If there is a single word that describes the condition of our economy right now it’s ‘precarious’
Many people are feeling vulnerable. Some have lost their jobs because of the pandemic or are in danger of becoming unemployed . For many the need to keep a roof over their head and food on the table has been a weekly, if not daily, battle for a long time.
You might think ‘ What’s new ? There has always been rich and poor . Was ever so!’
Well, yes I can see how a pessimistic view of history might lead someone to that conclusion but “always”? – that’s certainly not true.
In the immediate post WW2 era Commonwealth countries such as Britain, Canada ,Australia and New Zealand all picked themselves up and thrived because their governments took an active role in the marketplace by creating jobs largely through government controlled big infrastructure projects such as building houses and expanding and running the railways.
The focus was on creating full employment .
Rather than pay people to be on the dole the idea was to use that money to create work . If the private sector wanted labour then they had to offer a bit more incentive to attract them from government jobs. So workers had more control over their destiny than the powerlessness many have experienced under neoliberalism where private business interests control the labour market
In this pre-election billboard season I see the National slogan features the word Jobs.
However the method by which they propose to create those jobs is essentially trickle down neoliberalism . The idea that if we stimulate big business and allow a financial elite to get rich then the marketplace will come right and people will be employed.
We know from bitter experience of over 30 years now of trickle -down theory that it’s a con. It benefits a few at the expense of the many.
The Covid- 19 pandemic has forced the current government to behave a bit more like a post-war government, but their broad rejection of the reforms recommended by their own Tax Working Group signalled that the government’s position was neoliberalism with a softer face and not a passionate desire for us to change to a more egalitarian society.
Yesterday Auckland went back to level 3 and the rest of the country to level 2. This Covid -19 thing isn’t going to go away in a hurry. The longer it stays around the greater will be the effect on our economy.
If this precarious situation continues long enough, life will become so dire for so many of us that there will come a point where the State will be compelled to resume the role it one played in the post war period.
It will have to take back the control of the mortgage market it abandoned to the private banks, it will have to subsidise food and it will have to actively create government jobs through infrastructure projects such housing , large scale construction , transport reform , scientific and technological research and arts projects
.
History tells us there has to be a crisis for the tipping point for a social revolution to be reached.
This pandemic is a terrible thing. It’s ravaging lives and battering our economy. But if we looked to how we ran our economy in the years immediately following WW2 there is some hope.
Back then we picked ourselves up by electing governments that understood the term “The State” meant you and me and all of us and that collectively we have the ability to improve all our lives by sharing the nation’s wealth more fairly.
A people influenced marketplace rather than one controlled by private interests?
Could we do that again?
Stay safe and stay tuned.
Kia kaha
Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.
‘Could we do that again?’
No.
The resources that existed immediately after WW2 and made it possible for you to write this sentence:
‘In the immediate post WW2 era Commonwealth countries such as Britain, Canada ,Australia and New Zealand all picked themselves up and thrived because their governments took an active role in the marketplace by creating jobs largely through government controlled big infrastructure projects such as building houses and expanding and running the railways.’
no longer exist. They were gobbled up in the orgy of consumption that characeristed western economies between the late 1970s and the early months of 2020.
Additionally, all activity in the orthodox economy is dependent on converting fossil fuels into life-threatening waste and exacerbates our dire environmental predicament.
If those factor were not enough, in themselves, sufficient deterrent for attempts to ‘kick-start’ the economy in order to create jobs, or create jobs in order to ‘kick-start’ the economy, there is the matter of the imminent implosion of both the global Ponzi financial system and the globalised food system.
Under such circumstance government policy should be primarily directed towards Permaculture and Powerdown.
Well, we know the chance of governments implementing sound policies s exactly zero (despite Permaculture and Powerdown being the only sane responses to out collective predicament).
So, we will have to wait for the coming collapse to demolish redundant systems and redundant thinking, and for there to be a lot of suffering before whoever has not been wiped out by the crash belatedly adopts the only strategies that will reduce the rate at which governments make everything that matters worse.
It’s a bit like the inhabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) chopping down the last tree to shift the last statue they managed to shift instead of propagating trees.
