A right Charlie
You may have heard Federated Farmers President Charlie Pedersen on Nine to Noon this morning, before he launched an unbelievable attack on the environmental movement in a speech to his body’s National Conference:
I say shame on the people who elevate environmentalism to a religious status, shame on you for your arrogance, shame on all of us for allowing the environmentalists’ war against the human race to begin, and take hold.
Riiight. You’d think after the microchipping thing he might be grateful!
Seriously, I can’t imagine what prompted this extraordinary outburst, but it’s very misplaced. As the head of an organisation made up of representatives of the industry most dependent on the climate and environment for their wellbeing, you’d think he’d have realised that his interests actually aren’t too far from those of environmentalists. Fortunately, I don’t think anyone’s taking him very seriously.
[Update 19/7/06: Jeanette and Charlie went head to head on this on Campbell Live last night, here’s a link to the video.]
Speaking of acting like a right Charlie, you can’t go past Bush and Blair:
Thanks for the sweater, it was awfully thoughtful of you. I know you picked it out yourself.
Oh stop it.
July 18th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
When I read the report of the FF speach I thought the guy must be fsking nuts.
One of the key reasons consumers in Europe buy our produce is due to the so called “Clean Green” image. Mr Goff & co. must be hoping and preying that these words don’t get released in thise markets otherwise it will count as a huge shot in the foot.
Clueless, that farmers feel well represented by such an idiot is almost beyond belief.
July 18th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
Most environmentalists are indeed entirely clueless about the appalling devastation that their religion wreaks on the world’s poorest. You have indeed waged war against the human race.
http://www.eco-imperialism.com
July 18th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Yup, I just read the speach too. What a plonker!
What struck me in his speach is something that has been bothering me for some time, and it rather undoes his rage somewhat.
Whilst he accuses the environmentalists as succumbing to a new religion, and damning us all to regression and restriction, he peppers his piece with the prop of ’science’, much like religious crusaders invoke their God, so Charlie here invokes his science. It doesn’t sound like he has much of a grip on it, and if he isn’t being taken seriously that’s a good thing. I mean, he seriously seems to think the biggest threat to productive growth is the environmentalists, not the environment…
However, the invocation of the Science God is still troubling, we are seeing it everywhere these days, particularly in defense of the resource-consumption industry.
True beleivers the lot of them
Bikemike
July 18th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Interesting link Mouldwarp, always good to debate ideas.
However, can we take seriously a publication where the praise reckons all environmentalists are affluent whites and that “the environmentally sensitive rich (are) demanding that the Third World’s poor forego feeding themselves, solving their health and energy problems, and taking their rightful place among the earth’s prosperous people.” Come on!
What an insult to all those workers out there, white or not, affluent or not, giving up their time and energy to provide, teach and support the intermediate technology genuinely required to give the developing nations the power to raise their quality of life and regain their self-determination and respect.
http://www.itdg.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology
Shall we discuss instead the buckets of structured aid the money-men seem to think will solve those problems?
Lets have some clear thinking!
bikemike
July 18th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
Wacko! The “eco-imperialism” website is quite funny, too, in a very black humoured “greenies-crawling-up-my-legs” sort of way. Even malaria is the fault of greens, because we won’t let people use DDT! Never mind that malaria is easily dealt with by a variety of medicines…
Many years ago I recall a visiting nut bar who assured audiences at his lectures that environmentalists must be communists as we were sabotaging the capitalist economy by preventing the full use of natural resources. Actually he thought pretty much everybody was a commie - I wondered why he imagined Marxist parties did so badly in elections here when he was finding them under every second mattress.
July 18th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Well, the farmers have a very serious problem if they think this is the way to go. Here we have the Warehouse importing Chinese beef and the likes of FF think that an emphasis yield, price and some fancy packaging is the only way to compete. Time to move up the food chain, if you’ll pardon the pun.
