The Green Party has launched key planks in its economic policy, saying it would remove subsidies to carbon-emitting industries under the Emissions Trading Scheme and replace them with subsidies for green technology development.
Green Party co-leader Russel Norman unveiled the “100,000 green jobs for New Zealanders” plan at Parliament, with the single largest boost to employment forecast to come from an estimated 47,000 to 65,000 jobs available from encouraging state-owned electricity companies to become exporters of renewable energy technology.
Rather than partially privatising the electricity SOEs, the Greens would allow them to issue Green Bonds to support the development of a green technology export sector.
“To complement this initiative, we’ll set a 100% renewable electricity generation target for 2030,” said Norman.
The National Party has pledged to sell up to 49% of electricity generators and retailers Genesis Energy, Mighty River Power and Meridian Energy should it retain power after November's election.
The government’s current target is 90% renewable electricity by 2025, but assumes an on-going role for gas-fired power plants to fill in troughs in sometimes volatile output from wind and hydro stations. The Greens policy would add NZ$1 billion annually to the government’s research and development budget and would prioritise clean technology projects. New tax incentives and a NZ$100 million start-up fund would be targeted to small and medium-sized clean-tech companies.
Government procurement policies would also favour buying green, New Zealand-made goods and services. The plan also proposes building an additional 2,000 state-owned housing units “before the rebuild of Christchurch creates industry capacity constraints.”
It would also raise the minimum wage to NZ$15 an hour, and spend NZ$20 million a year for three years subsidising small and medium-sized businesses meet the additional cost of the increase. Home insulation schemes would also be extended so that the current target of 200,000 homes insulated with government assistance would rise to 400,000, with attendant health, welfare and energy efficiency gains.
Another policy would stimulate planting approximately 665,000 hectares of new forest in the next decade, and would establish a 3,000-strong conservation corps to plant alongside degraded streams and rivers. Encouragement of a bio-energy industry using waste material could create as many as 27,000 jobs.
The Greens would allow mineral and fossil fuel extraction to continue, but would raise the royalties payable to the government, allowing establishment of a “large mineral wealth fund” that could act as “an important stabilisation tool in uncertain times.” ETS subsidies would be phased out, and a 10 cents per 1,000 litres on water for irrigation would raise between NZ$370 million and NZ$570 million annually.
Among other policies in the package are:
• Giving the Reserve Bank more scope to control inflation;
• A comprehensive capital gains tax;
• Higher foreign ownership test and an “outright ban on the sale of land to non-resident owners”;
• Introduce progressive electricity pricing to alleviate energy poverty;
• Phase out inhumane farming practices;
• End bottom-trawling by the fishing industry;
• Allow Kiwibank to retain its earnings and, if necessary, inject capital to make it competitive with the major Australian-owned banks.
You can compare all political party policies in our Election 2011 policy section, here » (This section is updated as soon as new policy releases are announced.)
90 Comments
Dream on Greens - lets save jobs by kicking Kyoto into touch !
The Carbon Sense Coalition has called on the Australian and New Zealand governments to boycott the UN Global Warming talkfest planned for Durban later this year.
The Chairman of "Carbon Sense", Mr Viv Forbes, said that there was nothing useful left to discuss, so tax payers should be spared the costs.
"There are only two legitimate topics to debate in Durban – the science of global warming or the politics of the Kyoto agreement.
"Government climate mercenaries tell us at every opportunity "The science of global warming is settled". They refuse to debate climate realists. Thus, according to them, there is no science to debate at Durban.
"The politics of Kyoto alarmism is equally settled. No one outside the Green Empire in UK, Europe and the Anzacs will renew Kyoto.
"Developing economies in Africa, India and China are never going to agree to carbon taxes and rationing that damage the aspirations of their millions, many of whom still lack electricity. Others such as PNG, Indonesia and Brazil will participate only to the extent needed to rip off the gullible Green Empire by selling ephemeral "carbon credits" to them.
"Thus the Kyoto deal is dead and there is nothing there to discuss in Durban.
