Links to nuclear industry exposed!

First published 21 May 2006 in response to false claims about Landscape Guardian Groups

Landscape Guardian Group comes clean

An article published in the Sydney Morning Herald in May 2006 claimed that there was an interstate and international conspiracy of Landscape Guardian groups and that they are linked to the nuclear industry. Previously, claims have been made about links to the coal industry.

For the first time, we can reveal the Molonglo Landscape Guardians links to the wicked fossil fuel and nuclear industries – a relationship that readers will be shocked to know goes back over 40 years! That's right…40 years!

Our Ace Reporter, R.D. Herring has taken up where SMH journalist Wendy Frew mysteriously left off and is ready to crack this conspiracy wide open. Wendy was obviously too timid about providing explicit details, but Herring fears nobody! Dates, incriminating photographs and full and frank admissions have been gathered and laid bare for all to see.

“I woke up on Friday and discovered I was involved in an international conspiracy”

Until the article by Wendy Frew, It's an ill wind…, appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Molonglo Landscape Guardians President Margaret Ritchie claims she was unaware that she was involved in an international conspiracy.

“It was news to me,” she said. “Then I started thinking about it and realized that we were up against some top flight operators in Frew and the wind industry jockeys. They obviously know something we don't”.

Ritchie, pictured right, says she did not know that the MLG was, in fact, part of an umbrella group for the fossil fuel industries (although we think the photographic evidence at right gives the game away).

After meeting on Saturday morning to workshop the “problem”, the Molonglo Landscape Guardians executive decided honesty was the best policy. In the interests of an open an honest debate, they are now ready to disclose their associations with the nuclear and fossil fuel industries and encourage their detractors to do likewise.

Vice President caught dipping her toes in to the nuclear pond

Molonglo Landscape Guardians' Vice President, Wendy Bell , has admitted that 40 years ago, as an 8-year old child, she swam in the waters of the English Channel outside Dungeness nuclear power plant (pictured right).

She has admitted to being a direct beneficiary of the nuclear industry at that time.

“The sea temperature was bloody cold around Dungeness on the Kentish marshes near where I lived. All the local kids used to swim in the ocean outfall of the nuclear power plant because it was lovely and warm”, she said.

Bell (now nick-named ‘Glow-in–the-dark' by her friends) says that she wishes she had been more careful now that this connection has been exposed by the SMH and commentator Clive Hamilton.

“If I knew in 1962 that swimming in that warm water would somehow preclude me from taking part in a fight to save my home and amenity in 2006, I might have thought twice” However, in an attempt to avoid responsibility for her actions, Bell said “I blame my parents”.

MLG Secretary linked to “wicked” coal industry

The Molonglo Landscape Guardians Secretary, Ros Bush, has a more recent connection to the coal industry which began 20 years ago

In 1986, she worked within two kilometres of the Morwell Open Cut Mine (pictured right) in the Latrobe Valley. Her place of work, a commercial printer, was within full view of coal trains that took the coal from the mine to the furnaces yet she persists in denying a link. When pushed, she cracks but steadfastly denies being a "king-pin" in the fossil fuel operator.

“The place I worked for printed docket books for the SEC, and a few other odd jobs. I only worked there a couple of years, ” she said in an attempt to clear her name.

Clearly, Bush was a beneficiary of the coal industry 20 years ago, deriving an income from a company that provided printing services to the fossil-fuel power industry. Unbelievably she insists that this should not prevent her from fighting an “inappropriately sited wind farm” now.

However, in a startingly frank admission, she said that the research undertaken by SMH's Frew was incredible.

“How she can join the dots going back all those years is unbelievable. I take my hat off to her [Frew] – she has joined dots that I didn't even know existed”, said Bush.

MLG President was “bagman” for fossil fuel player

Perhaps the most damning revelation is that MLG President, Margaret Ritchie, until recently was employed by fossil fuel retailer, Country Energy.

