Methane cop out by climate denial Government highlights how incremental James Shaw was – lessons for the Left
And the corporate Farmers win again…
Coalition exempts farmers from ETS, sets up fresh working group
Farmers have been given more time before they start paying for emissions as the coalition replaces He Waka Eke Noa with another working group.
The coalition has confirmed it will keep agriculture out of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as promised by National ahead of the 2023 election.
It is scrapping the sector-led group He Waka Eke Noa and setting up a new Pastoral Sector Group to “constructively tackle” biogenic methane.
The government will amend the Climate Change Response Act to remove agriculture, animal processors and fertiliser companies from entering the ETS in 2025.
…the Corporate Farming Lobby have won again! They have as much influence as the Real Estate Pimps over this new Government and have no effectively managed to put off doing anything serious about climate change for 21 years now…
… this is a lobby group who have lied and manipulated and cheated any attempts to stop any real change and as NZ faces a $26billion climate fine for failing to reach our Paris obligations, the Insurance industry eyes up the reality that Climate Change will cost us a Trillion each year…
Lloyd’s new data tool highlights vulnerability of the global economy to extreme weather
Lloyd’s, the world’s leading marketplace for insurance and reinsurance, today launched a systemic risk scenario that models the global economic impact of extreme weather events leading to food and water shocks, estimating the loss to be $5trnover a five year period.
…killing off He Waka Eke Noa is a reminder of the agricultural industry’s political muscle and just how meaningless James Shaw truly was.
He Waka Eke Noa was always a lemon…
Agri-industry climate plan ‘He Waka Eke Noa’ an absolute lemon
Greenpeace has dubbed the agri-industry’s He Waka Eke Noa climate proposal ‘an absolute lemon’ that will fail to cut climate pollution from NZ’s biggest polluter.
Greenpeace Aotearoa lead agriculture campaigner Christine Rose says, “The government needs to abandon the idea of industry self-regulation, bring agri-industry fully into the Emissions Trading Scheme and phase out the synthetic nitrogen fertiliser which drives agricultural emissions.
…I think there is this belief now in NZ that you can brownwash your organisation by giving it a Māori name and pretending that is somehow progressive.
The corporate farming lobby were always taking the piss with this nonsense solution to a problem they refuse point blank to address.
Cows create the feacal load of 14 humans.
There are 10million cows.
That’s 140million humans pissing and shitting all across our lands and waterways.
Corporate farmers are refusing to acknowledge this.
I just don’t think understand how serious the most recent temperatures are telling us things have become…
Seafloor methane tipping point crossed in 2024?
The danger is that ocean heat could abruptly be pushed from the North Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean, temporarily raising temperatures at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, as discussed in earlier posts such as this one.
Terrifying rise of Northern Hemisphere ocean temperature anomalies
The image shows the terrifying rise of Northern Hemisphere ocean temperature anomalies from 1901-2000, illustrating crossing of two tipping points, i.e. the Latent Heat Tipping Point and the Seafloor Methane Tipping Point.
This threatens to cause rapid destabilization of methane hydrates at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and lead to explosive eruptions of methane, as its volume increases 160 to 180-fold when leaving the hydrates.
…if we start seeing Methane Hydrates reaching melting points, that will herald an explosion of methane that will be able to push the temperature up globally by 10 degrees within a decade.
Such a heat spike would see Greenland lose all it’s ice, which would desalinate the Labrador Sea which will shut down the Atlantic Current which will plunge the Northern Hemisphere into a mini ice age.
This is existential crisis level ramifications here and all the agricultural industry are focused on is maximising as many cows as possible and never ever ever ever reducing herds.
The Corporate Farmers and their political representatives keep lying to you about how extreme climate change is and the scale of damage it will wrought.
We are in denial about the changes that are coming.
We are in denial about the need to adapt.
We are in denial about the new realities.
Look at this heat map…
…We. Are. So. Fucked.
