by Kennedy Graham
On Monday night, Minister Nick Smith held the first of a series of public meetings on setting an emissions reduction target. The series is being held throughout the main cities in NZ.
The Government is to be commended for initiating this series since a democratic legitimacy for its policies is a necessary condition of it sticking. It would have been better had the series been held in 1992, the year Mr Smith attended the Earth Summit in Rio.
I was also present at Rio, and in fact first met Nick at that meeting. Nick said on Monday, innocently enough, that back then ‘they’ thought climate change was a simple enough problem to be cleared up within a few years. How wrong they were, he announced cheerfully. I wonder if he was in the room when the then 13 year old Severn Suzuki challenged us:
If you don’t know how to fix it, stop breaking it. You are about what you do, not what you say. Well, what you do makes me cry at night. I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words.
Her message in 1992 was not substantially different from what Nick heard on Monday night. In fact, Nick was possibly in a minority of one out of 6 billion humans at the time, thinking that tackling climate change would be easy. No-one else carried that self-delusion. We all knew the magnitude of the task looming up, even back then. That was why we needed to move fast and with purpose in the 90s.
His Government did not – from 1992 to 1999. Yes, it participated in the Kyoto Protocol, but we all knew that Kyoto was palpably inadequate at the time. Shortly after 2000, the EU undertook a trial run at an ETS with a carbon price. New Zealand, under the Labour Government, dithered, and so did the National Opposition. Now, in 2009, he devotes his energies to stressing how difficult it will be to achieve the targets we should have been anticipating back in the mid-90s.
It was constitutionally odd to see an MFAT official sitting next to the Minster on Monday night. Was that intended as a security blanket, or to lend official – expert legitimacy to his political pronouncements? I trust that the integrity of the civil service has survived the experience.
The Minister, apart from misrepresenting the Green Party policy, seemed keen to display his innocence. He is unable to perceive the economy as a component part of the broader environment. As a result, he persists with the National mantra of ‘balancing our economic opportunities with our environmental responsibilities’ as if the latter is a clip-on to business-as-usual.
Until he and his Government sees that future economic opportunities are zero unless and until we curb GHG emissions to 40% of our 1990 levels by 2020, he will continue to speak the wrong language in finding the solution to our challenge. The Greens have been raising the issue of emissions targets for years. I had the privilege of joining the chorus in April, when I questioned Minister Groser about our emissions target.
Climate change is not just another problem – not even the biggest problem of our time. It is qualitatively different from anything else before in human history – an existential threat to the well-being, if not the survival, of humanity.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management by Kennedy Graham on Thu, July 9th, 2009
Tags: climate change, emissions target, Kennedy Graham, Nick Smith
More posts by Kennedy Graham | more about Kennedy Graham
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Kennedy said: The Minister, apart from misrepresenting the Green Party policy, seemed keen to display his innocence. He is unable to perceive the economy as a component part of the broader environment.
That’s a vety polite way of putting it Ken. I would have said “The Minister … seemed keen to display his ignorance.”
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I disagree toad. My impression on the night was that he got narky because he knew we were right, but he is not able to go there politically. Shame really. He has an opportunity to be a hero. Instead, he’ll come out the villain, both in our time and in historical time.
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I went to the meeting in Auckland on Tuesday which went pretty much the same way. One of the interesting positions taken by Nick Smith was his apparent expectation from the audience not only of a mid-term target but details on how we were going to get there. He also made continual reference to our agricultural base which, from my interpretation of his presentation was almost considered a sacred cow.
What I find infuriating about the whole debacle is the continual reference to GDP as being a measure of success and this was mentioned on at least four occasions during the minister’s presentation with particular reference to New Zealand being in the lower bounds of the developed world when measuring GDP per capita.
It seems clear that the government is not be willing to compromise economic (gdp) growth in the interests of the environment. Until we find a universally acceptable alternative to GDP as the measure of success we will continue to battle with environmental versus economic interests. The EIU’s Quality of Life index is a good starting point – in which NZ is 15th in a list of 111 countries according to the 2005 survey ahead of e.g. UK, US, France and Germany.
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Frog – that’s a tune from my own song sheet. Those who put their faith in Mr Smith to do the bidding of the people are in for a let-down, I am certain.