“Under such circumstance government policy should be primarily directed towards Permaculture and Powerdown.”
I agree with the generalisation of a wider permaculture being our best approach for food supply ( mainly plants). and the artificial dependence on energy being removed by working our living economy to function with close to zero energy harvesting ( which took place for many thousands of years in the past).
But grounds for achieving that need to be laid. If left to collapse and emerging market forces and dog eat dog survival, then we are likely to see variations of feudalism or worse emerge that then will persist of a lengthy period as desperation and changing climate put more pressure on survival.
Humans have to move now to laying a foundation and a network of communication of “educated” like minds.
Already there are primitive permaculture projects happening in NZ and the ideas have a growing following.
Powerdown is less well understood but inevitable. Powerdown will mean the end of cities as we know them but getting used to that idea may take a long period of working carefully through alternatives that when fully scoped have no future.
Very few America writers can see past their indoctrination of exceptionalism hence beware of what they write.
What really happened if you look at it all from a distance, is that WW2 disguised but was instigated by the collapse of a laissez faire period of economic private largesse . Then a Common sense managed organisation of our economy and the economies of those we trade with gradually restored general prosperity.
The next generation forgot how it works and were persuaded to basically let the greediest take control of the economy for their own enrichment.Basically harvesting the wealth created under the management of the previous governments of either party.To the inevitable end that the system has collapsed again,as wealth is tied up in the hands of a few who can no longer profit from activities involving the mass of the population their earnings because they have sucked it all out . So now it is all being spent on speculative investments to try to preserve it while the real economy strangles, this time somewhat disguised by this pandemic. And what you suggest is indeed inevitable. Some government with some common sense will take control again here and everywhere else and run the economy in a managed and sensible way and some social equity will return. For a while till we all forget again and laissez faire comes back.
D J S
D J S
‘And what you suggest is indeed inevitable.’
May I suggest you look up what inevitable means, and then recognise that collapse of the global industrial system is inevitable, and is, in fact, underway.
Every empire that ever was collapsed.
Every fiat currency that ever was collapsed.
Every unsustainable food system there ever was collapsed.
Every society that exhibited enormous disparities between the top and the bottom collapsed.
Every society that outgrew its food supply collapsed.
Every society ruled by fuckwits, liars and self-serving sociopaths collapsed.
We currently have all of the above factors in play, what remains of th system all held together very temporarily by rapidly depleting fossil fuels.
Collapse is inevitable. I just hope it’s not next month because my preparations are not complete (having relocated from a very toxic location in the empire to a much less toxic location less than a year ago)..
So every society that no longer exists has collapsed ; sort of self evident isn’t it! Unless you regard society as being all of us. And we do still exist so far , so perhaps societies change rather than cease to exist even if the changes are sometimes transformational.
However some societies have remained much the same for very long periods of time.
Most of them in a condition of enormous disparity between the top and the bottom. Societies that exhibit the egalitarianism we grew up with are a very recent and unusual development. Totally desirable mind you.
I don’t think our present leader is either a fuckwit or a liar , but I think she is a very unusual politician in that regard. I don’t know if you ever got involved in a political party , but progressing to representation is usually a process of elimination that eliminates anyone who is not prepared to compromise. So cheats and liars tend to be the only one’s who get through. You very soon realise that there is no one else there that is interested in fairness or democracy, just on getting their priorities in place, or getting to be important.
I think Jacinda is a wonderful leader, but I don’t think she is nearly as unusual a person as she is an unusual leader of apolitical party. In fact I reckon I know personally at least a dozen young women about here age who just as intelligent, just as courageous , and just as honest. The difference is wanting that life and that job, and getting through the system.
I agree with the last, it’s going to be a race between the proof or otherwise of the effects of our CO2 emissions causing environmental collapse , and the end of the resource. Other kinds of pollution are also in the race . In fact CO2 may be the only thing we are producing that is not going to spoil our fun , being the stuff we and all other terrestrial life is made out of. (just teasing)
I do hope you find a place to be self sufficient. As a backstop it is the ultimate in freedom security and independence .
