One graph highlights all that is wrong with the fight against climate change in NZ

1. Those 15 corporations only exist and produce emissions because their customers want the benefits from cheap reliable energy from fossil fuels. Emphasis on the CHEAP.

   No customers = no corporations.

   So maybe we need to look at how individuals consume energy and the goods it enables at low prices? Their choices drive energy use.

   • “Choices”? You do live in
     NZ, don’t you?

2. ” We need to be far kinder to individuals and far crueller to Corporations ”

   ” Analysis shows that COP26 is riddled with fossil fuel delegates ”

   https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2021/11/08/analysis-shows-that-cop26-is-riddled-with-fossil-fuel-delegates/

   • And your point being? Apart from providing an excellent example of how to make one’s self utterly irrelevant, that is.

3. I agree, Ada.

   It is we, the people, who are responsible for climate change. Climate change has nothing to do with corporations, big business or the economic system we all live under that demands constant growth.

   The problem is we, the people, always has been, always will be, hence why the remedies for addressing climate change fall largely on, again – we the people!

   Yeah right….

   • Finally. Someone brave enough to proudly show how blindingly ignorant they are. Well done @ AO. And you’s too, you other idiots above.
     You really need to watch Russell Brand on the subject of corporate manipulation and political lobbying. ( You’re likely all-bought-and-paid-for corporate influencers desperately trying to send us lot off on a false narrative.)
     Here he is on a slightly different subject but you’ll get my drift.
     He does have more than a few words on the manipulative practices of corporations but I can’t be arsed trying to find them. Sorry.
     He’s like Jiff rubbed on corporate bull shit to reveal the truth of the matter.
     Russell Brand.
     “You Couldn’t Make It Up!!!” Check Out This Billionaire SCAM!
     https://youtu.be/18qtzz4ay1U

     Fonterra is a massive ( Not that massive really. ) swindling machine. The corporate equivalent of Darth Vader only darker.
     Not only has Fonterra greased already greasy political palms but they then convinced us all to look the other way as an old natzo rat like don brash killed off traditional farmers and their often family-member farming practices to instate weird, non-farmer types who fuck about on paddocks ( Paddocks? Flat green things FYI Auckland.) riding those awful quad bikes to production-line poor wretched cows into pouring out milk for a factory-ised money printing machine and so fuck you, and you, and you and fuck the environment and fuck you Greenies because I’m earning a massive, multi million dollar salary to run this shit making, soil killing, money printing machine. So cheers Schmucks!
     ALlowing, indeed encouraging corporations to fuck about with farmers, farming and their regenerative, holistic farming practices and millions will starve. Perhaps billions. Globally.
     How to fix shit up?
     Crush the banksters. Specifically, foreign owned banksters.
     Write off the mortgage debt they swindled you in to. All of it.
     Average house price is now a million? That, right there, is a kind of madness. A lunacy. So, we’re going to allow foreign owned banksters to tell us our houses are now worth a million? And we swallow that shit? I got beans? I’ll swap you them for that herd of cows?
     This, right here, is how low corporate scum will sink to ensnare you in unpayable debts to foreign bankster powers.
     RNZ
     “Average residential home now worth more than $1m”
     “The property market reached new heights last month with the average residential home value topping a million dollars for the first time.”
     https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/455324/average-residential-home-now-worth-more-than-1m
     Here’s the bottom line boys and girls etc…
     Our government isn’t doing it’s job by us if it allows foreign owned corporate monsters to come into our homes and fuck us all over the kitchen table without the kissing.
     Corporations use cash flow to encapsulate us within bubbles of un payable debts. As we can see.
     It’s our government’s job to ensure that, that never happens. But what do we do when we must consider that we haven’t had a government doing that since fuck knows when?
     Our ‘government’, like National etc are capitalist by definition therefore they’ll bend over forward for anyone or anything with enough cash and they’ll do that while not giving a fuck about you, me and we, the people.
     How do we fix that? At the risk of repeating myself; we must tell our government that [it] MUST behave in a manner that best benefits us. Not the fucking alien-criminal underbelly that’s corporations.

     • Sorry, but my attempt at a kind of sarcasm, clearly failed. Having said that, my point stands in regards to whom is being asked to shoulder the lions share of fixing the ravages of climate change, namely – we the people. Something is clearly wrong if all, certainly most, of the climate change remedies are being aimed at we the people rather the corporates and the economic system we all live under. I mean, the one graph shown here is a microcosm of the world in general in regards to ’emissions’ at the very least….and yet again, whom is being targeted as the remedy.

