A climate crisis has been announced at Auckland Council and I suppose that’s good.
It will make some empty gestures and ask Council to justify spending based on the climate crisis.
If we were to use World War 2 as our reference point, the Council has promised to measure how bad the Nazis are.
Yay.
I know that symbolic gestures matter, but the truth is this is as meaningless as being carbon neutral by 2050 when we compare it to the enormity of the climate crisis.
It’s like being given an umbrella on the beach to protect you from a tsunami.
Yay.
You can’t declare a climate crisis without declaring a crisis of neoliberal capitalism – gentrification and green yoga shops selling fair trade coffee won’t do jack shit.
As the planet melts rapidly, we are avoiding three glaring facts.
1: Neoliberal capitalism is exacerbating and amplifying global warming.
2: Climate change is an existential threat to our species.
3: The current political spectrum simply can not rise to the challenge.
We can’t change how we have bungled our way into this, we can only radically adapt towards a self sustaining economy with a strong State to protect what we have left.
It is not enough to jam the jails as Extinction Rebellion are espousing to force change, we must challenge the ever growing growth model of neoliberal capitalism. We can’t continue growing because we have passed that point and the very biosphere is now collapsing.
We need to take this ethical reality into our economics.
BeyondMeat launched on Wall St this week & blew past its opening by 160%!!! Memo to Dairy NZ – the game is over – NZ should no longer support an industry that pollutes, steals water, tortures animals and creates climate change gases!
Synthetic meat and milk is the end of an industry we’ve lazily relied on since the formation of this country.
China is a major contributor to green house gasses – we should stop selling milk powder to them.
The Saudi’s crucified innocent people after beheading them – we should stop trade with them now.
It is not difficult to start listing nations we don’t want to trade with to slow our growth model.
As vast parts of the planet become uninhabitable, we need to start thinking about Fortress Aotearoa.
We must look to increase our military spending to 10% GDP to protect what we have.
Look at this…
…you think as fishing stocks collapse this is going to get better?
A climate changing world will descend into chaos, NZ will be one of the few lifeboats available, we need to rapidly adapt with foresight before we are forced to blindly adapt because of necessity.
For those on the Right, your days of denial and worship of capitalism are over.
For those on the Left, if your politics are not focused on climate change adaptation first and foremost, then you are part of the problem.
NZDF funded at 10% of the GDP would be a little steep with out the war of attrition bit, Y’know the replacing of soilders. Probably 6%-8% would be better because we’d just struggle to actually spend $12-$20 billion per year on defence. Hell kiwi build and the Shane Jones fund struggles to spend $2 billion a year because NZ simply lacks the economy to absorb that kind of cash in one go. Just saying.
But again and here comes another Singapore analogy. I response to Indonesian vessels disregarding Singaporean waters by attempting to collide with Singaporean vessels and other geopolitical tensions to do with managing the Chinese relationship Singapore raised its defence spending to 6% of the GDP. And I think at a stretch NZ would want to raise defence spending to 8% to play catch up on defence acquisitions that could be brought forward by a couple of years. For instance Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel Programe could be brought forward and we should probably replace the 2 frigates with 4 frigates as soon as possible. Currently all of our frigates are unavailable due to refit.
But there’s a whole host of secound teir non-combat capabilities that should brought in quick as.
Yep. Its all just “White Noise” at the moment. Nana & Grandad feeling guilty after living the “Vive la vida loca” for the last 70 years.
Now retired, mortgage free, a holiday home, money in the bank, their daughters and sons set up in a home with the grandkids to now use to front for them in this latest hysteria; the World is gunnah end in 8 years! Oh no, its 10? Or 12?
My maths is a bit rusty; 1992 Rio summit? Oh fuck! We should all of been dead in 2002!
Slay capitalism first, and then everything else will follow.
Fucking about with winding GenZero up and you’ll get a bigger mental health bill to find some money for. Oh, tax the rich!
It is not only bizarre but an indisputable sign that our culture is mad that the same day the Auckland City Council declares a climate emergency Mayor Phil Goff is seen on TV announcing the plans for American retail giant, Costco, to build a 14,000 sq mt warehouse in Westgate.
If the declaration of an emergency is somewhat late in the piece, it is going to take even longer before we see a meaningful coordination of the various branches of local and national government in order to adjust their aims and objectives.
The ‘jobs and economy’ mantra is just too pervasive, making the climate action appear like an afterthought, only happening because it can no longer be ignored. Its a bit like admitting there’s a fire risk in an old house and deciding to buy a fire alarm.
