How long can the NZ Political Right deny climate change?

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
42
1784

The fundamental problem with climate deniers and the corporate interests that fund them is that the extreme catastrophic climate change we are watching unleash unprecedented weather events  around the globe are impossible to ignore and that at some point the people no longer care about the lies and just flee.

UN confirms 2022 among eight hottest years on record

The past eight years were the hottest since records began, the United Nations confirmed Thursday, despite the cooling influence of a drawn-out La Nina weather pattern.

This is what we keep missing, right now we are supposed to be under the ‘cooling influence’ of the La Niña weather system.
Imagine if that wasn’t in effect?
Global warming is no longer a scientific debate because the Science has been settled, it is now a culture war between those who hate that the Green Left are right (plus those corporate interests who profit from the pollution) vs the rest of us.
Radical adaptation of the economy and system is required.
Instead we get claims from Federated Farmers that global warming is ‘probably happening’.
Instead we get National Party MP games suggesting young people draw their own conclusions…
…remember this? It was National driving a tractor up Parliament Steps at the mere mention that Farmers be responsible for the climate changing gases they produce…
…the denial can’t last any longer.

As the extreme wet events following extreme droughts scar the land permanently and interrupt agricultural calendars around the world, let’s not forget who is responsible for this, the fucking oil companies!

NZ students ask for oil company execs to be declared criminals

Kiwi law students are fighting for BP senior executives to be investigated and tried in the International Criminal Court.

It’s one of the first cases targeting the people leading a fossil fuel organisation, rather than the company itself.

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Senior leaders of the fossil fuel industry know their products cause global damage, injury and death, yet create “doubt, dependency [and] delay”, the British and Kiwi students argue.

For the suit to be successful, the global prosecutors’ office would need to open an investigation into the oil executives’ conduct.

This follows the leadership of Mike Smith taking the exact same action at the International Criminal Court…

Iwi leader Mike Smith takes OMV oil boss to International Criminal Court

Māori leader Mike Smith has shot the first arrow in a global war between indigenous communities and oil companies.

Smith has started legal proceedings in the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Rainer Seele, the CEO of Austrian oil giant OMV.

He said oil company executives deserved to stand trial for genocide and other climate crimes impacting on indigenous communities now and in the future.

Once again it is Indigenous peoples and young people who are leading the war on climate change.

Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions that are causing the climate crisis, and big oil KNEW in the 1990s that they were creating catastrophic climate change.

The comparisons between how Big Tobacco lied and manipulated the science linking smoking to cancer is as audacious as Big Oil has lied and manipulated the science linking CO2 to global warming.

We should be collectively suing Big Oil now and using the payouts to fund the urgent Green transition away from fossil fuels.

It is outrageous that our Government has not led this fight and instead capitulate to the polluters rather than challenge them. Indigenous people have been at the forefront of the climate crisis battle and have been the frontline between corporate polluting greed and sustainable habitats.

You can see why the State illegally spied on Māori Iwi fighting big oil in this country.

Change is coming whether we like it or not.

 

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42 COMMENTS

  1. I think few would argue there is no ‘climate change’ Martyn, but most would say there is no ‘climate emergency’.

    For the average person the trouble is knowing where the science ends and the politics starts and there’s a fair bit of the latter.

    • The global temperature difference between ice age and just prior to the industrial revolution was slight, and yet look at the difference between then and the ice age. Since then global temperature has risen exponentially and is set to continue to do so.

      The arctic is already melting. The tundra permafrost is already melting. Several species are already threatened because they cannot adapt to a climate changing this fast. In short the emergency is already here. So far we’re barely even trying to adapt, let alone curb planet warming – we’re on a fast track to extinction.

    • All you are claiming is that “most’ people are either stupidly shortsighted or haven’t understood the reality unveiled by the science.

    • Here the thing, the scientists have been toning it down how bad it is for years, so the politicians would act. They did not.

      However the corporations acted in their own self interest (the greed drive) and made it about you and I, an individual problem – which it never was. Effectively, nothing has got done when it should have been

      So the science is were really close to being fubar. If tipping points start a cascading event say goodbye to your ass. Here read this (down load the PDF off the link) and draw your own conclusions. https://www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/climate-change/state-of-the-climate

    • A good place to assess the boundary between science and politics is to look at measurements like increasing CO2, methane, increasing temperatures (both land and marine), increasing acidification of oceans, changing air and water currents, die off of numerous species and decreasing populations, changes in rainfall (both volumes and distributions), changes in crop productivity……the list goes on, but the numbers, despite the best obfuscation by vested profiteers in the status quo, are undeniable.
      Facts remain facts, and free of politics.

