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An Australian judge ordered a halt to the construction of an offshore natural gas project because the company running the project neglected to perform all the consultations with interested parties required to meet environmental requirements. If you read the entire dry, boring, citation-heavy opinion you would never know what the missing consultation was all about. The developers neglected to consult with the Custodian of Whale Dreaming who asserts that Spirit Whales will be injured by the project. See, this summary of this article.
I think it is right and good that administrative law requires considerations of actual, substantive environmental harms and injury to substantive community interests. For example, I would oppose paving over the Alamo or Yorktown or digging up an established Native American burial ground to build a theme park centered on sex, guns, and whiskey or a toxic smokestack plant (well, the toxic plant is out for sure). But deference to the sensibilities of Spirit Whales who, according to native Australian fables, tell the fish of the sea what to eat, when to mate, and where to migrate strikes me as rather problematic.
If somebody presents a report about environmental impacts, we can examine the evidence offered. And if the issue is a site’s historical or cultural significance, we have written historical context, archeological evidence and the degree of vocalized community support to guide decisions about protecting certain sites. But how does one evaluate the testimony of someone who talks to Spirit Whales? Is there a backup custodian or some record of methodology or documentation?
The Biden Administration has already enshrined “indigenous knowledge guidance” for all federal agencies. So, perhaps we should expect similar regulatory adventures here in the US soon. Because I may be applying for a permit to build a new deck, I guess I should leave seeds and fruits out for the local Spirit Weasel, wood nymphs, or the Invisible Garter Snake who might otherwise inspire adverse testimony before the planning board. I will keep receipts of the fruit and seed purchases as evidence of conciliatory gestures should the need arise.
Discussion (32)
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Aren't we all, in a very real sense, living on land appropriated from wood nymphs and Spirit Weasels?
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You cannot say those things around 12-year-old boys.
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I'd invest in that. On the Kentucky side of Cincinnati, right?
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Before I commented that maybe, just maybe, you might be hitting the bourbon even harder than me, I went and checked out the link.
This, apparently, is not satire or drunken foolishness. This is real. An indigenous Australian woman who pretends to believe that she has conversations with mythical whales that don't exist got a judge to shut down a 16 billion dollar drilling project.
I used to think this sort of thing was funny. Until an autistic Swedish teenage girl decided to skip school, and a few years later the European energy sector collapsed.
In this day and age, adults would appear to be mythical creatures like the Spirit Whales mentioned in the article. Adults no longer exist, apparently. The judge should have laughed her out of his court room. But instead he gave her the power to dictate Australia's energy policies.
Here I thought I was drinking too much bourbon. Silly me. Apparently it's not enough.
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For me, the weirdest part was the lengthy judicial opinion that treated this like a mere regulatory oversight as if they failed to do a required report or failed to fill out a form on time. If you search the opinion, the words "spirit" and "whale" do not appear!!
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