Protesting against laws by cutting trees at a time when each needs to be preserved is nothing short of disaster. This can no way be termed as civil disobedience since it is resulting in murder with death to the trees!
Australian farmers are chopping down thousands of trees every day in a dramatic protest against laws intended to curb the country’s fast-rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Fed up with government restrictions on the use of their land they started with one tree on Sunday, two on Monday and three yesterday, about 2,000 farmers began a campaign of killing trees that they have pledged to continue until the authorities relax land-clearing laws.
If the disagreement drags on, thousands of trees could be felled in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The Government says that the strict land-clearing laws are necessary to preserve forests to soak up carbon dioxide. Without legislation, the Government claims, vast areas would be cleared to increase acreage of arable land.
On the other hand the farmers insist that they have been trying for five years to have the land-clearing laws changed with no response and so have had to resort to this campaign.
Illegal land clearing has been an acute problem in the large states of New South Wales and Queensland. A WWF study in New South Wales estimated that in the seven years to 2005, 80 million reptiles and 13 million birds had been wiped out because of loss of habitat. About 340,000 hectares of land were cleared in Australia in 2005.
It’s a sad state of affairs in a country, which has already started witnessing the harsh effects of global warming with severe droughts. Even then they do not seem to realize that their short-term goals will make them dig future graves.
Image credit: Darijus Strasunskas
Source: Telegraph