INSULATION, BUDGET, AND GREENS

You have to ask the question: “Do they know”?

Why would the Nats go with insulation. It goes down a path of less demand, less infrastructure demand, less economic growth. There had to be a total disconnect in the process of that discussion – on the face of it. For the Nats to go there, you have to wonder. Just using public money to keep the private construction sector going? Not enough, you’d think, not even enough for folk who think as little as that.

Maybe, just maybe, Brownlee and Co actually know about peak energy, and the down-slope beyond. If so, watch for the powerful to position themseves to pick up the energy sector, along with the water one.

For whatever  reason, politically, the effect will be the right one. Well done the Greens. Good luck in the snakepit!

Kawarau Falls? I’m waiting for Pegasus

Actually, there’s hardly anything to add to the heading!  Some of them are obviously hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and the jaw muscles will be getting tired. With ordinary credit dried up – and it’s hard to see how it gets a window long enough to start up again. Why? Because when things rev up from here, oil will not be available to lubricate the desired activity. It will get scarce again, peak and crash again – it’s called ‘demand-destruction’, better get familiar with it, it is the new norm. Given that it underpins debt and credit now –  (you are less likely to make money, and repay your debt, post peak oil) there will be less willingness to loan, and less to borrow for.Too obvious – where are the screeds of optimistic economists they keep interviewing? The ones who keep predicting an upturn? Busy hoping they get their ‘investments’ out of things  like Kawarau Falls. Good luck

ROD ORAM – I AIN’T THE ONLY ONE

Well I ain’t alone. My yesterdays comment about Standard and Poor’s was exactly what Rod was saying today on ninetonoon. It was – as I said – too obvious. Pity there are enough suckers out there for them to decide that it was a worthwhile approach.

AFTERNOONS

That was a bad one. Some fellow called Neville on the Panel – what a sad piece of humanity. I think this is the editor (is that an applicable tag?) of the NBR. Otherwise National Business Review. In the Rankin mould, but worse. Where, and more importantly, why does Mora find them?

The excuse may be that it is only entertainment – but it has too much message for that. If it is current affairs, it is bias-loaded. All three today (the ‘leftie’, the ‘rightie’ and Mora, were touting a temporary resource-extracting regime that has peaked. None of them have, had, or seemed willing, to address that. So we discussed getting bikes and pedestrians onto the Auckland harbour bridge, when the reality is that there won’t be cars there within ten years, given oil depletion, and competing demand. Same went for their discussion on protectionism, as obviously the lack of transport will render affairs much more local. And indeed their discussion on Local Government. Think about it, post cheap travel/ transport, local is what there will be. Very local.

So, is it denial, cognitive dissonance, optimism, propaganda, or catholicism? There may be more, my point is: it sure aint truth-searching journalism. A pity, because the core of an intelligent populace is his listening audience. It never ceases to amaze me how many Tascha McClellan’s and Brian Turners (meaning people I know) are listening too. Judging by much of the email traffic, the;re are some good thinking kiwis out there, and they constitute a majority of RNZ listeners. When you think about it, this is one of the last ones left, and it’s odds on the privateers have it in their sights – to close down and  shut up, or buy and shut up.

I guess we will know we are in trouble when blogs are censored.

STANDARD and POOR’S / SMELL A RAT

Standard and Poor’s make a comment about how they hope they don’t have to ‘downgrade’ us (wouldn’t that be unthinkable). And they just happen to make the comment days before the Budget?  And Key just happens to take it in his scripted stride? Pull the other one. This is a set-up. A nudge-nudge wink wink we-slap-your-back-you-play-our -game  set up. An excuse to slash and burn.

The irony?  Both lots are hanging on the same – collapsing – parachute.

the Business du jour…monday

LOBBYING – PREDICTABLE

Business New Zealand and Federated Farmers lobbying for less Government spending – note the source and the timing. These folk – particularly O’Reilly – are all about privatisation, and the ‘public sector’. The reason is never given – naturally – but it is this: there would be no need for the private sector to eye up the public sector, if unlimited growth was a possibility. It is exactly because growth is limited (by the constraints of a finite planet) that they have to scrap for the finite opportunities. Means that the growth theory was flawed.  Watch for the Key phrases: reign in spending, managing debt, grow our economy, hurting the economy. Yawn.

TOMORROWS SCHOOLS

the set-up was all about corporatisation, prior to privatisation. It got stymied in mid-track, and some have never taken their eyes off that ball. Teachers, however, have a different problem. Kids are more short-attention-span, more belligerent, parents less respectful, and the future is not going to be what was traditionally expected. Actually, ‘traditional’ was only a short-term post industrial revolution regime based on extracting resources. It had to morph under the reality of oncoming sustainability. Enviroschools are the start, but the flow-through will be too late – we will need Transition Town structures universally, within ten years. Meaning we need Tomorrows universities….

FIJI LEGAL

Maybe there’s a place for Michael Guest – he should meet their criteria, perhaps he could help them frame the terms of reference!!!!!