D J S
and maybe all of the collapses you speak of happened over a considerable period of time and people adjusted and other social institutions arose and the people just carried on as best they could.
heres an interesting read https://www.ecosophia.net/the-arc-of-our-future/ “On the far side of that will be a new wave of crises, for that’s the nature of the Long Descent: each period of crisis is followed by a period of stabilization and partial recovery, and then by another period of crisis”
Some good stuff cushla and although nothing there is new, neither is the problem we are facing
David
“Some government with some common sense will take control again here and everywhere else and run the economy in a managed and sensible way and some social equity will return. For a while till we all forget again and laissez faire comes back.”
The only example I can recall of this is when Cuba had much of its oil cut off and Cubans lost 10-20 kg through food shortage with tractors becoming useless.
Desperate families pooled together and created gardens and shared seed. The Government gave the use of land to any group who needed it to grow crops
Cuba pulled through, learnt a lot and showed the world that strength of community is a valuable asset.
Do you know of any Governments inside or outside of Socialist influence that have supported grass roots people’s efforts for survival.
I consider that all governments i the western world that bought into the Bretton Woods agreement did what I outlined.
Some governments reviled by the West as despotic like that of Muammar Gaddafi did amazing things for the mass of the people. Like housing for everyone, free education, free healthcare etc.
What governments do you consider to be outside the Socialist influence? Surely all western democracies have some level of social security, unemployment and sickness benefits etc. May not be enough or the right approach but it’s pretty much universal these days isn’t it?
D J S
It seems reasonable to assume Qaddafi ran a very open socialism with a structure of representation from small communities right through to Government.
Free education from preschool through to post graduate level, free health care including dental and a generous support package for newlyweds. Libya did have resources of oil and water to help its prosperity.
Libya also had a state bank, set up the first African communication network by satellite and was setting up a Bank of Africa so the harness of the IMF and USA could be bypassed. So he had to go didn’t he.
Qaddafi was pillard as a dictator but his government appeared to run as a one party system.
Socialism does come in many forms and in NZ popular Socialism in the 1930s pulled together a package that lifted thousands out of poverty, established, pensions, child benefits, healthcare, created a new system of housing families and the state took on the role of being an employer on a scale not seen in NZ before to set up infrastucture and developments all under the wing of public ownership. Food subsidies, state insurance, state loans for housing, and free dental care for children gave families a bigger stake in their community as well.
Land and property sales were also overseen
NZ Parliament had a multi party system which set it apart from dictatorships.
The socialist mantra of the first Labour govt was transformational at a time of crisis.
Cuba also managed their crisis under a one party socialist govt.
My query really was can you think of any parallel situations apart from those two.
Governments that appear to be outside of socialist influences could be seen as ones who do not provide state sponsored health care and education but could afford to do so.
The USA stands out here where privatisation for profit takes precedence over public welfare.
Meanwhile the Covind19 crisis where per capita the USA has experienced deaths at over 170 times that of China per capita to date and climbing.
The number in poverty in USA has been rising for decades and now that rate of rise seems to be increasing
Meanwhile the top of the wealth pyramid is expanding and wealth concentrating without regard for the poor.
So crises on at least two fronts but no govt action to alleviate. We can ignore the racism also involved.
The USA has a crises which is deliberately ignored
I thoroughly agree with you about Jacinda and as such she is a rare person.
Next term may well give indication as to how far she is prepared to or allowed to push issues of greater equity, reducing poverty and structuring govt to address climate and related issues.
I suspect progress will be hampered if a better funding arrangement for govt is not put in place.
Our so called misnamed independent foreign policy will be tested even more with the USA and its Australian puppet pushing an anti China attack.
“New Zealand has an independent foreign policy and we always will”are words Jacinda has said and many people would like to believe. If she crosses the USA she may not last long so it will be a game of skill and delicate compromise.
It might be that NZ is the one country in the world that could get away with defying the US in that way. We are regarded internationally as one of if not the fairest and most ethical societies, small enough for our democracy to work. And the impression the world has of the present leader is spotlighting that impression.
Sanctions against us for implementing policies to enhance our social responsibility to our own people would not go down well.
We will just have to wait and see.
