ON THE SAME DAY as the IPCC warned us of impending doom, half the country’s lights went out. It was a sign. Like the chilling wailing of air-raid sirens that echoed across London just seconds after Neville Chamberlain told the people of the United Kingdom that their country was at war with Germany, the IPCC report and Transpower’s enforced “load reduction” signalled a shift from one state to the next. Except that no one in charge seemed to notice. Energy Minister Megan Woods huffed and puffed at Genesis Energy, but none of her Labour colleagues were in any hurry to blow the profit-driven electricity market down.
And the Greens? Astonishingly, they were in no greater hurry to call time on profit-driven energy than Labour. Proof – if further proof is needed – that the Greens’ commitment to fighting global warming is about as serious as the Exxon Valdez’s commitment to clean ice. Tragically, there isn’t one member of the current House of Representatives willing to urge the utterly obvious and desperately needed next step: moving Aotearoa-New Zealand on to a war-footing against Climate Change.
Only the assumption of full war powers will equip this, or any other, government with the legal authority necessary to reprioritise the economy and mobilise the population against the existential threat of an overheated world. But, since it is not yet possible, in this country, to point to a flesh-and-blood enemy at the gates (although, one might have thought that all those recent floods came pretty close!) obtaining the electorate’s permission for such a drastic and irrevocable decision will require a bit of fancy political footwork.
Since neither the Labour nor the Green caucus possesses a person with the requisite dancing skills, it will be necessary, from here on, to imagine a Labour-Green Government positively overflowing with politicians who know all the steps and who are all willing to make the necessary moves.
So, it’s Monday night, the PM and her colleagues have their noses deep in the IPCC report and the phone rings. It’s TVNZ’s political editor, Jessica Mutch McKay, asking for comment about the Waikato black-out. Just as soon as everyone calms down, and the Energy Minister stops heaping all manner of unprintable curses upon the heads of Transpower and the profiteering “gentailers”, the Prime Minister suggests that everybody take a deep breath and spend a few moments considering the extraordinary opportunity which this unique confluence of events has dropped into their lap.
As understanding slowly dawns in her Cabinet’s eyes, the Prime Minister presses on. She tells them that, in the light of the “Code Red” IPCC report, and the abject market failure evident in the deliberate shutting-down of the power-grid across much of New Zealand (not to mention the fact that the Government only got to hear about the blackout from the news media) the Cabinet has decided that the re-nationalisation of the entire energy sector is now an urgent necessity.
Naturally, the Labour-Green Government experiences immediate and massive pushback. The National and Act parties are the least of their worries. Most of the pressure comes from the public servants employed by Treasury, MFAT and MBIE. Nobody re-nationalises whole industries anymore, the Cabinet is informed. At least, not with any intention of holding on to them for any longer than it takes to rescue those that are “too big to fail”. Very soon, the officials are leaking like sieves to employer lobby groups, right-wing think tanks and the news media. The whole neoliberal establishment pitches in, confident that the Government will soon buckle under the weight of so much “mainstream” opposition.
The Prime Minister just smiles. This is exactly the response she anticipated, and is ready with her counter-move. The word is passed along to Greenpeace, Action Station, School Strike For Climate and the CTU that the Government could use a little help on the streets. The PM’s spin doctors prepare a list of talking-points to emphasise in what it hopes will become a popular campaign to re-nationalise the energy sector.
