Free Market neoliberal capitalism has always had an achilles heel.
The environment.
With a pathologically short sighted myopic focus on the profit margins of the next quarter, neoliberalism unquenchable thirst for greed has outgrown the biospheres ability to provide.
Over 50% of the carbon emitted from burning fossil fuel has been released in the last 25 years.
The enormity of the feedback loops we are now unlocking is existential threat level.
Climate Denial is no longer about the science, it’s a culture debate now. It stopped being about science when the oil companies realised in the 1990s they were to blame and went about funding quack science to play the same game big tobacco used, pretend there is a question over the science to confuse the public.
Those who benefit from the current inequality and pollution refuse to admit the Green movement they’ve despised are right.
it’s been about ideology and selfish culture for a long time, there should be no surprise that this is just a culture debate now, because climate change caused by human pollution is settled science the way evolution is settled science.
Climate change denial not about the science
Climate change is a direct challenge to the philosophy of neo-liberalism that has made a very small group of people exceedingly rich, writes the University of Auckland’s Dr Neal Curtis. It’s never been about the science – it’s the ideology.
Climate deniers are the flat-earthers at a geology conference. When the next economic storm hits…
When it comes, New Zealand cannot help but import a global storm
As a starting point, low unemployment and Government debt is a positive one. Taking extra steps to support a slowing economy may indeed win much favour from the coalition’s traditional supporters, some of whom have been calling for more public spending for some time.
But simply dealing with the pressures could represent a test of the Government which it has not faced yet.
Other areas of managing a Government have already been made to look like hard work, from coalition relations to flagship policy programmes such as Kiwibuild.
The coalition is already set to enter potentially fraught political negotiations around tax reform.
Add economic troubles to the existing complications and 2019 could conceivably make 2018 look easy.
…climate change damage will exacerbate that economic storm.
If only we had politicians who could publicly stand up and reference The New Green Deal as a blueprint for the changes we need here..I shan’t be holding my breath. Maybe it needs a hashtag before they can take it seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal
Hi Bomber
No right turns idiot savant on sustainability when it effects our oceans and wildlife.
Two-faced criminals
Last year, in a desperate attempt to regain social licence, the fishing industry ran an expensive series of TV ads assuring us that they had nothing to hide. Meanwhile, they were furiously lobbying the Minister to oppose video monitoring of fishing boats:
At the same time as the seafood industry was placing adverts on television last year proclaiming it had “nothing to hide”, it was writing to the minister, Stuart Nash, expressing its “overwhelming opposition” to the idea of cameras on board its boats to monitor what they were up to.
The letter, released under the Official Information Act, said its purpose was to “dismiss any suggestion that the ‘New Zealand Seafood industry’ supports the current proposal”.
For the removal of any doubt the words “do not support” were underlined.
Some of the signatories were redacted but amongst those still visible are managers at Talley’s, Sealord, the Federation of Commercial Fishermen and Te Ohu Kai Moana, representing Māori fishing interests.
Forest and Bird spokesperson Karen Baird said it was a case of them saying one thing publicly while working towards a quite different outcome behind the scenes.
So I guess they do have something to hide after all. But what could it be? The illegal dumping of less-valuable fish? The criminal doctoring of records to understate catches? Or maybe the failure to report catching and killing endangered species? The problem here is that the fishing industry is pervasively criminal. They need to be treated as such, and monitored and prosecuted until they change their behaviour. Instead, our government – bought and paid for by Talley’s – is doing the exact opposite.
Posted by Idiot/Savant at 2/07/2019 01:53:00 PM
And this roadblock to any meaningful action.
Getting what they paid for
A political party makes strong promises to regulate a destructive industry and prevent it from engaging in widespread criminal behaviour. They are elected to government. But their coalition partner includes an MP who was paid $10,000 by that industry. That MP argues from within government against regulation, and successfully prevents the government from enacting meaningful reform.