July 19th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Just noticed this - “You’d think after the microchipping thing he might be grateful!”
Not really, you’d think it would now be clear to the Green caucus what a collosal misjudgement they made in handling this issue.
July 19th, 2006 at 9:47 am
> Charlie here invokes his science. It doesn’t sound like he has much of a grip on it
His would be “sound science” (the sort that comes from political think tanks, economists and statisticians, pulp thriller writers etc) rather than “junk science” (the kind published in peer-reviewed journals like Science or Nature).
Here’s a rebuttal:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0607/S00176.htm
66
A study by the Ministry for the Environment showed that New Zealand’s “clean and green� image was worth an added $30,000 a year to every New Zealand farmer, due to the premium it adds to their products.
99
As his anti-green comments make it to foreign shores (http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=114981), farmers should be hoping that Charlie stops tarnishing this image in public.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:54 am
I liked the way he denigrates Christians too. That should get a few more churches on the side of the environmentalists! Actually I think the missionaries were right about the need for humans to follow a doctrine that included rigorous moral and intellectual training in order to foster the benevolent side of human nature and supress the bad side. Where the 19th century missionaries went wrong in my opinion was in thinking their own doctrine was the only one that could acheive this. Modern missionaries seem to have learned form this, and appear generally more accomodating to other religious beliefs and attempt to work in with them.
Environmentalists are similar to missionaries in the belief that we need to enhance the good parts of human nature, such as co-operation, compassion and thinking ahead, and discourage the bad parts such as short term thinking and greed. It does require similar intellectual and moral training to that promoted by the missionaries, especially that of re-thinking all the standard cultural assumptions we have gown up with, and occasionally going without rather than contributing to increased consumption. Once the training is in place however, it is no hardship to stick to it. On the contrary, I am more content now I am not getting ulcers chasing yet more wealth and power. If that makes environmentalism a “religion” then I am pleased to be called religious.
July 19th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
hmm, there’s not really a lot of rigorous analysis or proof published on eco-imperialism is there? The story synopses on their home page promise much, but when you actually click on them and visit the story there is a lack of what was promised.
For example the story about the biopharmed GE product that could save Africa’s children, the synopsis says that
but then you read the story and there is a single unattributed quote …
That’s it? That’s your proof of eco-imperialism? A single unattributed quote? Where are the Greenpeace press releases? Where are the protestors?
Compare and contrast with, just for example, Media Lens, in their 4-part analysis of bias in the western media against Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, all accessible from…
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060619_the_system_works.php
They quote from about 50 different articles in a wide range of newspapers.
Bit of a difference don’t you think? Media Lens actually back up their thesis, and eco-imperialism don’t.
July 19th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
> “Never mind that malaria is easily dealt with by a variety of medicines…”
Ahh. The old “let them eat cake” argument.
Here’s some information for you…
http://www.fightingmalaria.org/search.php?search=Search&keyword=ddt
Let’s pick one at random…
‘”[B]anning DDT worldwide is beyond ignorance, it is just plain stupid,” Koenig said. “[Although m]alaria still is prevalent in the countries in the equatorial regions . [it] is only a matter of time, a short time, before we see these diseases again in the regions between the tropics and the poles.”
Until that time comes, the malaria plague seems to be off the public radar. However, let there be no mistake: Rachel Carson and the worldwide environmentalist movement are responsbile for perpetuating an ecological genocide that has claimed the lives of millions of young, poor, striving African men, women and children, killed by preventable diseases.’
(http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9169)
The fools! Don’t they realise that “malaria is easily dealt with by a variety of medicines”?
Environmentalism is not an end in itself. It has moral worth only in so far as it promotes human wellbeing.
July 19th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Mouldwarp, can you find support for your case that doesn’t come from a neocon tabloid or a pressure group that lobbies for increased use of DDT?
