Richard Black is cranking up the pressure on biodiversity, today repeating from Japan the killer line that a fifth of the world’s species are under the threat. And on Today, James Naughtie simperingly accepted the Cleggeron line from Caroline Spelman that another £100m needs tipping down the aid chute to assist with the biodiversity nonsense. His only concern was whether it was enough.
Meanwhile his business BBC colleague Richard Anderson has filed a trio of reports here, here and here which are plainly part of the same concerted indoctrination effort. They are key statement of the BBC’s creed on this topic, So I have been looking into them.
The first point to note is that they are a parrot-like regurgitation of a report compiled by the accountants Price Waterhouse Cooper for the World Economic Forum. This purports to be “independent”, but is anything but; a moment’s reading shows that it is a one-sided homily in favour of the UN’s alarmist stance on both biodiversity and climate change that includes claims that (for example)because of climate change, no coral will be left in the world by 2050. When accountants take up a topic so seriously, hang on to your wallets! And as PWC say themselves in this report, they see this whole areas an an “opportunity”, that is, a new chance to extract as much money as possible. The fact that Mr Anderson accepts this report’s findings so sweepingly is an indication of the bankuptcy of so much of the BBC’s journalism.
For the sake of brevity, I have focused in the next section on the detailed claims by Mr Anderson in the second report of his trilogy. First, he suggests that Scottish fisheries have declined and fishermen are being forced to retire because of biodiversity loss. Oh yes? Actually, the crisis in North Sea fishing to which he refers has another, simpler cause. It’s called the Common Fisheries Policy, enforced with jackboot ruthlessness by our masters in Brussels. Richard North chronicles its horrendous effects here. Mr Anderson moves on with his scattergun to say that the Malaysian island of Sabah is also similarly being mindlessly despoiled. Well actually, Sabah is one of the poorer areas of Asia, and its inhabitants need better ways of making money. Strong conservationist policies are in place, but the idea that it can remain as an unspoiled, pristine back-to-nature idyll would I suspect be somewhat challenged by its natives.
Moving on, Mr Anderson then asserts:
Another sector that has been hit by damage to the natural world – often referred to as biodiversity loss – is tourism. For example, lions across Africa have disappeared from 80% of their former habitat, hitting game reserves and associated businesses.
Rising temperatures caused in part by greenhouse gases have also seen glaciers and snow coverage shrinking, hitting winter sports resorts that are seeing ski seasons cut short.Rising sea temperatures and water levels are also affecting coastal regions and small islands such as the Maldives, and particularly those businesses dependent on coral reefs, 20% of which have disappeared in the past few decades alone.
There is so much wrong with this that it is difficult to know where to start. Climate alarmist models have been predicting the end of ski-ing for 20 years. FACT is that 2009-10 was one of the best ski-ing seasons ever with so much snow that resorts could not cope. FACT two is that, much as greenies might want wild lions wondering around everywhere, lions and people do not go together in lots of areas of Africa. Wiki suggests that there are between 20,000 and 47,000 pairs, and in the Masai Mara and elsewhere, excellent conservationist policies are in place. I accept that more needs doing in this respect, but that is not a reasion to end industrial production as we know it. FACT three is that rising sea temperatures and water levels are not affecting the Maldives despite claims to the contrary. And FACT four, corals reefs – another perennial greenie yelp point – are sensitive organisms. They suffer bleaching for a variety of reasons, but then usually recover. But every bleaching incident is recorded by greenies as a calamity, and each (just like Arctic melting) provides constant cod “evidence” for them to parrot their claims.
On such ludicrous, slender foundations, Mr Anderson moves on to his main claim, that big nasty multi-nationals are causing trillions of pounds of damage to the environment and therefore endless new regulation is required to quantify, measure and hamper what they do. His “assessment” of alleged damage is, of course, conducted on a kangaroo court basis. The reality is, as he grudgingly points out, that many companies do have conservationist policies and are pursuing them with sensible vigour. As Matt Ridley so brilliantly pointed out in The Rational Optimist, those multi-nationals that Mr Anderson so reviles have worked pretty effectively over the years to provide the needs of most of the world’s burgeoning population, and in doing so they have affected miracles of matching supply with demand. And we and they don’t need new layers of biodiversity politicians and police to bedevil our lives. The outrage is – as the interview with Caroline Spelman today underlined – that the BBC is working hand in glove with government to create those new forces of repression.