Climate change stopped being a scientific argument a long time ago because the science IS settled, the way evolution as a hypothesis IS settled.
We have a huge swathe of older white men who have benefited immensely from the neoliberal free market and they don’t want to hear that their carbon footprint or affluence their position has privileged them with has contributed to a psychotic form of capitalism that is rapidly destroying the planet’s ability to keep pace with our never ending growth models of consumption.
The reason why the climate polluters are now crying adaptation is because they think it will blunt the push to mitigate their cow herds.
let’s take a moment to counter the whole ‘NZ gas emissions are tiny’ defence because this seems to have become a favourite argument from Agricultural protagonists of late…
NEW ZEALAND’S ENTIRE CONTRIBUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE REPRESENTS JUST 0.17 PERCENT OF GLOBAL EMISSIONS
…the position is that even if we were to be sustainable, our contribution is tiny and meaningless in the face of global polluters.
While that is true, the obligation to change remains.
NZ, BECAUSE WE ARE SO SMALL, has an obligation to lead and trailblaze new technology and ways of sustainable agriculture that the rest of the planet can adopt.
This same argument would have been used against universal suffrage – the NZ population is tiny so why bother giving women the right to vote when the total number will be meaningless against a global population.
We make these changes because they are the right thing to do and because it leads progress for the entire planet, which is NZs legacy as a country.
Just because our emissions compared globally are small doesn’t mean our carbon footprint per person isn’t huge and it doesn’t remove the obligation to become totally sustainable.
The reality is that the planet is super heating because of human pollution, that it is faster and worse than Scientists had conservatively predicted, and that the level of civil disobedience and radical reform is inescapable.
Pretending adaptation over mitigation is the new excuse for MORE COWS is ridiculous when you consider our emissions are up 26% since 1990!
Right wing climate deniers, Boomers who don’t like being told they’ve contributed in any way shape or form to the current climate catastrophes and those who profit from cow pollution will scream climate change is a socialist hoax and that’s why not one precious cow life will be culled ever because every calf is sacred!
Cue Monty Python.
Won’t someone think of the Cows?
Sure John Key sold 49% of our Hydro Assets to create a $400million irrigation slush fund that was used to intensify dairy farming while polluting our water and generating climate changing gasses, but fuck that – MORE COWS!
We pay a price for NZ dairy and NZ meat that is set by an international market, so we are competing with the 400million others wanting that product but fuck that – MORE COWS!
A cow shits the same as 14 humans, we have 10 million cows, that’s the equivalent of 140million humans pissing and shitting into our rivers, but fuck that – MORE COWS!
The quisling corporate farmers claim they are generating jobs, yet they import cheap foreign labour to do those jobs, but hey – who cares? MORE COWS!
Farmers are 1.16% of the population, represent 5.5% of GDP, make 48% of greenhouse gas emissions and create 70% of NZ’s contribution to global warming yet they are able to run roughshod over any legislative reigning in because the have such enormous political and economic power!
SO! FUCKING! WHAT!
MORE!!!!!!!! COWS!!!!!!!!!!
As the reality of the climate change the polluter profiteers have denied was ever occurring in the first place starts to dawn, all focus now turns to adaptation rather than mitigation so we can have MORE COWS!
I propose that New Zealand urgently spends $1Trillion dollars into research and development so that golden Cows can float in the sky with massive golden flying paddocks so as to never be drowned by the floods their farts create!
Whatever the problem is, MORE COWS! is always the solution.
Cow Udder Alles!
Stay classy Aotearoa.
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The strongest argument that NZ polluters must pay for their private greed and not go on welfare to allow them to ‘adapt’ to the impact of climate catastrophe, is that THEY have directly caused the worst features of extreme climate events.
Just like the ferals who are still deforesting the Amazon it was the invasion of the land grabbers that deforested Aotearoa and who have sucked out the wealth of nature ever since. Adaptation accepts that history as OK and makes us pay for their refusal to retreat from their ongoing profits.
The best way to mitigate climate change in NZ is for the taxpayers – the workers and working farmers who create the wealth pay all the taxes – to refuse to pay to compensate the profiteers for the disasters caused by their own blind greed.
We need to nationalise the land to control who is entitled to work it. Land is a monopoly abused by private ownership. We need to leaseback land use to those who can prove they can use it sustainably.
To do that we need a government of the workers and not the financial parasites and land speculators.
What a complete shambles that would be.