July 19th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
There are more ecologically sound methods of killing mosquitos than toxifying the landscape. Some of them are also cheaper. We do need to keep on point here, DDT doesn’t stop malaria, it kills mozzies… and a lot of other useful insects, birds and the like.
Mouldwarp, you need to recognize that there are other options that greens would happily support, which would likely stop a lot of the troublesome bugs. None of them would be familiar to Kiwis of course. I have yet to see a house that actually has flyscreens … or central heating… or proper insulation… and I have looked at more than a few of them
Is this that rugged kiwi attitude towards cold and hardship coming to the fore?
respectfully
BJ
July 19th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Mouldwarp - are you saying malaria isn’t able to be dealt with by available medicine? And do you have any “information” to back your case other than somebody ranting?
July 19th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
The DDT Story:
http://kenethmiles.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_kenethmiles_archive.html#10 7570569615970184
July 20th, 2006 at 11:07 am
Here’s the response from the public… perhaps his attempt to ‘provoke debate’ backfired just a tad? ; )
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3737135a4621,00.html
July 21st, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Baz,
> “can you find support for your case that doesn’t come from a neocon tabloid or a pressure group that lobbies for increased use of DDT?”
That’s a curious request. You don’t want to hear from any group that argues for increased use of DDT? How on earth do you hope to get the full story?
Probably it doesn’t meet you criterion of only hearing what you want to hear, but anyone interested in the subject should read the open letter at http://www.malaria.org/DDT_open.html
bjchip,
> “There are more ecologically sound methods of killing mosquitos than toxifying the landscape.”
Nobody is talking about using DDT to “toxify the landscape.” Limited use to treat dwellings is the prescribed method. There is no question of using DDT in agriculture. As for alternatives, it’s a question of cost effectiveness:-
“During the height of the malaria season tens of thousands of homes are sprayed [with DDT]. It kills and repels the mosquitoes which carry malaria. It lasts for six months. It is also cheap. The nearest alternative is three times as expensive. For Ethiopia, calls to ban the use of DDT are unrealistic. “We don’t have an alternative” says Berhane Mikail of the country’s health authority. “It’s not practical in our situation. It doesn’t mate with the reality of this area. “We cannot ban these insecticides because we don’t have alternatives.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/902915.stm
Henry,
You posted a link to “the DDT story” which included the line “The manufacture and use of DDT was banned in the US in 1972, on the advice of the US Environmental Protection Agency.” Here’s the real story:-
“Extensive hearings on DDT before an EPA administrative law judge occurred during 1971-1972. The EPA hearing examiner, Judge Edmund Sweeney, concluded that “DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man… DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man… The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife.
Overruling the EPA hearing examiner, EPA administrator Ruckelshaus banned DDT in 1972. Ruckelshaus never attended a single hour of the seven months of EPA hearings on DDT. Ruckelshaus’ aides reported he did not even read the transcript of the EPA hearings on DDT.”
(http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm)
Sam Buchanan,
> “are you saying malaria isn’t able to be dealt with by available medicine? ”
Excuse me? Are you suggesting that people should be left to contract malaria and then go to the doctor for medicine? I’m simply staggered.
> “And do you have any “informationâ€? to back your case other than somebody ranting?”
Let’s see. A quotation at http://www.malaria.org says that “globally, the death rate is equal to seven jumbo jets, full of children, crashing every day.” Is that a “rant”? Maybe it is. Hopefully you will read the open letter at that site (linked to above) which adopts an extremely measured tone.
Let’s be absolutely clear. Anyone who supports the ban on DDT does so in the full knowledge that it will unquestionably result in the avoidable deaths of many millions of people.
To be honest, the reaction of you people to this issue simply confirms everything Charlie Pedersen said. It’s like the plight of these millions of poverty-stricken people is a matter of complete indifference, just so long as the green agenda is pursued without compromise. His comments are in complete accord with those of Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore when he said “the environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity. The pain and suffering it is inflicting on families in developing countries must no longer be tolerated.”
