by Catherine Delahunty
Last night Gareth Hughes and I completed an urban tour where we met community activists and organisers working on a range of threats to the environment from mining. We had great meetings in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. At each meeting we shared information about deep sea drilling, seabed mining, fracking, lignite mining, underground coal gasification, coal and gold mining proposals. We also covered the map with our knowledge of applications for different types of risky activities from Te Tai Tokerau to Invercargill and out to the Raukumara basin, the Kermadec trench and the Chatham Rise.
The audiences were quick to recognise that this is a national issue. The Government is working closely with the oil, gas and mining industries to facilitate extraction of New Zealand’s finite resources. As well as the issues of ocean, water and soil pollution there were overarching concerns about mining’s contribution to climate change and foreign control of our resources. People were upset with our low tax and royalties rates for the mining industry, and Government subsidies for industry such as the $25 million of taxpayer money which has paid for seismic surveys and the analysis of seismic data.
Each meeting was different but in each place people were using the events to build networks and share the many strategies they have to stop destructive mining in New Zealand. As was discussed, there are particular opportunities to challenge the dirty mining technologies in urban areas. The Bathurst Mining protest in support of Denniston plateau was a great urban success in the heart of Wellington.
Everywhere people were supporting the Greens stand against assets sales and wanted Solid Energy to stay a state asset. We talked about alternatives to the “drill it, mine, it, sell it off” strategy including the promotion of green energy technology, clean food production and valuing the environment as the real economy.
Highlights of the tour included hearing from the Coordinator of Coromandel Watchdog at the Auckland meeting, working with tangata whenua and campus Greens to plan awareness work in the Waikato, sharing the Wellington stage with Caleb Behn from the Salteaux First Nation in Canada about the impacts of fracking on his territory, meeting the Kaikōura anti frackers who had just achieved a ban on fracking alongside the Christchurch ban, and meeting the Southland lignite crew who drove all the way to our Dunedin meeting.
Gareth and I were inspired by the creativity and commitment of communities and we will tour again later this year with more information on creating sustainable jobs and protecting the environment as a positive future for Aotearoa.
The clear message from the people to the Government on these issues “when you are in a hole stop digging!”
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Catherine Delahunty on Tue, May 1st, 2012
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An interesting piece and it’s good the see the grass roots mobilising. I do wonder though, if this is just preaching to the converted and may not stand up to your claims that there is a clear message being sent from the people to the government. If there was a clear message then they wouldn’t have got re-elected!
You make an interesting point about tax rates and royalties. Does this mean that if tax rates were higher then mining would be more acceptable to society? Sounds like a Pigouvian taxation approach – taxing the externalities. The tricky part is valuing them to put the ‘correct’ tax on them …
The Green movement really needs to get behind renewables and stop playing silly parochialism when it comes to local landscape or noise effects. We must look at the big picture and accept that a few people may be made worse off … but this is much better than extensive mining which may involve fracking.
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The point about tax and royaltioes is that Govt is claiming the great mining expansion will pay for our schools and hospitals, if we do the maths this is simply untrue. You are correct we need to continue to promote renwable energy and wnergu conservatioon solutions instead of fossil fuels. As for issues like landscape and noise etc you are invited to buy and live in a house next to the Martha Mine in Waihi and then see whether noise and vibration are minor to you. We stand up for social issue in the community as well as environmental issues because the residents of Waihi need support and solutions not more industrial mining within and beneath their town.
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I’d be interested in exactly what you presented re royalties, Catherine, because the chart that Gareth presented here is very misleading. He draw a comparison between government returns from oil & gas activities not only on a royalty basis, but on a total investment basis (production sharing contracts, primarily). These are basically public/private partnerships. Now – that is all well and good if the government wants to directly invest in the oil industry, but I suspect that the Greens would object to that, and I also suspect that the government of the day (any of them) would be loathe to spend the billions of dollars of capital required.
Secondly, the argument on seismic is put into perspective by this article which lists exploration costs to-date at $100 Million, and the seismic hasn’t even been processed. What also needs to be taken into account is that the crown minerals act requires companies to give-up all their seismic data etc if they relinquish an exploration permit, so that government gets a lot of ‘free’ (well, aside from admin fee) seismic in return.
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Catherine – without mining and drilling, you wouldn’t have the thousands of items that will enable you to do your tour –
- planes, cars, trains
- fuel
- roads, airports
- meeting hall, sound and light equipment, windows, etc
- comminucation and computer equipment
- electricity and the means of getting it to where you are
- accommodation, beds, sheets
- tools to produce, transport and cook your food and drink
- music or movies for entertainment on your trip
- pretty much every single item that will allow you to do your trip
ALL these things rely on mining and drilling, if not directly, then for the tools used to make them.
What you really want is some other country to take the risks for your consumption, so that you don’t have to have any responsibility or risk in your back yard. Then we can all pretend that we’re all clean and green here in NZ, when we consume as much as anyone.
Surely we should be taking responsibility for the mining risks of our own consumption, instead of campaign to abdicate responsibility and risk for our own consumption, and try to shift it to some other peoples place where it’s out of our sight.
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