I would like to see our politicians sent to the Indian villages suffering severe drought, reported on by the Guardian this week. They should be given one litre of personal water supply and only allowed home after a week. Then, after that glimpse of the future, they can lead us perhaps to salvation.
One of the 2 father organisations to the successor of the Business Roundtable’s final report was about how the freemarket couldn’t go on with finite resources.
So many who didn’t believe in climate change, so overwhelmingly on the side of the 84 establishment, are completely disproved. But they carry on. Money and power have that way. And Yertle has his own way. Why we invented democracy, to place Yertle at the centre of the rock on which we build. A sound foundation.
My culture is middle class pakeha but when the revolution I hope I’d have the courage to join the least, despite ending at a firing wall through misunderstanding.
“China is a major contributor to green house gasses – we should stop selling milk powder to them.”
Hey cherry picking does not help. Typical Yankee China bashing bullshit.
The GHG emissions per capita of the USA, NZ, Australia and many other trading partners, are much higher than that of China. China produces goods that fill our shops and homes so is creating emissions on our behalf.
Selling China dairy milk for human consumption is selling a known health problem to an unsuspecting Chinese public.
Capitalism holds no responsibility for health nor the future.
As the Western diet proliferates in Asia, so does the increase in Western diseases including, heart, diabetes, MS, cancers and a range of immune system related disorders.
Diary milk is very good for calves but not humans let alone helpless infants fed the stuff and having their gut changed for life.
The debate has to move to how to “retire” Capitalism–people seem more comfortable with moving direct to a Mad Max scenario–apocalypse, end of life as we know it etc. without even trying the interim step of eradicating the militarists, authoritarians and Finance Capital in favour of socialism.
“For those on the Right, your days of denial and worship of capitalism are over”
Not on your fucking life mate! Had to troll your leftie shit right there. I’d shoot a thousand lefties before I’d ever vote for one. Bullets and death for commies. It’s what’s best for you.
We cannot “protect” our ourselves by buying more military power. Such mythical protection is simplistic thinking.
The strength of community resolve and rejection of the greed systemically proliferated by capitalist parasites will take understanding yet to be mainstream.
Community adhesion must be directed against wealth accumulation by the few and translating into corporate dictatorship.
Corporations, shares, investment funds, private banks and off shore pools of money have dominated Kiwi homeland and all need to be recognised as counter to our having any future control.
Money and banking must be community owned and state controlled.
Cullen is a weasel.
John A Lee a visionary whose far sighted and courageous thinking laid a foundation we have all benefited from.
Corporate elites have a million different ways of wriggling out of it when the troubles hit the fan. The price is always passed onto the people least able to pay. The heaviest burdens always fall on defence people’s to carry.
I think your comments about defence matters is a good example of why rapid expansion is just bad for defence. Granted you desire NZDF expand into new unexplored areas of defence of the realm.
New Zealand currently lacks the weight of population for a domestic military industrial complex of our own so we will be net buyers of defence technologies from the open markets.
The military industry is a ploy to uphold the power of the few to scavenge from the commons and enforce the existing power base / mindset.
The military grows no food nor builds houses, nor educates communities to use resources conservatively.
Nor does it develop simpler and less wasteful technologies to support basic community existence and function.
A population that has developed strong community experience is not easily diverted away from continuing that by neoloiberal raiders with the power of money and munitions. There are many historical examples.
The best example i can muster off hand is the recent Cuban response to oil supplies being cut off.
The community pulled together, developed new cooperatives and changed laws around property to facilitate common good and food supply. Horses and oxen did the work of tractors and more traditional methods of agriculture produced superior food supply as well as binding community more powerfully together.
Guns did not feature.
Whether you see survival as taking the reins of power by conquest or whether you see it as support of community, cooperative education and experience may depend on what examples you us as persona thinking references.
Both may well exist during transition from a suicide path to one of improved survival tenure.
I know where my money will be placed. You won’t survive long without food and shelter and a community.
And? We all know that the US and China has always forced itself on other Nations.
The question is what will the world looks like if the US and China become more aggressive and actively seeks to takeover nations. Not ‘if’ NZ remained “isolated.”
So whatever happens to get the US and China to be more broadly colonial needs to cause visible change. As things happened the European colonial powers were destroyed by WW2. When not just France fell to other Europeans but Malaya, the D.E.I & the Philippines fell to the Japanese the implicit ideology of the colonial model of imperialism, the aura of white supremacy was shattered. If the Japanese could beat the Brits, Dutch & Americans – if even only temporarily, then so could all the other non-white peoples of the world.
