This is tin-tacks taken back from the Green Blob, but cheer it on. The Abbott government apparently wants to use the money to protect rainforests, instead of given to green-bureaucrats. Enjoy the apoplexy among greens and environmentalists. Excuse me, I think your priorities are showing!
The Federal Government has slashed funding to a key United Nations environment agency by more than 80 per cent, stunning environmental groups ahead of a global climate change summit in Peru.
The ABC has learned the Government cut $4 million from the UN Environment Program (UNEP), which provides advice on environmental policies and climate change negotiations.
Instead of giving $1.2m a year, we are giving $200,000. True to form, the green-blobby is “stunned” and immediately responds with a higher ambit claim. There is a scale for everything, and too much is never enough:
Environmental groups are stunned, especially because according to UNEP’s Voluntary Indicative Scale of Assessments, Australia should have contributed around $2.2 million next year.
The money is going to the environment, and environmental groups hate that:
Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the Government had to “make choices in a difficult budget environment”.
“I would imagine that most Australians would see putting $12 million into coral reef protection within our region and combating illegal logging of the great rainforests of the Asia-Pacific as a pretty good investment compared with $4 million for bureaucratic support within the UN system,” Mr Hunt said.
The appropriate response when the government takes money from bureaucrats and uses it to protect reefs and rainforest is to call it “anti-environment”, “anti-nature”, “anti-science”, and “denier”.
The Greens leader, Christine Milne, labelled the funding cut “a slap in the face”. “Australia is a global pariah on the climate front,” Milne said on Tuesday. “This sleight of hand is just extraordinary.”
The denier-pariahs want to do what?
She accused the government of using money taken from UNEP to fund its commitment to stop illegal logging of rainforests, made at the World Parks Congress in Sydney in November.
What’s more important than rainforest to a Green? Our social standing among the global thought police!
“This is really Australia on a world stage behaving badly on the climate. We are so out of step as a nation with the rest of the world. We are not only risking the environment, but Australia’s standing in the world is seriously diminished by the Abbott government,” Milne said.
Keep talking Christine.