       Something is wrong, something is drastically wrong with this equation of cause (economic)and solution (non-economic).

       Otherwise, I largely agree with your views. I enjoy Russell Brand, and the video you mentioned, but he is a bit of rank amateur at this sort of stuff.

       As for our government. I believe our government to no longer be working in our interests and it doesn’t matter which flavour of government is in power, the chances of them doing what we want – are minimal. I can only speculate whom is actually pulling their strings. Corporations are a safe, albeit simple bet. The USA, an even safer bet….other entities, perhaps. But none of that is here nor there, the bigger point here is, whether you believe it or not – we are on the same page here. Cheers.

     • What about all the people driving huge SUVs and Utes? You can’t sell a product people don’t want

       • The point is in who you believe is responsible for climate change. The graph above suggests that it is not us, the general public, but the corporates have done a stellar job in making us believe that it is us . We far too often focus on ourselves rather than them, as your comment shows…

       • ep, maybe the distinction should be between ‘want’ and ‘need’. Plenty of people will buy stuff they want but don’t need, the whole capitalist system depends on it, so huge marketing departments exist to make people buy what they don’t need.

     • The successful manipulation of the “average kiwi” has been blindingly obvious to anyone with a view of historical timelines. While a tad long winded, I would generally concur with the basic premise of your comment. The only thing I would point out is that it’s always a good idea to read comments more than once before the arsehole tearing commences.. AO was being sarcastic. I would contend that if the corporates were shaken free of the levers of control for long enough, then a general “awakening” would occur, and the opportunities for cottage industry to replace shoddy goods is then a possibility. Kiwis used to be renowned for being imaginative, and adaptable. 30 years of being under the corporate thumb, and being deliberately undermined, through insane levels of low skilled migration, and our government working for outside interests against ours, has left NZers bereft of a lot of the skills and perspective required to be able to function in a healthy, and evolutionary way..

4. Cmon its like saying the devil made me do it

   • Or saying god is going to save us.

     • Touché.

       But I think divine intervention [which I believe in] is all we have left TBH

5. “One graph highlights all that is wrong with the fight against climate change in NZ.”

   Answer is, James ‘Banker’ Shaw and the juvenile gween party.

   They have no idea what Green Wash’n Capitalism is! And yet they actively engage in it and promote it.
   Wankas!

6. I think the problem with this analysis is highlighted in the queues waiting for the doors to open in Auckland. One has to wonder how many of the products so badly wanted by all those shoppers are environmentally friendly. Sweet fuck all. All that unnecessary wasteful useless shit we buy all year round but mostly at Xmas. Yes lets blame it on the cooperates. Talk about hypocritical BS. yeah we don’t drive cars or drink milk or buy electronic junk we don’t need, and we don’t wear clothes made from petrol and made in china. None of us have synthetic carpets or throw our plastic shit in the land fill. Seems to me the corporates earn this country it’s bread and butter and we couldn’t have developed without them. A bit like hating China but happy to wear a cheap shirt made there.

   • Hmmm. No-one really comes out too well, the corporates or the shopper-citizens.

     Let’s hear it for green hydrogen, which may have the best chance for supplanting industrial coal, and which we could produce here when/if Tiwai closes.

     Or, indeed, nuclear: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/08/rolls-royce-secures-450m-for-mini-nuclear-reactors-venture

   • First off, new view, the corporates need us, the workers to earn their so-called bread and butter. They don’t just magically develop stuff out of thin air. Neither do we magically buy stuff at the drop of a hat. The urge to buy/consume is largely driven by other corporate entities, namely the advertisers and the media. Once upon a time we bought products built to last, over consuming wasn’t really a thing, and planned obsolescence had yet to be invented, just to name a few changes of recent times, that was more corporate influenced rather than society driven. Point being, even if we are inclined to only ever concentrate on what we, the people, contribute to climate change, then our behavior does not exactly come naturally to us!

     • Don’t agree AO. Yes the corporate want to sell their products but you seem to suggest that we the people are powerless to resist them. We have no brain. You are right. The corporates need us and will disappear without us. So let them disappear. Most of the corporates listed might add to pollution but are mostly needed. Food fuel power etc. the corporates that aren’t being looked at are the Amazons Apples Samsungs clothing toys magazines newspapers plastic ware. The list is endless but all these products are just as polluting as the ones listed. We choose to buy them. Have to have them. It’s us.