Smith makes a great villian btw – that lidded eye, that forked tongue, even the name – you can help but think of Dr Smith of ‘Lost in Space’ fame (the black and white tv series original, not the appalling movie –
Danger Will Robinson
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>>Dr Smith of ‘Lost in Space’
‘Warning! Warning! Disaster approaching!
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Ahhh, Penny!
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# toad Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 10:02 am
> That’s a vety polite way of putting it Ken. I would have said “The Minister … seemed keen to display his ignorance.”
that makes it sound like a good thing. Generous of the minister to ensure the audience knew about his ignorance, rather than him trying to hide it.
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Quality of life is related to GDP, especially for small countries. If you’re not earning export revenue, then your revenue needs to be generated internally.
Only last week you were whining about EnviroSchools funding being cut. Can you comprehend the services that will be cut if we decide GDP is “unimportant”?
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The top countries on that list all have high GDP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QLI
The bottom countries have either low GDP or nutbars as leaders.
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BP. Whilst I don’t intend to go into a detailed explanation of why GDP is a poor measure of quality of life, a quick reference to Wikipedia on the subject of GDP pulls up the following:
“GDP is widely used by economists to gauge the health of an economy, as its variations are relatively quickly identified. However, its value as an indicator for the standard of living is considered to be limited. Criticisms of how the GDP is used include:
* Wealth distribution – GDP does not take disparity in incomes between the rich and poor into account. However, numerous Nobel-prize winning economists have disputed the importance of income inequality as a factor in improving long-term economic growth. In fact, short term increases in income inequality may even lead to long term decreases in income inequality. See income inequality metrics for discussion of a variety of inequality-based economic measures.
* Non-market transactions – GDP excludes activities that are not provided through the market, such as household production and volunteer or unpaid services. As a result, GDP is understated. Unpaid work conducted on Free and Open Source Software (such as Linux) contribute nothing to GDP, but it was estimated that it would have cost more than a billion US dollars for a commercial company to develop. Also, if Free and Open Source Software became identical to its proprietary software counterparts, and the nation producing the propriety software stops buying proprietary software and switches to Free and Open Source Software, then the GDP of this nation would reduce, however there would be no reduction in economic production or standard of living. The work of New Zealand economist Marilyn Waring has highlighted that if a concerted attempt to factor in unpaid work were made, then it would in part undo the injustices of unpaid (and in some cases, slave) labour, and also provide the political transparency and accountability necessary for democracy. Shedding some doubt on this claim, however, is the theory that won economist Douglass North the Nobel Prize in 1993. North argued that the creation and strengthening of the patent system, by encouraging private invention and enterprise, became the fundamental catalyst behind the Industrial Revolution in England.
* Underground economy – Official GDP estimates may not take into account the underground economy, in which transactions contributing to production, such as illegal trade and tax-avoiding activities, are unreported, causing GDP to be underestimated.
* Non-monetary economy – GDP omits economies where no money comes into play at all, resulting in inaccurate or abnormally low GDP figures. For example, in countries with major business transactions occurring informally, portions of local economy are not easily registered. Bartering may be more prominent than the use of money, even extending to services (I helped you build your house ten years ago, so now you help me).
* GDP also ignores subsistence production.
* Quality of goods – People may buy cheap, low-durability goods over and over again, or they may buy high-durability goods less often. It is possible that the monetary value of the items sold in the first case is higher than that in the second case, in which case a higher GDP is simply the result of greater inefficiency and waste.
* Quality improvements and inclusion of new products – By not adjusting for quality improvements and new products, GDP understates true economic growth. For instance, although computers today are less expensive and more powerful than computers from the past, GDP treats them as the same products by only accounting for the monetary value. The introduction of new products is also difficult to measure accurately and is not reflected in GDP despite the fact that it may increase the standard of living. For example, even the richest person from 1900 could not purchase standard products, such as antibiotics and cell phones, that an average consumer can buy today, since such modern conveniences did not exist back then.
* What is being produced – GDP counts work that produces no net change or that results from repairing harm. For example, rebuilding after a natural disaster or war may produce a considerable amount of economic activity and thus boost GDP. The economic value of health care is another classic example—it may raise GDP if many people are sick and they are receiving expensive treatment, but it is not a desirable situation. Alternative economic measures, such as the standard of living or discretionary income per capita better measure the human utility of economic activity. See uneconomic growth.