D J S
Similar to what I have thought for decades.
The US and banksters cabal were so busy with cashing in on the depression that little insignificant NZ enacted legislation that went under the Radar until about late 1939 then the screws were put on Nash personally and then Savage who died shortly after. John A Lee the foremost radical was booted out of the party.
It took a while to get National to power because Labour had done so much to endear itself to the Kiwi worker and small business owner. But with the right skills and PR expertise, Kiwi minds can be changed for promises that never eventuate.
The 1951 strike was backed by CIA funded airlifts to move freight and after Kirk died again a CIA company Hanna Barbera conducted Nationals election campaign with dancing Cossacks and anti communist innuendo. Kirk was no communist nor was his brilliant superannuation scheme communist inspired.
Yes time will tell if Labour has determination and what it might bring.
Grim as it may be, the pandemic, I do like the idea of state size building projects. More Houses are badly needed to not only house the people but to drive down demand and therefore prices. Contrary to the msm blather that we don’t have enough Builders and Tradies, they are there. Just gone to ground, doing other things, not building houses because it’s not worth it. This happened many years back. If this pandemic causes a reset and more state involvement bring it on. Fuck this neoliberal business, it’s getting us minions nowhere.
Thanks Bryan another great topic well said.
Well based on your comment ‘the State meant you and me and all of us’ that would count out both the national and act party cause they are all about me me me an I not us. And me me me and I are the 1% .
Never mind either the naysayers or the neo liberals.
I notice continually there are comments about ‘this cant happen again’. Piffle. Those self same promoters of the ‘Green Economy’ are simply so biased and thus blind folded by their own brand of ideology. When in reality, the Green Economy can work perfectly well in with Keynes economics. What do these people want or expect?- the only way there will be no consumption is if we are all DEAD !
Even a damn fish ‘consumes’ to live !!!.
They fail to see that moderation of some industry’s and developing replacement industry’s is the only viable and sustainable answer.- so radical have they let themselves become. Even the Green party acknowledge this. The real motive behind these types is the total abolition of all trade and capitalism in all forms. Well, I have news for them : even bartering is trade and its also ‘consumption’. These types smack of the thinking of the Luddites. Yet they live happily in Tinkerbell land naively dreaming of the day when even regulated capitalism wont exist. Let them have their sweet dreams.
They also expound this curious notion that in order to ‘ be as one’ with Mother Earth and cuddle into Gaia’s bosom a few billion other nameless faceless human beings need to be bumped off for them to enjoy their new ‘age of Aquarius’ utopia. You’ll also notice so long as its not them getting bumped off, they seem to be all fine and peachy with that.
Which brings us to the neo liberals.
Similar in self centered-ness to the above, this breed are quite happy to thieve literally billions from the country of their birth knowingly consigning millions to poverty conditions , indirectly causing the premature deaths of thousands because of lowered health care facility’s, creating wage slave conditions and diminishing the opportunity’s of others to advance themselves to their full human potential , – just so long as its not them.
Both are equally as scumbag in their thinking except that currently it is the directly above who currently hold political sway.
Now, … back to the topic at hand.
———————————–
…” their broad rejection of the reforms recommended by their own Tax Working Group signalled that the government’s position was neoliberalism with a softer face and not a passionate desire for us to change to a more egalitarian society”…
———————————–
And this is the root problem. They are stubbornly trying to fix massive problems that just cannot be fixed with the simplistic supply and demand curve of the neo liberals small economic ideological tool box. Still trying to pander to big business be they domestic or offshore, at the expense of a huge number of their working constituents. Rather than being courageous, and legislating in realistic wages and conditions and encouraging unions to be part of that process, – they find it far easier and less frightful to consider only big business demands and not forfeit the huge donations to their political party’s.
———————————-
… ” If the private sector wanted labour then they had to offer a bit more incentive to attract them from government jobs ”…
———————————-
We see a smidgen of this lately with the security personnel posted at MSD,…with them receiving the living wage…
Govt announces living wage for MSD security guards | RNZ …
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/423160/govt-announces-living-wage-for-msd-security-guards
Really ?- what took them so long? Was it a pandemic that forced their hands? Realizing that they were going to be dealing with huge numbers applying for the U.B and there were going to be many stressed out people there while our Police and military enforce the lock-downs at the borders and isolated management sites?
