The Greens need to be idealistic really tho’ John. Ecological sustainability is a serious issue that mainstream parties just don’t feature. So the Greens come along and refuse to compromise on certain fundamentals. They then draw votes from that part of the population who understand that the issues they’re set up to address are important and being ignored.

Other’s have been attracted to them as well including idealists of the traditional left whose policies are about social equity rather than sustainability. Then there’s identity politics because Bob Brown is gay. Anti-americanism etc.

They don’t make good Green policy partially because many of them aren’t really thinking about it most of the time. They’re thinking about ‘luvvie’ stuff like affirmative action, gay marriage; alternatively they’re thinking about labour stuff, lots of unionists in the party.

Because they haven’t yet had to run anything larger than a council it hasn’t dropped on them how shithouse their policies are. I should say a good chunk of them are thinking about green stuff , however. Fair’s fair.

I agree with your concern, but other than the precautionary principle, which I hate, I think we just have to muddle along. Certainly anything found to be dangerous needs to be banned if that is what the cost-benefit analysis suggests.

Paul, I’ve got no overwhelming problem with regulating to ensure people don’t take stupid risks, though I hate the state infantilising everyone. But making people liable for things they don’t do is wrong. If you are worried about flags of convenience then ban them from shipping here, and will you please pay my share of the increased costs of imports.

I’ve done work for the Greens and don’t regret it. I was one of the original members of the Qld Rainforest Conservationist Society and still remember standing beside Aila Keto while stuffing pamphlets into envelopes. I even voted for them on occasion. But the Greens are too much like libertarians, too idealistic and with too much of a revolutionary bent. Idealists of any colour are dangerous.

Yes, the laws exist, but the EPA is a paper tiger. I wrote up a submission on the dangers of landfill dumping of electronic goods and the EPA dismissed it as alarmist nonsense. 3 years later Europe and many other regions were passing laws mandating proper disposal of these items.

Another big problem is attribution, it can be very difficult to determine the full impact of pollution, that can take decades to uncover, and then the relevant entity may no longer exist. For example, there is increasing evidence that diabetes epidemic is in part, perhaps largely so, arising from accumulations of particular toxins. The law cannot address this at present because how do you cost the treatment and loss of lifestyle arising from such a condition? There is now incontrovertible evidence that a number of pesticides can induce Parkinsons Disease yet these pesticides are still widely used.

I concede this is a very difficult problem but it is one we must solve. Just because the current legal framework cannot address is no reason to abandon the problem. That is taking the easy way out.

Cynically, the dark side of this is the emergence of a Greens as the major minor party in Aus. If we continue to throw these sorts of problems in the two hard basket expect greater votes for the Greens. Now that is out of the frying pan and into the fire.

What if it would cost Shell $10 billion a year to make their fleet as safe as possible, but accidental spills from an unsafe fleet would only lost them $1 billion worth of oil? Then in a sense they might well “intend” to lose a bit of oil every now and then rather than making the outlay to maintain a safe fleet, and that will be the most economically sensible decision for them to make. This is where the law must step in, unless we as a society are also happy for them to make that trade off.

Wrong question really. who would waste all that oil on purpose? The issue with oil spills is liability for accidents. Should accidents be illegal, as compared to compensatable?

There are innumerable examples of things which are illegal even though their direct consequences were not intended.

Who would injure a worker on purpose? Who would ‘waste oil’ on purpose? Who would have a car accident due to failing to pay proper attention on purpose?

Yet all of these things happen, and we as a society often choose to impose some penalty on those who do them. As with OHSW laws, environmental laws are to a large extent directed towards ensuring that possible polluters do everything in their power to avoid polluting. Holding the oil company liable would ensure that they take a very proactive role in ensuring that everything that their agent/subcontractor/anonymous-person-from-bermuda-who-just-transports-the-oil does is as safe as possible.

What about this proposition: you are arguing in favour of permitting large polluters to outsource liability to third parties and then rely on ignorance/lack of control/jurisdictional issues to protect themselves.

That’s pretty much what our law does now. If you make a mess in australia you have to clean it up. but the law does allow some pollution to occur and while that is an externality, it is one we accept as a society because, for example, we want to be able to afford electricity.

Wrong question really. who would waste all that oil on purpose? The issue with oil spills is liability for accidents. Should accidents be illegal, as compared to compensatable?

Do you see nothing wrong with making Shell (say) liable for an accident caused by someone else transporting oil to sell to Shell in Australia?

Well that might be SL’s point. People will always act their own interests and no law on earth can change that. Aside from laws everyone agrees are morally necessary, why are we fighting markets that will exist with or without sanction?

Your caveat covers the field, I’m afraid. Does anyone NOT think that a law against dumping loads of oil across pristine wilderness is “morally necessary”?

If you are saying that there are many areas where there is no moral imperative and the law should just butt out, I totally agree. But I disagree with the example picked above about shipping, and the conclusion drawn from it.