by frog
I’ve only just found out about this but currently there is a live webcast debate on the Rainbow Warrior today in Wellington today (2 April 2008) at 7:00 PM, NZ politicians will debate which party’s climate policy is most on target to tackle climate change.
Sean Plunket from Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report is chairing the debate and Greenpeace is hosting it. Taking part will be David Parker (Minister of Climate Change Issues, New Zealand Labour Party), Nick Smith (Environment Spokesperson, New Zealand National Party), Jeanette Fitzsimons (Co-leader of the Green Party) and Hone Harawira (Environment Spokesperson, Maori Party).
It’s over now, but coverage and a recording of the debate is now available at Scoop.
Published in Campaign | Environment & Resource Management | Parliament by frog on Wed, April 2nd, 2008
Tags: climate change, David Parker, greenpeace, hone Harawira, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Nick Smith, rainbow warrior, webcast debate
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Thanks.
Sound is kinda cr@p, eh. Anyone else?
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Heh. Nick Smith more on board than Hone is….
Now fancy that…..
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Yeah the sound wasn’t too flash, but I really enjoyed the debate. It’s great to see old style political debates accessible in new mediums like that, not just because they show points of policy difference but because they also highlight significant areas of consensus (there’s that word again, sorry).
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Agreed, Frog.
There was an interesting dynamic between the panel, I thought. Maori Party perhaps on the outer.
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Hone is far more consistent than Nick Smith and National. John Key was a climate skeptic and Gerry Brownlee thinks coal is ‘sexy’ (don’t ask how).
Hone Harawira was against Marsden B, Labour was for more coal fired power stations starting up.
Jeanette has a decent climate policy, National and Labour are pro coal, pro oil exploration (to export it overseas like everything else of value) and pro agri-farming which is also fossil fuel intensive. National would move to nuclear if it would and will take up coal expansion and mimic australia like australia does no doubt.
National and Labour are both fossil fools!!!
http://www.fossilfoolsdayofaction.org/category/australia/
http://www.fossilfoolsdayofaction.org/category/front-page/
http://www.climatecamp.org.nz
———-
coal cooks the climate
http://www.savehappyvalley.org.nz
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ment to say mimic australia like labour does -
also see here for some great satire on CCS carbonated water:
http://ev-eon.com/
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Yeah, thanks for the propoganda, Trees.
I was referring to the debate. Hone’s comments, at the end in particular, were enlightening, given the Greens recent proclamations of who they’d partner with.
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I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, but could anyone tell me if population growth was ever mentioned in this debate?
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Hey make aure you tell Greenpeace to link to frogblog from their blog – as they don’t at present.
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bluepeter – you call that propaghanda – i was pointing out past policy stances.
if i said national will be bad and make nz nuclear and blah de blah that would be proaghanda. if i said labour will make promises, talk up its climate stances then underpreform and backtrack if elected that would be propaghanda again.
I will say I don’t think labour and national have credible climate stances – david parker and nick smith know their stuff, but looking at action under both – they are inconsistant and not the norm when it comes to policy from their parties. nick smith and brownlee differ as does Damian O connor and Parker, or Mallard and Parker or Duynhoven and Parker.
Basically labour and national are pro free trade and pro economics at the expense of solid environment and climate policy. the maori party remains to be seen as to their credibility.
greens have gone it alone for too long, and not got enough concessions. we cannot improve the performance if wee mimic australia and expand coal, while only talking about improved technology and research.
we cannot lower emissions if extending agri farming and agri fuels (biofuels) based on fossil fuel consumption rising and deforestation continuing to make way for dairy expansion. agri fuels compete with forest and food, so they cannot fully replace a high consumption industrial expansionist society.
we are a small country with big emissions, trying to out compete the big boys.
Hone Harawira hit it on the hear, the big boys need to lower emissions and pay their way.
~
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Did you see the debate?
In summary, (I’m paraphrasing, as I don’t have a transcript) HH said that there were greater issues facing his constituency, like poverty. He is, of course, right.
What is curious is that the Greens have said they see the Maori Party as a desirable partner post election. If you placed Labour/National/Maori on a continuum, which party would have the strongest emphasis on climate change issues? Based on that debate, I’m not sure the Maori Party are closest to The Greens on this issue.
>>pro free trade and pro economics at the expense of solid environment and climate policy
Wealthy countries have better environments. If you want the environment to suffer, keep ‘em poor.
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because they loot the resources of poor countries. look at japan, it gets its wood from outside its boundaries.
who gets nigeria’s oil wealth? a small nigerian polical elite and the foreign multi national’s that remove it, the same ones that are getting ireland’s gas, iraq’a oil and our oil presumably from the great south basin.
the same structures that took good from south america and used it in europe.
wealth and environmental levels are only some factors. britain is wealthy and has a degraded environment. it used t dump nuclear waste off irelands coast.
nz is wealthy but has dirty rivers, and bad air on parts of the west coast, auckland, nelson, chch and elsewhere.
auckland air is worse than london air sometimes. so the wealth is not cleaning up our dirty dairy or coal pollution, or car pollution. look at the rubbish all around auckland, and look at the industrial area’s in NZ. or the water in picton near the interislander.
if you want poor people to have a better environment, help them plant greenbelts, be self suffiecient, or nearer to it. don’t make them dependent on cash cows, aid and trade debt and extracting all their resources for export.
that is called the cycle of dependency. resource extraction doesn’t benefit iraq and nigeria, it benefits haliburton, exxon mobil and shell.