Re-nationalisation will:
- Hasten the shift from fossil fuels to renewables
- Keep electricity prices under control
- Ease the transition from the internal combustion engine to electrically-powered motor vehicles and facilitate the full electrification of the railway network
- Allow for coherent long-term energy planning
- Simplify the funding and construction of new energy generation facilities
The Government-inspired “Take Back Your Power!” campaign brings an impressive number of New Zealanders onto the streets. At what is billed the campaign’s “Struggle For Tomorrow” rally, the Prime Minister delivers an impassioned speech about the need to fight Climate Change the way our parents and grand-parents fought fascism:
“Nobody complained then about the state taking over the economy and asking everybody to play their part in securing victory. And yet, today, with the future of humanity itself hanging in the balance, the promoters of profit and private gain insist that we cannot mount a collective defence against Climate Change. They do not, even at this eleventh hour, understand that we are confronted with the moral equivalent of war – a total war for the survival of life on earth. If we cannot rely upon their co-operation, then we must insist upon their acquiescence. In the war against Climate Change we will not tolerate a fifth column of do-nothing-deniers!”
With the cheers of her supporters ringing in her ears, the Prime Minister drives through the re-nationalisation legislation under urgency. With many voters urging her government to take the next logical step and put the country on a full war-footing (as she hoped they would) the Prime Minister bolsters the already declared Climate Emergency with a comprehensive legislative package giving the Labour-Green Government powers equivalent to those wielded by Labour prime minister Peter Fraser during World War II.
In a Facebook post to her followers, the PM recalls Winston Churchill’s grim observation that he had nothing to offer the beleaguered British people but “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. Smiling, as only she can smile, she declares:
“I am confident that I can spare the Team of Five Million Churchill’s blood, but toil, tears and sweat there will be in abundance. You have my solemn promise, however, that the burden of rescuing our planet will be borne equally. And when we are safe, you may rest assured that the lessons learned in the struggle for tomorrow will not be forgotten.”
Now, if we could just lay our hands on 60 or 70 of these “do-something” politicians, then hoping for a cooler future might not seem such a pointless exercise.
This visualisation from CT, is one that I can whole heartedly support!
Restoring power generation and supply to full public ownership and control would be a great step. As would wide implementation of solar, eco cooling and heating tech, rain water collection, and mini gardens for residential and commercial structures.
Agree 100%. I think Wild Katipo suggested this yesterday too. Agree there is no-one with the mana or the ability to lead on anything – except woke victim-playing, as intimated by Pope Punctilious.
The Greens are a self-pitying disgrace. Kerekere’s maiden speech bitching about colonialists curbing Maori gender diversification/whatever, added nothing to the present, the future, or planet earth. Davidson’s hijacking the Muslim massacre to make it about Maori, to demonise Pakeha, and worry the Muslim
Muslim community was appalling – and then she has the nerve to feel sorry for herself when somebody called her a c**t, instead of asking herself why. The Greens are probably the biggest racists in Parliament, and people who can’t see the wood for the trees aren’t very well placed to help the earth or the people.
If this lot are unable or unwilling to address immediate issues like child poverty and homelessness, it may be unrealistic to expect them to concern themselves with the future. The power of one can achieve mighty things, but that one ain’t in the Beehive. Ironically, Winston Churchill, despite his flaws, was such a one, and Kerekere wanting his picture removed from Parliament was just more cultural vandalism, and Ardern was wrong in appearing disinterested when the when the power of symbols is also a biggie – which she should know, being a pr person.
Of course nationalising the electricity industry is a must at every level, including future shock – it just needs a few stout-hearted men.
Yeah it might work as well as all the other things this government has done.
New Zealand can carry all noble, doable and pragmatically necessary climate change preventable measures, the reality is that unless the major emitters (China, India, etc.) follow the pathfinders led by New Zealand. This climate change will continue unabated.
Lets not be disillusioned about New Zealand changing the 99.9% of climate change induced practices it has no control over. It cannot.
So we have two strategic purposes. Show the world how it is done and what a society will look like OR prepare society to live with the inevitable climate change.
By all accounts it is too late to show case to the world how a restructured New Zealand society will mitigate climate change. The fear mongers how won that battle, world wide. World wide it is obvious that the majority of people world wide are not in a position or have an inclination to change a single climate changing parameter.
