Megan Evans, who writes her PhD at the Aus­tralian National Uni­ver­sity, has pub­lished a nice arti­cle on her blog, try­ing to out­bal­ance a rather poorly inves­ti­gated arti­cle pub­lished in the Guardian on an Aus­tralian coal ter­mi­nal. As she says:

I never thought I’d be in a sit­u­a­tion where I felt the need to defend Gina Rine­hart. I’m pro-mining tax, love the Great Bar­rier Reef, pro-divestment and pro-safe cli­mate. But, I want an informed debate on these issues – and in the case of the pro­posed Abbot Point coal ter­mi­nal devel­op­ment, we need to have a decent under­stand­ing of the envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies which guide the envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment process.

While I am not into the details of this project, the exam­ple illus­trates that the dis­cus­sion about bio­di­ver­sity off­sets has often become a hus­tle and bus­tle of quickly picked argu­ments instead of a “well-informed debate”. Thanks, Megan to add seri­ous­ness to this!

To read the full arti­cle, please visit: http://mcevansresearch.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/gina-vs-the-reef-a-plea-for-informed-debate-on-biodiversity-offsets/comment-page-1/#comment-1943