Fellow travellers, there's no denying that our unique Australian environment needs protecting and nurturing. And wherever possible introduced pests should be compassionately dealt with so that they do not damage the delicate local ecosystems.
But being such a life affirming soul, I still find some of these culling techniques a
little upsetting. Take, for instance, the use of carbon dioxide to euthanase cane toads,
which has just been approved by the Department of Environment and Conservation.
As a spokesman for the rather insensitively named
Kimberley Toad Busters said, CO2 is "a great way of putting toads to sleep very quickly and not ever having them wake up".
While I do find this method somewhat unsettling - although ultimately justified - when applied to non-indigenous amphibians, I feel much more at ease when imagining its use in solving an analogous but
even more pressing problem: the invasion of conservative climate change denialists.
These poisonous creatures have wrought havoc on the previously stable Australian media ecosystem over the last year or so. I can recall when they were pretty much confined to
Quadrant and the News Limited rags. But now they seem to be much more numerous and dispersed. Even the ABC publishes their toxic
planet hating diatribes!
These invasive pests need to be dealt with swiftly and decisively. So why don't we use the very effective carbon dioxide solution described above? They are such fans of the gas, and encourage its unfettered production. So I think we should give them their wish, hold them down and
pump them full of it!It would be such a fitting end for them, as well as a highly constructive use of such an otherwise toxic compound. I mean, ultimately carbon pollution would be being used to ... reduce carbon pollution. It's a very elegant and satisfying solution to this very serious problem, don't you think?
