by frog
Jeanette followed on from a number of convoluted speeches full of numbers, figures and backslapping about tax cuts.
We are living in a moment in history, in a generation where the people who have the power have a clear choice. Either they face inconvenient truths that are so obvious around us, or they leave it to their grandchildren to face those truths, when it may be too late. But the one thing that gets this Parliament excited, is tax cuts.
We are bumping up against the limits of growth. The atmosphere will only absorb so much carbon. There is a finite number of fish in the sea. The planet has only so much freshwater and only so much oil. Unless we recognise all this we are only going to create, budget to budget, problems for our grandchildren and for our world. Those environmental limits are already feeding inflation in a way that just playing with the OCR is not able to control. We have to recognise that the environment is the economy, and that resource limits are driving our spiral of high inflation, high interest costs, high exchange rates, which again raise the cost of imported resources. Oil water and climate limits are driving food prices – up 28% in a year for a basket of staples the Herald tells us – which in turn are driving poverty. Only addressing the problem at its cause will enable us to get monetary policy under control. But Parliament can only see tax cuts…
The whole speech is here.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management | Parliament by frog on Thu, May 22nd, 2008
Tags: Budget, cliamte change, Jeanette Fitzsimons, peak oil, tax cuts
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Great speech from Jeanette I love the line
“The enviroment is the economy”
I’m stealing that Jeanette and I’ll be using it on all my friends here in NY.
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Great speech now ditch the left wing agenda, Greens, and fight the more urgent issue of our environment and sustainability. Jeanette seems to understand, why don’t the rest of you?
Never before have so many Kiwis been so in tune with your green agenda, but not the red agenda.
Get neutral and help guide labour or national.
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Is save the environment let the poor starve, nuetral enough?
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Is save the economy let the poor starve, nuetral enough too?
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Save the evironment so we can have an economy with which to feed the poor.
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I switched off. Even Winston made more sense.
We can do nothing about global climate change. We can do something about cleaning up our act, growing our economy, and energy independence.
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BP,
Jeanette is right, the economy is dependant on the environment, and there are limits to growth. The news headlines have demonstrated the fact, i.e. oil prices and agflation. That being said this is NOT the time to be imposing punitive schemes like the ETS in place that will achieve nothing save putting more taxes on already struggling taxpayers.
People are already showing the signs of cutting back on activities that emit GHGs, because of the price rises on fuel and food.
I haven’t been in Christchurch long, but on my bus route it appears that patronage is rather strong, particularly in comparison to what I was used to in Rotorua.
To the Greens out there precisely how are we expected to fund public services, healthcare, social security etc if we don’t grow our economy?
We can’t import drugs, medical technology, transportation, equipment for our communications or electricity infrastructure if we can’t export products of the same value.
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The economy is dependent on feeding grass to animals and exporting them.
The environment of New Zealand will be here long after we’ve gone.
The economy is not the environment. That’s pure nonsense.
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Of course. An agrarian economy has nothing to do with the environment. Everyone knows that. We can all now go stick our heads in a hole with BP. Sheesh.
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samiam, if you think Jeanette agrees with you, you can’t have read her speech.
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An environment will be here when we’re long gone. But not an environment that can support all the things we take for granted today.
BP needs to learn a thing or two about ecosystem services.
Google it.
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Indeed. And will we have to compromise those ecosystem services in order for the grass-fed economy to grow? I certainly hope not.
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My point is that the environment is NZ is not about to collapse, disappear, be rendered useless, captured by aliens, dry up, sink, explode, or turn into Karl Marx.
We have some dirty waterways. We have some water issues.
That isn’t even in the same ballpark as the damage that would be done to our economy by damaging our export trade through mindless, ideologically driven environmental policy.
I ask again – how do you intend to pay our way?
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“If mankind were to die out today, our impact and footprint on the planet would be totally erased inabout 25,000 years which, in the lifecycle of a planet, is the mere blinking of an eye”
“the i/we/Gaia evolution”
Isacc Asimov
Brilliant Scientist as well as science finction author
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But BP we haven’t been paying our way for decades. Borrow our way more like.
I don’t know about you but I’d rather have a clean river than a plasma screen.
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<blockquote. Madam Speaker, I said earlier that this budget is not based in reality. It is backwardising, expecting the future to be like the past. It is ignoring the urgency of responding to climate change, peak oil and resource depletion. It is a long, long way behind and the tragedy is that National is even further behind.
I would like to devote the last minute of my time to silence, to recognise the dead hopes and perishing people that will be – and in some countries already are – the victims of governments around the world who refuse to get serious about climate change, the end of cheap oil, abundant food and the need to plan a different kind of future.
Oof!
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>>I’d rather have a clean river than a plasma screen
I’d like both. Doable, yah…..
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“If mankind were to die out today”
That reminds me – did anyone see the documentary “Life After People” on the History channel the other night?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People
Human disappear (unexplained), then it shows what happens to all our pets, buildings etc.
In short, the plants win.
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Here’s some of the vid: http://www.history.com/minisites/life_after_people/
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It’s probably based on the book…However I would imagine in NZ’s case that the possums would win.
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Lol!! The possums are already winning…
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I’m talking about herds of possums the size of small cars here, no laughing matter
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It would be a foolish individual who bets against the cockroach….
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# StephenR Says:
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:59 am
> I’m talking about herds of possums the size of small cars here, no laughing matter
I don’t know what’s coming of the world if we can’t even laugh at possums. They laugh at us, after all.
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@SleepyTreehugger “We can’t import drugs, medical technology, transportation, equipment for our communications or electricity infrastructure if we can’t export products of the same value.”
Absolutely correct; only the USA can do that.
This fact is often lost on those who seek to import raw American ideology to NZ, or those who are fans of the raw socialist way, or indeed environmentalists who see a utopia funded by magic. All colours of the political spectrum can be deceived.
Only America has magic money. And one has to ask how much longer that can be the case…
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# SleepyTreehugger Says:
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:07 pm
> We can’t import drugs, medical technology, transportation, equipment for our communications or electricity infrastructure if we can’t export products of the same value.
Currently we are. It’s called a trade deficit.
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kahikatea
The question is kahikatea, How long will they be willing to fun our trade deficit?
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kahikatea
The question is kahikatea, How long will they be willing to fun our trade deficit?
Not to mention what effect will it have in the future?
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