"Almost every western government is guilty of massive overspending. Australia and New Zealand should reduce government waste by sending NO ONE to the pointless party in Durban."
.......one might not think it all a great idea, but at least the Greens are thinking further ahead than the next 3 year cycle..
of late I am seriously thinking of taking my vote from the Nats and giving it to the Greens. My fear is that Labor are so weak, the Nats will romp in without the need for a coalition partner. If this happends it will be to bye bye environment, lets rape, pillage, develop, chop, bulldoze, dig up anything that moves ..and if it doesnt move we'll sell it anyway.
John Key needs to start fronting up with the agenda ..smiling and waving doesn't cut it anymore.
Brilliant rastus...counter Key with them what wants no development, greater unemployment, higher taxes, bigger govt all wrapped up in power shortages while the peasants return to sleeping with the animals to stay warm. Might you not have a greater influence if you shift your A into gear and go join the National Party where you can have your say...! or is that too much like what they call being active!
Wol nice of you to mix things up with a snarky and sarcastic comment that offers nothing in the way of solutions.
You always talk about the entrenched shiny-bum pollies enriching themselves while changing nothing - well your buddies in National are EXACTLY that. The greens - for all their hippy baggage - are the only party who has presented some new policies that try to really change things.
I've voted for every party going at one time or another, and this election National are more of the same corporatist neo-lib bullshit, Labour are a joke, so who is left? Mana and ACT are both crazy, Peter Dunne is basically a political prostitute. The Greens do want development, they want decentralisation (i'm thinking of private micro-generation of power), they want to end agricultural subsidies of water and pollution, and they do want to create innovative export sector jobs. Whats wrong with that? I thought your were for all those things? I bet if John Key proposed those things you'd be on it like stink on a mule.
The Nats are just more of the same - smile and wave while the ship goes down and bail out some terrible national-voting businessmen on the way. If you vote for them then you are a hypocrite of the highest order Wol. Why don't you admit it - you're actually most comfortable with the status quo aren't you?
Norman is promising his way into a safe seat and cumfy well paid spot VL...whatever promises it takes.
I have little time for the National party especially when I see Gerry handing heaps of pork over to Shipley...and fattening the Queen street scf carpetbaggers....but they are reducing the size of the state sector and post Nov they will chop at a faster pace.
If pinky green policy were so great...so wonderfully world beating and certain to bring utopia to the here and now.....don't you think your average farmer whatever would grab the policies with open arms!
Try watching the tv rural shows to see that positive ideas are being taken up...that the planting of natives and fencing off of native bush and the use of micro power generation, is taking place.
The real problem with the pinky greens is how they are changing colour at a rapid pace...they are no longer a party dedicated to 'green' policies....they are now a party of socialists believing that what they think should be how the rest must think.
Hey Wol from what I know of Norman he is much less of a cynical trougher than i think you think he is.
Farmers have been too slow to take up things such as the riparian zone plantings you suggest there.....i would say they should have been planted BEFORE our rivers got filled with notrogen and cowpoo - not decades after the fact.
I agree there are some very progressive farmers and some really switched on cockies - our own CasualObserver among them - but they are outnumbered by conservative serial polluters who are happily subsidised in these habits while people such as yourself excuse them. I know farmers who have done the right thing and its not actually that hard or that expensive - you just need the will.
And finally, yes the greens have changed in the last few years. They have adopted the European model of moving to the centre and offering some real policy alternatives which are sensible, thus forcing the powers-that-be to co-opt some of these policies to stay in power.
As i'ce said elsewhere, I'll probably vote Green this time for the first time exactly because they have made these changes. I've not voted for them in the past because they've been too vague and pink for my sensibilities (I'm a 'Naki boy after all Wol) but this time I really do think they are shaping up as the lesser of many evils.
All of our political options are socialists Wol. Even your boys John and Bill are nationalising this and bailing out that. So in a broad look at their policies, I'm leaning Green because at least they recognise that the status quo is crap and are prepared to do something about it.
