Cars, Pigs, Food, Biodiesel, Stadium

CARS

Obama has gone for more fuel-efficient cars, and less carbon output – per car! Note, no limit on the number of cars. So no cap.

We are looking at cheaper imports, because nobody is buying. As a country, we owe more per head than anyone but Iceland, and the lid is sinking. More unrepayable debt, then?

The reality is that there will be serious resource – oil – wars, before Obama’s edict runs it’s course. The day of the car is nearly over. Which means the idea of garaged suburbs has the be revisited, as in are they relevant? and how can they be adapted? Before there is no oil left to adapt them. Even as we have to adapt agriculture, under the same sinking lid. Good luck Jeeeeem.

PIGS AND PORK

Much of our processed pork is imported. Cruelty aside, the big question is the quality of same. What, if any, guarantees are there? Hormone additives? GE? Toxins? Residues? Oink.

FOOD QUALITY

Speaking of which – my OAK and Watties baked beans come from China. How are they grown? Where? Who checks on our behalf? Who audits? The answers appear to be: don’t know, nobody, and nobody. Time a journo had a look at this one…..burp

BIODIESEL

I applaud those who started down this road, the Earthrace fellow, and the producers. They had to try, but it is proving not to be the answer. Not in terms of volume, nor in terms of energy return on energy invested, nor in terms of land use.

A  potential industry advocate complained of being at the whim of policymakers. Whose whim would he rather be at?

STADIUM

A rescue for building firms? A stay of execution, more like. Ratepayer money is financing this thing, and it will be a permanent loss. As builders are ratepayers, the net effect is only a re-adjustment of wealth within the system. Which building firm just happened to own one of the properties, again?

AUSSIE PROJECTIONS

4 % growth ahead ?????? They don’t call it the Dreamtime for nothing…..

Home   more snow on the hills, more writing, more soup, more bored dog. Had a keen off-grid couple visit yesterday, I think they got some ideas. Probably the best thing is that they get reassured you can live, very comfortably, on sod-all energy. Which we will all have to do, within ten years.

When negative is Positive

When you are desperate. Very desperate. From the Usa to the New Zealand service sector, thw word is the same. A slowing of the slowing, is touted as an upswing, a flattening, a bottoming out, a turn. Bollocks, at all sites, this is still a fall.

Will it bottom and climb? You bet. Back to the point it meets that lowering ceiling, the oil-depletion one. Call it a roller-coaster.  They all end at the bottom, as I recall.

EDUCATION – Tolley’s Folly

The Radio NZ Panellists were right on the money this arvo, this is all about rating schools, competition, bulk funding (on rating) and ultimately privatisation. Too obvious.

Let’s go Baby Boomin

Money for midwives, money for maternity leave, where have we been?   25 years ago, Jennie and I discussed having children. The discussion was always within the limits of ‘no more than replacement’, ie we only had a right to – at best – replace ourselves. Friends and contemporaries went further and had none, as their contribution to humanity. It was very obvious, a long time ago. The current Government sees more as better, babies included. That puts them in the same league as Bill Rowling, and Josef Goebbels.    Sad.

Queenstown dreamin

The nonsense continues. What a disconnect. Try googling: Campbell 2004 scenario. Even if that graph is out, even by a factor of two, there won’t be fossil fuelled aeroplanes going into Queenstown at all, let alone four times the traffic.

The ODT has had chances to ascertain the validity, or ont, of that graph, and it’s like. Come on, Ms Roxborough…