Many of these events are not reported in New Zealand. Ask yourselves why? For if 90% of the world’s people don’t give a flying monkey about climate change, why should New Zealanders’ vote for a climate change government. As an example have you seen this reported in New Zealand.
https://scoopempire.com/kuwait-tire-graveyards/
So lets prepare New Zealand society for the extreme climate changes that are happening.
And also be honest to tackle the real problem. Over population.
It would be a hard sell that nationalising our power market would save the world.
SPC – It’d be an easier sell if presented as saving a bob or
two on the electricity bill, but better still, having control over our own income-generating assets is a no-brainer – could be done.
Aint going to happen. The problem I see is China, India, The USA and Russia are all doing not much.. so no matter what happens climate change is going to happen. We need to be preparing for whats coming.
Start zoning areas that will flood unbuildable from now on.
This is going to get ugly.
Or we can build flood prevention systems to stop sea inundation. At the same time we need river flood prevention systems. Though I would think the Greens will not allow say Wellington to be ring fenced with a 3 metre high stop bank. And where would those Green MP’s fly into when Wellington Airport is under water without a 3 metre stop bank to protect it? Plus that rail line into Wellington will need to be realigned through Transmission Gulley? Interestingly the recent flooding in Germany and Belgium were not replicated in Holland. Yet Holland is on the delta of all those rivers. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Prevention better than retreat?
Hmmm The Netherlands has also been breached with floods.
Thousands flee as flood waters breach Dutch defences
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/families-told-flee-flood-waters-breach-dutch-dyke-2021-07-16/
Since in NZ the construction industry can’t even build a cycle lane, bridge or road in NZ as entire industries have been allowed to do nothing but rort profits for decades and bring in untrained and illegal workers, to shareholders without delivering much, (in particular construction (workers) and energy (do nothing)), then don’t like our chances of a win on flood protection.
How many years and millions of dollars and a resource consent granted, before the stakeholders realised that Sky path was not viable engineering wise??? NZ has become crazy incompetent and the resource consents for white elephant projects keep flying through, generating millions in fake profits while nothing gets done well!
Even in Europe and The Netherlands they can’t prevent water breaches… in NZ we struggle to build even an apartment well like Victopia.
We might have been better to keep the 100% pure NZ rather than 100% pure Rogernomics construction and 100% pure Rogernomic electricity generation.
ROGERNOMES
ROGERNOMES
ROGERNOMES.
ROGERNOMES! ROGERNOMES! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting ROGERNOMICS to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!
(apologies to Ginsberg)
OK sounds like Transpower are now claiming their instructions to WEL to remove people’s electricity was a ‘mistake’. Yeah Right! https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/448986/waikato-power-company-was-told-to-reduce-load-by-20-percent
Is NZ going through Enron inspired behaviour, because of NZ’s sad monopoly and lack of regulation of NZ’s electricity, to spike prices while putting lives and the economy at risk? When outages create spike which are highly profitable, then our markets are actively encouraging this behaviour to occur!
The question is, why Transpower hasn’t installed batteries (like in OZ and some Auckland) to stop power outages???? Too busy doing nothing but exploiting consumers for their own profits! At present there is no incentive for Transpower to do anything to stop this because the government does nothing to hold them to account and they don’t want to change the system like other countries have already done!
If even OZ with Coal card carrying Morrison has managed to start the transition, you have to think that the Green and Labours war on gender and twitter housing WOF (when there is dwindling houses left to rent, now) is becoming life and planet threatening when that is all they care about.
Real politics was killed off by Muldoon and the criminals that followed him.
Since the mid-70s, it’s all been a puppet show geared to looting and polluting the planet.
And that is all the LINO mob (or any of the other clowns and criminal in parliament) know, having grown up in the age of looting and polluting.
An uninhabitable planet on its way, soon (probably around 2040), thanks to politicians, bankers, economists and the other saboteurs that infest the system.
And make sure the army and police are onside to counter the ‘freedom’ mob and the crazy farmers who will be out on the streets
Crazy farmers like Rachel Stewart who might be a TERF so must have guns seized.
