GUEST BLOG: Patrick John O’Dea – Greta calls bullshit on climate targets
“Don’t be fooled NZ”
Greta Thunberg calls “Bullshit” on New Zealand’s climate neutral by 2050 target.
“Humanity Must Not Be Fooled by ‘Bullsh*t’ Climate Targets of World Leaders”
Greta Thunberg
The Swedish campaigner says insufficient goals and empty rhetoric represent the “biggest elephant there’s ever been in any room.”
Pledging to be carbon neutral by 2050, while doing nothing about carbon emissions in the present, is the biggest most dangerous “bullshit” lie of all time.
New Zealand is guilty, more than most, of promoting this dangerous, ‘kick the can down the road’, strategy.
The Ardern administration has pledged that New Zealand will be carbon neutral by 2050, while in the present, giving financial support to major polluters, like Air New Zealand, like Comalco, Like permits for Bathurst Resources to mine for coal on Crown Land near Huntly, and, (except for the recent downward blip caused by covid), overseeing an upward trend in carbon emissions annually, with no realistic foreseeable end in sight, right up until we reach the magical cut off date of 2050.
And New Zealand has the cheek, as the chair of the recent global climate summit, to call on the world to follow our lead!?!?
Global climate summit: Jacinda Ardern urges other nations to follow NZ’s lead
RNZ, April 23, 2021
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has urged other nations at a global summit to follow New Zealand’s lead in taking financial action to address climate change.
Ardern said New Zealand had been leading the charge on “climate finance” such as ending fossil fuel subsidies.
A matter of days before Prime Minister Ardern claimed before the world, that New Zealand has ended fossil fuel subidies, her administration made $1.5 billion in “finance” available to one of the most polluting fossil fuel industries on the planet.
Covid-19: Government increases Air NZ loan by $600 million; $1.5 billion total
RNZ, April 09, 2021
Some people have no shame:
Ditch the “Bullsh*t” Ardern
New Zealand emits 0.2% of the world’s carbon pollution burden.
New Zealand’s emissions are tiny on a global scale.
In the previous government, Professor Gluckman was chief science adviser to Prime Minister John Key.
On the official government climate website, Professor Gluckman wrote, New Zealand’s greatest ‘contribution‘ to solving global climate change, New Zealand must be as an example to the world. (ie become a leader on climate change)
“New Zealand is a small emitter by world standards – only emitting some 0.2% of global greenhouse gases.”
“…..anything we do as a nation will in itself have little impact on the climate – our impact will be symbolic, moral and political.”
Famously John Key disagreed with his Chief Science Adviser, and said instead that, New Zealand would be a “Fast Follower” on the climate.
So what will it be, New Zealand?
Fast follower, or leader?
To avoid the worst affects of climate change the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, (UNFCCC), has set a target for the globe to be carbon neutral by 2050
If New Zealand is to be a leader on climate change, 2050, which is the target date for the whole world to be climate neutral, cannot be New Zealand’s target date to be carbon neutral.
Any governmentmental body or organisation, (including the newly set up Climate Change Commission), that has 2050 as its target date to achieve carbon neutrality has surrendered to the fast follower doctrine of John Key.
In going for 2050 as our Target date, we are just following the herd, but worse than this, 2050 is just far enough into the future that we won’t have to take any hard or meaningful measures in the present. Leaving up to the next generation to do so.
By avoiding taking the hard decisions now, avoiding making the cuts in our emissions in the present, we will leave the coming generation with a problem which will be too late for them to anything about.
In the present we will continue business as usual, our emissions will keep going up year by year. We will continue to subsidise major emitters like Air New Zealand.
In the South Island we will continue to supply Tiwai Aluminium Smetler with cut rate subsidised electricity prices, while we burn coal and gas for electricity in the North Island. We will not rationalise and upgrade the electricity transmission system. We will build more motorways while we continue to underfund public transport. We will issue permits to mine coal on crown land in Huntly, We will continue to convert traditional cropping land in Canterbury to intensive dairying. We will still dig mine and export coal. We will not ban ICE vehicle imports. We will not set one leading example for anyone.
If we were doing something about climate change we wouldn’t need targets, because we would be doing it. Instead of setting targets we would be measuring our progress.
Greta Thunberg, as she always does, cuts to the chase:
Forget 2030 or 2040, Says Greta Thunberg, World Must ‘Reduce Our Emissions Right Now’
The world needs “to stop focusing on dates and numbers” and recognize that taking immediate action is what must be done, says the 18-year-old Swedish climate leader.
