As TDB has been banging on since its creation 3 years ago, and as I have for 10 +years, the planet is melting far faster with greater dangers than the IPCC has predicted…
Soaring ocean temperature is ‘greatest hidden challenge of our generation’
IUCN report warns that ‘truly staggering’ rate of warming is changing the behaviour of marine species, reducing fishing zones and spreading disease
…we are in serious, serious trouble right now and the radical reforms necessary to make life possible here become more difficult every day.
It does not surprise me that activists like Russell Norman and Kevin Hague quit Parliament, the vested political interests that can hide a mass water drinking poisoning are simply too embedded into our political infrastructure to be able to defeat inside the system, but like Norman, Hague leaves a massive hole in the Greens.
The mass influx of blue green Identitarian millennials from Wellington who read the Wireless and Spinoff religiously dominate the Greens now and have reduced protest to an aesthetic. This lack of ideology is open to manipulation by the free market and Hague leaving removes any real idealogical rudder to the party.
The blue-green watering down of the activist edge the Greens once had is still being challenged by some within the party (Marama Davidson’s upcoming trip to Gaza is a glaring example), but when your largest voting block are user-pay Gen Y’s with no idealogical compass, the truly big issues like how the planet survives the next 20 years are less important than being liked on social media.
We need a far more radical green left agenda being promoted than the political establishment is currently allowing for and the danger for the establishment is that the very environment around us will radically change before it does.
Maybe NZ really will need to wait until the sea swallows Wellington whole before we can start on actual change?
The Greens (I’m a supporter but not a member) are caught between two opposing pressures here. One is the need for radical change, which Martyn rightly says is more urgent than ever; the other is the need for some kind of credibility with the electorate – most of whom are rather conservative, poorly informed about the sciences, and unaware of the extent to which the current economic system is broken and unsustainable. The Nats and their allies have sought – largely successfully – to paint the Greens as ‘loony left’ happy-clappy types with no understanding of the real world. This is the facile stereotype which the likes of James Shaw are trying to overcome. Not an enviable task. I suspect it will take a major slap in the face – such as a series of massive floods and other adverse climate events – to wake people up. The trouble with the climate crisis is that it is all about probabilities and frequencies, and humans are not good a dealing with stuff like that.
Yep graham is right,
I and others were all Green Party members until we founded an environmental NGO in 2001and went somewhat political then, and we were forced to resign as a green members in 2002 because Green Party was afraid of being sued as their name was attached as parties to any Environment court issues we were fighting at that time.
So yes they are more exposed than our Incorporated Society was then believe it or not.
I n was slightly afraid they went a trifle overboard bon some earlier polices like reducing shower water flow and other similar over reaching mandatory rules then as it affects to many poor people who can not afford these shower heads and other measures they wanted to make mandatory then.
Incidentally I use the same bath water for two weeks simply by placing Hydrogen peroxide in the water and use a brief shower to wash before a soak in the bath now called “Hydrotherapy” commonly used in good hospitals’ now to speed recovery from cancer & surgery.
I am green today and think about cutting carbon use every time I do things so it’s a state of mind we need changing not “mandatory compliance rules” here!!!!!
As we need to give choices not a belting over the head here to get folks onboard.
I had the good fortune to get to know Kevin when we both lived on Waiheke Island. A more genuine, sincere person would be hard to come by in my opinion.
Parliament will be a poorer place, through Kevin’s absence. However, Forest & Bird will be much richer for his dedicated input and management.
Go well Kevin. Stay strong in your values.
Where do F&B stand on 1080?
F&B collaborate with Fed Farmers on a pro-1080 propaganda site. One page on that site still implies 1080 is used in Aotearoa (and almost nowhere else) because it only kill mammals:
“1080 bait has been used on a small scale in a number of countries, including Australia, the United States and the Galapagos Islands (Equador) [9], but its use has been limited because of the need in these countries to protect native mammals. New Zealand, however, unlike almost all other countries, has no native land mammals (except bats), but a very large number of introduced, highly destructive mammalian pests, including possums, rabbits, rats, stoats, ferrets and feral cats.”
http://www.1080facts.co.nz/overview-of-1080.html
Even DOC has admitted that 1080 kills native birds eg Kea:
http://qttr.at/1gtm
1080 is what chemo is to cancer and trapping is the scalpel. If we are serious about pest eradication we would coordinate 1080 drops and trapping on a national scale in conjunction with fenced off habitats where native animals can hide out till the drops are over. But that’s if we’re seriouse about rehabilitating aotearoa
Heaven help the Greens when Catherine opts to retire. But with her fighting spirit as an intense and constant focus the left lives on in the Greens, as before, with a Coromandel heart.
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