  2. I’ll tell you why complete denial of air pollution issues still has popularity: the return of Malthusianism.

    We are told that the solution to air pollution is to collapse living standards, lay off large numbers of people, and then reduce the population.

    This kind of thinking was already being debunked and rejected by the late 19th century. It was only ever popular amongst the wealthy elite.

    The solution to social problems is economic development and the democratisation of society. Investment in mass infrastructure projects and new scientific research is what should be on offer.

    • @Kristoff bingo, there is also a very linear thinking around climate change consequences and policies.

      For example changes in regional eco-systems will actually be a boon for some (not popular to say) while being catastrophic for others. Proposed solutions are often myopic. For example spending billions on solar panels and wind turbines only makes sense if you are blessed with the sun and wind to generate enough power at a minimum to offset the carbon cost of manufacture and transport. Then consider the range of materials required for battery manufacture at volume. It will be a supply chain logistics that makes the geopolitics of oil look like child’s play. Without innovation is battery technology (like a new chemistry), an EV revolution is difficult to foresee and only makes sense if national grids that are largely run off renewables.

      Germany is a cautionary tale of ideology over pragmatism. Despite spending billions and far more than California on solar, they only generate a fraction of the electricity. Who would have guessed? They are also burning record amounts of lignite since natural gas supplies from Russia are compromised. No doubt the closed nuclear power stations would have been useful this winter and next.

      The solution to climate change is IMO, are sources of abundant, cheap energy and resilient supply. Likely some kind of hybrid network combined with usage efficiencies. This will require new and improved technologies, advanced materials science etc. Not only will a fall in standards of living be rejected in the developed world, for many parts of the developing world where children don’t get enough to eat, you are never going to talk people out of using fossil fuels without providing affordable alternatives.

      If nevertheless you think harsh conditions need to be imposed for the greater good and to save the planet, consider that the average person will cut down the last tree before they let their family freeze and hunt the last animal before they let their family go hungry, that in itself will be a ecological disaster.

    • @ KR Yeah but we had that. And roger douglas and his lazy, dodgy, buddies took it all off us and sold it, but wait? It gets worse, or better, depending, right? He’s still doing it. For example: Graham hart bought state owned, taxes paid for infrastructure at below market value then sold them and bingo, billionaire!
      That’s like all the houses on your street are worth $2 million each except you get to buy one for $100K because you know people who know people. Then, you turn around and sell it at market value and you just made a $1.9 million dollar profit without breaking a sweat. In America such people are called the ‘mafia’.
      “Heeeeey…. what’s a little trade among friends, c’mon, whadaya say? ”
      stuff.
      ‘You can smell where the money is’: Graeme Hart and his innate sense of commerce’
      https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/128825629/you-can-smell-where-the-money-is-graeme-hart-and-his-innate-sense-of-commerce?utm_source=pocket_reader
      Heeeeeeeeeey…! C’mon? Is just a little more money. Where’s the harm? C’mon..? Or, you want I choke off the primary industry to their export customers thus sending cockies to suicide watch or worse then you’s all go fuckin’ broke. C’mon…? Just a little business… and business is business right?”
      stuff
      “Graeme Hart, NZ’s richest man, makes $3.4b during Covid-19 pandemic”
      https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/124046498/graeme-hart-nzs-richest-man-makes-34b-during-covid19-pandemic?utm_source=pocket_saves
      We’re all fucked but we’re too fucked to know just how fucked we are while a panel beating mafia-like, money-sniffing vulture circles above.
      But wait..? It gets worse. Far, far worse. Thanks to fuck-face hart and dirty little duggie, we know, yes, we know that our politics and our politicians are not ours. I know, we pay them huge money, but they’re not in our employ. They belong to the Kiwi mafia. But it’s all too fucked for us to fix ourselves. The people who could are all too bent or afraid to go anywhere near that shit. We need outside help.
      Royal Commission of Inquiry with an independent board of investigators please? ” I mean c’mon… hey! Whadday doin’? Let’s all go down to Bennies for a beer, we can talk about it? Louie? Get my coat and bring that box o’ gags would ya? Oh? And a shovel.”

      • CB – Martyn’s next column will be on ‘dog-ticks’ and your next comment will no doubt blame Roger Douglas for the infestation.

  4. irrelevant to NZ because 1. Our contribution compared to say China is negligible. 2. CC is accelerating and cannot be stopped. 3. All we can do is adapt. 4. Therefore unless you live on a beach it can be ignored. 5. CC here in NZ is lessened and gentled by our position between the Pacific and the Tasman.