“I was only doing my job,” she protests.

Ritchie's “job” can now be exposed as the payroll manager for the organization, a role known colloquially as the “bagman”.

“Sure, I made sure the right people got paid, but only after they put in their timesheets and overtime claims,” she said.

Ritchie has since left Country Energy and says that if she had known that her work in the Queanbeyan offices would have brought the MLG into such disrepute, she would never have exercised her democratic right to protest.

“It's obvious to me now that any connection to legitimate businesses and organizations are a liability. I was a fool to think that earning a wage and paying taxes would entitle me to participation in a debate about putting an industrial power plant in my quiet neighbourhood”, she said.

Still in denial – current links to the fossil fuel industry exposed!

While the MLG executive say it has been cathartic to get their past nuclear and fossil fuel links out into the public domain, they remain coy about their current links to the fossil fuel industry.

While visiting the home of MLG Vice President Bell, we noticed that she has electricity connected to her home. As our camera caught her trying to hide the evidence (see right), an unrepentant Bell tried to brush off questions with a “I'm not alone – doesn't everybody do it? ”.

We also noticed that all three “Landscape Guardians” drive cars and quizzed them about this. When confronted with the evidence, Ritchie admitted that she had put fossil fuel in the tank of her small 4 cylinder car (pictured above). She too used the excuse that “everybody does it”.

Bell has a pet donkey “Oatie”, pictured left, whom she denies is a contributor to the emissions problem facing the world. She says that the methane emissions from Oatie are “minor”. On the other hand, Secretary Ros Bush has admitted that her three horses are major contributors.

“Especially that gelding,” she said. “He's a shocker. I've tried cutting down on the molasses, but it doesn't seem to help.”

Recklessly, Bush says she has no intention of ridding herself of these methane-belching nags any time soon. Two of the culprits, who between them have produced a staggering 56 years worth of methane, are pictured at right.

Incredibly, all three women reject the idea that their current connection to the fossil fuel industry should stop them from fighting the 60 turbine wind farm planned for the nearby ridges.

They also expect us to believe that they would rather be doing anything else than fighting the imposition of an industrial wind plant in their neighbourhood and say they only got involved after a wind farm developer announced their plans. This is typical of the sort of excuses that other "Landscape Guardians" have tried to use, but none of it stands up to scruitiny. Clearly, there is an elaborate and well-planned operation that spans the beaches of Dungeness in the UK, the Latrobe Valley and probably the ANSTO research facility at Lucas Heights in Sydney. The excuse that people have moved jobs, moved countries, retired, changed careers does not remove the links. There can be no other explanation for the connection between these people.

Let's get serious …

What is going on here? Why have wind industry apologists launched such personal and vindictive attacks on individuals and grassroots community groups?

It has got nothing to do with the fantasy of an international association of anti-wind/ pro-nuclear campaigners. There is no such thing. These are nonsense claims that are not worthy of publication in a serious newspaper. Publishing conspriacy theories about shadowy international networks are really scraping the bottom of the barrel. The only way to respond to this fiction is with ridicule.

The motivation behind the SMH article is that things aren't going all the way of the wind industry. They, and the consultants and wonks who rely on it for an income, are scrambling. What has them upset is that the Federal Minister for the Environment, Senator Ian Campbell, is responding to the growing outcry from the community about the obnoxious activities of the wind industry in their neighbourhoods and the failure of some State Governments to support their consitituents.

And what terrible thing is Senator Campbell proposing? Merely that the views of local communities be considered in the location of wind farms, and that there be a national standard for the siting of these monster turbines. How does Dr Clive Hamilton, the author of something called The Wellbeing Manifesto argue against the proposition that empowering the community who face the behemoth of corporations is anything but a good thing? Or is Hamilton only interested in empowering communities when the thing they are battling coincides with his view of the world?