Why Bob?
Economically what is proposed won’t work.
It’s theoretical,leaving out the critical component, human nature.
as is most of the theological unscientific belief system we call ‘economics’ bob the last
especially the dimwitted chicago school mouthpieces who get featured in our media
Especially when US/Chinese troops arrived to secure their investments.
what a shambles what would be young’un? You do know that it was a government of the workers that put NZ into the first world, don’t you? You do know that it was a government of workers that set up NZ society to start producing world class tradesmen/women, educators, scientists, philosophers, engineers, and scientists….. Don’t you? Or do you seriously believe that the parasitic and self destructive urge to revert back to being just more brutal, bigoted, and self important idiocy in the manner of our British “heritage”? Seriously, where are the smart ones in NZ? Oh right, we all made our way in other countries, as I will be again now that I’m no longer trapped here …. Considering what I’ve seen passing for political debate here, not a minute too soon..
Always amusing to see this kind of nonsense. How do you propose this glorious revolution will occur? Will you kill for it? Who will you kill to bring it about? Will you die for it? Will you sacrifice those you love for your revolution? Do you have the weapons to fight for your revolution? If not, which foreign power will provide & what will be their true cost? I’d love to hear your answers, because those you will face in your revolution, will happily slaughter you, those you love & those who would stand with you. What will you sacrifice to save us? Or is it just an aging Marxist’s pipe dream?
Translation: Let’s make ourselves poor so we can better look after the environment – Yeah nah.
The foreign workers on Dairy farms are not cheap labour these days. Many are on $40000 and more depending on skill and don’t pay city prices for their rented houses.
dairy earns 23% of overseas returns
I don’t believe dairy farmers are pushing to increase numbers although numbers fluctuate on a yearly basis
I notice Fonterra is supporting its farmers through these floods whereas forestry hasn’t.
Err… Hate to tell you this but $40,000 isn’t exactly big bucks. I think a rough calculation will probably show that $40,000 is below minimum wage.
Perhaps you made a typo?
Maybe a lot of lefties think $40k is the big bucks, because they’ve never earned so much? Sad.
Well… Not everyone can be an inbred trust fund baby right wing nut. Sad.
Or an entitled loser. Some of us work for a living, to pay the tax, so others can keep their snouts in the public trough.
Oh you precious wee petal, do you need a lie down after your hard day at work? A safe trigger free space? How could we have not realized what a delicate and unique little snowflake you were. I mean after all you are the only person in NZ who works for a living.
One of the few workers around here anyway. Most of you snowflakes wouldn’t know hard work if it hit you in the back of the head with shovel. 12 hour days, 7 days a week, rain or shine, building a life & future for my family. No rest for the wicked, eh?
Oh you poor martyr… It must be so hard being a smug wank, after all you chose your profession, no one forced you to do it, and yet you want to weild your self entitled, (badly misplaced by the way) superiority, (truly some next level narcissim), like some sort of crown of arrogance.
Congratulations. You are a “winner”.
Proud to be a working man, with my own home & no debts. Hard work pays dividends, you should try it some time.
S. You are correct I got those figures wrong, $40000 might be starting wage with no experience but $55000 is more like the reality, with the chance of promotion to manager where $60000 plus is paid. The majority, like those that live near me, live in good houses suitable for families that in many cases they don’t pay anything for. There can be other benefits such as firewood and time off between milking and in some cases meat. It’s a totally different setup to orchard work and the workers can have a personal work relationship with the owner. Only a city person would consider a forty minute drive to town living in the middle of nowhere. On the other hand they are happy to sit in jammed traffic that long so go figure.
$60k is hardly big bucks, you’d have a hard time supporting a family on that without Government assistance.
Cool. Figured that number couldn’t be right.
Most don’t pay city prices for their houses because they live in the middle of nowhere.
They certainly pay far more than they are worth however.
Avocado workers paying $180 for a bunk in a six bed dorm.
Which is more than a bed in central Auckland.
Average in NZ around $60k per annum before tax. So under $40 after tax. Presume that is fulltime work.
bbbbbuuttt climate change isn’t real it a plot by soros….yeah right
If only we had a government that regulated that type of shit. but they don’t. Priorities, dude, they have them.