Amen to that.
July 21st, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Mouldy olde chum, ddt is not globally prohibited for the purpose mentioned… it is, if I read the links correctly, available in various countries for use inside the house where it does aid in suppressing the population of bugs. It however, is a lot less effective than it used to be. The bugs evolve.
If you have to use 3 times as much, 3 times cheaper doesn’t cut much ice with the wallet.
I don’t see ANY indication of a widespread “ban” on DDT outside the agricultural community, and its use in agriculture, given the propensity of the bugs to become resistant, actually INCREASES the rate at which people get bit.
Mozzies do not develop “resistance” to screens. They do not develop “resistance” to CO2 based traps without sacrificing their effectiveness at seeking out animals to bite. There are other ways of dealing with this problem… without killing the birds and the bees.
I am sure that you’d agree that we need the birds and the bees ?
BJ
>
July 21st, 2006 at 5:40 pm
This is the editorial inthe Otago Daily Times, of all places, on Charlie Pedersen’s speech:
One farmer speaks
WHILE MANY New Zealanders today value the environment and recognise what can be lost, many still do not. We will not count among the latter the president of Federated Farmers New Zealand, Charlie Pedersen, although we suspect others will not be so charitable. The agricultural community has often been at loggerheads with those who disagree with the idea that boundless economic growth is achievable without finite cost to the nation’s natural resources, and Mr Pedersen’s intentionally inflammatory and ill-advised comments to an audience of his peers will further cement that division. The sector he represents is under considerable political and community pressure to relinquish some of its long-assumed ‘rights’ and is resentful that its ancestral claim to special treatment, due to its crucial contribution to the national economy, no longer seems to be given quite the priority that had for so many decades been automatic.
‘If food production cannot grow, then our population cannot grow,’ declared Mr Pedersen. ‘I am yet to hear any environmentalist admit that rolling back agriculture’s intensification would have to be matched by worldwide starvation or a matching reduction in population.’ To which the environmentalist would doubtless respond: the developed world already produces a surplus of food but it has failed to devise the means of delivering it to those who cannot; and, if intensification of agriculture means the continuing degradation of water and soils, ‘intensification’ will be irretrievably reversed. What, we wonder, would be the state of the country’s national parks, its productive land, its rivers and lakes today had not the Save Manapouri campaign awakened general awareness of political, industrial and economic pressures on the environment, and Mr Pedersen’s desire for untrammelled exploitation been permitted?
While it would be foolish to expect that 160 years of agricultural and urban ‘development’ could somehow be reversed, or that this country should lock itself into an environmental time capsule, our record over that span in losing flora and fauna species is among the worst in the world. The laudable aim of the environmental movement to arrest this decline means New Zealand has nothing to learn from the world - or from its agriculture industry - in terms of the creation of national parks, of pest-free sanctuaries on land and marine reserves at sea, or in bringing back from the brink of extinction threatened species. And, if Mr Pedersen and like-minded farmers wish to rely alone on economic arguments, they ought not exclude the economic benefits to the country of tourism, nor the consistent reasons given by visitors why they are attracted to this country: its ‘unspoilt beauty’, the possibility of a ‘wilderness experience’, the ‘absence of pollution’, the ‘pristine landscape’, a!
nd so on, ‘clean, green’ advertising notwithstanding (although it no doubt helps market our agricultural produce).
Hidden from the tourists’ view, of course, or not immediately observable by them, are the consequences of decades of ruinously manipulating lake levels for commercial gain, the destroyed wild rivers, the poisoned and polluted (mostly by animal and agricultural run-off) lakes and rivers, the sacrificed salt marshes and bird sanctuaries for industrial and urban ‘development’, the overall decline in biodiversity, the elimination of some 32% of indigenous land and freshwater birds, the extinction of a vast range of fauna and flora, the catastrophic impact of 70 million possums, goats, deer, rats, stoats and feral cats, the costly effect of 200 or more invasive weed species . . .
