Thanks for the long and detailed reply (17 August 5:06pm)

In answer:
I note that you put Jeanette Fitzsimons on your list of “people in high places who do understand the problems”. That’s accurate! She is a dedicated Green and a very pleasant and approachable person who lives “a Green life”. Jeanette is an an excellent MP and Green Party Leader.

The “tree hugging”, “morris dancing”, etc portrayed by the media is a caracature which is repeated by some (presumably lazy?) journalists. There is little we can do about this. Silly stereotypes of the Greens are hard to get rid of. Unfortunately, this superficial journalism says very little about the Greens … Unfortunately some people believe it.

I come from a family that has always questioned things. I joined ZPG (Zero Population Growth) in the 1960s and I joined the Values Party when it formed.
Later, (when I returned to AotearoaNZ after some time overseas) I joined the Green Party. My adult children are both Greens. My brother and his family are Greens also, in California USA.

The tree hugging, morris dancing, etc portrayed by the media is not good. I watch this repetition in disbelief! There is little we can do about it however … (and some Greens, from time to time, have been known to dance!)

eredwen

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I would be very keen to see an “actual” population policy. All the other parties just talk about demographics and ignore population size, let alone sustainable population size.

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overpopulation – have seen toad say that they are formulating policy on that one…

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I’m afraid I’m just your average kiwi, who gets most of his information from what the media tells me.

From what I have seen, the Greens are a group of people who want to bring the standard of living down a peg or two and get everyone hugging trees and becoming vegetarians. This is not what I personally believe, but it’s how I see the Party being portrayed when I watch the news. I also had the perception that the Greens would dismiss the idea that the world is overpopulated. Don’t blame me if I got the wrong impression, like I said before, I’m just your average Kiwi bloke. I have looked into a couple of things about the Greens, but not alot, I’ll admit. But that’s the only way I found out that you guys had the answer way back whe you were the Values Party (although Zero population & economic growth was all I really know about the Values Party).

I have pretty much always thought that overpopulation would eventually be a global problem, but never really thought that anyone that could do anything about it really cared. But when I researched it a little I found that some people in very high places do understand the problem. Jane Goodall, Isacc Asimov, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Stephen Hawking, The Dalai Lama, Jacques Cousteau & Jeanette Fitzsimonds are just a few names I can drop off the top of my head. You might note that a number of these people are highly intellegent.

The only way I know this is because I deliberately sought out the information. And it was only after I sent an email to all the political parties to ask if the subject of overpopulation could be included in the discussion of global warming, that I found out that the Greens already understood the seriousness of the problem. I doubt that many other average Kiwis out there have had the problem explained to them, despite the message about climate change being so well aired now.

If you want to know why it is important to me to get the issue openly discussed in parliament, just ask yourself why it’s important to you guys to have climate change openly discussed in parliament.

And if you want to know why I think New Zealand should bother when we probably aren’t really overpopulated anyway, just ask yourself if it’s easier to prevent a problem or to cure it?

And I don’t think the demographic transition is a cure. It relies too heavily on a strong economy, and luck.

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You ask:
1. “Are you honestly telling me that the statement “Burning oil and other fossil fuels is changing the atmosphereâ€? was a last minute realisation by your policy makers?”

REPLY:
Of course NOT! Green policies are produced with input from all who are interested and/or with appropriate expertise. They are then well circulated and discussed among all the Greens as part of the process.

For some reason I was under the (mis)impression that you were talking about the WORDING, rather than the content, so I answered accordingly.

2. “Too scared to talk openly about overpopulation … ”

I REPLY:
Certainly not! (We also notice that some people use AotearoaNZ’s size and population to say that “We don’t need to worry about climate change”) … We would answer that “everyone on the Planet is part of the problem and must be part of the solution”… “What if every similar sized group used the same excuse?” … etc …

Similar arguments re-surface from visitors to frogblog from time to time!

3. “You have to face the facts Greens, you can’t fix this problem. The world has to get out of this false idea that we can stop climate change, and start talking about how to prevent it from happening again. And the main thing everyone has to understand is that future generations must be made aware of the limits that this planet impose on sustainable population.”

DougT, we are “’singing from a similar hymn book”. I wonder how much you have read and heard of/about what the Greens are saying.

