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Great only 40,000 emigrants per year, + the ‘domestic’ human production machine, that is only the infrastructure of the Hutt Valley per year?
So what is the number of hospital beds, houses, schools ‘we’ need to build per year to accommodate this many people ?
Or nearly 2x Palmerston North per 3 years
Or just over 2/3 a Hamilton per 3 years
Or a Whanganui District per year
Better build more car parks
This is the important stuff.
Any chance we cold have a thread based on this article by George Monbiot?
Here are some excerpts…..
‘Which of these would you name as the world’s most pressing environmental issue? Climate breakdown, air pollution, water loss, plastic waste or urban expansion? My answer is none of the above. Almost incredibly, I believe that climate breakdown takes third place, behind two issues that receive only a fraction of the attention.
This is not to downgrade the danger presented by global heating – on the contrary, it presents an existential threat. It is simply that I have come to realise that two other issues have such huge and immediate impacts that they push even this great predicament into third place.
One is industrial fishing, which, all over the blue planet, is now causing systemic ecological collapse. The other is the erasure of non-human life from the land by farming.
Some information from his article…
One study in Britain suggests that, if we stopped using animal products, everyone in Britain could be fed on just 3m of our 18.5m hectares of current farmland (or on 7m hectares if all our farming were organic).
A recent study in Nature Plants reveals that most farms would increase production if they cut their use of pesticides
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, at current rates of soil loss, driven largely by poor farming practice, we have just 60 years of harvests left.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/20/insectageddon-farming-catastrophe-climate-breakdown-insect-populations
Ok then lets say resource depletion is number 2 and climate change is number 3 and the ‘neoliberal assault on the population’ is the number one threat to kiwis and the world. There are things that can be done, Germany and China are moving towards large renewable energy programmes but for the most part most we are just racing towards the cliff. Most of the fossil fuels in the ground has to stay in the ground. The same goes for bio fuels, most bio mass has to stay solid. So must of nature has to remain natural. On the contrary energy corrections are trying to exploit every last opportunity to get a drops of oil out of the ground or replace native forest with commercial quantities tradable goods but they’re not being stopped. That’s part of the capital market is that you maxim is short term profit and don’t pay attention to the consequences for others or for the future so that’s a huge problem. And things can be done about that but they are not and that will be catastrophe in the not very far off future generations.
Another threat is nuclear war and that should not be underestimated. We’ve come close to nuclear war many times and are experiencing that now with Trump vs Kim. In theory we know how to deal with these threats but where not undoing it. In fact efforts to expand nuclear arsenals are underway. The U.S hoped to spend a $trillion on there nuclear arsenal over the next 20 years, the U.K. About 10 $billion and Ukraine could well turn into a nuclear catastrophe if Trump turns over the Obama policy and gives hard military aid.
Back to my original point. In the background is the neoliberal assault on the global population and it’s been going on now for a generation. If you look at that, 50% divorce rate around the western so we have a generation exiting the education system that come from broken homes. That’s a huge problem. A few sectors of new Zealand’s population are beginning to extricate themselves from the old ways of thinking about love, relationships. You know. With all the discoveries humanity has achieved over the past 100 years how subservient to people need to be to power structures. So like the flower power love child’s of the 60’s with free time comes freedom of thought and that scares people who have to convince the population otherwise that your best interests are the interest of big oil and other bigness in order to maximise the short term profits and don’t pay attention to the consequences.
Closer to home the neoliberal assault on New Zealand has had a terrible effect on democracy and now the government and all its departments barley function. For the most part voter participation this election is back to the level of the 19th century. That’s an indictment and something we’re not doing anything about. Not totally I mean people like Nandor Tanzcos and Sue Bradford understand the time when voting was restricted to white males. Voting participation is back to that level in much of the county. That’s a sign many people have abandoned hope in the system. And there is very good reason. Because policy does not reflect the opinions of the majority. Policy is decided by the few who control over 50% of the wealth and 60% of new income and every one basically knows. That’s not democracy.
Take a look at the economic issues. The neoliberal assault began under Roger Douglas and escalated under Ruth Richardson. For most of the population it’s been a period of stagnation or decline. Real wages for male workers are back to the level of the 1960’s. There has been productivity growth and wealth increase but it’s going to the few, not the many of the population and probably a fraction of 1%. And these are serious problems that can be dealt with that are not at the level of the first three I mentioned but they are serious problems to the maximum brain power of the people.
And there are other problems to deal with. Take say terrorism. That’s a serious problem. There is terrorism in New Zealand and it started under Helen Clark. And it is formally and explicitly aimed at who the government suspects might one day want to harm us. That’s might one day want to harm us. So they have to b terrorised. Along with any else that’s standing around. If Māori or any one else came out with a campaign like that we would be beyond ropeable and probably nuke em but that’s official policy supported by all western countries.
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