Many farmers and rural property-owners have already done and continue to do a great deal with regard to the preservation of what remains of the unmodified environment, and are practising so far as possible sustainable agriculture. Mr Pedersen does them all a disservice by lumping them in with what he ludicrously termed ‘the environmentalists’ war against the human race’. They, after all, recognise that the environment is the best thing we have got going for us, and that it would be utterly foolish if a strategy to protect, preserve and enhance was to be sabotaged by exploitation motivated by simple greed disguised as ‘contributing to the betterment of the lives of ordinary New Zealanders’, in Mr Pedersen’s words. Like Mr Pedersen’s despised environmentalists, such temporary guardians of the land have long realised ‘progress’ is not to be measured by ‘growth’ but by carefully and responsibly managing the process of change: an ethos that accepts the dominance of mankind on Pla!
net Earth but acknowledges it may not be infinite.
Forest & Bird’s response is also here, if you are interested in reading it:
http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/mediarelease/2006/index.asp
Cheers, Helen Bain (Forest & Bird)
July 21st, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Jeanette was really good on Campbell live, people like that would make good governors.
July 22nd, 2006 at 2:11 pm
> “ddt is not globally prohibited for the purpose mentioned”
But only because the environmentalists were defeated on this occasion. That’s the point.
“…this led groups such as Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Physicians for Social Responsibilty and over 300 other environmental organizations to advocate for a total DDT ban”
(http://www.malaria.org/DDTpage.html)
Greenpeace’s own archive records how they planned to fight attempts to exclude DDT from the general POPs ban:-
“An international treaty to ban POPs is currently being negotiated. Greenpeace is lobbying against industry plans to exclude products such as DDT from a POPs phase-out.”
(the link http://www.archive.greenpeace.nl/report99/html/content/p7.html is down, but the content is available from google cache).
“Lobbying against industry plans” indeed. The case for excluding DDT from the ban was being widely made by those concerned with the fight against malaria *many months* before the meeting. For Greenpeace to dismiss such humanitarian objections by telling people they are “lobbying against industry plans” is sickening.
> “It however, is a lot less effective than it used to be. The bugs evolve. If you have to use 3 times as much, 3 times cheaper doesn’t cut much ice with the wallet…and its use in agriculture, given the propensity of the bugs to become resistant, actually INCREASES the rate at which people get bit.”
Your musings on the subject are about as far away from reality as it is possible to get…
“Tragically, the Anopheles mosquitoes were resistant to the insecticides that replaced DDT.After malaria cases had risen by about 1 000%, South Africa reintroduced DDT in 2000 and in just one year achieved an 80% reduction in cases in KwaZulu-Natal, the worst-hit province. Malaria cases remain at almost all-time lows in the country thanks to DDT.
In 2000, a private mine, Konkola Copper Mine on the Zambian Copperbelt, restarted its IRS programmes using DDT. Malaria control had declined along with the economic fortunes of Zambia in the early 1980s and, as a consequence, the disease had returned with a vengeance to many areas. Yet after just one season of DDT spraying, malaria incidence was halved, and was halved again the following year. So successful has the application of DDT been that the Zambian government restarted its IRS programmes in several other parts of the country.”
(http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=256050&area=/insight/i nsight__africa/)
July 23rd, 2006 at 8:50 am
Mouldwarp said:
>> Environmentalism is not an end in itself. It has moral worth only in so >> far as it promotes human wellbeing.
Funny that I should find myself agreeing with you Mouldwarp. For me that is what the end game of protecting the environment is all about, making sure that we don’t kill off the human species. What I care about is making sure that my kids have a future, so for me protecting the environment for me is a means to an end, and the end is survival. Short term techno fixes such as DDT have a predictable way of not working out in the end (industrial farming, and large scale irrigation in particular, is another).