If this happened in Africa, or the Pacific Islands, we’d call it what it is: corruption. But it has happened here. The industry is the fishing industry. And the MP is Shane Jones, who took $10,000 from Talleys in 2017 in addition to large donations in the past, and has claimed responsibility for preventing any independent review of the fisheries industry. The government has recently shitcanned plans to use video cameras on fishing boats, and announced plans to lower criminal penalties when fishers break the law – and there is a suspicion that Jones is behind both of these moves too. So it looks like Talleys is very definitely getting what they paid for.
So how do we stop this? Fundamentally, we need to remove the ability of corporations to buy favourable treatment with large political donations. And that means moving to publicly funded political parties. Its either that, or allowing corruption to continue unchecked.
Posted by Idiot/Savant at 2/05/2019 03:11:00 PM
And one of the other elephants in Jacind’s room.
Getting what they paid for
A political party makes strong promises to regulate a destructive industry and prevent it from engaging in widespread criminal behaviour. They are elected to government. But their coalition partner includes an MP who was paid $10,000 by that industry. That MP argues from within government against regulation, and successfully prevents the government from enacting meaningful reform.
If this happened in Africa, or the Pacific Islands, we’d call it what it is: corruption. But it has happened here. The industry is the fishing industry. And the MP is Shane Jones, who took $10,000 from Talleys in 2017 in addition to large donations in the past, and has claimed responsibility for preventing any independent review of the fisheries industry. The government has recently shitcanned plans to use video cameras on fishing boats, and announced plans to lower criminal penalties when fishers break the law – and there is a suspicion that Jones is behind both of these moves too. So it looks like Talleys is very definitely getting what they paid for.
So how do we stop this? Fundamentally, we need to remove the ability of corporations to buy favourable treatment with large political donations. And that means moving to publicly funded political parties. Its either that, or allowing corruption to continue unchecked.
Posted by Idiot/Savant at 2/05/2019 03:11:00 PM
Climate Change: The cost of inaction
Stuff reports that local authorities want the government to pay billions of dollars to replace infrastructure threatened by climate change:
Local councils are facing a $5-8 billion bill to replace vital infrastructure lost to climate change in the next half-century – and they want a national war chest to pay for it.
For the first time, environment and engineering researchers have calculated the cost of replacing pipes, roads and buildings destroyed by sea-level rise.
The data is included in a new Local Government New Zealand report which spells out a dire warning about the country’s ability to fund repairs. The organisation is now calling on the Government to create a national climate change adaptation fund to help meet the costs.
$8 billion is over 5% of GDP, and it is literally the cost of doing nothing. We will have to pay it because past governments have dragged their feet on climate change and climate change adaptation – not just allowing our emissions to increase and our planet to warm and the oceans to rise, but also refusing to set limits on coastal development. Meaning that stuff got built in places it shouldn’t have, and is now threatened and will need to be rebuilt elsewhere, all because of government inaction.
But hey, at least farmers don’t have to pay for their polluting cows, right?
Posted by Idiot/Savant at 1/31/2019 01:09:00 PM
Claim your country back, that is the people, one would say. But the people are in their majority not even bothered to take such action, as most people have become corrupted themselves. Consumerist convenience comes before anything else, so does money, to buy all the things people want, even things they do not really need.
“climate change damage will exacerbate that economic storm”
Nothing surer than that Martyn.
We will reap what we sow and the wrecking of our climate will exact the level of harm upon us equal to our ignorance to change our ways.
Only when they suffer personal harm from their stupidly will they wake up sadly.
Ultimately only a global effort to avert the worst consequences of human caused emissions and climate change will achieve something. As we have nation compete with nation, besides of corporate with corporate business, and all others also at varying levels, there is simply NO sign of any unified effort to be achieved.
The Paris Climate Summit was just another talk fest with targets set by individual states, which will become virtually unenforceable, as there is no punishment for not meeting targets that were set.
New Zealand should lead in all this, but is actually one of the worse emitters, that is per capita.
We have a continuation of the blame game, nation against nation, group of nations against other groups of nations, and individuals and classes against other individuals and classes, and so forth.
It is like standing in a circle and every one person in it is pointing to the person behind them, to blame them for not doing anything or not enough.
I see NO hope to achieve what needs to be achieved. Hearing James Shaw speak in Parliament today was a ridiculous performance, I thought he must be on another planet, to say what he did.