Or did they just suddenly thought they’d put kindness into reality for a day?
We’ve had these talks about a living wage for working people for DECADES. Literally DECADES !!! But these neo liberal govt’s were quite content to let family’s sleep in cars, kids die in moldy shitty run down state houses from preventable third world respiratory diseases to increase house prices and speculation , lock out first home buyers and young family’s from ever buying a home while saddled under enormous student debts , have foreigners increasingly owning large strategic chunks of our countryside , importing cheap labour from country’s with weak or non existent trade unions to drive down labour costs, sell off our natural resources such as water to foreign concerns for a song , and on and on and on.
Just think of the Double Dipper from Dipton Bill English and his glowing reports of a ‘low wage economy encouraging foreign investment’ and his follow up statement to justify cheap foreign labour to flood the country because ‘ most Kiwi workers are too drugged out and lazy to hold jobs’.
And in the meantime , – deny New Zealanders a realistic living wage to keep his mates and sycophants in clover. Thank goodness he’s gone but his ‘legacy’ lives on. It is that legacy we need to destroy.
And this is where we are heading and this is what MUST happen:
————————————
… ” If this precarious situation continues long enough, life will become so dire for so many of us that there will come a point where the State will be compelled to resume the role it one played in the post war period.
It will have to take back the control of the mortgage market it abandoned to the private banks, it will have to subsidise food and it will have to actively create government jobs through infrastructure projects such housing , large scale construction , transport reform , scientific and technological research and arts projects ” …
————————————
And the ONLY WAY this can be achieved is by a modernized form of Keynesian economics. The EXACT opposite of neo liberalism. Big govt instead of small, a re-inventing of both a Ministry of Works, a re-utilization of state assets for citizens to get an initial loan for mortgages on a first home, large scale public works including building of state housing and infrastructure including hospitals and schools, ports ( Northland ) rail , developing of IT , forestry and value added products for export and so on and so forth etc.
All based around the fundamentals of a Green Economy, technology , egalitarianism, business input and the like. None of this can happen under a neo liberal consensus in this country,- or any other. It is not communism nor is it capitalism , and it isn’t even extreme socialism. It is simply a measured and regulated, legislated response to world conditions, in a practical, fair and safe secure way we can not only rebuild our country but inure ourselves against global upsets and all still live a relatively normal and prosperous life.
This may be anathema to those accustomed to living off the backs of others but their time is over. They have had their 36 long year day in the sun of sponging off the many. It is time the teat was taken from their mouths and they learned to eat solids. We cannot afford to shoulder them any longer. And yet they will never be poor. They will never know what its like to live in the sort of poverty they and their interest groups created for the many by lobbying politicians to ensure their interests were met and the wealth of the commons was looted. Therefore they should be the least to be considered in this hour.
It is policy’s for the many not the few that matter now.
Keep up the good work Bryan , you hold many of the keys that have been deliberately and conveniently forgotten by this generation of politicians since 1984. I appreciate your excellent work.
WK, I like the fact that you are prepared to attack the corrupt, loot-and-pollute system. But when it comes to ecology or the fundamentals of what makes the system function you repeatedly demonstrate your cluelessness and lack of knowledge, both of fundamental science and history.
‘These types smack of the thinking of the Luddites.’
I have some bad news for you: the Luddites were absolutely right to oppose mechanisation of production and the dehumanisation of production previously dependent on the skills of craftsmen and women.
I’ll remind you that at the time of the Luddites (early 1800s to about 1819, when they were heavily stamped on by the empire, which at the time condoned slavery) ordinary folk were imprisoned, hung or sent to penal colonies for trying to feed themselves and their families.
After any war, the victors write the history according to their own perceptions and political ideology. This, the term Luddite has come to mean ‘someone who irrationally opposes progress’, rather than the genuine meaning of someone who opposes the dehumanisation of production and opposes the destruction of Nature.
