The Daily Blog Open Mic – Wednesday – 17th June 2020

1. The Madness of King Profit and Tourism. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/419155/queenstown-international-airport-decision-years-away-despite-report-mayor
   A new international airport built within two hours’ drive of Queenstown could bring 50,000 additional commercial flights and almost 2 million new passengers to the tourist resort.
   The Queenstown Lakes District Council this afternoon released the findings of an independent socio-economic assessment of the district’s airport infrastructure.

   ‘An independent socio-economic assessment? Independent of what though? Any rationality, any understanding of human needs enabling a worthwhile outcome of being born and alive? Already Q/town (I drop the letters because that is more efficient) is bursting at the seams. It’s basic supplies of services like water and sewers and treatment plants etc will be stretched to the utmost. The ability of the resident community to enjoy their own environment will be plummeting. The housing for the workers was absent. NZ has got to stop this boomtown, gold rush fever mentality.

   And now Covid-19 had put a brake on it. Find some mature, business and life-experienced local people who only need an invitation, a suitable warm room with kitchen and toilet facilities, good meeting method, time plans, good record keeping and get the low-cost practical assessment by locals of what is needed. Just give the high-cost consultant leeches the heave-ho at present. Later when decisions are made, their expertise could be used to implement it.

   Women used to have a rousing song about moving up and having more agency in their world – ‘Sisters are doing it for themselves’. Well NZ has become very vulnerable to oppressive management styles and we citizens have to break free and think and form our own plans. These would be practical, with information and evidence-based, so with guidance from experienced professionals that whose background shows they are practical and on the same page as the Queenstown community.

   • Further on Q/town. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/419222/queenstown-s-chamber-of-commerce-unhappy-to-be-embroiled-in-complaints
     The Chamber of Commerce doesn’t want to be embroiled in disagreement with people who don’t follow the official dictum, and the easiest path, never mind trading on the alpine daisies! Oh for some uncertainty about what to do. I seem to remember someone on TS talking about the get-togethers of local farmers where anyone who aired a dissenting view would probably be sent to Coventry, or the NZ equivalent. It actually is a gutless, mindless way to run a country and a business sector in this time of change and competition. I am reading a book of remniscences published in UK in 1994. He was involved in a number of trivial matters at the time which were, ,,among the foolish things that happened in a forgotten age, before unemployment and Aids and the breakup of nations into murderous tribes left us no time to mind about [it]
     all”. Perhaps people here can think about entering the 21st century and addressing the new problems.

2. “Dirty dairy Fonterra is.”
   So why are Fonterra not using rail through most of our NZ provinces as they used to do?
   We had Fonterra join with all meat companies in 2002 to move rail freight though HB/Wairarapa/Manawatu then, but now they don’t as they have switched to using trucks now?

   https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2006/S00173/fonterra-slammed-in-new-global-emissions-report.htm

   Politics
   Fonterra Slammed In New Global Emissions Report

   Wednesday, 17 June 2020, 10:18 am
   Press Release: Greenpeace New Zealand
   Fonterra has been named and shamed as one of 13 global dairy companies causing the climate crisis to worsen, in a damning new report by the United States-based Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy.
   The institute singles out Fonterra, the second largest dairy processor in the world, for increasing its emissions in recent years and for what it called ‘destructive expansion into global markets’.
   The report also criticises Fonterra and 12 other major dairy companies for pursuing business strategies that had caused farmers debt levels to rise dramatically.
   Greenpeace Campaigner Gen Toop welcomed the report and called on both Fonterra and the Government to take heed.
   “Fonterra is now attracting heavy criticism on the international stage for its global role in the climate crisis. That should be a wake up call for the company and for the Government,” she says.
   “There are too many cows being farmed with too much synthetic fertiliser in New Zealand. Intensive dairying is now the country’s worst greenhouse gas emitter.”
   Agriculture makes up 49% of NZ’s emissions. The industry’s emissions have risen 13.5% since 1990. The government attributes much of this rise to a doubling of the dairy herd and a 600% increase in synthetic fertiliser use. (1)
   The Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy urged a ‘dramatic reduction of the country’s dairy herd and the Government to help dairy producers and workers to transition justly to agroecological systems of production and other means of employment.’
   Toop agreed, saying, “We have to rapidly reduce emissions, starting now. In New Zealand that means far fewer cows and a swift transition away from intensive livestock into more plant-based regenerative farming.
   “The Government needs to ban synthetic fertiliser, which is a key driver behind the inflated dairy herd, and use some of the $20 billion post-Covid stimulus budget on accelerating the transition to more plant-based, regenerative farming.”
   The new report also called into question Fonterra’s corporate structure and investment strategy pointing to the huge losses incurred by Fonterra farmers last year and to the increase in on-farm debt by 30 billion dollars over the last 16 years (2003-2019).
   It said Fonterra’s ‘export-led strategy has not only led to rising emissions, but also an economic crisis for New Zealand’s dairy producers.’
   “Intensive dairying is working for Fonterra’s senior managers with their million dollar pay cheques, but it isn’t working for the climate, for our rivers, or for farmers either,” Toop says.
   (1) Ministry for the Environment & Stats NZ. “New Zealand’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory 1990-2017” Retrieved from http://www.mfe.govt.nz
   https://storage.googleapis.com/planet4-new-zealand-stateless/2019/10/db5857c3-greenhouse-gas-emissions.jpg
   Table ES 4.1: New Zealand’s gross emissions by sector in 1990 and 2017
   https://storage.googleapis.com/planet4-new-zealand-stateless/2019/10/70c21a92-nzs-gross-emissions.jpg

3. Good info Cleangreen. Here at home we wouldn’t know anything about this from the media. All living in wilfully ignorant la-la land as usual. Not the sort of thing that gets discussed on the business segment of Radionz in any depth and width. On the commercials, fight your way past the advertisers’ interests.

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