YES, the Green Party of AotearoaNZ is a Political Party AND we do “tell the whole truth” … and we find that an increasing number of aware people want us to do so. Support for the Greens is increasing …
(… NOT “political suicide” despite your fears!)

e

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Are you honestly telling me that the statement “Burning oil and other fossil fuels is changing the atmosphere” was a last minute realisation by your policy makers? Come on Greens, why don’t you admit it. You are too scared to talk openly about overpopulation because you are afraid it will cost you votes. And before you say that overpopluation is not a problem in New Zealand, just remember that that is exactly the same attitude that many people have about climate change too. We only produce a tiny fraction of greenhouse gasses, so why bother

And as far as eco bulbs are concerned, I have personally had to replace at least half a dozen of the ones in our house (we still have incandescant bulbs that have outlasted some of our eco bulbs). And they all went to the landfill, because I didn’t even know that they contained mercury. And now that I do know they are hazardous waste, they still go in with the landfill, because we don’t have any collection points where I live, just like most of New Zealand.

The reason I pointed out the eco bulbs was because it was a very good example of the kind of panic problem solving that is going on in the world today. We have seen a panic solution to peak oil, with production of bio fuel, and now it is creating an even bigger polution problem that the oil was, plus it has caused a reduction in food crops. That’s why the Europeans are abandoning it now.

You have to face the facts Greens, you can’t fix this problem. The world has to get out of this false idea that we can stop climate change, and start talking about how to prevent it from happening again. And the main thing everyone has to understand is that future generations must be made aware of the limits that this planet impose on sustainable population.

I can totally understand that you would never consider the last bit though. The Greens are a political party after all. And it would be political suicide to tell the whole truth on this one.

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Make that 28 eco bulbs, not 38!
It is still an impressive “bulb life” so far, however.

You have spurred me on to ask some hard questions of Christchurch City Council and Environment Canterbury about consumer education, safe collection, safe disposal … but they seem to be on to it.

However, on the subject of mercury poisoning, I’m NOT willing to get rid of those amalgam fillings in my teeth, (from my pre-fluoride childhood).
Maybe we need “safe disposal” strategies for the pre-fluoride teeth of my generation … when we “pass on” like the Cigna-Funeral-Plan addvert on TV)?

Enough on mercury !

e

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Very well put! I totally agree!

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Continuing on the comment about ecobulbs, (and putting things in perspective.)

When they FIRST came on the market, several years ago now(?) I put ecobulbs right through my house and the flat that I let out, (38 bulbs in all).

In that time only ONE bulb out of of the 38 has needed to be replaced.

Christchurch is in the process of setting up its special collection system.
I understand that if they are labelled and separately wrapped when they go out with the rubbish they will be separately dealt with. (Meanwhile they can be dropped off at our recycling/dump complex for special treatment.)

e

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In reply:

Yes! … and the Chinese are burning OUR coal … which we shipped and sold to them, instead of leaving it in the ground until we, or future generations, figured out how to use it without adding to the Warming or Polluting of our Planet …

Thanks for the comment. I’d suspect that your “almost there but not quite” criticism is more likely to be somebody wording a statement to meet a deadline in the middle of the night, rather than the Greens misunderstanding the facts.

(There have been a heck of a lot of words floating around all members of the Green Party, for us to read, digest and comment upon before each Policy Document is finalised.
It has been a mammoth task, so do forgive us one “error”!
(I’d say that the Greens do have a fairly clear idea of what is happening, wouldn’t you?)

I seriously doubt that your interpretation that the Greens have been silent on ecobulbs because of their mercury content is correct.
That problem was common knowledge as far as I was concerned.
(Greens are not usually invited into the media spotlight, but the work goes on.)

e

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I probably shouldn’t have worded the bit about GE food the way I did because I do realise that it is not actually feeding the starving like some GE advocates claim it is being used for. But if you have a cause like starvation or climate change, people will use it as an excuse to experiment with new, unproven ideas. And the problem with something that hasn’t been proven is that you don’t know what the adverse side effects might be.
Just because the Greens knew there “might” be problems with GE, the scientists that worked on it probably didn’t realise it also. It’s just like how the Greens didn’t realise there “might” be a problem with the safe disposal of Mercury in eco bulbs but now they do Which is why they don’t talk about that any more

The Greens have sort of got the idea when it comes to AGW though.
But not quite.

The first line of the first campaign issue according to the Greens is…

Burning oil and other fossil fuels is changing the atmosphere.
http://www.greens.org.nz/campaigns

Almost there but not quite.

It should read more like..

“The rate that at which we are burning oil and other fossil fuels is changing the atmosphere”

One person burning coal is not a problem, because the planet can absorb that amount of CO2 quite easily. But a few billion people burning coal is a problem, because the planet is still the same size, despite how many of us there are.