It’s a very clever narrative that industrialists, bankers and the so-called elites have generated in their self-serving world of detachment from reality. And such has been the political power of their ‘progress’ narrative and their control of the so-called education system and their control of he public media that the vast majority of people believe the bullshit about progress and associate the term Luddite with irrationality and backwardness. It’s summed up by the phrase ‘you can’t stop progress’. And you too, have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker.
Well, if rendering the Earth uninhabitable for humans and most other species in a shockingly short period of less than 300 years is ‘progress’, no thanks.
The Earth was hardly pristine in 1780, when the Industrial Revolution really began to make its mark; the plague of greedy apes had already exterminated numerous species -from mammoths to great auks and moas, and was going into severe overshoot. ‘Progress’ had already commenced the process of converting the beautiful forests and prairies of America [that had self-sustained and had supported human cultures for around 60,000 years] into the toxic suburbia and toxic farmlands (that now produce mostly toxic ‘food’) -all of which characterise the America we witness today: a wasteland of toxicity, governed by fuckwits and lead by a fuckwit who wants to render the Earth uninhabitable faster than is already being achieved!
‘Trump rolls back methane climate standards for oil and gas industry
Methane is a greenhouse gas that heats the planet far faster than CO2 and addressing it is critical to slowing global heating’
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/13/trump-rolls-back-methane-climate-standards-oil-gas-industry
In Aoteara, the industrial empire began its assault on the natural environment soon after arriving -chopping down trees for masts and planks, and killing as many whales as the technology of the time -long boats and steel harpoons- would allow in order to extract the oil, which was beginning ti be in short supply as Europe went into sever population overshoot.
And once enough people had been imported to NZ -mostly semi-destitute, with a disproportionate quota of religious zealots- the process of destroying the natural environment and converting it into an empire-serving wasteland got underway on earnest. The pioneers of Taranaki didn’t even bother harvesting the trees but simply chopped them down and burned them in the race to create an almost featureless landscape of industrialised sheep and cow production. And when the soil fertility declined -as always happens when forests and jungles are cleared- the industrial answer was to turn the nearby phosphate-rich islands of Nauru and Christmas Island into moonscapes by digging them up as fast as possible and carting the phosphate to NZ.
Such was the greed and impatience that the natural process of phosphate release ‘wasn’t good enough’ and fertiliser works were constructed to make sulphuric acid that was (is) used to modify the phosphate rock and convert it into ‘superphosphate’, which dissolves much more readily and releases the phosphate, promoting overproduction of grass and overstocking of livestock. Needless to say, the phosphate (along with nitrogen in the form of ammonium nitrate or urea) then caused (causes) algal blooms and other ‘complications’ in the lakes and rivers of the country. As does the overstocking, which results in animal excreta finding its way into lakes and rivers.
I could write a book on this stuff, stuff but won’t bother because i already have written five, and we live in a society in which most people don’t read, and of those that do, the majority ruin from reality as fast as possible.
That’s why we are fucked and why the children of the world stand no chance. Having said that, children growing up in NZ have a slightly better odds than most of not being wiped out by what is underway.
Even as I write, i know for certain that the coming election result will be decided on the basis of no discussion whatsoever about anything that actually matters, and will be decided on the basis of who can lie most successfully whilst talking a whole lot of bullshit that is centred on short-termism -which is fated to collapse over the coming few years (or coming few months).
No wonder ‘no one’ wants to talk about reality.
Daily CO2
Aug. 12, 2020: 412.89 ppm
Aug. 12, 2019: 410.65 ppm
‘Remember that above 0°C, ice will melt. The water temperature of the Arctic Ocean underneath the sea ice is warmer, and this has been melting the sea ice from below. There still is a (rapidly thinning and shrinking) layer of sea ice at the surface of the Arctic Ocean, because until recently, air temperatures had remained low enough to maintain it, while it also takes time for the ice to melt. As long as there is ice, the heat will be consumed by the process of melting – once the ice is gone, temperatures will rise even more rapidly.’
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/
Apologies for the typing errors in my early morning ‘rant’.