That’s because we can only mitigate, since our total greenhouse emissions are 0.1% of the global. So even if we deleted every person and cow and sheep in New Zealand it will have a negliable effect here anyway. Assuming we only got rid of the cows, we would simply just import meat/dairy from our trading partners (some of which will be happy to clear forest to expand their herd) and everything we export will similarly be picked up by their trading partners (which is particularly stupid, since New Zealand farmers are among the most sustainable in the world with far lower environmental impact than say US cattle farmers who feed their cows on heavily subsidised corn crops).
Who is suggesting that farmers kill off their herds? Please try and make a rational argument.
Exactly Standalone. These people talk utter shit. They are the same people that regard any government debt as the equivalent of polio and ‘how dare we give future generations anything to pay off’ while being completely ok with f’ing the planet.
the ‘future generations’ will benifit from not being knee deep in actual shit, not camping out on ther roofs, having decent housing, having roads that aren’t fun fair rides, having schools hospitals etc y’know stuff like that.
the naysayers are usually people who support deficeit funding if it’s a mortgage or a ute…any form of private debt really
Of course we adaption is the only sensible policy.
Billions of third worlders are not going to stop burning coal, and why should they.
We are standing in the face of a tidal wave. You don’t try and stop the wave, you run to higher ground, build higher, build sea walls and adapt.
Great adapt by all means but if you do nothing about omissions you are constantly trying to adapt to moving goal post. We need to do both as a race.
Will sea walls hold back the billions of people from developing nations that will do anything to survive and they face starvation and certain death
Or do we need a Donald Trump scale wall
Capitalism works against tackling climate change.
This is what sits behind the lose-lose “we are insignificant” arguments.
Capitalist competition will punish those who move first.
Capitalism will destroy civil society.
Nothing NZ can do will mitigate Climate change caused elsewhere, our emissions are so tiny compared to big polluters like the US, China & others!
Bingo!
Proving you haven’t read Martyn’s post!
All you city folk, in ALL NZ cities, can’t use your 100km’s of beaches and foreshores because YOU have covered them in shit.
Mean while we drink the water from the steam that runs thru our farm.
Just sayin. Not that the truth gets published these days.
I take it you are drinking upstream from the cowshed..
Your commet shows you are ignorant of the laws we must comply with around dealing with effluent.
Times and farming are changing fast, please try to keep up.
Your comment shows you are ignorant of the reasons why we have so much effluent leaking into the sea.
Times are changing, please try and keep up.
Well said Peter. They rabbit on about cows but refuse to take a bike to work.
Not all, just a small minority.
Cheers
NZs future.NZ to become a petri dish for R&D and global experimentation… and mental people.
Mitigation and adaptation is what we should focus on. So far we have pretended that buying E-cars with gov subsidies will bring a change.
Capitalism will defeat any climate issues we face.
bob the last spluttered ‘Capitalism will defeat any climate issues we face.’
it will halt action in anyway it can, we as a species will become extinct, climate issues sorted….
It’s the only system that has the money,the know how and the science to do so.
so why isn’t it doing it bob the last…the authoritarian chinese are…the ‘free market’ cannot cope with change, politics in the neolib countries for 40yrs has been about the maintainance of stasis
this years fashionable cell phone colour isn’t an agile response as carefully placed influence promotes the new colourway prior to it’s appearance so no capitalist markets are not ‘agile’
Adaptation without mitigation is nonsense as we will never adapt fast enough.
And the climate models have never, ever included the full impact of changes in oceanic temperatures, which are an order of magnitude greater than modelled.
The impacts will get exponentially worse, whether they double every 10 years in severity, or every 3 years, depends on our ability to mitigate.
Unfortunately the “experts” have other solutions, which will each bring their own catastrophe, perhaps an ice age if my research is correct.
We need urgent mitigation and even more urgent adaptation, even the billionaires are not going to survive on the moon or mars for at least another 50 years.
Funny how many the greatest minds in history, adhered to the adage that science is never over, and we should question even fundamental principle, including the ones we’ve settled on.
Yet every climate alarmist, including Swedish highschool dropouts, know far better than Albert Einstein or Carl Sagan.
Never ceases to surprise me the number of people who are experts in climate issues yet hold no qualifications in science.
But the science is settled!!
Even Einstein stated that his own theory of relativity needs to be questioned.
No science is ever settled
Just said to wee friendly right-wing fellow Matt Hooten on Twitter that’d be hunter-gathering.
I think he’s at an intersection. Friendly or right-wing. Can you be right-wing and moral. He thought he could stride those two points.