During this extraordinary climate crisis acceleration event that is occurring globally right now, we have run out of Alphabet to name storms…
Twenty tropical storms and hurricanes have already been named in the Atlantic in 2020, with months left to go before the oceans finally settle. The breakneck pace of the 2020 season has far outpaced the 11-storm seasonal average that usually prevails, and it has nearly exhausted the list of names that can be assigned to storms this year. It’s highly likely meteorologists will have to dip into the Greek alphabet for additional storm names — but some fear this convention, as is, could be problematic.
While our focus is on the Pandemic (an event which is itself a symptom of the climate crisis), the catastrophic weather events that global warming exacerbates are exploding right now.
The following is from Bloomberg, hardly a radical green voice of hyperbole…
- Record breaking temperatures around the planet.
- Siberia is on fire and as permafrost thaws, it risks releasing a methane giga-tonne bomb.
- Ninety-three percent of heat captured by greenhouse gases since the 1970s have been absorbed by the oceans.
- Hurricanes in America have made landfall in numbers before the end of August that have never been seen before.
- Agricultural calendar disruption – the changing and ever extreme weather events are now disrupting global supply chains for food production. Low water levels caused up to a 15% rise in costs to cross the Panama Canal.
- California’s extreme forrest fires are the new annual reality.
…oh and the ‘doomsday’ glacier in Antarctica is far more unstable than we ever previously feared…
Over the past three decades, the rate of ice loss from Thwaites, which is about the size of Great Britain or the US state of Florida, and its neighboring glaciers has increased more than five-fold.
If Thwaites were to collapse, it could lead to an increase in sea levels of around 25 inches (64 centimeters) — and the researchers are trying to find out how soon this is likely to happen.
…in short, we are seeing an acceleration of warming dynamics that demand immediate political attention.
So where is NZ politically a month out from an election?
- Labour is tinkering with renewable energy.
- ACT will repeal all climate crisis legislation and mine on conservation land.
- National will bring back oil and gas exploration.
- The Greens will charge Farmers some extra money for slightly less toxic rivers and give the private Jedi Academy $12m.
- NZ First will give money to the Racing Industry. I know, this is a climate change issue, but NZ First will still give money to the Racing Industry because anytime NZ First open their mouths, money just bounces out to the Racing Industry.
For sometime my feeling has been that the current political spectrum simply isn’t radical enough to adapt the economy, society and culture fast enough to the realities of the climate crisis.
This pandemic has highlighted that when existential extremes occur to us as a civilisation, we immediately look to the state for protection, so let’s just dump the whole free market neoliberal bullshit shall we?
It’s not ‘Socialism for Stealth’ if the entire country is screaming for it.
This pandemic is a universal experience, the shock waves of which are fracturing the free market certainties the hegemonic economic framework has been built upon.
An enormous cultural, economic and political backlash is building and the naked reality is that the climate crisis will be far worse than this pandemic we currently tremble from.
Spending billions on trying to rebuild ‘normal’ is fucking absurd when the market ‘normal’ was what made this pandemic erupt in the first place.
Destruction of natural biospheres alongside jowl to cheek over population and global trade exacerbated this pandemic but the climate crisis will make these 1 in a 100 year events become 1 every 10 years.
JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race
The world’s largest financier of fossil fuels has warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document.
The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences.
The study implicitly condemns the US bank’s own investment strategy and highlights growing concerns among major Wall Street institutions about the financial and reputational risks of continued funding of carbon-intensive industries, such as oil and gas.
JP Morgan has provided $75bn (£61bn) in financial services to the companies most aggressively expanding in sectors such as fracking and Arctic oil and gas exploration since the Paris agreement, according to analysis compiled for the Guardian last year.
The current political spectrum in New Zealand can not radically adapt fast enough to adopt the changes we must make if we are to survive the climate crisis. It will require a radical Political Movement that elects a Party to implement Fortress Aotearoa…
- Move away from intensive farming and look to become domestically self sustainable in terms of food.
- Immediately ban all water exports
- 5 year Parliamentary term.
- Upper and Lower House (Upper House 50-50 split between Māori & Pakeha that can hold up legislation if unhappy about Treaty issues)
- Massive investment into R&D from Government with the understanding research is to benefit NZ first before sold offshore.
- Large scale increase in Navy, Army & Airforce.
- Mass limiting of tourism numbers with increased tourist taxes.
- Only citizens can vote.
- Sustainable immigration and an end to exploitative migrant workers.
- Resettlement Programms for all pacific island neighbours.
- Increase refugee in take to 10 000 per year
- Fully funded public services.
- Mass Green housing rebuild.
- 100% renewable energy for entire country.
- Massive tree planting across previous farming land.
- Wholesale re-write of state services act to end commercial values.
- Investment into basic pharmaceutical production.
- Financial transaction tax
- Wealth tax
- Multinational tax
- Inheritance tax
On a rapidly warming planet, NZ will increasingly be the life boat for Earth and the tyranny of our distance will become our blessing.
As the climate crisis unfolds more and more people in fury will turn against the current political system too wedded to the economic profits margins of the polluters. It is just a matter of time before the NZ electorate rejects the limitations of the current political spectrum.
If Labour or Labour+Greens are the next Government, we should judge them on their first 100 days legislative plan.
If Jacinda fails to do the real change required we will know that Labour are not the political vehicle required for the radical transformative reform required.