       • No, it is not us in the slightest. In the slightest. Reason for this is that we, the people, did not create the economic system that we all live under. The very same system that for the majority of its existence, didn’t give a jot about the environment. The damage was done long before we moved into the rampant consumer age of the neoliberal era. And again, we never choose that path either. We did not create the system nor the industrial practices that has led us down this path…..

         • Business and corporates produce what is demanded of them. If they see a need or demand they will produce for it. They’re run by people not aliens. That’s capitalism. Not everyone hates it like you. You can bitch about them but only when you live your life in a very pure, non consumer and environmentally friendly way. In other words make sure you don’t add to the pollution.

           • Big business manipulates demand. It is far too simple to suggest that demand is created entirely by the people. Especially in this age of cheap money/credit.

             Otherwise, the point here is to highlight whom, between big business and the general public, is playing the greater role in climate change, factoring in also, given your view, the role business, not to mention the very system we all live under, has in influencing the decision making process of the general public side of this equation.

             • When Martyn wrote this blog he was trying to shift the responsibility of pollution on to the polluter’s. And away from the consumer. It’s playing devils advocate. You can’t. It’s like separating businesses from wage earners one can’t do without the other. Large corporates need to pay for their pollution and are. The three larger examples highlighted are. Fonterra’s farmers who are having to change the way they farm at a cost The company itself is spending large amounts on research. Coal is being phased out and oil companies will have to change also as the amount of product they sell shrinks. Airlines are developing new fuels and electrics at huge cost. Change is everywhere. If the public wants to keep using plastics and cheap petroleum clothing, cars, disposable nappies wipes etc they will have to be taxed for the privilege. I live in the country and regularly drive past dumped plastic bags full of rubbish on the side of the road. Who should clean that up. Not the corporates, the dirty lazy fuckwit people that do it. We are all responsible and to separate businesses and public on this is in my opinion disingenuous. I don’t expect many from the left to agree because hating and blaming corporates is built into their DNA. I would agree that corporations are too powerful and as you say can manipulate the market. You have a Labour government that’s happy enough to let that continue. Maybe blame them.

               • First off – manipulation – as I am using here, has more to do with finance than corporate shenanigans. The role of credit (which has not been around forever, in its current guise) helped usher in the age of rampant consumerism. As did moving away from a one-income household. Throw in neoliberal policy and cheap money (low interest rates) into the mix, and these are just some of the structural level decisions used to grease the economic machine. Rarely, do we bother to think about structural level decisions or those making them. We all think the world we live in is natural, and the decisions we make are wholly our own. As if. And now the same powers-that-be are ushering in climate change-driven initiatives that while hurting some businesses, will nonetheless expand both the economic system and its profitability even more, over time. And this is where we, the people come in because someone has to contribute to this increased profitability…and climate-led taxes galore, that’ll help for sure.

                 So, the point here being, your last comment deserves a nod to the full picture occurring here, rather than just concentrating on the level down, where we mostly reside. We are but the little plebs on the treadmill. Those that own the treadmills make the decisions, of which, has led to what we are facing now…..

                 • Point taken. The world is geared to consumerism and the corporates grow and encourage that. Problem is the people consumers are so far down the track they can’t turn back. Try telling people they can’t have hire purchase, bank loans lay-bys etc. all to the corporates advantage but the public either won’t or can’t save to pay cash. When I was a kid there was very little of it and people were happy to save for luxuries. Now days the poor miss out completely and middle income people aren’t prepared to wait so they can pay cash for their purchase. I don’t know what the answer is but you and I have certainly pulled the issue apart.

                   • …indeed we have. The answer or an answer to me is, exposing or shining greater light on the treadmill owners – the movers and shakers of this world. When our govt takes its cue from elsewhere (said movers n shakers), neoliberal economic policy the best example of this, hands off finance being another. When we can clearly see that our government is taking its cue from afar…then we really should be jumping up and down over the initiative being introduced because if Neoliberalism and the hands-off, out of control housing market is anything to go by, these measures from afar are not designed to benefit us, the people….

7. Desire is a trap; desirelessness is liberation.

   Desire is the creator; desire is the destroyer.

   Desire is the universe.

8. NZ doesn’t punch above it’s weight but as always NZ talks a good game.

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