* Externalities – GDP ignores externalities or economic bads such as damage to the environment. By counting goods which increase utility but not deducting bads or accounting for the negative effects of higher production, such as more pollution, GDP is overstating economic welfare. The Genuine Progress Indicator is thus proposed by ecological economists and green economists as a substitute for GDP. In countries highly dependent on resource extraction or with high ecological footprints the disparities between GDP and GPI can be very large, indicating ecological overshoot. Some environmental costs, such as cleaning up oil spills are included in GDP.
* Sustainability of growth – GDP does not measure the sustainability of growth. A country may achieve a temporarily high GDP by over-exploiting natural resources or by misallocating investment. For example, the large deposits of phosphates gave the people of Nauru one of the highest per capita incomes on earth, but since 1989 their standard of living has declined sharply as the supply has run out. Oil-rich states can sustain high GDPs without industrializing, but this high level would no longer be sustainable if the oil runs out. Economies experiencing an economic bubble, such as a housing bubble or stock bubble, or a low private-saving rate tend to appear to grow faster owing to higher consumption, mortgaging their futures for present growth. Economic growth at the expense of environmental degradation can end up costing dearly to clean up; GDP does not account for this.
* One main problem in estimating GDP growth over time is that the purchasing power of money varies in different proportion for different goods, so when the GDP figure is deflated over time, GDP growth can vary greatly depending on the basket of goods used and the relative proportions used to deflate the GDP figure. For example, in the past 80 years the GDP per capita of the United States if measured by purchasing power of potatoes, did not grow significantly. But if it is measured by the purchasing power of eggs, it grew several times. For this reason, economists comparing multiple countries usually use a varied basket of goods.
* Cross-border comparisons of GDP can be inaccurate as they do not take into account local differences in the quality of goods, even when adjusted for purchasing power parity. This type of adjustment to an exchange rate is controversial because of the difficulties of finding comparable baskets of goods to compare purchasing power across countries. For instance, people in country A may consume the same number of locally produced apples as in country B, but apples in country A are of a more tasty variety. This difference in material well being will not show up in GDP statistics. This is especially true for goods that are not traded globally, such as housing.
* Transfer pricing on cross-border trades between associated companies may distort import and export measures[citation needed].
* As a measure of actual sale prices, GDP does not capture the economic surplus between the price paid and subjective value received, and can therefore underestimate aggregate utility”
say no more :>)
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Peter said: Only last week you were whining
Forever trying to endear yourself of Frogblog readers eh Piero! Not trying to inflame or irritate, annoy, demean, belittle or dismiss? Not being arrogant – you self-described ‘rich, successful, white male’ you. Manners, Peter, you display an appalling lack thereof.
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BP
1. Since they USE GDP in partial calculation of the rankings, perhaps this isn’t the best measure to use to determine if GDP is important.
2. Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Australia… have a high GDP with respect to the USA? Maybe it isn’t that important after all?
3. GDP is a stupid measurement. Again, if I go out and wreck my car and then replace it with a less expensive car, I have ADDED to the GDP. If I blow up a building and build a replacement, I have ADDED to the GDP, even if the new building serves exactly the same purpose.
Any sane measure would at least count the losses and costs as well.
Which may explain why countries with high taxation and effective social policies find themselves at the very top of that list and the folks who focus on GDP uber alles are somewhere down a bit further. MAYBE we should be focusing on the social equality meme a little more tightly.
?
respectfully
BJ
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bjchip Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
> 2. Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Australia… have a high GDP with respect to the USA? Maybe it isn’t that important after all?
Yes, and they also rank highly on that quality of life index in comparison with the USA. I’m not sure what your point is.
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Stop whining, Greenfly. And your faux outrage
Let’s not beat around the bush. If you make New Zealand’s exports uncompetitive, then we have SFA money to spend on government services.
Where are you going to get your alternative revenue sources from? How competitive are they? At what speed can you ramp them up?
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BP
Nobody in this party has ever said that we have to “go it alone”. So your whining, and that is what it seems to me to be at this point, about making NZ uncompetitive is little more than a meaningless noise. We aren’t planning to do that. Your worry about it is misplaced. We MIGHT go first, but not by much…. and if we do not see international cooperation happening we’ll be shifting into survival mode ahead of most everyone else.