One way plastic bags abolition and the likes are hardly any achievement at all, try and tell the consumerist middle class to stop flying overseas for holidays, as for instance a trip to London creates one and a half TONS of carbon emissions, that is for ONE person!
Tell people to stop driving their fossil fuel powered cars everywhere and they will scream and tar and feather you.
That is the damned reality out there, there is talk and damned little honest action. And where they are more serious about the matter, they are also far too slow to implement anything.
And who will put up living with ‘bugs’ around us, that is insects, as they are about to die out en masse too, taking us as humanity with them. People live in cities, totally disconnected to nature now, so have NO awareness of the seriousness of what we are talking about, they do not even understand nature, of which we all depend.
I am NOT hopeful, sorry.
I see that yet another report warning of systemic collapse has been released overseas. Such reports are coming thick and fast now that we are witnessing the ‘collapse of nature’ that Rachel Carson warned about in the early 1960s.
What the Guardian’s coverage of this latest study fails to note (because it cannot) is that collapse is an inevitable consequence of the growth-based financial, economic and political systems that operate throughout most of the world.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/12/climate-and-economic-risks-threaten-2008-style-systemic-collapse
The introduction to the report, titled ‘This is a crisis: Facing up to the age of environmental breakdown’ does at least point out what many of us have been saying for many years, that ‘The historical disregard of environmental considerations in most areas of policy has been a catastrophic mistake.’
That said, we can be certain that governments around the world, including that of NZ, will ignore the report and continue to promote the business-as-usual growth-based policies that disregard the environment, and in doing so guarantee collapse at some point in the not-too-distant future.
We castigate the oil companies for supplying the fuel we use; the fishermen for supplying the fish we eat; the farmers for supplying the milk and meat we eat; and the banks for supplying the money we keep on borrowing.
Fixing the environment might have to be achieved from closer to home.
D J S
yep, how dare companies supply what their customers want at prices that customers can afford!
No demand = no supply from corporates.
Change has to be by the population as a whole accepting less of pretty much everything.
Last year banks in NZ made $5bn profit.
We have near 2.7 million employed in NZ.
That’s roughly $2,000 per employed person per year.
The median income is just under $50,000.
In other words, each NZer pays two weeks salary to bank shareholders.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/103907588/banks-make-more-money-out-of-kiwis-than-australia
The population needs to start accepting giving less of their money away to foreign owned banks.
A state bank should be the main source of lending.
Changing the fractional reserve from 10% to 50% and then raising it by a further 10% per year will help stem the gross theft by private banks.
Eventually all banks will need 100% reserve and the state has asserts to back that.
Fair competition should be welcomed.
NZ State provided loans for a long period before that was shut down.
Saving the planet and the people on it is going to require the good of the many over ruling the good of the individual. In other words, actions that will require blanket compliance. However, New Zealand society is completely based on the rights of the individual and in particular the rights of property owners. The perfect example of this is how people will not accept the government telling them that they must protect the trees on their own property.
Well, the trees are private property, just like the houses, cars, and TVs.
If society wants the trees kept, society can subsidise the trees at risk.
Ada there is another way of looking at this.
Humans are creating massive problems not the trees.
We need trees not just for convenience or personal preference.
Members of society have a responsibility to consider the bigger picture they are a part of.
That responsibility comes before personal wants.
RAGE in other words. OK.
But what happened to the old-fashioned words like unqualified naked CAPITALISM as the cause and unadulterated new world SOCIALISM?
Or even REVOLUTION since that is what we need.
Extinction panic should focus the mind not double dumb down politics.
Disagree this is a cultural debate. That’s falling into the MSM trap of blaming individual behaviour. The only debate for me is around the timing of the popular revolt – because the worse things get, the more likely it will be that people take to the streets.
Once people take to the streets governments and corporations will be forced to capitulate – this is the usual way that significant change happens in our culture’s history – the problem is we need it to happen sooner rather than later
New Zealand’s biggest problem is we have a faux red/green government who give the impression they’re doing something but who lack the courage or the electoral support to do anything useful. I feat that we will need an ignorant right wing government in power to get people to the necessary level of concern so they will get active.