What you and others such as the leader of the Federated Farmers seem to unwilling or incapable of understanding is the short term vs. long term perspective. The moral issue that we should be worried about is whether or not we have the right to destroy our current environment (e.g. destroying Lake Taupo) thereby taking it away from future generations of, yes Mouldwarp, humans.
But congrats to you, as an internet troll you seem very talented. You have certainly managed to shift the focus of this debate here away from the original topic in order to get folks to spend time knocking down your strawman argument when we could be out there doing something more worthwhile like talking to people who don’t already share our views and might be open to doing so.
July 24th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Mouldwarp
>> “can you find support for your case that doesn’t come from a neocon tabloid or a pressure group that lobbies for increased use of DDT?�
> That’s a curious request. You don’t want to hear from any group that argues for increased use of DDT? How on earth do you hope to get the full story?
I’m happy to listen to any argument from credible sources, preferably peer-reviewed: for example, you could link to a paper in Nature saying that increased use of DDT could save x lives per annum at such and such a cost.
Unfrotunately lobby groups aren’t a good source of unbiased information, and most people won’t know enough about the subjects at hand (epidemiology etc) to know when they’re being economical with the truth.
July 24th, 2006 at 10:56 am
>Excuse me? Are you suggesting that people should be left to contract malaria and then go to the doctor for medicine? I’m simply staggered.
Good, keep staggering. Environmental protection has an impact - particularly impregnated mosquito nets. But in the main, people die of malaria simply because they can’t afford access to medicine (you don’t need go to a doctor, any competent technician can do a blood test in about five minutes and the treatments are available over the counter from pharmacies in most affected countries - I recommend Artesunate for preference). That is the problem, not the ban on DDT.
>Let’s be absolutely clear. Anyone who supports the ban on DDT does so in the full knowledge that it will unquestionably result in the avoidable deaths of many millions of people.
A little like arguing that anybody who opposes a ban on motor vehicles is responsible for the deaths of 300 New Zealanders a year - this makes them worse than Al-Qaeda. You’re all murderers! Car drivers are conducting a war against humanity! ‘Scuse me while I go and wash the froth off my lips…
July 24th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Hmm, how did a topic that started out being about Federated Farmers attacking environmentalists end up being about DDT???
July 24th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
oh..y’know hb..that just happens…
drag it back..!..drag it back..!..if you must….
but the important thing from all this is that ‘making a right charlie’ of yourself has taken on a new resonance…(and that pederson has done his ’causes’ no end of harm..)
so..’a right charlie’ is now cultural shorthand…. much as ‘making a right richard’ of yourself is also gaining traction….eh..?
yours in the evolution of the language….phil(whoar.co.nz)
July 24th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Ok, drag it back I will … The Dompost certainly wasn’t impressed with Charlie this morning: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dominionpost/0,2106,3741447a6483,00.html
July 24th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
benw,
If I ever need a false dilemma I’ll know where to come.
It is explained to you how DDT is environmentally safe when used as proposed, but your apparent argument for a total ban consists of apocalyptic warnings about the end of the human race. You express concern for “future generations” but not one ounce of compassion for the plight of millions of people living today.
Why is it that not one of you here seems to give the slightest consideration to the millions of people that are affected by the problem of malaria? Why aren’t they *central* to your proposed response?
To quote bjchip “I am sure that you’d agree that we need the birds and the bees.” That would make a great epitaph for their mass grave. Sure they need a decent environment with the birds and the bees, but they need to be alive first. Get your priorities straight.
> “What you and others such as the leader of the Federated Farmers seem to unwilling or incapable of understanding is the short term vs. long term perspective.”
No. The problem is that people like you are unwilling or incapable of understanding that hundreds of millions of people alive today have urgent short term priorities which preclude any longer term perspective. Your cruel and ruthless response is to let them suffer and die whilst you focus on planning your brave new world for the “future generations.”