WK, I like the fact that you are prepared to attack the corrupt, loot-and-pollute system. But when it comes to ecology or the fundamentals of what makes the system function you repeatedly demonstrate your cluelessness and lack of knowledge, both of fundamental science and history.
‘These types smack of the thinking of the Luddites.’
I have some bad news for you: the Luddites were absolutely right to oppose mechanisation of production and the dehumanisation of production previously dependent on the skills of craftsmen and women.
I’ll remind you that at the time of the Luddites (early 1800s to about 1819, when they were heavily stamped on by the empire, which at the time condoned slavery) ordinary folk were imprisoned, hung or sent to penal colonies for trying to feed themselves and their families.
After any war, the victors write the history according to their own perceptions and political ideology. Thus, the term Luddite has come to mean ‘someone who irrationally opposes progress’, rather than the genuine meaning of someone who opposes the dehumanisation of production and opposes the destruction of Nature.
It’s a very clever narrative that industrialists, bankers and the so-called elites have generated in their self-serving world of detachment from reality. And such has been the political power of their ‘progress’ narrative and their control of the so-called education system and their control of the public media that the vast majority of people believe the bullshit about progress and associate the term Luddite with irrationality and backwardness. It’s summed up by the phrase ‘you can’t stop progress’. And you too, have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker.
Well, if rendering the Earth uninhabitable for humans and most other species in a shockingly short period of less than 300 years is ‘progress’, no thanks.
The Earth was hardly pristine in 1780, when the Industrial Revolution really began to make its mark; the plague of greedy apes had already exterminated numerous species -from mammoths to great auks and moas, and was going into severe overshoot. ‘Progress’ had already commenced the process of converting the beautiful forests and prairies of America [that had self-sustained and had supported human cultures for around 60,000 years] into the toxic suburbia and toxic farmlands (that now produce mostly toxic ‘food’) -all of which characterise the America we witness today: a wasteland of toxicity, governed by fuckwits and lead by a fuckwit who wants to render the Earth uninhabitable faster than is already being achieved!
‘Trump rolls back methane climate standards for oil and gas industry
Methane is a greenhouse gas that heats the planet far faster than CO2 and addressing it is critical to slowing global heating’
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/13/trump-rolls-back-methane-climate-standards-oil-gas-industry
In Aoteara, the industrial empire began its assault on the natural environment soon after arriving -chopping down trees for masts and planks, and killing as many whales as the technology of the time -long boats and steel harpoons- would allow in order to extract the oil, which was beginning to be in short supply, as Europe went into severe population overshoot.
And once enough people had been imported to NZ -mostly semi-destitute, with a disproportionate quota of religious zealots- the process of destroying the natural environment and converting it into an empire-serving wasteland got underway in earnest. The pioneers of Taranaki didn’t even bother harvesting the trees but simply chopped them down and burned them in the race to create an almost featureless landscape of industrialised sheep and cow production. And when the soil fertility declined -as always happens when forests and jungles are cleared- the industrial answer was to turn the nearby phosphate-rich islands of Nauru and Christmas Island into moonscapes by digging them up as fast as possible and carting the phosphate to NZ.
Such was the greed and impatience that the natural process of phosphate release ‘wasn’t good enough’ and fertiliser works were constructed to make sulphuric acid that was (is) used to modify the phosphate rock and convert it into ‘superphosphate’, which dissolves much more readily and releases the phosphate quickly, promoting overproduction of grass and overstocking of livestock. Needless to say, the phosphate (along with nitrogen in the form of ammonium nitrate or urea) then caused (causes) algal blooms and other ‘complications’ in the lakes and rivers of the country. As does the overstocking, which results in animal excreta finding its way into lakes and rivers.
I could write a book on this stuff, but won’t bother because I already have written five, and we live in a society in which most people don’t read, and of those that do, the majority run from reality as fast as possible.
That’s why we are fucked and why the children of the world stand no chance.
Having said that, children growing up in NZ have a slightly better odds than most of not being wiped out by what is underway.
Even as I write, I know for certain that the coming election result will be decided on the basis of no discussion whatsoever about anything that actually matters, and will be decided on the basis of who can lie most successfully whilst talking a whole lot of bullshit that is centred on short-termism -which is fated to collapse over the coming few years (or coming few months).