Common Dreams, April 01, 2021
Comrade Patrick John O’Dea is a fierce fighter for worker rights.
Martyn – it’s ALL bullshit, because in essence, that’s all she’s got.
For example, if we were serious about say, electrifying our vehicle fleet, one of the first things we’d need to do was to plan to install more renewable electrical generation capacity. And not just a little either. We’d need gigawatts more base load generating capacity. So where is that plan? Neither wind nor solar will do it. It’s either more hydro (dam several more rivers) or a nuclear power plant on the Kaipara. Take your pick.
Oh and there never was a “climate emergency” that was only ever more bullshit: A cudgel to beat her opponents with when she was in opposition:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/21/there-is-no-climate-emergency/
Usually people will cite out of date problems or the waste issue but really it is decades of fear mongering from the anti climate change movement.
The problem with nuclear, so far as there is one, is that it produces Radioactive Waste, which needs dealing with. The current solution; shove it in a depleted mine, is not great, because the waste can last 1000s of years.
Which is what is great about theoretical nuclear fusion reactors; the waste from them is relatively short lived; 100s, not 1000s, of years. That’s still a long time, but it is easier to contain things for 100s of years than thousands.
Concerns about safety are asinine.
Interesting straightforward link Andrew. Perhaps AFKTT can point to the inaccuracies.
D J S
We don’t need Greta Thunberg to tell us.
People in NZ have been describing government strategies as destructive bullshit for well over a decade. Indeed, almost two decades now.
[snip]
‘Your party, the Labour party, nearly every industrialist and most of the world are surely mad. We are poisoning the very planet that sustains us, when even the meanest animal species knows not to foul its own nest, and yet this is what all of you seem determined to do. It is literally beyond all reason, all comprehension and all morals.’
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/monro_03.htm
‘Sadly, it is coming generations, who have no say in the matter, who are going to pay the horrendous price for the ignorance, greed, and collective stupidity that characterise modern industrial societies. That is a message most people still do not want to hear.’
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/moore_09.htm
‘Just why is it that politicians and community leaders stubbornly refuse to become informed about, or deal with, the crucial issues that will determine whether their own children and grandchildren will have a habitable planet to live on, just a few decades from now?
Just why is it that our so-called leaders refuse to acknowledge or prepare for the imminent and drastic decline in energy that will see the end of industrial agriculture, and will therefore lead to widespread starvation (even in New Zealand)?
Just why is it that our so-called leaders refuse to curb the emissions that are already causing abrupt climate change and will probably render the earth too hot for most life forms in the very near future?’
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/mystery.htm
What matters are:
1. Per capita emissions. New Zealand’s are almost as appalling as Australia’s.
2. The total unpreparedness for the massive infrastructure damage commensurate with increasing climate instability.
3. The total unpreparedness for the massive sea level rise that comes over the period 2030 to 2050.
4. The total unpreparedness for the dire effects Planetary Overheating is already having, i.e. half the US will be ‘toast’ in the summer of 2021 if current trends continue.
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
It is bloody hard to keep people on track on the existential issue of our times–Climate Disaster.
There is the constant swim against the corporate and media tide as many of us try and work it all out on a personal, political and planetary level.
Some would rather poke around for inconsistencies or head off down dusty side roads in their denial, than acknowledge that we must move beyond blame and investigation, and act NOW, all of us, one way or another. A rainwater tank and survival techniques mean you might last a bit longer in some remote corner. But really it is time to unite all who can be united and fight for eco-socialism in Aotearoa NZ.
During 1787, Nobleman Grigory Potemkin erected phony portable settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to impress the Russian Empress; the structures would be disassembled after she passed, and re-assembled farther along her route to be viewed again as if another example.
In today’s politics and economics, a “Potemkin village” is a construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country which is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better.
The new master of such puppetry and window-dressing sits as Minister for Climate Change in the Ministry of Environment of the New Zealand Government.
He taiao tōnui mō ngā reanga katoa.
A flourishing environment for every generation.
Another four or five weeks until we reach the seasonal peak for 2021:
Daily CO2 (CO2 earth)
Apr. 26, 2021 = 420.01 ppm
Apr. 26, 2020 = 416.12 ppm
What ‘delights’ we are in for: rampant ‘inflation’ (devaluation of money), a collapsing economy, a collapsing energy supply, a collapsing environment, and a collapsing social order -all brought to us by banks, corporations and their enablers -the bought-and-paid-for politicians and economists.
‘Signs of things to come’
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/04/27/signs-of-things-to-come/