That's most magnamin mag manaminus...good of you VL...and good luck to you...I think bugger all of national to be honest...the Gerry pork handout to Shipley was the signal nout has changed regards the pissing in pockets....but in all fairness, they promised their way into a hole full of shite and have tried to keep their promises in the face of several truckloads of effluent being dumped in the hole on top of us all.....the other lot with Goofy helping out dug the hole.
There are no quick easy simple magical answers to escaping from the hole without a good dose of the brown stuff over all of us...well maybe not over the fithy rich but then shite don't stick to them until they run into the FMA aussie bloke.
My experience of trying to discuss issues such as climate change, water quality, the madness of spending billions on roads (that will shortly have no cars on them) with entrenched Nat and Act people is about as rewarding and successful as banging one's head on a brick wall....in fact a brick wall would have more give......
.I don't need to jon the Nats to have influence...thats what my votes for...............but I'm happy for you re-iterate my point out you next clan meeting..
"I don't need to jon the Nats to have influence"....really!
But if you really mean what you say...you will try to influence the policy creation process. Now you can sail off with Norman and crew in the hope of reaching Utopia...or you can hang around and make your point to the fatheads who make up the govt policies.
The truth is Norman and his congregation are socialists at heart...while promising to reduce debts they will borrow 2.5billion to blow on dreams.
Why do I not read of Norman et al out there planting the hundreds of thousands of acres of native bush....oh I see the rent a mob demos yes....but planting trees 7 days a week to prove they are not just bags of hot air...not on your bleeding life.
NZ voters wont tollerate too much of that (pillaging) from the marches I recall.
Funny thing but as a green party member Im seriously considering voting for national....if they were not doing the SOE sales I probably would.
Why? because Green's are losing the plot....they are lurching t the left in an un-conrolled and un-sustainable manner IMHO....
Labour is toast....
regards
Unlike you, Wally, Norman is on the right track. The fact that he has to sell the right track wrapped up in acceptable packaging, says a lot about who manipulates the information fed to the public - of which you are a classic example.
And yes, most of them are out planting trees. They don't holler about it, but it's being done. It's only a buy-time measure, of course.
wolly....thanks to the planting of trees by the unemployed in the depression we have timber industry...well sort of anyway. Thanks to the tree huggers who hung out down the west coast, they have a tourist industry.
There is no way all of the above Green options will happen...but if they get enough votes at least they can counter the flat earth movement of Act and some of the Nats, then great.
The former Labour and the Nats have got us into this mess......so I'm not sure why you think the Green stuff is so loopy...
Bollocks rastus...the crap Californian pine planted in the depression years were left unpruned and grew into rubbish fit for firewood. The Rhubard industry kicked orf in the late 50s. The wood is crap. I'm using DF. Bloody sight better wood.
Yes the Tree huggers did a great job bringing some sort of an end to the slaughter of the native forests. But tell me why the pinky Normans are not out there right now planting native trees where they can....no sign of them....even the bleeding coal companies do more in the way of reafforestation.
It's "loopy' because it's all 'utopia now' stuff, with no regard for unintended consequences or who will pay..or what will work....
The greens started with a love of environment and evolved into a monster determined to have its own way over the lives of everyone. They know best rastus..they will organise you...of that you can be certain.
Here's an open challenge for the Greens...pool your capital..buy a farm and show us all your policies in action and where income is derived from that land....do this and we will stop laughing at you. It's all too easy to generate hatred toward rural people trying to survive on bugger all, by screaching about pollution while driving shite belching cars in town and heating your urban box with gas and electricity...try doing it with bloody firewood and no mains water supply 50 miles from a shop.
wolly the coal miners and others are planting trees due to the pressure of the Greens and associates......if you think they are doing this for any other reason you are are in dream land..
you reckon those trees were rubbish.....don't tell Iwi......that..they came in pretty handy to settle a few zillion dollars in claims....
as for pooling $ to buy land....it is goin on...take a look at the millions of $ left each year to Forest and Bird to fence off and renew marginal land
all about balance..... and the threat of the Green vote restores some balance...
Jeez oh dear rastus...get a grip mate..the Rhubarb planted in the last depression are now mostly long gone and replaced by plantation Rhubarb...with some isolated plots of old man pine left to be blown over.