Baz,
> “I’m happy to listen to any argument from credible sources, preferably peer-reviewed: for example, you could link to a paper in Nature saying that increased use of DDT could save x lives per annum at such and such a cost.”
I absolutely agree. This is the sort of rational approach which should be taken. By all means argue that DDT should not be used, but do so on the grounds of cost effectiveness rather than because it is a green article of faith. Of course this does presume that the wellbeing of those affected is the central concern; something of a controverial position here.
Sam Buchanan,
> “But in the main, people die of malaria simply because they can’t afford access to medicine (you don’t need go to a doctor, any competent technician can do a blood test in about five minutes and the treatments are available over the counter from pharmacies in most affected countries - I recommend Artesunate for preference). That is the problem, not the ban on DDT.”
So let’s see if I’ve got this straight. You’re justify a a total ban on DDT on the grounds that malaria is a treatable condition, but you also acknowledge that people can’t afford to buy the medicine.
> “A little like arguing that anybody who opposes a ban on motor vehicles is responsible for the deaths of 300 New Zealanders a year - this makes them worse than Al-Qaeda.”
It’s not the same at all. As well as the costs you have to include the *benefits* of motor vehicles, which are simply enormous.
HB,
> “how did a topic that started out being about Federated Farmers attacking environmentalists end up being about DDT???”
Because he said this: “shame on you for your arrogance, shame on all of us for allowing the environmentalists’ war against the human race to begin,” an opinion which echoes that of the Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore and an example of which is the DDT issue. Just read the responses here to see that Mr Federated Farmers was correct: ambivalence at best, Sam Buchanan at worst.
July 24th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Thanks Helen Bain!
Great speech … come again and give us more like it!
Mouldwarp:
How about taking a lesson from Helen? She doesn’t use insults and “put downs” and therefore her message is much more likely to get through than yours is.
But then, perhaps it is those insults and put downs of yours ARE the message you want to get across?
eredwen
July 24th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
ha ha nice one eredwen, mouldwarps a bit of a charlie himeself isn’t he, deliberately antagonistic and denegratory.
July 24th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
oh and did you see the interview with Charlie on the back page of the Saturday Herald where he backtracks. Seems he wasn’t attacking environmentalists or the Green Party at all, only those environmentalists who place planet before people (are there any?). And running your farm in an environmental manner is a given apparantly, he’s been doing it for 25 years. And he recycles!
See, we’re all a lot closer together in our opinions than we think. No need for the derogatory attacks.
July 25th, 2006 at 7:33 am
so stuey…..if pederson is actually a ‘reconstructed greenie’..no longer worthy/deserving of our denigration/mocking….do you know why he is still arguing for no protections for the lakes..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
July 25th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Mouldwarp, when you’ve done a little time in politics, you’ll find out that abusing people who don’t support your pet theory or solution is both inneffectual and counterproductive. Comments such as “cruel and ruthless response” and “not one of you here seems to give the slightest consideration to the millions of people that are affected by the problem of malaria”, just make you look like a pedantic jerk who isn’t worth talking to.
For what it’s worth, I spent several months living in a severe malarial zone, had four bouts of it myself, and put my own money into buying medicines for affected people in the area. DDT was being used near this area by government teams - the people whose houses where being sprayed had no choice in the matter and weren’t at all happy about it, but perhaps you think their opinions don’t matter? Do you believe in democracy, or do you follow a technocratic Marxist line and think people should be sprayed with DDT whether they like it or not?
If you’d like to do something about malaria, let me know and I’ll send you my address and you can pass on a cheque. I guarantee the money will be spent entirely on medicines (Artesunate) in affected areas (Thai-Burma border) with no admin costs or other deductions.
July 25th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Sam Buchanan,
I’m aware that my posts disturbs the usual self-congratulatory tone that permeates this blog; however they were not insults but mere observations of fact. It is indeed “cruel and ruthless” to support a total ban on DDT when the consequences are both inevitable and devastating. Obviously some will choose to be insulted and use that as an excuse to avoid addressing the issue.