BIKES, HARBOUR BRIDGE and TUNNELS IN THE SKY

So a walking and cycleway is ‘on the books’, but not for 30 years. Well, anybody wanting to see what the harbour bridge will look like, I refer to that site mentioned in an earlier post below –  the oil drum one. The bridge will be empty in 2030, nothing surer. Come on, fourth estate – expose the nonsense.

FREE TRADE TALKS

Groser should have stayed behind the counter. Actually, he has. Protectionism is localisation, and localisation is where it will go from now on, in a power-down world. Eventually, local will be community local – thats where a dwindling supply of cheap transport takes you (or doesn’t). It has to be understood that the fractional reserve banking system (which needs growth to underpin it’s continuance) will not continue, post energy peak. That means a different fiscal system, less or no debt/credit (who will loan in a dwindling ecomomy?). That almost inevitably means not global. Food, water and energy will be the key wealth, get used to it.

Judith Bassett and the sad – real – history

So we sack those who don’t increase profits. What a stupid tart, but then, Michael is the chief re-righter of NZ history, you get what you deserve, I reckon.Which ones the flea?

He was on radio recently touting unending exponential growth, she obviously thinks (?) so too. Sadly, we have bumped into the limits to growth now, and sacking someone who can’t get more out of a fossil-fuelled activity, won’t change that. Hitler used similar tactics too – shoot the messenger – but it didn’t help him either, for the same reason.

It’s all over, Judith. The limits to growth is/are here. Eat it. And, at the end of the day, sheer frustrated numbers always storm the barricades, meaning your move to shift wealth to a select few, will backfire. History – that which is written from the basis of truth (not like Michael’s twisted spleen-vent) tells us of this. People in positions like yours either work on behalf of your community, and  with good heart, or they run an agenda which is all about the advancement of self-agrandisement.

Judith – take a look at the site I suggest below, “for weekend reading”. How the hell can you run an exponential expansion of activity, on that?  Are you a fool, or acting cynically on behalf of a selfish clique? There’s no third option!

Don’t worry, some of us will write the real histories……….

WEEKEND READING

If anyone wants to really know where the world is going, have a quiet weekend read of the following.

http://www.theoildrum.com.node/5395/#more

That’s as good an appraisal as it gets. It goes like this: finite planet, finite oil reserves. Oil is the energy most transportable in a vehicle. It makes, and moves everything. It is every supermarket container. It is in everything you see in an operating theatre. It makes your computer. It makes fertiliser, drives tractors. Makes roads. Toothbrushes. And transports everything.

Peak the supply of oil, you peak the supply of work that can be done. If work is economic activity (and it’s hard to argue it ain’t) then the peak of oil supply was peak activity, means no more growth. Therefore anyone who – like our PM – touts growth, is internally void in the cranial department.

That graph is happening now. After two years of throwing it at all NZ media, I can only shake my head in wonder. Denial?  No comprende? Cognititive dissonance?      astounding, really.

GREEN NEW DEAL will be too late

I went to the Kevin Hague GreenNew Deal talk in Waitati last night. It was probably aimed at a lesser level of savvy that Waitati – this is a Transition Town, has a community Energy Project, and understood the need to support the trial commuting train, (despite Michael Deaker’s ignorant comment about buses being cheaper ) and was, after all, the home of Mushroom Magazine.

So the discussion centred around whether you had time, anymore, to educate the unknowing mass, before the window of opportunity closes. Those of us who have watched it for years, and have a fairly realistic overview of progress, reckoned we are behind where we were in 1984, on nearly every front.

Our advic was to have a plan in place for when the crap hits the fan, and we all are sure that is well within ten years. He didn’t have to sell……we’re there.

Concerns were raised (not by me, but I agree) about their proposed borrowing, as most who get to where we are, realise that debt will be (is now, if you’re honest) unrepayable. Will it matter, is a good question. Will a chinese warlord have rights to the reserve bank at that stage?

Some of us had reservations about ‘jobs’, the ‘economy’, and building new state housing, too. The energy return on the energy invested, has to stack up. Or you are better just retrofitting existing stock – there is simply no time left to dicky around. Further, the insulation is good, no great, but it has to contain some heat, which  has to come from somewhere. Retro-fit for solar gain, is where somebody ought to be looking……

BROWNLEE, POWER PRICES, NONSENSE

There goes a problem, eh Gerry? We’d like to privatise more, but it didn’t work already, already. Split it up more? No, that won’t work either – though it is what he will probably do. He has to juggle a couple of concurrencies, concurrently. One is the constant chant – mantra even – of growth. This is the very thing that stymied the old NZED planners, the old exponential function. We are at the limits of that now, and he won’t be able to see it. Even if he did, his instinct would be for his cronies to get the goods.

The ‘need for new infrastructure’ is as misguided as it gets. Yes, old dams (approaching 100 years, or ‘life’) will need replaced, but new?  The question there,  is : ‘ How much will electricity be asked to take up the replacement of oil? and : ‘How much will the lessening of economic activity reduce demand.’ The final question is: How much efficiency can be obtained in current (sorry) usage.

The nonsense of user versus owner (the same) has been well pointed out, which is good. We will watch this space, just remember that if every house in NZ used the power ours does, the whole country could get by on half of Benmore, idling. You can’t tell ’em, of course, they know best already!