As Kiwis we are a very laid back culture and we are fastidious about ignoring things that might lead to conflict, until conflict is upon us and then we are unrelenting in fighting for a righteous egalitarianism.
I believe we are at a turning point on climate change and we need to start being honest that nothing we can do now will stop what is coming.
For many of us, climate change has been a theoretical argument about something that might happen in the distant future.
It is no longer that.
It is now a present on going risk factor that poses an existential threat to us as a species and it is here now.
I’ve been following the IPCC reports on climate change from the beginning, and the criticism made against the IPCC was that due to its strict need for only unilaterally agreed science to make the official report, it was always underplaying the urgency and severity of the climate crisis.
There was always a section in each report where the science was presented that wasn’t universally accepted but included to show the reach and scope of debate.
Increasingly over the years, the worst case scenarios in the IPCC are playing out in real time.
The scientists were wrong, but only in their optimism.
You understand that each year that passes now will get worse or remain as starkly bad as they are now right?
You get that it doesn’t go back to normal after this right?
The extreme weather will get worse and worse.
More extreme than these extremes now.
Consider the baseline extreme current normal.
Sure the war in Ukraine is hurting food prices, but that’s damage on the baseline reality of a mega drought that has interrupted the agricultural calendar of major food producers globally!
The radical adaptation required to get us ready for what’s coming will splinter the political spectrum whether we like it or not.
NZ has to radically become more self sufficient.
We need a basic pharmaceutical industry.
Engineering industry.
Green Power.
The supply side shocks caused by Covid and war are not going away, and they are being compounded by catastrophic climate change.
Radical adaptation and communal community resourcing alongside a Big State approach to lynchpin infrastructure for basic self-reliance as an Island country facing enormous economic shockwaves is the only means to build the muscle mass to respond to the ever intensifying external disruption of late stage capitalism.
The need to increase military spending to 5% alongside the new costs for this infrastructure must be funded via new taxes aimed at corporations and banks.
A financial transaction tax and windfall profit tax would take the yoke of taxation off working people and place it upon the shoulders of the wealthy.
National and ACT see mass immigration as a means to create fake growth at a time when we should be focused on de-growth.
Climate Crisis is here and adaptation is now.
We need to start rethinking Isolationism as a strength and Hyper-Regional Think Big as Economic Sovereignty.
The geopolitical shock waves are only getting more intense from here on in.
As you look around at the devastation these extreme weather events have caused, doesn’t being carbon neutral by 2050 look pathetic now?
We need a far larger vision than Luxon can produce, we need a far larger vision than the Left are even currently thinking.
We are beyond the tipping posts now: Greenland ice melt, the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, the Atlantic current failure, the changing of the jet stream, total biodiversity collapse, FFS what actually needs to happen before you sleepy Hobbits wake up!
I remember when the idea of instability in West Antarctica was a ‘never’ prospect, now in barely decades that has been turned on its head…
Meltdown of West Antarctic Ice Sheet unavoidable, study says
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet will continue to melt this century regardless of how much the world slashes planet-warming emissions, research from the British Antarctic Survey has found, locking in further sea level rise over the coming decades.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday, found no matter the degree of warming this century, the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will speed up as warmer water in the Amundsen Sea erodes ice shelves bordering the ocean.
…the melt will happen regardless, no matter what we do now meaning we are fucked!
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.
We need a vastly different vision for this country now, and it will require a revolution at the Ballot Box.
A specific plan to get elected with a radical agenda, force other Parties of the Left to agree, a 100 day plan to force it through and a strategy to hold the changes in place.
The next 3 years will start seeing climate change events beyond the ability to ignore and will terrify the electorate.
We as a movement must have a plan and an ability to articulate that or we perish as a movement, as a people and as a country.
This is now an existential threat to our species playing out in real time.
Undoubtedly a problem. Where do you stand on nuclear power Martin and what can we do to move the anti-nuclear narrative in NZ? If there is an incident, yes catastrophe. But no doubt whatsoever it is the most efficient and clean energy we can get. Cost price energy for all NZ perhaps?