by frog
An interesting discussion from the Otago Daily Times’ Dene Mackenzie – who was lunching with Jeanette and Australian Green Leader Bob Brown yesterday:
Senator Brown said the injection of new ideas in politics around the world was coming from the Greens and there was never a time when the Greens were more needed than 2008 in the face of an economic collapse.
Without environmental and sustainable policies, the economies of the world would continue to struggle.
Green policies were helping feed the world, he said.
Labour conveniently released some environmental policy while lunch was being served.
Ms Fitzsimons said the policy seemed to be what Labour had done, not what it was going to do.
And she was “amused” to find Labour claiming credit for the $1 billion spent on retrofitting cold and damp houses and introducing biofuels legislation with a sustainability clause.
“So, they are Labour policies now. I sat across the table and pushed and pushed and pushed for the $1 billion and ended up with 20 times more than Labour was initially going to give us and we only agreed on the Biofuels Bill after we wrote in the sustainability clauses.
When they proved too inept to write it themselves, we wrote it.
“Labour is desperately grasping at Green ideas. If we are in government with them, we will give them heaps of Green ideas and get them into law.”
Published in Campaign | Environment & Resource Management by frog on Thu, November 6th, 2008
Tags: biofuels, Bob Brown, climate change, environment, insulation, Jeanette Fitzsimons, labour, labour party
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
- “Without environmental and sustainable policies, the economies of the world would continue to struggle.”
That doesn’t make any sense at all. Really, it is complete self-congratulatory nonsense.
- “Green policies were helping feed the world, he said.”
Completely wrong.
Part of the reason starving people are starving is because they are, through necessity, “organic” farmers. What they need is to receive the benefits of the green revolution to escape from their subsistence “green” poverty.
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You missed this wat dabney: “we only agreed on the Biofuels Bill after we wrote in the sustainability clauses.”
The Biofuels Bill and biofuels in general are complete dogs, utterly unsustainable because biofuels are created from food.
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Wat –
The reason that poor farmers in developing countries are using organics, is that with GE-treated seeds, they don’t get plants that grow seeds they can re-use (ie: seed termination is built in by Monsanto, etc, to ensure that farmers must buy seed the next season), and they can’t afford the petro-chemical-based insecticides and pesticides that Monsanto has engineered their “Roundup Ready” crops to withstand –
So organic farming, which allows the crop waste to be used to mulch and fertillise the soil, along with naturally occurring animal wastes, which provide NPK for plants, is the technology of choice for farmers in India, South and Central America, and those parts of Africa where political stability has been maintained long enough for agricultural pursuits to resume.
We live in hope that the USA will leave Iraq in about February 2009, and then the Iraqi peoples will be able to sort out how much land they have left after DU-irradiation by US munitions, and they will be able to begin to be self-sufficient in food again, after 5 years (nearly 6!) of US Invasion.
Palestine is another area where centuries-old olive groves have been uprooted, in order for US-led initiatives to co-opt land from semitic peoples have been continuing, under the aegis of the Isreali Army and Military Police forces.
The Palestinian peoples, along with the peoples of Lebanon and Syria, are part of the old cultures of the Euphrates Valley, once one of the most fertile growing regions on this planet.
Wars of colonisation in the 20th and 21st centuries have made parts of this fertile land almost uninhabitable.
These are the problems we talk about – and the solutions are Green.
We see social justice, appropriate use of technology, and environmental concerns as interlinked issues, to which holistic solutions can be applied.
What are you seeking? Merely a short-term, point-scoring, political gain?
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Katie, have you got a link that shows seed termination GE is actually being used? I could be wrong but I thought Monsanto hadn’t proceeded in commercialising that technology.
Farmers in less developed countries usually use artifical fertilsers when available an affordable.
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Monsanto wanted to bring it into NZ for field trials, it was an ERMA submission a while back; they didn’t get field trials in NZ, but the technology has been grown in the States.
Nandor Tancos was hot on the subject of terminator seed technology, and I was part of an e-list to receive information about that, a couple of years ago now.
Try googling Monsanto & see what you find – they were very keen on the idea, as a way of improving profits for seed merchants, etc, so they’re probably still bragging about it.
It was going to cripple third-world economies, however, since a lot of US Aid is given in the form of seed grains, (and expired medicines!) to third world economies, who then have to buy the fertisilisers, pesticides and herbicides in order to make the “aid” work for them.
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OK, this is what I found:
http://www.globalissues.org/article/194/terminator-technology#Setbackforcorporationsfornow
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wat dabney stated…
No. The main cause of starvation is lack of access to decent land. In many many countries (Malawi is an example) food production has been superseded by cash crops to repay debts. The cash crops are mono cultures that grow at low biological productivity (compared to peasant farming) but high commercial productivity. The farmers are mostly surplus to requirements as their knowledge and labour is not used. So they starve.
It is peasant farmers who will feed the world. It always has been and always will be. Modern industrial farming cannot get close to the same levels of sustainable biological productivity as labour intensive peasant farmers can.
But it is “economic madness”. Better to let the locals starve, take their land and grow cotton for Trelise Cooper to make more frocks.
peace
W
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This is a pretty horrific story about thousands of Indian farmers committing suicide because they are trapped in debt to the GM companies.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html
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“The Biofuels Bill and biofuels in general are complete dogs, utterly unsustainable because biofuels are created from food.”
Not all are and not in NZ, because the Green sustainability clause prohibits it.
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