It is unfair to single out Hamilton for criticism because he is not alone. In the past, local Landscape Guardian community groups have been smeared with similar claims by others, including Hamilton 's sometime collaborator, Dr Mark Diesendorf. At that time we were accused of being a front for the coal industry. This is another fiction, but let's look at some facts.

Diesendorf runs a private company, Sustainability Centre Pty Ltd, and earns a living by promoting renewable energy. Hamilton is the director of The Australia Institute. At least two of the directors of The Australia Institute earn an income by promoting renewable energy. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but in the interests of full disclosure of connections and associations, these things should be mentioned. Hamilton and his co-horts are very keen to make repeated and false claims about links between local community groups and “anti-climate change sceptics”, but are less keen to announce their own connections to the renewable energy gravy train.

For the record, nobody in the Molonglo Landscape Guardians is making a brass razoo out of fighting the inappropriately sited industrial wind plant in our neighbourhood. In fact, it is costing us our personal time and resources. Can Hamilton, Diesendorf, or any of their associates and people they support put their hands on their hearts and say the same thing?

And what are we to make of the part played by Wendy Frew and the Sydney Morning Herald?

Frew claims that the Herald conducted some research while compiling this story. What research? She obviously spoke to Hamilton, and Chris Riedy of the Institute of Sustainable Futures (look at the staff list to see what a cozy circle of friends it is). She did not speak to the Molonglo Landscape Guardians. She seems to have spoken to the President of the Taralga Landscape Guardians, who do not have a website. It appears she spoke to two upset individuals near Bungendore who are not members of our group nor, as far as we know, members of any other local Landscape Guardians group.

From this information, she concocted a hatchet job that was intended to smear Landscape Guardian community groups by linking them to “the nuclear industry”, so-called “discredited environmentalists” and “anti-wind climate change sceptics”. Oh yes, and if you believe it, we have a direct line into the Cabinet Room of the Federal Government (we wish!). If Frew was really interested in fair reporting, she would have at least attempted to speak to representatives of the community groups she later crucified.

Frew implies that her article is based on independent research by the Herald, when it is clear she has done little more than accept at face value the oft-voiced assertions of two or three self-interested parties while failing to disclose the pecuniary interests those parties have in the renewable energy and wind-energy sectors. The article made no attempt to distinguish between the work of the growing number of Guardians groups, preferring instead to mislead readers that simply going by the name of ‘Landscape Guardians' is, in itself, proof of her claims. This is the worst sort of deception and simply not worthy of a prestigious newspaper like the Sydney Morning Herald.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect is that a week earlier, Clive Hamilton and Andrew Mackintosh, writing in the name of The Australia Institute had an opinion piece published in the Canberra Times in which they said that disinformation was crowding out legitimate debate. They then launched into an invective of personal abuse against individuals who are fighting wind farms in their neighbourhood. Apparently, we're all a bunch of naïve bumpkins who deserve to have the full effects of global warming shoved down our collective throats as punishment. Within a week of calling for a halt to "disinformation", Hamilton re-enters the fray saying that he believes "there is a network of anti-wind activists associated with climate change sceptics who are fuelling the fires of local opposition".

Here's a newsflash for you, Clive: it is the activities of wind industry developers and their shonky behaviour that is fuelling the fires of local opposition. Nothing else.

We couldn't agree more with Hamilton and Mackintosh about disinformation crowding out legitimate debate. Obviously we disagree on what constitutes disinformation because we think that personal attacks on individuals who have already been done over by wind farm developers and ludicrious conspiracy theories are a distraction from the main issue which is industrial wind turbines and the corrosive behaviour of wind farm developers. It also stifles legitimate questions about the true effectiveness of wind turbines to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

We are not anti-climate change sceptics. We are not anti-renewable energy. We are anti-bullshit.

And where is the wind industry's lobby group, AUSWEA, in all of this? Why haven't we heard some soothing words from their spokesperson? Or is it just that we can't see the Ventriloquist's lips moving?

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