It seems the government is determined to put as many risks as possible to get Covid back into NZ with the new self isolating system. Worked so well with trusting the people coming from certain countries, who in spite of testing negative before departure, had widespread Covid as soon as they landed! Soon as they land, NZ has to pay for their care. Never mind, it seems the MIQ system is frustrating for the exploiters profits, Covid refugees building their next McMansion here and those who need to holiday out of NZ so Jacinda and Labeen quick to change the rules for them.
Fiji and OZ community outbreaks, here we come.
Even without Covid, with NZ’s housing shortages are getting more alarming, why are the government so determined to bring in more people from overseas to be housed in NZ? Don’t forget the 30,000 people on NZ’s health waiting list and the congested schools and roads. Today apparently 5 people in an Auckland hospital were starved due to shortages of feeding systems. But still more important to keep the Ponzi rolling in despite a lack of public good rather than make sure there is enough hospital resources for existing NZ residents first.
Is having exploited slave workers more important than the health of NZ current residents?
The Meth trade is probably suffering now as it’s becoming harder to get precursor material into NZ!
Seems like the bad things that have been driving NZ, also seem to be driving the governments actions to get back the status quo post Covid full of exploitation and Meth and contraband, to the people of NZ’s detriment.
I reckon Labour, and to a lesser extent the Greens have just had the shits put up them. The problem is they’ve dithered and procrastinated for so long that the actual work has piled up.
Letting the bureaucracy pushback (in the nicest possible way, of course – most often through spin and BS and outdated “process”) . They don’t have functioning BS detectors.
H1 at least had her shit kicker to trot out when necessary. But we’re now way past incrementalism as a way to make progress and do what needs to be done. Things have mounted up.
I’d say a bigger problem is that government wrote checks and promised support to the loudest whiners who are ripping them and NZ off, but still the penny hasn’t dropped.
Every industry the government has backed seems the most broken and most probably ACT supporters waiting to embarrass the government. The neoliberals tricked sly dog Winny, (easy with Shane at the helm) and took NZ First out, now time for Labeen.
So after making NZ’s homeless live in emergency housing for years while housing continues to skyrocket with more migrants coming to NZ to buy new builds, landlords sell up, industry increases the price of food as most is now exported, while having organised rolling power black outs. Oh and forget going to hospital you can’t even get on a hospital waiting list anymore. Not a good look! Then wait till Covid hits the hospital beds.
Industry has failed to produce many houses that locals in NZ can afford because while house prices, food and power sky rocket, wages remain stubbornly low. Meanwhile the biggest whinners bray about how they can’t get their cheap workers anymore once they made their old ones redundant from 2020 and now they have to pay their migrant workers more, not wages from 20 years ago! Its called the markets, guys! Funny how the free market guys, rush for government help every minute in NZ which the government gratefully glad hands.
I hear Rymans are now selling retirement right to occupy licenses for millions in Auckland, highest prices ever, collaboration with the blind foundation. Who knew that there was such a relationship between charity holdings and business? I’m not holding my breath the retirement industry pay their nurses more though, as they are routinely paid 5% less than other nurses , then surprise, surprise apparently the highly profitable retirement industry has worker shortages that the NZ taxpayers are expected to bail out.
Gosh no wonder the lobbyists are pushing the government to open the borders for a flood gate without MIQ because if this keeps up, NZ business might have to start to try to get parity with OZ wages, train workers and respect people more while allowing workers enough money to buy a house! Quick abandon MIQ, with all this socialism!
My point is @ SAVENZ, Here’s how it should go:
– Responsible Munsters tell their ‘officials’ this/these are our policies and this is what we want to get done. Please provide advice asap on HOW to achieve the outcome we desire in the most expedient way.
