The Carbon Zero Act is meaningless sophistry. Let’s be clear, if you think maybe doing something in 31 years is a solution to the climate crisis, then you are the problem! But the real political danger with the do nothing Carbon Zero Act is two fold. The first is that it allows National and Labour to pretend to be doing something about climate change when they aren’t and the second is that it paints the Greens into a go no where idealogical corner.
Now the blue-green Sustainability NZ has launched, the vacant nothingness of the Greens middle class consensus making over the Carbon Zero Act is stripped bare because when you remove the deeply alienating identity politics of the Greens, there is no actual economic difference between Sustainability NZ and the NZ Green Party.
The Greens actual economic model is pure free market liberalism in gender neutral drag – all they want to do is include the price of pollution in the cost & let the market do the rest.
Have you ever been to a Green Party conference? It’s a whiter shade of beige. These days it’s wall to wall with ‘ethical entrepreneurs’ that ugly middle class blue-green colour that bruises turn after a severe beating.
They all see NZ’s pure clean reputation as an economic branding advantage and they want the Greens to champion that cause. If you actually read the Green Party economics policy, it’s about setting the market conditions to allow the free market to work towards that benefit, and that is what underpins the Carbon Zero Act, the misplaced belief that business as usual can occur with just the right market dynamics in action.
The Greens stopped being a socialist party the second Sue Bradford lost the co-leadership race in 2009. From that point on it’s been a free market neoliberal economic agenda, James Shaw, a former corporate greenwash lobbyist to Coke-Cola, signed up to Grant Robertson’s promise to be as economically ruthless as National for our corporate overlords without any problems whatsoever because such an agreement is of no issue to the Greens because they are pro-market, not anti.
They are a middle class vehicle for woke identity politics with a neoliberal economic policy framework, their only ‘state intervention’ is to force the cost of pollution into the final price SO THAT the market does the rest.
How is that indistinguishable from Sustainability NZ who economically believe the exact same thing?
Once that truth is naked and bare, you can see why Sustainability NZ can easily syphon enough votes off the Greens to bring them under 5%.
Post the 2020 election NZ will desperately be needing a radical socialist green political vehicle.
The continued dominance of the main parties is in my view the real problem. In spite of MMP they so conspicuously dominate the political landscape that any smaller party allying itself with them inevitable becomes then to a lesser or greater degree.
Its only when people wake up to the fact whether they vote red or blue they are essentially voting for the same thing that any real change will come about.
That said, I believe politics like the mainstream media are slowly becoming irrelevant. This will only continue as the basic need for food and water come to eclipse all other concerns in peoples minds as climate destruction continues.
I was astonished at an environmental speech I went to in Auckland a few years ago now, how the majority of people attending were over 65, white and affluent!
So no surprises to me at all, that Green Party are now encapsulated by ‘ethical entrepreneurs’ lobbying and pro business groups like Zero Generation who have clouded their judgement and experience.
While their constant put downs based on identity of white, boomer, home owners and intolerance to most identity groups are completely off base to many of their loyal voters, who by the way, were the ones who started the Green Party and selflessly fought for that cause from the 1970’s!
I keep saying that the best thing that could happen is for the Green’s to leave parliament and create space for a party that will genuinely challenge the neoliberal status quo. Given the roll identity politics is now playing in distracting people from class politics (see Chris Trotter’s latest article) the Green Party is becoming something of a 5th column. I really like and respect the Green MPs that I’ve met but somehow the party has been twisted around to the point where it’s incredibly ineffective.
we are desperately needing one now,.
You only live twice.
Awareness of climate change and the need for climate resilience in NZAO is much more accepted by the ordinary Kiwi as the usual small circle of respondents to the TDB blog does anticipate.
There is a fair potential for an environmental party based upon neo-liberal market dogma. People are used to related austerity message.
Assuming that such party would have access to personnel with reasonable profile and standing, and a clever election / marketing strategy, plus assured funding, this party would well be able to cut into the stock of the existing Green Party, probably also into the electorate of the other parties.
Perhaps not with a first run but certainly on medium to long term.
The existing Green Party of NZAO has nothing to gain by such competition.
Either she is able to propose and demonstrate an alternative, non-capitalist strategy, or she will risk being eliminated or amalgamated by carbon-copy ideology.
The wider concept of Transformational Change is seriously compromised and damaged without the existence of an eco-socialist NZAO platform.
System Change. Now.
https://www.slideserve.com/burian/adapting-to-climate-change-in-eastern-new-zealand-powerpoint-ppt-presentation
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