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uneducated societies have bad environmental practices. a countries wealth doesn’t necasarily mean it spends its wealth well or wisely.
they may spend it on destroying other countries environments and futher degrading their own.
read ‘collapse’ by jared diamond and the ‘last hours of ancient sunlight’ and also watch ‘the llth hour’
~
direct action on endless fossil fuel extraction
carbon trading is just a distraction
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I have read “Collapse”. Suggest you read Julian Simon.
” if income rises 10 percent, the demand for environmental quality rises more than 10 percent. At lower levels of income, people trade environmental quality for economic growth”.
>>be self sufficient
Like Zimbabwe, perhaps?
Totalitarian socialism is not the answer…
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BP,
So if there is no income, no trade and no economic growth, does this mean the environment will suffer for it?
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I’m not sure maori are in an informed position at this stage bluepeter. I would not say climate change is a priority yet for a lot of people, as things heat up and the seasons become less stable that fill fast change.
I would say Hone has focused on other pressing areas and when the info is put before him, he will take a strong stance, as he did in the northern territories in australia.
i imagine the sinking of pacific nations will be one aspect that strongly influences maori party policy in the coming years.
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>>that fill fast change.
I predict the opposite. It will go the way of Y2K, Global Cooling, the Ozone Layer, Asian bird flu, and Turrurism. As more data pours in, the AGW line is looking increasingly shabby, and people and growing tired of it.
Lets check back in five years time, and see who is right.
>>he will take a strong stance
I’m sure he’ll do what it takes to get elected. Maori, as a whole, just ‘aint that big on climate change.
>>DougT
We have a right to life. What do you suggest?
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BP,
You may have taken my question the wrong way.
What I was going to get at is, where does Tikopia fit into Julian Simon’s theory?
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I don’t think thats the case at all. Terrorism is a less of a threat than climate change according to the white house and many security experts.
The maori party is working on peak oil issues and no doubt will get up to speed with climate change.
America has a shoddy climate stance and performance as does Australia, that throws out your Wealth = good environment performance theory.
Why would america be destroying appalacian mountians and alaska is wealth ment they were already environmentally enlightened.
because you ignore greed and conquest. imperial expansion and the this is mine, i can do it, you can’t approach of the capitalist western countries.
we can burn coal and drive SUVs, pollute as much as we want – but china can’t.
carbon trading is simply the rich west, paying to pollute the majority world. it will not reduce emissions or improve the degraded environment. less polluting and changes in lifestyle and society will.
zimbabwe is capitalist with a nationalist autocrat btw peter, the people do not own the means of production – the ruling party and class does.
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i don’t know why yous people don’t see it.
you walk in there to NZ GOVT NAT 2008
and say this is the 7% deal we want
you have till election day to sign.
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>>the ruling party and class does
Like I said. Socialism. Always ends in dictatorships….
>>Tikopia
I take your point. However, we’re comparing large, complex societies with small “privative” (I don’t mean privative in a negative way) societies.
If we were stopped at subsidence farming, the environment may well be better. Life expectancy, health, and various other standards of well-being might have been curtailed somewhat, and we may not have made it through various winters.
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The only reason Tikopia is “primative” as you say, is because the people survive on what they have on the island, with no need to rely on the “civilzed” world.
I would assume that if you asked a “primitive” child where food comes from, they might tell you about the forest of garden where the food grows. If you ask any “civilised” child the same question, most of them would probably say that food comes from the fridge or the supermarket.
What I am trying to say here is that we are brought up with the understanding that food will always be there for us, and as long as you have money to buy food you can eat. The concept that demand for food can outstrip supply is hard to understand for anyone that does not have to grow or hunt the food for themselves.
“Modern” societies rely on someone elso to get the food for them, so that the economy can grow, and people can buy things like TV’s and nice houses.
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Doug,
I’ve been careful to point out I didn’t mean primitive in a pejorative sense.
In 2002, Tikopias dam was ruptured by a cyclone. This lead to contamination of the lagoon with seawater, which threatened the islanders food supplies. They were helped by foreign yacht crews. With out such help, that may have been the end of their civilization.
I tired of people being so down on Western culture. I’m proud of it, and our ability to solve problems, and to feed, house and educate. Feeding ourselves isn’t a problem – it’s not even a difficult problem. Shooting ourselves in the foot might be.
Why aren’t most greenies living on self-sufficient communes? Deep down, I suspect, they know subsistence living won’t produce the benefits they currently enjoy – mostly delivered by technology.
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And now it’s probably time for me to go back to the very first comment I made on this website (it was in the “Is Earth day really the answer to the question” blog).