"take a look at the millions of $ left each year to Forest and Bird"...by whom rastus?...by whom
Point to Norman's dairy...beef....sheep....venison...whatever farm...where is it?
Meanwhile rural people get on with making a living off the land and at the same time busting a gut to look after the land they have....too much rubbish is said by too many who have never had rural shit on their shoes.
PDK- Here in Southland Invercargill doesn't have a resource consent, Winton is in serious breach of it's sewerage discharge and another community which I will not name discharges it's sewerage directly in to a waterway.
Breaches of resource consents by some urban councils are fact PDK.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1109/S00370/regional-councils-should-t…
A level playing field is all I ask for in prosecutions of resource consent breaches PDK - I am heartened to see the Green Party calling for the same.
CO is probably referring to the Palmerston North City Council violating their resource consent 12 times over 7 years but they are not going to be fined because it is not in the rate-payers' best interest. This is total bull excrement because it sends the message that breaking a resource consent is OK, the Manawatu River is unsafe to swim in, and a big fine would encourage the council to get their act together.
VL: Agree. Southland Regional council have received a lesson recently in how finite farmers goodwill is, in being made a scapegoat for what are in effect council decisions made with little or no regard to the environment. When the sh.t hit the fan ES thought they would just hit the farming community (not just dairy) and have been surprised by the concerted cooperation of the farming industry in holding ES responsibile for their decisions.
That's half the problem though isn't Steven. For all the good policies any party might have they'll have a couple more that just don't fix the problems.
I commend the Greens for the environmental bent but in the end they still follow a tax and increase welfare mantra much like Labour.
I'm not sure how many readers here read the blog sovereignman.com, but today's post was about jobs, and so I thought it might be worth posting here. Enjoy.
-- quote --
NOTE FROM THE FIELD Date: September 20, 2011Reporting From: Johannesburg, South Africa
Earlier this month, some economic luminaries in the United States Congress introduced a new bill, H.R. 2835. The bill intends to "establish a joint select committee of Congress to report findings and propose legislation to restore the Nation's workforce to full employment..."
Great idea, fellas. After failing to ignore your way out of recession, spend your way out of recession, lie your way out of recession, and print your way out of recession, you now intend to legislate your way out of recession.
This bill exemplifies how completely clueless the leadership is, and highlights the common demeanor of the political class. By definition, people are in government because they believe that government is the solution, not the problem.
Legislating your way to full employment is as fantastical as prancing unicorns and the Tooth Fairy. It's impossible. The only employment created by legislation are government jobs to staff all those new agencies and bureaus. And naturally, those jobs must come with some task, some responsibility.
With each new job is created an additional burden upon the taxpayer, and an additional bureaucratic hurdle for the productive class. From opening a bank account to going to see the doctor, things that used to be simple are now fraught with paperwork and regulation, just so some government worker somewhere has something to do.
Here in South Africa is an absolutely mind-numbing example of this mentality. A few years ago, the city of Cape Town installed digital parking meters-- the high-tech kind where you could pay the parking toll on your mobile phone through an SMS... or the good ole' fashioned way with coins should you so choose.
Then some politician decided they needed to create more jobs. So the city hired a bunch of workers to go through town ripping out the digital parking meters. In their place, the local government hired a small army of curbside parking attendants-- human beings to replace the machines.
If you think this was a triumph of humanity over profit, then I have a modest proposal... let's turn the clock back across all industries. We can build roads with hand-laid stone, dig canals with shovels, and hire legions of street sweepers armed with bristled brooms to keep our cities clean. Just think of all the jobs we'll create!
Fact is, these sorts of moves are wastefully inefficient, and I shudder to think of what insane ideas would come out of the 'jobs super-committee' proposed in this new House bill.
Governments don't create value, they destroy value. And the only way for more jobs to be created and money to start flowing again is for the market to perform its function matching willing buyers and sellers, producers and consumers.
