You have to feel sorry for Gerry Brownlee, and John Key, for that matter

Waiting in the wings for so long, finally get your hands on power and………there’s a slight lack of power. I’ve never heard an energy Minister say what Gerry said on Morning Report: “We are facing a world energy crisis”.  Tell us something we don’t know, Gerry. You’ve found out something I’ve known since 1975. Congratulations. Now get with the programme.

Just be aware that your world energy crisis, is also a world resource-per-person crisis, and an end-of-growth crisis.

I’d be having a wee Cabinet discussion at this point. Obviously, no amount of expansion of Business-as-usual will fill the bill. You’ve shot that bolt. You’d better get learned about conservation of energy, and quickly.

You’ll find us magnanimous, Gerry. Ours was never a personal fight, as was yours. Ours was about preserving the planet, for the next generation. We can’t help it if you look stupid in that light, but we won’t rub it in. If you need to know what to do, just ask. Folk like me have been thinking about it, and debating it, for 30 years. While you were being an arrogant popmous idiot – oops, wasn’t going to be personal……just slipped out.

Grasping at straws – like lignite – is just blind, dumb panic. You have to believe in sequestration (yeah right) which will never have an EROEI of better than one. You know what that is. Gerry?  And if you got it out and burned it, what do you get?  Those few years attempting to buy Business as Usual, even while the rest of the world turns to custard, stops being a market for you, turns to war, and reduces it’s population by 2/3.

I don’t think you have a clue, old son.

Key is a different fish. Made his money by creaming-off and doing nothing socially useful, but a man with some grasp of social sentiment. He too, must be punch-drunk at this point. All his background, all his advice, will have been from the gospel according to economists. About as real as perpetual motion, and I chose the a(i)llusion carefully. Growth forever? What a provable farce. His problem is that the announcement will have to be made in his tenure – what a bugger. Still, it had to happen on someones…………  Hopefully he’ll try and do the right thing, but I suspect the learning-curve will be too steep, and the time too short. It may prove to be the worst election we ever had, but I suspect we had to go through this, to get where we had to go.