I tried to point out that finding an answer was only possible if you knew what all the factors were. Something that has really only just dawned on me, is that you also really need to know what the question is too (doh).
I am going to have to assume here that some of the replies to that would maybe go something like this “Don’t be so stupid, the question is:
How do we make electricity sustainable?”
How do we sustain our fish stocks?”
How do we reduce pollution?”
How do we stop deforestation & desertification?”
How do we maintain economic growth without increasing the poverty gap?”
or the that doesn’t seem to get asked very much;
How do we maintain population growth without lots of people starving to death?”
If one of those is what you think the question is then I believe you are right and wrong.
What I believe is that all of these questions are just part of the one and only question that not many people realised they were actually asking, which I believe (untill proven otherwise) is:
“How do we make the human species sustainable?”
Every other arguement and debate that is going on as far as I can see are just parts of the greater equation to which the answer is as finite as all the matter that makes up the planet that we live on.
The equation in it’s simplest form as far as I can see it goes a bit like this:
+ All the things on the planet that we need to survive
+ All other things on the planet that we didn’t realise we needed to survive
+ (Stuff that can be turned into TV’s and video games
– TV’s and video games)
- (The Human population x (overated intelligence – actual intelligence)
x arrogance x ignorance))
= Sustainability of the Human Species
The answer is finite, so if one of the parts increases, then one, some or all of the other parts will decrease.
(The equation has a margin of error of +/- 1 season of Star Trek)
I’m not saying I’m right about this, but it might be worth thinking about.
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On reflection, I think I should tweek the equation and the answer.
+ All the things on the planet that we need to survive
+ All other things on the planet that we didn’t realise we needed to survive
+ (Stuff that can be turned into TV’s and video games
- TVs and video games)
+ (The Human population x (overated intelligence – actual intelligence)
x arrogance x ignorance))
= Life on Earth + TVs & video games
BP,
It’s just lucky that the boaties turned up when the only cyclone in thousands of years that could destroy the dam happened then.
It obviously never happened before because the Island was still inhabited before any Europeans discovered it.
Without the outside help people would have most likely died, but I’d say that sort of thing had been overcome by them in the past, which is one reason they maintained a sustainable population.
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Don’t get me wrong here BP,
I’ll be the first person to stick his hand up and admit that I am very ignorant. I don’t know what I don’t know. But I DO know that what I do know is less that what I don’t know.
This is why ignorance is probably the most complicated part of the whole equation, becase we just don’t know what we don’t know, but as we decrease the ignorance factor we inadvertantly increase the arrogance factor (my belief in this little equation is proof of my own arrogance).
But if you don’t think there is any merrit to the equation, just give me an example of what you think doesn’t fit in, and I’ll see if I can elaborate.
Remember though, this is a very simplified version of what is a hugely complicated equation, so don’t laugh too hard if my ignorance shines through.
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things not always what they seem fwwog, with them NZ GOVT 2008,
yous don’t necessarily suppose that existing shadow portfolio will be the Minister. Nick done a good job and yet some peoples saying we centre right got to do better yet, wish we had aq good MP down south here,
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DougT
Maths was never my strong point, but if you deduct all the scientists who have issues with the AGW theory and response to it, from the total pool of scientists, how many left would form a consensus?
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Don’t worry BP, Economics was never my strong point. That’s why I don’t understand how economic growth means a healthy environment.
But back to the scientist thing….
What I’m saying here is that scientists don’t know everything. It’s a pretty crazy concept, but it’s true. The fact that there seems to be contradicting opinions within the scentific community should be proof enough.
Just because some new evidence disputes some old evidence does not mean there will not be newer evidence to swing opinion back again.
After all scientists, just like everyone else don’t know what they don’t know. The gaps are usually filled in with the best guess at the time.
Does this make any sense?
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Al Gore probably explained it better with his Mark Twain quote:
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
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bp, if you deduct all the scientists who have issues with quantum theory, from the total pool of scientists, how many would be left to form a consensus?
The answer is probably even fewer scientists than in the case of AGW. Yet most of the scientists who “have issues” with quantum theory actually accept quantum theory in general but are quibbling about the details.
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BJ,
Would you agree that that global warming is happening then?
If you do, then who cares if it’s man made or not. The outcome will still be the same anyway. And if it’s proven that it isn’t AWG then we are probably deeper in the s**t because if we didn’t cause it then we sure as hell won’t be able to stop it.
In the mean time food security is probably a bigger problem anyway, because that’s more dependant on oil not running out. Global warming just makes that problem worse.
Global warming, climate change, peak oil, food insecurity, water shortage, overpopulation, rising standards of living in developing countries and our inability to understand whats going on.
They are all interconnected, and they are all most likely going to boil over at around the same time.
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I just watched the debate and to answer my own question, there was no mention of overpopulation. But it was almost on the tipes of their tounges when DP made the comment that went something like “What do you want us to do? Shoot the cows?”
Well if too many cows cause too many emissions then would it make sense that too many people make too many emissions too. After all, there are to many cows because there are too many people. that want to buy the milk products around the world.
Does this make sense anyone?
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