Kahikatea – The logic is that since they do NOT have a higher GDP with relationship to the USA yet score higher on this quality of life index, it follows that GDP isn’t the defining issue that BP wants to make of it.
The first point is more telling. Using GDP to measure whether GDP is good is self-referential. Circular logic. Cannot be fully accepted.
respectfully
BJ
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I think the shafting of GDP is right but I think to deal with the CC issues we need to look as a community at what is discretionary spending and designing actions asround the conclusions. If we look at a base productive economy we realise that the input of the ecology is a huger input and to kid ourselves we create the economic base is sung by the Capital manipulators to justify their taking over of resources to monopolise the production. They don’t produce but privately allocate resources, and as in the Wars we as a community need to do this or at least regulate the process. The issue is not GDP but the allocation of productive resources to those who can produce efficiently and cleanly and those doing it unsustainably should give in for the survival of our grandchildren. The trouble is these same people are the ones controling now.
True democratic action is the only way to curb the excesses without fighting, and this is why I support the Greens
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The reason why GDP is so commonly used is that it is easily measured (no extra cost because of tax calculations) and it is a good INDICATOR of wellbeing etc.
JUst as lifespan is a good INDICATOR of general health.
The problem with calculating goods and bads is that one persons good is another persons bad. Spending on defence for example. One person sees it as a public good another sees it as a public bad.
We are seeing this issue in the analysis of the costs of alcohol. BERL assumed the people who drink alcohol gain no benefits and only costs.
So changing the method is not worth the costs. Sweden may have a high GDP but what price those endless nights?
There are better things to do with our time than get bothered over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
If you want to measure things that are not measured in GDP such as air quality it is better to go and measure air quality rather than link it to economic activity measures.
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>>it follows that GDP isn’t the defining issue that BP wants to make of it.
It is pretty much the defining issue. Those at the top also have high GDP. Those at the bottom, do not.
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Owen
GDP is a *crap* measure of general well being. There is a lot of work being done developing better measures and many are available.
Get a grip!
peace
W
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bjchip Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
> Kahikatea – The logic is that since they do NOT have a higher GDP with relationship to the USA yet score higher on this quality of life index, it follows that GDP isn’t the defining issue that BP wants to make of it.
Okay, it’s just that they actually DO have higher GDP per capita than the US. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_ca pita
i agree that it would have been interesting if they didn’t, because that would suggest that the other factors in the QLI calculation were sufficiently strongly in favour of those countries to cancel out the effect of GDP.
> The first point is more telling. Using GDP to measure whether GDP is good is self-referential. Circular logic. Cannot be fully accepted.
I agree that the inclusion of GDP in the QLI makes it circular logic and therefore an invalid comparison.
I also think there are other things that should have been included in the quality of life index caluclation, such as the level of absolute poverty, and levels of happiness. But of course it was devised by The Economist magazine, whose priorities are different from mine.
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Again to get the GDP in perspective, if it is a general measure of the money go round and not really any significant measure of the quality of that spending or if it is on prisons to keep the masses who are having to live on a small portion of the big count it is given far too much priority in economic debate and is a lazy way of counting things. It generally will suit those who gain off the money go round, banks, lenders etc.
John Key doesn’t want an investigation into Bank costs/interest and has told Bollard to stop harping at them so he is seen as there to protect those moneyed interests.
The monetarist economists don’t want to count quality or debate these things as it doesn’t suit their power trip. The Old schools of Economics were Philosophy Schools to debate the definitions of what makes economic good.
The trouble is the monetarists have got so wrapped up in the process of counting the ching ching they have stopped looking at why we have an economy – to create wellbeing, wealth in a broader sense. If we have forgotten some basic human needs in the definition of this wellbeing (eg. ecological security) then we need to redefine the economic models. If it is too costly then we need to tax the excesses more and not the base production or producers.
Chief Seattle told the Americans that they would eventually have to eat their money if they kept killing off the natural economy. I have seen some estimations somewhere that a healthy natural forest produces more resources than farming as it is multi layerd – wood, cleaning the air,the food living in the habitat, and the natural foods growing. The dollar counting system doesn’t necessarily count the full benefit, just as GDP doesn’t count the value of the homemakers.
