by frog
As I predicted Jeanette’s Picnic for the Planet speech was a challenging on for the government, starting out with a scathing attack on its denial that the world is running out of oil.
Government is in denial because anything else would require them to plan for a different kind of society, and they don’t think they can sell this to the public. Once again though, the public is ahead of them and already wondering how our society will survive.
There’s good coverage of the Picnic on TV1, TV3 and the Herald. Most of the stories focus on climate change where Jeantte bombarded listeners with a string of government acronyms and bureaucratese that have done nothing but talk about sustainability.
The Ministry for the Environment and DOC and the PCE in the 80s. The QMS. The RMA in the 90s. Since then the Sustainable Development Programme of Action, Govt3, the NZES, the Sustainable Water Programme of Action, the ETS, yet still our emissions are growing fastest in the OECD, our water is getting dirtier, our land eroding more, our waste mountain growing, our fisheries depleting. Why is that?
And the reason that neither Labour nor National can solve the problem is because they both are both unwilling to admit that our economy, based on growth at all costs, is the problem not the solution.
Government’s commitment to sustainability goes only as far as it contributes to increasing GDP. As soon as it comes to a choice between a bigger economy or a better, more sustainable one, bigger wins. The ETS is primarily a trading scheme, not an action plan to save our climate…
The tragic thing is that GDP does not measure human happiness or wellbeing. It mainly measures the rate at which resources are turned into trash. Every tonne of metal mined, timber logged, fish caught, raises GDP. Every tonne of trash dumped raises GDP. Every million dollars we spend trying to mitigate these effects, from landfill management to land restoration, remediating toxic sites, raises GDP.
Green solutions (solutions that when presented individually one by one, everyone agrees are common sense) are about conserving and preserving, not unlimited growth. The Greens are the only party that recognises that our measures of economic success are so flawed that they are giving us damaging, dangerous and wrong answers to crucial questions about the health of our people and our planet.
But if we use less to do more; grow our own food, recycle more resources, take a shopping bag instead of a throw away plastic one, fish more carefully to waste less and leave more in the sea, use smaller motors where they are appropriate for the job, farm with our intelligence instead of toxic chemicals, we often don’t raise GDP – we just increase human satisfaction, the quality of our food and our environment, reduce our energy bills, and add to human happiness.
Published in Campaign | Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management by frog on Tue, January 22nd, 2008
Tags: climate change, economics, economy, GDP, Jeanette Fitzsimons, peak oil, Picnic for the Planet
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
It’s worth noting that the Maori party has advocated the use of the GPI many a time, so I don’t think that the Greens are the ONLY “…party that recognises that our measures of economic success are so flawed that they are giving us damaging, dangerous and wrong answers to crucial questions about the health of our people and our planet.”
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yeap, fair cop.
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Hmm how bout Green for Party vote in the Maori seats then heh heh heh
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Yes, well…
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“As I predicted Jeanette’s Picnic for the Planet speech was a challenging on for the government, starting out with a scathing attack on its denial that the world is running out of oil”
Who says the world is running out of oil? I suppose it is, in the sense that there is a fixed amount on the planet and we are using it up slowly. Similarly we’re running out of iron ore, and uranium, and limestone for cement etc etc. But are we approaching a point in time when there is a shortage of oil? I don’t believe we are yet. I recently read a credible article that believes peak oil will occur because of the reducing demand, not because of lack of supplies. The reducing demand will come about because of environmental policies enacted by governments around the world.
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Skeptic:
I read the same article you refer to. Its always hard to know how much oil is left, not the least because countries lie so much about their reserves. Sometimes it pays to overestimate, sometimes to underestimate.
In any case, if oil runs out in ten years or ten decades, the time scales involved are rather short. When we are talking about the environment, we should think in much longer time frames. Our grandchildren and their grandchildren will live to inherit the mess. It is my personal view that we should aim for a 100% sustainable society, so that no future generation suffers because of our current actions. Maybe this is a bit idealistic, after all, probably no human society in the last few millenia has been totally sustainable (where are the Mammoths, Moa etc?), however it is a goal worth aiming for.
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Skeptic- even if we’re not, the fact is that we are rapidly increasing our level of consumption, and unless we slow that force down, the end of oil will hit us like a freight train. I’m a little disappointed that Jeanette focused on actually running out of oil rather than the need to prepare for it in advance regardless of whether it happens now or in two generations. Of course, I understand time constraints do this sort of thing.
But back to peak oil- basically, we cannot lose if we prepare now. We have to spend the money to get around this problem sometime. If we go ahead and oil peaks soon, we took a gamble and won. If oil peaks later, then we’ll have plenty of time to reiterate our infrastructure and products and strategies for a largely oil-free society.
I hope you’re right about a more positive cause for peak oil. That would have all us Green supporters clapping. But are we ready to take that for granted yet? We don’t have any good alternative yet, just a few good prototypes without any widespread adoption, and hybrids that delay the problem, which while a good start, will not help us when oil truly begins to get prohibitively expensive, as it will without a permanent solution.
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Yes funny how our countries performance is mostly reduced to money…
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Just back on GDP and all that – from the International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/22/business/dprotect.php?page=2 :
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