Opher in Green – 1974
I have always been green. It is the only way to be.
I am a great believer in science and technology. I believe science will dispel superstition and technology will develop the tools we need to make a better world. There is nothing wrong with science and technology.
The problems around the world have been created by politicians, businessmen and religious fanatics. They have guided us along the path to environmental destruction in pursuit of power and wealth. We always seem to fall for the same thing. We elect or follow tyrants, sociopaths and psychopaths because they appear to offer clear, unambiguous, strong leadership. Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Thatcher, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Tony Abbott – It’s about time we elected people who cared.
In Australia, Brazil, Borneo, Tasmania, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Africa and a hundred other places they are chopping down the forests for short term gain. What is lost will be gone forever.
Tony Abbott with his strip mining and selling of gum trees to be pulped for paper and exported to China is destroying the planet for a quick buck.
Outside Lima they are dumping refuse and toxic waste on the shore to pollute the oceans rather than spend money on disposing of it properly.
In the Gulf war they used uranium tipped shells as armour piercing weapons without a thought for the long term effects of fissionable material.
In Africa and India they are hunting the elephant, tiger and rhino to extinction for ivory and bone for quack Chinese medicine. Rhino horn is made of keratin – the same substance as hair and nails. Chewing your own nails would be every bit as ineffective.
In South Africa near Capetown they are dumping raw sewage from the vast townships directly into the sea.
Our population is out of control – seven billion and heading for catastrophe. Yet still the average number of children in many third world countries such as the Yemen is seven! It is unsustainable!
I am green because I believe it is in our ability to deal with these problems and build a world based on intelligence and logic, with room for wilderness, wild animals and unpolluted land, sea and air. All we have to do is to get the greedy, selfish lunatics out of power.