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The ban that wasn’t – mining on conservation land
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018829872/the-ban-that-wasn-t-mining-on-conservation-land
From Newsroom, by Dame Ann Salmond:
“The folly of carbon farming with pine trees”
Excerpt:
Unfortunately, New Zealand’s ‘Nationally Determined Contribution’ to COP-26 at home relies on covering our landscapes with short-lived, shallow rooting, highly flammable monocultures of pine trees. This kind of ‘off-setting’ is high risk, socially, ecologically and economically.
In a warming climate, ‘lock up and leave’ pine plantations are vulnerable to pest attack, wind throw and fire. If they go up in flames, New Zealand’s carbon debt will rise, not diminish. They create very few jobs, and displace sheep and beef farming, production forestry and their support services, putting rural communites at risk of collapse.
To make matters worse, New Zealand proposes to meet much of the rest of our carbon debt by paying international investors to establish carbon farms in other countries. Taxpayers will fork out billions of extra dollars to put rural communities and ecosystems in other countries at similar risk, while pretending we’re doing them a favour.
Worse still, this kind of ‘off-setting’ is unlikely to be internationally supported in the short to medium term. As a strategy for dealing with climate change, it’s regarded as a kind of ‘greenwashing,’ not unlike the fake international credits that New Zealand used to purchase in large quantities.
Full article at https://www.newsroom.co.nz/folly-of-carbon-farming-with-pine-trees
ANNE!
Thanks Kheala Ann Salmond’s wisdom and that of other thinkers is like a drop of water on the desert with the sort of train-track managers, businesspeople and politicians we have. They can see lovely short-term solutions that show them as competent managers which wil enable them to move up the food and wine chain.
Political machinations were well covered by John Mortimer in three books collected under the title The Rapstone Chronicles. They follow a fictitious politician Leslie Titmuss who become successful in life after pretty humble beginnings.. At the end he had a beautiful home and bought good staff, but no-one loved or cared about him.
John Key Chows down: https://i.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/real-estate/127773569/sir-john-key-joins-forces-with-the-chow-brothers-in-property-venture
Didn’t the Chow brothers make their millions running brothels while John Key made his ripping off mum and dad investees and then every other NZ citizen. Oh, but look at them now, “solving” the rock star housing crisis. Gee thanks so much!
Isn’t this a good example of how the present punitive, authoritarian, fine for control DOESN’t work. Don’t enforce remediation, refresher courses with mandatory attendance and study and passing a test, and counselling to help the person to manage underlying worries. Old boring cliche’, ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/461521/police-road-safety-operation-misses-the-target
The road toll is stuck above 300 despite the pandemic restrictions on travel.
Operation Deterrence was all about doing more – more stops, more speed camera hours, more ticketing: “The intensity of enforcement plays the key role in behaviour modification,” Greally said in June.
But it did not work:
With driving on public roads, with protesters, teaching the young how to stop, think, gather your brain every now and then is very important. At present we are all bulls in a performance of matador skill. Our government is part of the matador team fleet-of-foot manipulating us. FGS let’s get on to being educated people, running our lives along satisfactory lines, with wise advice and help from our government systems working for our better standards.
And among those standards would be better understanding of what we have and how to keep it good, and how to use our political system for our personal benefit but also, ensure it is available to the many as well. And feel pleased and gratified when we achieve that and not take it for granted, and be trying to get more than our share from what others need .
All a hell of a big ask. Do we have guts enough to be mature adults? It will be the peoples’ Everest. Which is aname with a double meaning, because everest is what many of us will have from cpresent and bad conditions, so bad that we’ll not be sorry to go. Start now, widening our concepts to encompass others in need of whatever, not just as a Give a Little rush of blood to the wallet.
My issue with big tech listening to the police and refunding fundraising is , if big tech had of been around and listened to the local cops they would have banned the miners from being able to fundraise during their fight against Thatcher.
Big tech would have helped govts track down draft dodgers. They would have banned MLK, the industrial strikers after the great depression.
This is not just about these anti mandate protesters it’s about American tech companies picking and choosing which protests are legit and listening to the govt they are protesting against.
Seeing western countries use big tech to hurt protest movements will just embolden actual authoritarian regimes.
I’ve donated to heaps of protest movements overseas because of left wing solidarity.
It’s not about this protest it’s about future protest movements being squashed out by big tech and govt collusion.
Think of all the protests movements in the last hundred years, the sit ins the rallys the occupations that would have been stamped out by corporate tech and govt.
If the powers that be decide to go to war and call a draft will anti war anti draft protesters be attacked in the media, deplatformed in social media?
If there’s another great depression will working class protesters who do a sit in outside parliament have fundraising banned by tech, which is how everything is done these days.
I’m not defending these protesters but the idea of govts of the day and big tech working together to shut down protests is scary
And it’s the left and working class and oppressed groups that will be stomped on
So think before you cheer on big tech deciding to ban fundraising for a protest movement, it’s a slippery slope, could be climate activists next, unemployment activists, unions, the working class, amnesty international?
If you give govt and big tech an inch to crack down on protest movements and their fundraising they’ll take a ten miles.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/461582/ai-company-raises-105m-to-create-people-for-digital-workforces
This is the trend. People who have decided that people aren’t good enough for this or that – have decided to import the usual type or create artificial ones, will they still be under the purview of ‘Human Resources’?
Yet human females do this for free. Or used to when they knew what being a female was. But everything is confused these days isn’t it. WTF.