No wonder ‘no one’ wants to talk about reality.
Daily CO2
Aug. 12, 2020: 412.89 ppm
Aug. 12, 2019: 410.65 ppm
‘Remember that above 0°C, ice will melt. The water temperature of the Arctic Ocean underneath the sea ice is warmer, and this has been melting the sea ice from below. There still is a (rapidly thinning and shrinking) layer of sea ice at the surface of the Arctic Ocean, because until recently, air temperatures had remained low enough to maintain it, while it also takes time for the ice to melt. As long as there is ice, the heat will be consumed by the process of melting – once the ice is gone, temperatures will rise even more rapidly.’
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/
All you ever do is fill these forums with your equally clueless and unrealistic personal viewpoints and your smug sense of pseudo intellectualism day after day.
Frankly? – I’m sick of your grating pessimism and your groundless selective scaremongering. Are you burning right now in your global fireball or drowning in deep floods and growing gills? Which is it?
When time comes for you to offer something more constructive than your incessant nihilism and your destructive arrogant ‘ I know best than all the rest of you’ it may be time to even consider you as a contender for rational commonsense. Until then, stop scaring people especially minors with your selectively chosen cherry picked idiot rants.
Do you mean ignore what is most likely to be ahead. I think the kids should know and badger their older selfish generation to take some action.
AFKTT had added valuable input and repetition is often needed to avoid ignore.
WK you also have added some very pertinent contributions.
Live and let live. We are not all the same.
…’ But when it comes to ecology or the fundamentals of what makes the system function you repeatedly demonstrate your cluelessness and lack of knowledge, both of fundamental science and history’…
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You complete and arrogant little schmuck.
A Dip in Sc and tech , advanced trade certificate in horticulture and organic techniques , as well as practical hands on experience by nature of living in the rural and you deem to condescend to me like a common peasant.
TBH? My view of you is as a camp follower, sneaking behind and being shielded by untested popular opinion and using populist theories to hide behind to ingratiate yourself as some sort of modern doomsday prophet. I see you have carved yourself quite a comfortable and unassailable niche within the doom and gloom crowd. The problem is as I see it, your like a secondary witness to a car crash. Full of fleeting glimpses but low on the ground when it comes to actual solid facts of who, where , when and how.
WK
Perhaps the facts of ” who, where , when and how.” are as yet in the future but likelihoods are best structured on a wider area of study which was called “Futures”
A good background in this very wide field is necessary to comprehend some of the intricacies of interaction between many of the trend well observed since 1800.
Horticulture as taught in the past few decades has a lot that can be added to address the bigger picture largely ignored.
The DSIR had a group working on futures before that was disbanded due to not being commercially profitable.
Business including Horticulture don’ want to know.
Rather than select views just on mechanisation of production the link below covers views of a brilliant thinker that you would be much poorer if you have missed the,
https://www.tinytechindia.com/mahatmagandhi
thank you Bryan.
i am looking forward to that day when life becomes so dire for so many of us.
One thing we could do is cap the salaries of MPs and the number of terms they serve. If they wanted to be remembered for having done some useful task for NZ then they had better do it before 9 years was up. And they would not be allowed to stand again. Bring down the salary – apparently Brownlee is getting $288,000 approx.
It should be a privilege to serve your country and help it to be great. At present these pollies appear to be puppets on long strings, and chosen because of their white teeth and confident mien. Also they should have done at least a diploma in political science, planning and decision making, and social anthropology and social development. All those disciplines will make them very sharp, cunning and good value after they stop being pollies.
At present the political sphere appears to be a well-paid apprenticeship preparatory to serving some large money-making business entity. Bu…er that for a lark say thinking citizen voters.
I’m waiting , Mr Bradbury for my return response to my accuser. Something to which I believe you also had problems with regards your difficulties with certain law agency’s not so long ago. I would appreciate if the same courtesy with which you expected were returned to me on your blog.
I respect if you are currently busy. I will not respect however if you are wishing to slant issues to a predetermined narrative to suit current political narratives by delays or withholding contrary viewpoints.
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