Do some research, give us you SWOT analyses and all the shit, NOT your opinions, PR spin and bullshit. If you need more resource – let us know. In the current environment, all the relevant purchase agreements, KPIs and crap should have been in place (although, as we know, back in ’17, they didn’t expect to win or have a plan)
– Officials go away and do their job.
IF they don’t do their job, responsible Munsters tell the SSC behind closed doors (now the PSC after a bit of window dressing), we’re not that happy with what’s going on. PSC chastises ‘officials’ as necessary and puts them on notice. Even the most hapless, useless Munster.
Trouble is, none of that is happening.
I just learned today (for example) that OT ;officials’ were “offended” when some young upstart you may have seen on TVNZ Breakfast who’d been repeatedly abused and traumatised whilst in State Care delivered his paper at a conference. Diddums! the ‘officials’
I’m sure he gives a shit that their poor wee egos were a bit bruised. Bit of a setback to the old CV I ‘spose.
It doesn’t actually have to be the way it is but if officials don’t understand the concept of being in the PS, there are jobs for them elsewhere.
It’s not their job to try and capture their Ministers and force their various agendas.
Fuck ’em
This government is very good at making apologies.
What, when and from whom will the apology be forthcoming to our children and our children’s children for the terrible and disastrous mess we are leaving for them – if, in fact, they even survive climate apocalypse?
It will never happen for many reasons but none more so than a lack of ‘moral majority’.
Assuming the government wanted to go down this road and had the capability to do so, I dont think the electorate would have the requisite amount of trust in them to go there. Even us dyed in the wool, labour voters no longer believe anything that comes out of the PM and the team of four?’s mouths..
Agreed…..Even us dyed in the wool, labour voters no longer believe anything that comes out of the PM and the team of four?’s mouths.
But I keep saying where is the REAL left wing party that we can vote for that has a half decent chance of getting into Parliament? Then we’d see how popular JacindaBlair really is. Presently it’s her or Judeath. No wonder JacindaBlair is doing so well.
At the very same time as people down south are shivering in a polar ice blast, and the food in their freezers is spoiling, what are the greens doing?
In a breathtaking move like shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic they are whining about having to see a portrait of Winston Churchill as they come and go from their committee room. They need to get their head out of their undies, do some compulsory kibbutz-style labour, disband the quidditch green school magic and sleep rough for a https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/08/12/must-read-take-back-your-power-what-a-real-labour-green-government-might-do-to-combat-climate-change/#comment-567982.
If you listen to the greens and much of labour the greatest crisis humanity faces is people being mean, colonialism, patriarchy and minorities and lgbt+ don’t need houses or a breathable environment we need hugs and a PM to go on drag race.
Instead of uniting we’re getting into smaller and smaller cliques and then cliques inside the cliques.
As a gay working class man from a mixed race family I’m astounded by how the left think minority communities live in some alternative dimension where we don’t need the things everyone needs.
The left which consists of solely upper middle class academics , lawyers are encouraging this cliquey crap , they have no interest in a united movement of the people to save the planet from the corporates who pollute and steal from our people they have no idea of poverty outside statistical knowledge. A united movement would force them to change , better we argue amongst ourselves in cliques and better we be told what to do by our intellectual superiors.
We are doomed. Smoke em if ya got em
The moment the left disregarded its foundations of economic equity for the working class and sought other means of relevance through such things as identity politics was the moment the left came off its foundations. And the minority far right neo liberals have been exploiting that and laughing at us ever since. And all they have to do to keep the whole pantomime happening is make sure their paid stirrers infiltrate that group or movement and rinse and repeat.
Even The Bad Times Are Good
https://youtu.be/9aqEQEG9kUc?t=1
Any signs of what you suggest materialising? Keeping in mind they have lots of conservative supporters these days.
When the shit really hits the fan in 10 years or so, what is NZ going to do if China or somebody parks their navy in Auckland Harbour and threatens to blow us all up unless we allow 10 million new citizens into our formerly peaceful democracy
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