In 2023, for the first time in NZ history, Gen x + Gen Y + Millennials will be a larger voting block than the boomers.
2023 is our date for Fortress Aotearoa comrades.
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‘2023 is our date for Fortress Aotearoa comrades’
I think you will find that 2023 is too late, Martyn. The financial meltdown is more-or-less certain to hit before the end of 2020, and NZ will be taken down by the US and other major players.
As for the environment, well that is already fucked beyond repair, and once we allowed* atmospheric CO2 to exceed 400 ppm we set the agenda climate catastrophe on an unstoppable course of accelerating meltdown via positive feedbacks.
*promoted would be a better word because no politician lifted a finger to reduce emissions and all politicians demanded economic growth.
The issue of citizenship, permanent residency and voting rights needs a complete rethink – especially since citizenship became just another tradable commodity.
– Buying citizenship (think Peter Thiel)
– Should a NZ born person who spends most of their life outside NZ, and who in no way contributes to the economy and NZ society – and who likely holds dual citizenship, be eligible to vote?
versus
– the spouse (say) of a citizen residing in NZ for several years, and who does contribute to the economy NOT be eligible to vote
– the voting age
As someone who used to support dual citizenship, the past 30 years or so have caused me to have a rethink.
– more so since Thiel and others who simply see NZ as a bolt hole.
– more so since absentee citizens (some absent for most of their lives, and most likely with “foreign” partners) now want to come back to a “home” they’ve done little to support over the years, and who will return equipped with savings earned in currencies worth double NZ’s. They will likely help hold things like property values artificially high and keep others from ever owning a house.
– is NZ simply real estate?, a retirement village? a bolthole? a place where the wealthy can live at the expense of others and ‘displace’ them from having reasonable lives?
It’s a complex issue. There are some ideas around that would prevent the likes of Thiels and others who see NZ as a backdoor to Okkerland, AND/OR those who see NZ simply as real estate.
(One is the idea of an ‘Overseas NZ Citizen whereby if a citizen lives overseas for more than a couple of election cycles – rhey become ineligible to vote, and where someone has been Permanently Resident for more than a couple of election cycles, they are eligible to vote)
I’m reminded of my Maori nephew who had lived overseas from the time he was 6 months old, and who finally wanted to return nearly 30 years later with wife and 2 children AND was treated like shit at the border by officials demanding he prove he was Maori and entitled.
Similarly friends with ‘foreign’ partners who’ve been here many years struggling to get citizenship because of ridiculous policy, and who’ve only rarely visited their place of birth.
More complex than giving it a quick glance
Gen Y is millennials. And the only thing we are inheriting is an ever increasingly f$#ked up world.
“YES!” to Financial transaction tax, AND get rid of GST – the most regressive tax of my life (in my 8th decade).
But Trump said “it will cool and the science is wrong”
And I hang off his every word because he’s bigly smart.
The Climate Emergency
* Record breaking temperatures around the planet.
* Siberia is on fire and as permafrost thaws, it risks releasing a methane giga-tonne bomb.
* Ninety-three percent of heat captured by greenhouse gases since the 1970s have been absorbed by the oceans.
* Hurricanes in America have made landfall in numbers before the end of August that have never been seen before.
* Agricultural calendar disruption – the changing and ever extreme weather events are now disrupting global supply chains for food production. Low water levels caused up to a 15% rise in costs to cross the Panama Canal.
* California’s extreme forest fires are the new annual reality.
The Climate Crisis
* Labour is tinkering with renewable energy.
* ACT will repeal all climate crisis legislation and mine on conservation land.
National will bring back oil and gas exploration.
* The Greens will charge Farmers some extra money for slightly less toxic rivers and give the private Jedi Academy $12m.
* NZ First will give money to the Racing Industry. I know, this is a climate change issue, but NZ First will still give money to the Racing Industry because anytime NZ First open their mouths, money just bounces out to the Racing Industry.
“Ninety-three percent of heat captured by greenhouse gases since the 1970s have been absorbed by the oceans.”
This is the key. The ocean controls the weather. It covers 70% of the worlds surface and stores 98% of the heat.
The energy captured since the industrial revolution began is equivalent to millions of trillions of nuclear bombs that destroyed Hiroshima.
That energy is released in the form of hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, or whatever you want to call them.
That energy results in warming of the oceans. None of the climate change models fully factor this into their calculations.
What happens when oceans warm is thermoclines form. A layer of warm water over cold water. There is a physical boundary between those layers.
Cold water at the bottom contains nutrients, but there is no light. The warmer layer above has light, but no nutrients.
So phytoplankton which grow in the upper layers of the ocean have no nutrients, so they die. And fall to the bottom of the ocean.
These phytoplankton absorb 90% of the worlds CO2. And they are about to die. And when they disappear, the ocean warms up, the thermoclines expand and the process becomes exponentially irreversible.
We are already at the tipping point, there are solutions but the people who should care seem more worried about survival and their house price.
That is what we need to address, why have people, even from the left, become absorbed by the greed is good mantra.
All good except ‘the people who should care seem more worried about survival and their house price.]
I put it to you that they do care about their house price but don’t care about survival and do everything possible to ensure they DON’T survive via pursuing consumerism and short-term comfort/convenience.
Grand Solar Minimum
Wake up dumb-asses and smell your own horseshit
There are none so blind as those who will not see
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