The uncomfortable truth about the global economy is that the old way of doing things is gone forever. Monetary stability, social cohesion, political credibility, traditional career paths, investment assumptions... these are all changing. The game is being reset and the new rules are being rewritten.
The future is about creating value: what problem can you solve that's so important to someone else that he/she would be willing to pay you for it, or trade for something that you value?
Everybody's good at something. Hell, everybody's usually good at a lot of things... from designing websites to cutting grass. "You have an overgrown lawn? I have a lawnmower. Let's make a deal." The greater the problem, and/or the more people it affects, the greater the reward.
None of this requires any government involvement; it simply requires a motivated individual to get out there in the world, figure out what needs to be done, and kick ass to make things happen. Until tomorrow,
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com
Rather than partially privatising the electricity SOEs, the Greens would allow them to issue Green Bonds to support the development of a green technology export sector.
Meaning - let's raise more debt as a means to work our way out of this crisis of debt?
A jobs for debt plan.
Green tech is in trouble - generally it is not effective and is mostly supported by subsidies. Bankrupt states will withdraw these subsidies as they have in Spain and you can say goodbye to massively expensive green jobs. The Greens are out of touch, well meaning, but naive. There is talk of "disruptive technologies" in the pipeline. Let's hope these work. One I certainly have reservations about, but which I'm following is this:
Forget Green tech in terms of AGW....look closer in the time frame, your (lifetime) time frame.....
globally we use 17TW.
Where is the energy going to come from? and just as importantly who will seed fund it so its in place when oil output declines?
The answer will be it has to be Govns.....private industry wont because of the risks to a business....Govns will have to think in tems of risk to the Nation.
But you will probably get your way and they wont...
Say 5 years from now, consider NZ electricity is 79% renewables....what do you think the price of electricity has to climb to to reduce our power consumption from 100% to 79%?
What's the impact on everyone let alone the poor?
What's the impact on businesses?
FFS think.
Green's out of touch? no....Green's have more of an idea...
regards
The answer will be it has to be Govns
But steven, "Govns" means taxpayers and in the case of this policy (as per the ones operating in Europe), taxpayers subsidising various forms of the transition to renewables through raising more public debt to provide private incentives.
''Green tech is in trouble - generally it is not effective''
I must take that up with my solar PV system - which has abolished my electricity bills (and which will pay for itself in 11 years - then its free electricity pour moi). Bad solar system - OMG says your crap.
Perhaps you should also take it up with our electrical generators given that they now produce 75% of our electricity from the 'green' tech that you appear to hate (hydro, geothermal, wind)
Andyh - I should tell it to my $4,200 (total, lights, wiring, everything) system. The old Gentle Annie (actually it's a General Electric 5SME22NJ028A) is spinning at it's hundred-and-something revs, churning out 5 Amps for free, 24/7.
If it's so uneconomic, how come I have so much spare time?
Kate - there's a couple of problems there; one is that the biggest corporates safeguard their profits even to the last, and if that means sidelining emerging competition, it'll happen. They are short-term thinkers. They also fund - and we can see it here - obfuscation.
If society is going to run into a wall - and exponential growth based on fossil fuel was always going to, the only variable was when - then there needs to be anticipatory action taken, and that takes vision beyond next years divvy. In a democracy, it takes 51% who understand, or a leader with the gift of being able to demonstrate reason. Load that with the obfuscation, and it's odds-on we'll always be late. Sooner or later, the law of averages says we'll be too late.
Sure you don't need handouts - but you do need to legislate. Lots who are quite intelligent, don't 'get it' (Ryan on Nine-to-Noon today, interviewing Pearce, being one), so the tail-end haven't a chance.
I totally agree - legislators need to legislate.... like to ban the import of energy inefficient equipment and appliances. Like to require all dwellings to be properly sited on their sections. Like to amend the tax and welfare laws that use up so much human energy in unproductive endeavours. etc. etc.
With this Green Party announcement - I wonder if they aren't singing these guys tune;
Gotta get your campaign funding somewhere - and at the very least retain an optimistic approach. But, where is the preparedness planning in any of that?