What is happening is probably a combination of factors. One is rightwing populists victories or otherwise Socialist victory in any major powers. So long as there’s a War on Terror or something like it there’ll be funding, arms & support for freedom fighters who are opposed to secular democracies. The other is the continued domination of Transnational powers over their empires, shutting the U.S out of free trade with much of the world. That is basically going to wind up being a British Empire wank with the U.S forming it’s own set of colonies or “protectorates” as zones it can trade with because it doesn’t trust that any remaining areas that aren’t colonized by China and the Europeans will remain so. Friction spots would be Latin America (Venezulan Crisis, Brazilian President), any remaining worthwhile areas of the Planet to colonize (see the South Pacific & Fiji Samoa, Tonga, ect), & whichever spots wind up with the commodities America or China lacks the most, where they’re cheapest to make, where they’re defended the least & where the locals are least likely to rebel. Some possible examples.
Nickel:
– Canada will sell it though.
Rare earth, for prissisioin guided munitions:
– Liberia and West Africa.
– Philippines had some of it’s own
– China
Still not enough unless more effort is put into Brazil.
Malaya, Ceylon.+
DEI.
French West Africa.
Belgian Congo*.
Uranium:
the U.S can establish mines domestically if it has the time to prospect, but if it’s in a sudden hurry (like in ww2) then it’ll be the
Belgian Congo*+
High quality Graphite:
– Alabama had some but it would run out.
– Mexico*
– Columbia
– Madagascar
– Ceylon+
Durable rope:
– Philippines had some Jute
– India has the Hessian (Burlap) though which is more desired.
Monzanite (Thorium):
– India.
– Brazil.*
Coffee:
– Columbia.
Bauxite:
Australia will sell*
Surinam+.
Nylon:
– Japan but it gets replaced by mass market.
..
*represents least resistance
+represents least cost of production
..
Brussels would likely prevent European involvement without a world war which would probably result in the destruction of what’s left of the European empires / Union anyway so most of these are moot & we’re largely left with Africa.
Well before all out hostilities Taiwan, Hong Kong and Brazil, Venezuela fall to revolution / counter revolution & then have a proxy war with China and America respective and with each other that results in a white peace & governments that mishandle their economies leaving a power vacuum for the European colonialists. Something like the Great Depression happens & trying to keep themselves afloat the Europeans attempt to form financial cartel. Brazil fails in general, US cope rations complain and 5eyes jumps in and protects their little thiefedom. The lack of media independence and the whole media landscape is full of bullshit stories of presenters acting shocked as if where did all the hostilities come from as if nothing was learnt from Trump and BREXIT.
@Drako. I kind of like $70 on a new outfit from K-mart. Shoes, pants, jacket, shirt, unduks. All made in China, that’s one of only a few supply chains that could offer a whole outfit for $70. If only it was biodegradable I might spend an extra $10 bucks.
The late great Michael C. Ruppert used to say “Until you change the way money works, you change nothing”.
All any government can do is rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic and tell the truth.
James Shaw and Jacinda Ardern have decided to distract us until the extinction event plays out.
https://kevinhester.live/2016/04/24/the-pain-you-feel-is-capitalism-and-the-living-planet-dying/
Capitalism is entirely unnecessary as is most trade today.
The waste by present money and trade is unprecedented.
Smoke and mirrors while extraction of wealth is systematically implemented entrenched by advertising and marketing of crap we don’t need within an economy gears for earlier collapse if we change..
An earlier change will be less catastrophic than continuing.
Prepare for more wars, civil unrest, terror and so:
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/climate-crisis-raises-risk-of-conflict/
Lets not accept that conflict is a substitute for management.
The main driver of conflict internationally is the greed or vested obesely wealthy psychopaths.
Common folk have simple needs and a universal hope for family welfare not riches and power over others.
Cooperative communities have little hierarchy and benefits for all.
There is no room for the crazy wealth seeker.
Banks are the nucleus of power over societies world wide.
“Hang the bankers” is a resolve held by many with many aspects of merit apart from the brutality implied.
The USA represents the extremes of violence and greed on a scale unprecedented, and has corrupted all international attempts at fostering a platform for peaceful management of humankind and this planet.
Bullshit America Inc controls our news, our entertainment and our policies and thinking.
Revolt!. Fuck their crap and those who abide by it.
Soldiers on both sides of conflict are brothers not enemies. The force that sets them apart is the greed and crimes of others.
A tragedy we allow and become responsible for.
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