In March 2016 I requested nominations for the Environmental Arsehat of the Year, and you happily complied by providing many excellent suggestions.
I now request that you vote on these nominations using the polling widget that follows a brief description of each nominee and why they’ve been suggested by the CB.com community. Once the votes are tallied, I’ll post the ‘winner’ (loser) in a new post in early 2017. Happy voting!
The nominations (in no particular order)
- Dennis Lowe, Barbados Minister of Environment and Drainage: Nominated for intentionally destroying the last mangrove on the island. Despite being privately protected and offered for donation to the national park system, the Minister would prefer to destroy the wetland by preventing inflow of saltwater and dumping raw sewage into it.
- The Norwegian Government approved wolf shooting in that country, with more than 11,000 Norwegian hunters lining up for shooting permits. In Norway, sheep run free everywhere and farmers strongly refuse to use electrified paddocks.
- Matt Ridley has a PhD and is a popular science writer. He is also a fervent climate change denialist (writing for the Times and guesting elsewhere). He preaches a brand of conservation optimism and neoliberalism that is not borne out by facts.
- Greg Hunt, former Australian Minister of the Environment, for rolling back environmental protection in Australia by decades, and actually believing that he did a great job.
ConservationBytes.com 