sue bradford matthew hooton greens vs the left nine to noon

Interesting look at where it is going. Bradford is to NZ what World Vision, Oxfam et al are to the planet. Entirely admirable, and where my parents generation were at – if they had good hearts.

The problem now, is that if we don’t get the habitat stuff sorted, there’s no point in the social safety-net.

None whatever.

Which is what the ‘environmental intellectual middle-class’ she talks of, get. The folk she wants to save, are still buying McDonalds and flat screen TVs. They haven’t a clue.

There are too many on the planet (but probably not too many in NZ) by a factor of three. This is manifest in oil, corn, onion, wheat and tuna prices. With the staples, the poor are bidding with their lives. Yes, you outbid them at present. But you have to remember, you’re going into both types of debt (environmental debt is far more serious than numerical/fiscal) to do so. So you’re not really outbidding, more like outbluffing.

Bradford, sadly, is on the second problem before grappling with the first. No point increasing the ‘wealth’ of the poor, if it is from an unsustainable source. She’s unlocking the steerage passengers, the Greens are suggesting we need lifeboats.

The Greens are right, first.. Sue is right, but only if the first item is sorted, first.

What a mixed media weekend.

You couldn’t fault Laidlaw yesterday. Not just because the content went ‘my’ way. This isn’t about yin/yang he said/she said/left/right any more, it’s about truths versus delusions. Fact versus reality. The real versus the imagined.

It’s simply ‘time’. Actually, its past time. With resources-per-head having peaked in 1980, Oil having peaked in 2005 (the ‘official’ tabulator the IEA , having denied such a thing, now says 2006 – they’ll come around) and global longevity having peaked in 2007.

The last one is the killer. 🙂

Kim Hill was good too, but then we get Dene Mackenzie in the ODT, Tim Hunter in the Sunday Star Times, and just about everybody else.

Mackenzie quotes Bollards recent speech to Canty Employers Chamber of Commerce under the heading “RWC significant driver”. He missed the pertinent section:

“But as oil prices rise, this places pressure on inflation not just in New Zealand, but globally, risking a bursting of the commodity boom just like the 2007-08 event.  Indeed if oil prices escalate beyond US$100 for long, growth in much of the world will suffer again,” he said.

Purposely?  Keep up the hype and the spin?  Or does Dene really swallow the nonsense.

Tin Hunter reckons “National Carrier a tempting prospect”.  When oil went to 147 a barrel (of shallow light sweet crude, not to be confused with a barrel of ethanol or converted shale/coal or deepwater) no airline was viable. Soon, well within 10 years and probably within 5, that situation has to be a permanent arrangement. Hunter too, then, has the same problem.

Maybe it’s just that these folk rub shoulders with, and need to stay ‘in’ with, the set who desperately hope/believe that growth will go on forever. Maybe they have ‘investments’ of their own – or maybe they’re just parents, and don’t want to know.

None of which excuses their failure to ascertain what the truth might be – regardless of its palatability.

Add up the ‘opinion’ contributions in the SST, and they’re numerically stacked – Macdonald does a fair job, but misses the bigger picture – that energy is the all of economic activity, and that nothing whatever happens without it. Thus, if ‘the boys’  were on to it, they’d be targeting energy – it’s simply a social essential, right up there with water.

Both ‘sides’ have missed that. So the Laidlaw morning stood out like a sore thumb. Beacon in the darkness kind of thing.

Watch the McCully’s of this world move to throttle Radio New Zealand. As Wikileaks will be throttled, the Egyptian media has been silenced, and all the rest. Surely, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but don’t count on the majority of the NZ media. They’re missing in action. P[art of the caffe latte style which is all about self-indulgence and instant gratification, but a long way from understanding the essential nature of energy.

Well done, Chris Laidlaw – your muttered reply to an emailer showed your bottle (” or mother nature will do it for you”).

It’s going to be an interesting year.

Gazza – fair comment. Hunters words were ‘oil price spikes’. That’s a lot different from the saw-tooth descent on the downside of the Hubbert curve/gaussian. I don’t for a minute think he meant that. Cheers.