Because the noticable increase in CO2 started at around the 60’s (just to be conservative) when there was a global population of just under 3 billion, it would stand to reason that we would have to try to emit less than half the CO2 than we did back then to be at a safe level. But that would not be enough either, because there is less forested area on the planet than there was back then, and the forests are getting smaller, and CO2 output is still increasing thanks to the booming Chineese and Indian economies. I’m not blaming China or India when I say that though, because they are only doing what people like us have encouraged them to do.

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I reply:

Well … Lately it seems that Homo sapiens (using that grand name that we gave ourselves) is making progress in that direction (again).
Various groups of us are trying out all sorts of methods of wiping “other people” off the Planet.

Some of these methods are are old, and some are new.

The USA, with the conivance of the Israelis, is rethinking the possibilities of nuclear anihilation. (That was a “biggie” when I was a young adult, but it lost favour for a while.)

In the lull between, whole new arsenals of new weapons have been developed, and depleted uranium (a useful carcinogen) is now “blowing in the wind”* and around the Globe (courtesy of US munitions makers who, needing to find a “profitable”use for it, found that it could be used to harden the tips of bullets and shells etc to improve their “penetration” (into the flesh of those pesky “other” humans, that they want to get rid of.) The fact that it vaporises* on impact and thus enters the atmosphere, seems to be of no concern.

As well as DU, pollution (of all sorts) is a whole new ball game.
Between them they have great possibilities to kill off millions of humans.
……………………………………………………………………………………………

Sarcasm aside, I feel very sad that we will take other species with us as we finally go through the processes of wiping ourselves off the face of this wonderful Planet Earth.

eredwen

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Not to long ago I watched a documentary about king cobra snakes.
They were going on about how the cobra had evolved the amazing ability to construct a nest that kept its eggs at exactly the right temperature to ensure survival.
When the eggs were about to hatch they removed mummy snake because she would have eaten all her young.

Maybe some animals deserve to become extinct,
although snakey may have been making a political protest.

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eredwen Says:
Nature has always provided us with enough varieties of the plants we need (or the capacitiy to produce these varieties) to cope with regional changes caused by Climate Change.

True, and nature has generally tested the basic genetic makeup of such varieties for thousands (millions?) of years.

How arrogant mankind is to assume that our “scientific” methods of assessment (usually involving mere months of testing/assessment) can ensure environmental safety.

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A good post, but I notice you have “swallowed” this idea :
“The ability to produce enough food to sustain 6.5 billion people is just one of the limits, that’s why we have GE food now. Normal crops aren’t coping with the changing climate or the increasing demand.”

Nature has always provided us with enough varieties of the plants we need (or the capacitiy to produce these varieties) to cope with regional changes caused by Climate Change.

It now appears that that is NOT all that GE has been about.

I understand that many of the GE crops available have been “Patented” by the Companies that “own” them. The GE plants produce seeds containing “terminator” genes so that the (sometimes subsistence) farmers cannot produce next years crop from saved seeds.
They must buy more seed from the Company that holds the Patent.

This has been / is leading to increased poverty and even starvation in areas that the GE seeds have been used.

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# DougT Says:
If global food production is unpredictable, will we still be able to feed over 6.5 billion mouths?

Don’t get me wrong though, trying to lessen the effects that we have on the environment is the right thing to do, but ensuring that we don’t get too close to the limits of growth is part of it too.

DougT, I think you have correctly alluded to the core of the issues that face us in NZ.

There is a certain population we can cope with happily in NZ. We have a certain amount of “green” energy, and a certain amount of food production capacity etc etc.

These issues necessitate that we consider what is a reasonable level of population for us to aim for. It is less than we might think.

We cannot let ourselves worry too much about what other countries do, or what “growth” policies they live by, or even by what they think of the Kyoto protocol etc.

We need to make our own decisions and do only what is best for NZ.

I think the Kyoto protocol is going to break our backs, and there are other ways we can go about preparing for the future.

We still need to be aware of the value of our “clean, green” branding though (whether we deserve the green label or not).

We still need to limit our population and energy demands to the level that can be met using “green” technology, simply so that our global brand stays as green as possible. Food exports and tourism depend upon it.

For example, there is no point blindly following John Key’s idea that we should rely on gas and/or coal forever. That simply leads us towards higher population, higher pollution and higher energy use.

It might be a necessary policy for the short term, but should be followed by more longterm thinking that limits growth.

The concept that the only good future is a “growth” future is at the core of so many problems.

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