Dirk Flinthart's totally unsustainable whimsies

(Desperate, but funny!)

Since then, I've moved on down to Tasmania with my little family. We're pretty primitive down here in Taz. Heck, we don't mind admitting it. Everybody knows we're all inbred hicks, right? Forever strapping ourselves to trees, trying to save the damn Franklin, making cheese out of organically grown goat smegma and all that kind of thing. And I've gotta tell you, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of "environment" down here, either. Not the kind of "environment" you get with lots of modern development happening --- because if the truth be known, "development" isn't happening much down here any more. They keep shutting the mines, reducing the heavy industries, and they even seem to have forgotten to keep exploring for more minerals. Globalisation at work, apparently. Awfully hard on a little backwater of a place like this.

(rather good!)

Still, I will say this: you can drink the water straight out of the springs and rivers around my place. The trees look damned nice too. Come to think of it, you can swim in the sea and the fish that you catch around here are pretty damned tasty. We may not be able to afford a proper environment here in low-employment Tasmania, but from what I can see, the local nature is still looking good.

Can development be environmentally sustainable? I don't know. Go ask somebody with a lot of science up their arse. I'm just a bloke who has opted to live as far away from development as he can get, without having to change his name to "Rainforest Dillweed" and grow a bunch of stupid dreadlocks. But ultimately, I think I might be able to point you in the direction of the answer. The best clue I can give you comes from a little newspaper article which nicely illustrates the way that the forces of Development and the forces of the environment get along together:

"1995 -- In July, French president Jacques Chirac awarded the Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, the nation's second-highest military order, to Major General Jean-Claude Lesquer, for commanding the troops that sank the Greenpeace environmentalists' protest ship in Auckland, New Zealand, harbour in 1985."

Boom boom! See you in a month!

PS: Did everyone remember to send George Bush a packet of pretzels? Keep those donations rolling in!