As fires rage in many parts of Australia, and common-sense humans correct Climate Change Cultists’ errant and dumbfounding claims that the blazes have been caused by “man-made global warming” rather than many of the dozens of people police arrested on charges of arson, another huge problem has come to the fore.
It’s the problem of feral camels, an issue that pits animal lovers against native Aboriginal settlements, as well as causing cognitive dissonance for many environmentalists who seem to worship nature, but who also blame camel flatulence for being a driver of the dreaded “Climate Change” monster hiding under their proverbial beds.
The problem has seen a government-ordered mass slaughter of the camels, which was just conducted over a series of days by snipers in helicopters. And it’s got many people at odds. As AFP News reports:
Aboriginal leaders in South Australia state said extremely large herds of the non-native camels had been driven towards rural communities by drought and extreme heat, threatening scarce food and drinking water, damaging infrastructure, and creating a dangerous hazard for drivers.
According to the Manchester Evening News (UK), “The carcasses will be left to dry off before they are burned or buried.”
How pleasant. That ought to be terrific for local health conditions and seems a bit at odds with the worries of Aussie Climate Cultists who wanted the camels killed because of carbon emissions and methane/flatulence from the beasts.
The main problem the camels presented appears to have been (and still is in some regions, as this cull might not be enough to satisfy the government) their demand for water and the contingent movement of camels into residential areas to not only fight for resources but destroy government-run roads and private property.
Marita Baker, a board member of Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land (APY), told The Australian:
We have been stuck in stinking hot and uncomfortable conditions, feeling unwell, because the camels are coming in and knocking down fences, getting in around the houses trying to get water through air conditioners.
But some, including a Climate Cult member, offered their own “world-aware” reasons. Says The Manchester Evening News:
Climate change campaigner Craig Hill (Tweeted): '10,000 camels are being culled in Australia as their flatulence supposedly contributes to climate change.'
And he went on to conclude:
Considering that human population increased from 1 bil in 1804 to 7.5 bil in 2020, has the increased human flatulence also contributed?
And, considering that he connects the great cull of camels to their flatulence, then he mentions human flatulence, is one to read advocacy for a human cull in his statement?
If so, he would be in line with many eugenicists and “population control” advocates who have, since the turn of the 19th into the 20th Centuries, wanted a “Great Cull” of humans to “save the planet,” keeping the population below 500 million souls.
It’s all about crisis and control, be it concerning humans or camels. And so the answer in Australia is to destroy thousands of these unowned camels.
Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” was child’s play compared to this alleged problem.
Or is it that hard to handle?
Having visited Australia and traveled the Outback and Queensland for nearly two months, I’ve had some on-site experience studying the environment and land-use problems the nation faces. And, while they are complex, they are not unsolvable.
In fact, the problems stem from government management of land, roads, and water rights, and a lack of private property and liability claims.
And this is the kind of problem the United States already solved years ago in the so-called “Wild West.”
Australia’s vast interior is mostly desert, but a giant aquafer exists beneath the entire continent, and has allowed ranchers to live in the area and hydrate their cattle with water drawn from the aquafer through their famous “bore wells”. In many cases, these ranchers own so much land, they round-up their herds via helicopters; the towns are so far apart, they fly sick or injured people to hospital via their “Royal Flying Doctors” and teach kids over a system that’s evolved from radio (“The School of The Air”) to the internet, with children never sitting beside each other, but sitting in their homes, hundreds of miles apart.
And camels were introduced to the Australian continent in the 1860s by people who saw advantages in their ability to go long distances without needing to drink. But since then, escaped camels have multiplied, and since Oz has no native predators save crocs, which hang out on the coasts (and, sometimes, along inland rivers emptying in or near the coasts), the camels have bred plentifully.
But this is not necessarily a problem. In fact, there’s a market for camels as work animals and rides, and there’s a market for their meat. The problem is that the feral animals roam over government-run lands, and, just like disputes have arisen over the Aussie government managing water access in favor of large, politically-connected corporations, and just like there are major problems with the Aussie government running lands that it does not clear of dry brush or work to make firewalls (something Aboriginal tribes used to do as part of their rituals), the lack of real private property in areas where the feral camels breed and roam has inspired this mass migration problem of the beasts into populated areas and, now, the destruction of private property.
The answer is not to wait until the government calls for a cull of some arbitrary number of feral camels. The answer is to allow for a private property system that attaches “carrots” to owning/ranching camels and “sticks” to recklessly allowing them to invade another person’s property or harm his or her water supply.
Skeptics have a hard time imagining how migratory or roaming herd animals could be managed in such a way, especially over long distances, but free market economists know that this “problem of the commons” was already solved more than a century ago in America. In their excellent and meticulously researched book, “The Not-So Wild, Wild West”, Terry Anderson and Peter Hill detail the awesome ways in which western US ranchers, gold miners, and farmers created their own system of property respect, dispute resolution, and restitution, all in territories that were not states at the time and were, essentially, “hands-off” by both the federal government and any form of regional compulsory, tax-funded agency.
When it came to livestock, the ranchers, who often had to drive cattle hundreds of miles, or who had to work out group grazing rights, figured out systems like branding to denote property and allow for liability should someone’s cattle range into private land unopen to grazing.
The Australian camel problem is a result of government mismanagement and a lack of this kind of private property management. It’s been made worse by fires that, themselves, have been made worse by government mismanagement of vegetation on public lands.
And, though a private property paradigm cannot stop mishaps, a real, functioning system of property ownership and liability long ago would have incentivized systems to mitigate risk and increase profitability so that people have their own reasons to manage camel populations, keep them from trampling other peoples’ property, and make sure that water claims are not disturbed.
It’s a safe bet one will not hear this from most members of the Climate Cult, but that’s to be expected. To many of them, man is a disease, a feral animal that, like the camels, must be culled by the wondrous destructive power of government.