But the fact remains that at no time do green supporters here give any sense that their basic premise is “what is best for the people who live there.” Rather, they would dictate whatever they believe is best for the environment and hang the consequences for the population. The only moral purpose of environmentalism is to advance human wellbeing: Letting people die from malaria in the quest for a pristine environment sums up all that’s wrong with a green movement more notable for its smugness than its humanity.
> “the people whose houses where being sprayed had no choice in the matter and weren’t at all happy about it, but perhaps you think their opinions don’t matter? Do you believe in democracy, or do you follow a technocratic Marxist line and think people should be sprayed with DDT whether they like it or not?”
Not at all. Nor do I follow your technocratic Marxist line that DDT should be banned outright. Neither do I think your personal experience of visiting an affected area makes you an authority on the subject. These people know vastly more about it than you or I - http://www.malaria.org/DDT_signatures.html - and they signed this letter -
http://www.malaria.org/DDT_open.html - calling for the option of DDT to be retained in order to save lives.
> “if you’d like to do something about malaria, let me know and I’ll send you my address and you can pass on a cheque. I guarantee the money will be spent entirely on medicines (Artesunate) in affected areas (Thai-Burma border) with no admin costs or other deductions.”
Thank you but I already contribute elsewhere as my income allows. Unfortunately the state robs me of much of my income in order to pay bribes to its supporters, otherwise I’d certainly send even more each month to people who genuinely need it.
July 25th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Mouldy, I cited my time in malarial areas to refute your claim that “not one of you here seems to give the slightest consideration to the millions of people that are affected by the problem of malaria�, not to claim authority on the subject.
Actually, I don’t recall advocating a total ban on DDT - if people are actually demanding their houses be sprayed with the stuff, in full knowledge of the impacts, I wouldn’t stand in their way. What I am rejecting is your line that DDT is the only solution, and anyone opposed to its use is “cruel and ruthless”.
I’m intrigued by your rejection of Marxist technocracy, followed by an assertion that “these people know vastly more about it than you or I”, this sort of appeal to follow the lines of the “experts” is a slippery slope, old fruit, pretty soon you might find yourself discussing”scientific” laws of economics and reading Socialist Worker (though I’d recommend the Communist party of Aotearoa, who are at least good for a laugh - very secretive and conspiratorial). I prefer the silly old anarchist line that people have the right to live their lives as they choose, stupid as their choices may be.
July 26th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Sam Buchanan,
You are contradicting your previous posts. But in a good way.
Previously you didn’t disagree with a DDT ban, on the cruel and ruthless grounds that those who subsequently contracted malaria could go and buy medicine - something which you yourself pointed out they are actually too poor to do: A unique solution to the problem. Indeed, one could almost call it a final solution,
Now you are firmly in the camp of saying they should be able to live their lives as they choose, with the application of DDT where appropriate. Bravo.
As for the reference to the open letter and its authors, I’ll put your fevered tone down to a relapse of the malaria you contracted on your holiday.
Generally it is not good policy to wilfully remain ignorant of experts’ knowledge in any field. Certainly a proportion will be wrong (witness the way the wheels are coming off the global warming scam), or they may be right as far as their narrow field goes but need to have their recommendations put into a larger context. But to proudly declare here a policy of closing your mind to informed opinion is really bizarre. Dicussing issues with someone like that would be the equivalent of hiring teenagers while they still know everything.
July 27th, 2006 at 10:57 am
Mouldy, old bean, are you sure you’re not a Marxist?
You have exactly the same style of argument I run into from them on other sites - strawman arguments, convoluted twisting of other people’s comments, blaming people for things if they reject your preferred solution, fundamentalism and claiming people think things on the grounds that they didn’t say they didn’t.
Karl Popper’s critique of Marx is well worth reading.