I wonser if that is why a lot of the government cuts have been in analysis units in the civil service. I guess they don’t suit vested interests who want to sell ideaology instead of facts.
That is why an analysis of GDP won’t happen when the ideaologists want to hold power.
The cost of looking is probably cheaper in the long run to the economy, just as the cost of not doing something about CC is far greater, but in the same way the monetarists want to lend against our earning future, they want to keep their lifestyle by borrowing from their and our children. Simple common sense and that is why the Green analysis is gaining ground.
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Oldlux said: I have seen some estimations somewhere that a healthy natural forest produces more resources than farming as it is multi layerd – wood, cleaning the air,the food living in the habitat, and the natural foods growing.
That’s permaculture Oldlux and that’s my field. All questions enthusiastically answered.
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I note too that research has shown organic pasture holds as much carbon in the soil structure as a lot of trees. This also isn’t counted in the monetarist model of maximum return, as an organic farm is based on saving some for later, and producing slightly less now.
I guess it is about balance and understanding this, so I can’t see how something such as GDP can measure this, and any measure that can’t see this balance isn’t worth very much, except to those using it for their own gain.
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Kahikatea
Nooo…? I see there a list of GDP, not per capita. Maybe the link is being misinterpreted. I was looking at another list and the per-capita GDP using PPP was not higher than the US.
Luxembourg, Qatar, Norway, Singapore and Brunei. Of these, only Norway has a “conventional” economy and it has been living on North-Sea Oil with a small population.
respectfully
BJC
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bjchip Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Kahikatea
> Nooo…? I see there a list of GDP, not per capita. Maybe the link is being misinterpreted. I was looking at another list and the per-capita GDP using PPP was not higher than the US.
The link didn’t copy correctly. I’ll try it again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_ca pita
but anyway, the one I was trying to link to was regular GDP per capita, rather than PPP-adjusted GDP per capita. I see that what you’re saying is true of the PPP version, and on reflection I agree that that’s a better comparison than regular GDP per capita.
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There are two types of people who will survive climate change:
1) Those who continue to use high-energy fuel sources such as hydrocarbons.
2) Those who have managed to drop their energy and food needs so low that they can live on the smell of a non-oily rag.
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Because governments throughout the world love convincing people that they are in danger and that they can only be saved by letting them take control. Globalists imagine and invent problems and then they offer us the solution, but the solution is always more government, more corporate monopoly, less sovereignty and less free market economy.
The global warming tax scam has kicked in. There’s no time left for a debate they tell us – we don’t want to hear about the medieval warm period, we don’t want to hear about how temperatures dropped as carbon emissions increased for four decades from the 40’s to the 80’s, we don’t want to hear about how the troposphere shows no build up of greenhouse gases, we don’t want to hear about sun activity and its direct correlation with climate change, we don’t want to hear about arctic ice samples showing how CO2 lags behind temperature increase. There’s money to be made and there’s peasants to flog.
Eco-fanatics and power-hungry elitists have taken total control of the global warming bandwagon. Before they choke the life out of modern industrialized civilization by eliminating the source of 80% of the planet’s energy, and in the face of fierce silencing techniques, it is vital to further understand why scientific evidence is not on the side of the theory of human-caused warming.
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Great, another loopy Lib. Just what we need.
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Sleepy has just about covered most of the anomalies regarding the GDP except for one;
Suppose your house burns down there are the expences of (1) putting out the fire (2) cleaning up the property (3) materials and labour costs of rebuilding the house.
Regardless of the capital coming from insurence or charities etc. all the above expences are added (positively) on to the GDP.
Does this mean thet we should go around burning down our houses?
Marilyn Waring is on to it there needs to be amore accurate measurement.
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- “GDP is a *crap* measure of general well being. There is a lot of work being done developing better measures and many are available.”
Do you think someone living in poverty in India would agree with your “sophisticated” view?
The fact is that GDP and child mortality rates, for example, are highly correlated:
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/gapcasts/gapcast-11-reducing-child-mor tality/
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/gapcasts/gapcast-3-human-development-t rends/
Or what about the rate of women dying in childbirth?
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/gapcasts/gapcast-7-maternal-mortality/
GDP is a very good proxy for general wellbeing.