Here’s a good sign for NZ. https://www.schoolstrike4climatenz.com/
Good on the kids.
They need support and a many adults as can manage marching with them, should be there encouraging their bravery in facing what adults have left for them.
Want to see how climate change denial was applied by business groups in New Zealand to stymie responses to climate change in NZ starting more than two decades ago?
Take an hour and watch this documentary “Hot Air” to see how these fuckers went about ensuring there has been no meaningful action on climate change.
https://youtu.be/IGf4maDU7Ps
We’ve been systematically screwed over – don’t let it happen again or any more!
So….if the science is “settled” why are we still spending money on research?
😉
You still haven’t supplied your view on why/how there has been an increase in global temperature since the 1800s.
Answer that one (from months ago) and I’ll answer your question.
Same argument as was needed to deal with tobacco corporations, being in denial, then in knowledge and desperately using their defence and presenting fake evidence from their side, and only finally caving in once courts ruled that damages had to be paid to sufferers and claimants based on ‘scientific research’ that had become impossible to deny after so many years of denial, also by politicians.
The thickos out there need to be hammered with evidence, until it gets into their thick and non functioning brains that climate change is REAL, and that HUMANS significantly contribute to it!
A renewed direction for NZ
https://popularresistance.org/catalan-integral-cooperative-simpler-way-revolution-is-well-underway/
Some action is needed.
The ideas in this link sound very like my radical ‘Breakaway’ NZ vision which aim is to establish a resilient, sustainable & autonomous homeland within NZ called ‘Ayvangard’.
This experimental, communally owned & operated, hi/low tech region will set the tone for the eventual realisation of a visionary, trail blazing Aotearoan or Zealandian Confederacy.
Some among us have our own locally inspired & dreamed up future proofing ideas & solutions that are designed to suit local conditions, but unfortunately, as such thinking hasn’t emerged from mainstream society or arrived on our shores from foreign lands, it’s deemed to be worthless or idiotic.
The curse of living in a small minded, lap dog, cargo cult wasteland with an insufferable tall poppy complex I suppose. The Prophet of Zealandia.
The ideas in this link sound very like my radical ‘Breakaway’ NZ vision which aim is to establish a resilient, sustainable & autonomous homeland within NZ called ‘Ayvangard’.
This experimental, communally owned & operated, hi/low tech region will set the tone for the eventual realisation of a visionary, trail blazing Aotearoan or Zealandian Confederacy.
Some among us have our own locally inspired & dreamed up future proofing ideas & solutions that are designed to suit local conditions, but unfortunately, as such thinking hasn’t emerged from mainstream society or arrived on our shores from foreign lands it’s deemed to be worthless or idiotic.
The curse of living in a small minded, lap dog, cargo cult wasteland with an insufferable tall poppy complex I suppose.
The Prophet of Zealandia.
If this comment doesn’t get published like many before it, I’ll finally right off TDB as an establishment fishing tool that’s strings are being pulled by the SIS.
https://wentworthreport.com/stop-the-climate-stupidity/
Wonder who really spread stupidity here???
One quote from that link –
There is no role for renewable energy because it is not sustainable.
Rick are you suggesting that climate shift is a Marxist plot.
Then lets go with them as they obviously are pretty influential operators;
getting 97% of scientists supporting them,
they have managed to acidify the ocean,
melt icecaps and most glaciers ,
reduce insects by 40% of their mass,
put atmospherics CO2 up in the 412+ppm
and create ongoing wars using the puppets in the US do their dirty work.
The Marxists must be very corrupt unlike the unelected NWO.
Probably worth reading Marx’s Das Kapital and get the low down.
https://www.wnd.com/2017/07/study-blows-greenhouse-theory-out-of-the-water/
just trying to post research links, i dont support the opinions expressed, its about the data, and corruption of that data
That has serious flaws all through it.
you my friend have drunk the Koolaid
RICKOSHAY the dumb sheeples will never wake up to this collossal Scam.
I know Cassie but at lest ill have the satisfaction of being proved Right bye the passage of time, these ass clowns will freeze there unprepared nuts off and no longer be a problem, lets see what solar cycle 25 brings us.
Where we go one we go all
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