    • Well, when I walk on a beach and see some plastic I pick it up. I don’t say, ‘oh we’ll Indonesia just chuck heaps so I won’t care’. We all have to do what we can.

      And if we do something it makes it harder for the big guys to do nothing.

      At the beginning of this journey the deniers said climate change wasn’t happening. Then they said that, ok, it was but it wasn’t caused by humans. Then they say, yes, it is but it’s too late now so let’s do nothing.

      It’s not too late.

      You might be ok, Jack, but what about the people who are highly exposed to the effect; heat deaths, starvation, floods, societal collapse…I mean that could be us but for the grace of god. If I lived in a vulnerable place I’d hope that other people cared enough to do what they could.

    • If your stupid comment was instead an attempt at sarcasm then tag it as such.
      As most genuine climate change denial arguments and their proponents are so grossly stupid it is dangerous to mock them without inviting falling foul of Poe’s Law.

    • Yeah the deadly outcomes on food not mentioned much. People in India can’t even work in the fields the effect of heat and sun is killing them, and the crops they are trying to tend?

      So can people weed at night, then mulch during the day to keep watered, what about family teams, you run along the rows watering as you go to the shade at the end of the row as a team effort. Or relay race, run along watering, hand water can to next person, return to home base holding umbrella to shade yourself! Time to come up with urgent adaptations. Include shoes to protect feet from hot earth and from downward rays on top.

    • Indeed, although the fall in global supply of fertilizer through, war, export embargo and price of natural gas may compromise our ability to grow food in the more immediate future.

  8. Trucks are the biggest polluters, not cars or cows. So until you get a world class freight/ passagner rail network,all Labour’s new taxes won’t t make much difference. Even then EV trucks are still needed to move freight in some areas.

  9. they will deny it until it stops being financially lucrative.
    …that’s what the argument is about selfish self interest ‘I luurvvves my ute’ vs evidence.

  10. National voted for James Shaw bill for Zero 2050 , plus the interim target for 2030.
    You had to go back two decades to get the tractor photo.
    Now if you had said Act doesn’t accept that there is such a thing as human induced climate change, well that would be more believable.
    I know you have been consistent in saying that National will be no more than Act’s cypher. Does the mean that for the future Labour will also be no more than the Green Party’s cypher?

  11. Meh. Climate has been changing forever, how do you think all the huge glaciers that once carved those big valley’s in the south island disappeared? They had mostly melted before people had even arrived here

    Personally I find it funny that people are freaking out about the climate as if humans have some God given right to live on this planet and it is all about us. We are the virus and maybe the planet is devising a way to rid itself of this pest.

    • We also get told that humans will be wiped off the earth if the sea level rises a few centimeters. In the last 10,000 years the sea levels have risen 400ft and the global population has exploded.

    • the difference is straight a large sophisticated ape society now has to deal with it….

      so bg when arew YOU investing in a beachfront property to back your notions?

  13. These guys knew though Bomber back in the 1970s.

    ” One of the world’s largest oil companies accurately forecast how climate change would cause global temperature to rise as long ago as the 1970s, researchers say. ”

    The findings suggest ExxonMobil’s predictions were often more accurate than even world-leading Nasa scientists.

    ” The academics analysed data in the company’s internal documents. ”

    ” ExxonMobil denied the allegations. ”

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/482390/exxonmobil-oil-giant-predicted-climate-change-in-1970s-scientists

  14. I am not smart enough to know about the true extent of global warming but I read and listen to commentators and try to make an opinion based on the moves made by businesses and countries. There is so much mixed messaging like Fiji complaining about the effect of global,warming but they have a tourist minister and they are running a campaign to entice European tourists.Air NZ is partly owned by the government and have a huge order for new planes and Boeing have orders for thousands of new planes so obviously air travel is going to be around for some time .
    I know it fits into the narrative to blame just the right but the left are no different really

  15. Climate scientist Guy McPhersons ‘s predictions are so far turning out to be eerily accurate and i cannot see any big initiatives, (that would need to be implemented tomorrow to have any meaningful effect), that will stop the feedback loops from changing.

    It’s a joke when you hear companies announce their new green initiatives. Stating they will be doing xyz by 2030 like that’s going to shift the catastrophe dial……Too late!!!!!

  16. Climate change doesn’t mean it’s happened all before. That could only be true if you believe that there is nothing that separates humans from monkeys.

    What separates humans from the animal world as any linguist worth their salt well tell you that humans can forecast the future.

    If you’re to stupid to get your thick head around polluting the biosphere I got more copium for you try me.

  17. no sam because we can’t predict the future, we can extrapolate from current data….what seperates us from animals is the knowledge of our own mortality

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