Poverty is the number one issue in the world today; and not the “relative poverty” that the Greens campaign on – where they seek political power by railing against the injustice of one rich westerner having slightly less wealth than another.
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Speaking of loopy Libs
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wat dabney Says: “GDP is a very good proxy for general wellbeing.”
Wat, you need to get out your “How to Lie with Statistics” book you referred to the other day – a major theme of it is “Correlation does not imply causation”. If we work towards identifying and improving the causes of wellbeing that do fit within our resource budget, rather than chasing some correlation, surely we will be better of?
Interesting in the second link how Cuba has a low GDP/capita and very high life expectancy.
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We are plagued by Librarians!
Sssssssssssssssssssssssssh*t!
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(correction) Shhhhhhhhhhhh*t!
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Shunda
http://www.should-a.com/pmv7r3
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92% say yes!
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Nick’s Our man – he suffers permanent sunburn, must be a believer hey?
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Old Nick, the Red-skinned One?
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Jimrome
PLEASE go ahead and tell us how else to solve the problem?
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. This is basic physics.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing faster than it ever has in the known history of the planet and is higher than it has been in 3 million years. There is:
a. No other source of the CO2 but us burning half the dead dinosaurs ever found.
b. The isotope studies tell us that it is us.
c. The last time the CO2 was here, it was 3 degrees warmer.
The temperature is increasing and almost all CLIMATE SCIENTISTS understand that we are at risk and how. Two degrees of warming is the limit. We are exceeding IPCC estimates on sea level, ocean heat content, sea ice.
We know the risk of non-linearity goes up astronomically if we exceed 2 degrees… non-linearities are not included in the IPCC estimates.
The world is warming. It is Us. It is CO2.
HOW DO YOU LIMIT CO2 EMISSIONS WITHOUT GOVERNMENT?
No libertarian has yet answered this with an alternative that can actually be performed by a society composed of human beings. We’d be happy to entertain options.
Since you also seem to wish to challenge the science, please feel free to post your challenges here. We are used to explaining where those challenges fail the tests of ACTUAL science.
respectfully
BJ
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Nine shades to a Rainbow
The sun’s light reflected back – j edgar loved Gambling they say
what a noodle!
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You must have a word document BJ to just cut and paste the facts for these genuises, otherwise I wish I had your typing speed (or patience)…
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Jezza
I have patience… I spent time at sea, and the ocean teaches patience like no other teacher.
I type pretty quickly and I keep a library of links to things that have proven useful…
———
…but I never ever EVER would consider buying or using a Microstuffed product if I can find a way to avoid it.
I have a huge amount of disrespect for the way MS has operated in the past (former Wordperfect user back from when it was “Satellite Software”) and I remember “the code’s not done until Lotus won’t run”… and I have absolutely no confidence in their security model. You can secure a machine with MS loaded on it by cutting off the electricity to it.
That’s about the only way.
… and that’s only a heavily edited version of how I REALLY feel.
respectfully
BJ
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Cutting off electricity to a machine..?
Why you climate “believers” are trying to destroy the economy…
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Saves power and protects data at the same time. SUCH a good idea
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Actually my understanding of the research (I’d dig out a ref if I wasn’t supposed to be doing something else urgently) is that GDP IS a reasonable proxy for (human) wellbeing, up to a certain point. After that, the correlation rapidly disappears, if not turns negative. That level was reached by the USA in about the 50’s or 60’s. I’m not sure if the study has been done for NZ, but I imagine we are not much different, perhaps a few years behind. Anyway, the evidence IS very clear now that it no longer is very meaningful in terms of wellbeing for wealthy countries like ours. A Genuine Progress Indicator would be much more useful.
Even for poor countries, measures like GDP that don’t account for the loss of social and natural capital are unhelpful for guiding policy decisions.
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And the reason the Greens couldn’t/wouldn’t persuade Helen to hold the debate during their 9 years of cooperation is ? Instead of spending time/effort on arguing the cause of climate change better to work on adapting to it or go the same way as the dinosaurs and their greenhouse gas emmissions. Just wonder if the suns activity could be involved as Astronomers are reporting that all planets in the solar system are experiencing similar temp changes but my Martian friends advise they dispensed with hydrocarbons Eons ago.
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