it all means – well, those with the money want to keep making money (doh). And they regard environmental regulations as unnecessary red tape. And they want to make it harder for civil society to advocate for these things. They’ll often pretend to be in favour of “protection” as long as it is vague and “balanced.” What makes this incident interesting is that the mining lobby isn’t just going after the “crazed hippies” but as establishment an outfit as WWF – albeit by insinuating that they’ve fallen under the spell of crazed hippies.
We can laugh, but this sort of attack has been, historically, a tremendously powerful tool in the armoury of those doing “predatory delay.”
So glad I did not breed. The second half of the twenty-first century is going to make the first half of the twentieth century look like a golden age of peace, love and understanding. If, in fact, we have another thirty years to begin to find out…