The Green Cancer In Government – UK Environment Agency Putting Birds Before Humans

The main railway line between Exeter and Plymouth swings in the wind because the UK Environment Agency could not act to protect the line until it had carried out an impact assessment on local bird life.

The stranglehold that environmentalism and being Green has on government departments in the western world has reached epidemic proportions of stupidity, or to put it another way the clowns have taken over the circus.

Much of Britain, and especially the south west has been submerged in flood water for weeks now, the Somerset Levels are not far off of joining Atlantis.

There are many complex and interlinked reasons as to why the floods have been so bad, one of the most significant is the lack of dredging of the rivers which in the case of the Somerset Levels stopped some 25 years ago. Dredging while solving one problem upstream can lead to further problems downstream caused by the increased flow of water as it heads to the sea.

On the never ending news reports from the flooded areas many people have been heard to say that the Environment Agency is putting birds before humans, now a group of Peers has revealed that in a meeting they were told by Environment Agency officials that no steps to protect the only rail link between Exeter and Plymouth could be taken, until an impact assessment had been carried out on the local sea birds.

The Environment Agency has been accused of putting the needs of wildlife before those of humans in its management of storm-hit places like Dawlish in Devon.

Days before the recent winter storms, the agency is said to have told peers that it could not act to protect the railway line at Dawlish from the sea until it had studied the impact of any improvements on local birdlife.

The line at Dawlish was this week severely damaged by the surging sea amid winter storms, leaving much of Devon and Cornwall cut off from the rest of the country by rail.

This highlights the problem that irrespective of the political party you voted for, the Green cancer of environmentalism is all pervasive in departments like the Environment Agency, DEFRA and stupidly named Department of Oxymoron Energy and Climate Change.

Any organization ultimately carries out the will of its leader, in this case a former Labour MP who was made a life peer in 2005, Lord Smith of Finsbury.

Lord Smith is a devout believer in the Green boondoggle of Anthropogenic Global Warming, he had this to say on the Green debacles of Climategate and Glaciergate in 2010:

He said “sloppy and irresponsible” emails sent by scientists from the University of East Anglia in a scandal known as “climategate” was being used by sceptics to cast doubt on the whole argument.

He also said a mistaken claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the Himalayas will melt by 2035, known as “glaciergate”, was being used by critics to suggest that the UN body is not to be trusted.

“Let’s not allow one or two errors to undermine the overwhelming strength of evidence that has been painstakingly accumulated, peer reviewed, tested and tested again, and that shows overwhelmingly that our emissions of greenhouse gases are having a serious impact on the earth’s atmosphere, and that as a result climate change is happening and will accelerate,” he said.

Lord Smith buys into the whole Green dream,  being a socialist he would really, as the Green scam has declined only socialists with their anti capitalist agenda still fervently support AGW .

Lord Smith told The Telegraph: “I do want to both meet local people and see what their experience has been, and I also want to talk to our staff, who have been working flat out for so many weeks, and say a very big thank you to them.”

He wants to see what their experience has been?

Priceless, their homes have been flooded, their lives turned upside down, businesses and livelihoods ruined, months of stress, worry and inconvenience lie ahead and Lord Smith can’t work that out for himself.

Still should make for some interesting television on tomorrow evenings news.

Last month, a group of peers met officials from the Environment Agency to urge more action to protect the main railway line in Devon and Cornwall from the elements.

The peers claim that the agency dismissed their concerns and was more concerned about bird life than protecting the railway.

Lord Berkeley was one of a group of peers who met Paul Leinster, the agency’s chief executive, on January 23.

The officials told the peers that they had plans to shore up the coastline at Dawlish, but would have to take into account the consequences for local birds.

The Environment Agency planned to spend a year studying the potential impact on the local wildlife before even considering protecting the rail line that links Devon and Cornwall with the rest of Britain, hardly doing the job it is supposed to do, protect taxpayers with their tax money.

The impact of Green dogma that everything humans do is evil, has reached epidemic proportions when even a Labour Peer notices it:

Speaking in the House of Lords on Thursday, Lord Berkeley, a Labour peer, questioned the agency’s priorities.

The peer said: “Has the Environment Agency got its priorities right when it comes to dealing with the floods?

“They are going to study the bird movement on the beach over the next year to see whether they can move any sand back there. Are we looking after birds before humans?”

Lord Berkeley is not the only Lord to have noticed the birds before humans agenda of the Environment Agency:

Lord Berkeley’s criticism was echoed by Lord Jenkin of Roding, a Conservative who served in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet.

He said that the agency’s handling of flooding in Somerset suggested it cares more about wildlife than humans.

He said: “There have been many complaints by the residents of the Somerset Levels that the Environment Agency seems to be prioritising birds over the needs of people. What is the Environment Agency’s answer to that charge, which seems to be very widely felt by the people in the area?”

The time has come to remove the Green cancer from government and the voters and taxpayers should get what they voted for and paid for, an Environment Agency that acts protect the people, their homes and their ability to earn a living.

As Lord Smith has failed to deliver this and prioritized wildlife over people his should be the first of many heads to roll at the Environment Agency.