Kate - pure advantage have the oxymoron too; they're into 'growth'. Too many look like they're coming down the track, but when you scratch the surface, they ain't really.
Which means we hit the wall.
As one who has talked, written, lectured and debated for years, I've turned to readying a blueprint. There will be a lot of wide-eyed punch-drunk, panicked folk looking for answers, and the best approach is to have then ready.
Written in very, very simple english, apparently.
Interestingly enough, we have constant crowds of visitors through the place, seeing what we've done, emails about it at least weekly, and young folk coming to learn. There's a growing awareness out there - as the Green polling shows. Graph the trend, and I'd be worried if I was an old-guard 'Pollie'.
I'd be preparing my excuses if I called myself a senior journalist, too.
Solar and wind are in trouble, but it's you who includes geothermal and hydro in your smear.
Good for you if you have PV, may well do that myself if I'm living in the countryside away from a the grid, but don't delude yourself. PV is a cost to the environment and by the time your system needs replacing in probably less than 11 years you may not be so smug. Tech is improving the the energy efficiency of all appliances/lighting and that is the most logical route including conservation through price rises.
Bought your spare parts yet? Using polluting lead acid batteries are you?
Executives with bankrupt solar company Solyndra will refuse to answer questions at a congressional hearing Friday looking into the company's $528 million government loan, their lawyers reported Tuesday.
The move, while not entirely unexpected, infuriated congressional Republicans, who have seized on Solyndra's collapse as a potent political issue.
Solyndra received the Obama administration's first green-tech stimulus loan, using the money to build a solar-panel factory in Fremont. Following the company's abrupt decision to close its factory and fire most of its workers on Aug. 31, Republicans have branded the administration's efforts to create green jobs an expensive failure.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/20/BU4R1L74SC.DTL#ixzz1YYQGBzfb
Batteries? Some research might help - never heard of grid-tie? No, I thought not. Strange that someone who spouts off about solar, doesnt know about grid-tie. Well maybe not that strange.
By the way solar panels come with a standard guarantee that after 25 years they will still be operating at at least 80% efficiency - so no I dont expect too many repairs (but I doubt you knew that either).
A company collapses because it sells a product at a loss because other manufacturers are undercutting it, and somehow that means the technology is crap? You might want to do research into something called capitalism while you are at it.
LOL, PV made in China, is that what you use? 25 year guarantee you gotta be kidding. BTW all I said was that green tech was in trouble. You are the one using the word "crap" You seem a trifle sensitive.
Solar farms need signifcant maintenance. Even the industry is upfront about these and other issues
http://www.solarpoweristhefuture.com/problems-with-solar-energy.shtml
Now if you think that NZ which is IMO near BK should borrow money to create an industry, well good for you. We all know how good governments are at picking "winners"
Glad you are a capitalist.
Ahhh bless. Grid-tie came as such a shock to you you chose to ignore it. Here is another factoid you seem oblivious to - not all panels are made in China. Shock, horror.
Government borrowing? Hey these systems make sense at an individual level, no government involvement needed. As the price/watt comes down no doubt more and more individuals will buy them - they make economic sense now, and when electricity prices double in the next 7 years or so they will make even more sense.
Which is why I have not the slightest doubt you will never buy one.
So we have the usual predictable comments.
Dear little Gonzo, and his obsession with carbon, which rather taints his attempts to address the thread.
OMG slash the netwriter, clearly renumerated by what - numbers of comments logged?
Matt - sideways to the point of irrelevance - or is the point that somehow private enterprise will win all?
Then we have the Greens, who I suspect, know exactly what is happening, but have to serve up a palatable offering. Meaning - they know we're sinking, but they're going to teach 2000 people how to don the 600 lifejackets, and won't mention the water temp.
It's the right way to go - energy efficiencies and renewable tech, at a tech level and on a scale we can maintain when TSHTF.
The 'export' bit, and the theoretical 'debt', are red herrings.
The greens are pushing green jobs where they can.....they have to wrap it in "cotton wool" to make palitable....
Either that or they are right for the wrong reasons.......I talk to Green ppl and they rarely answer sticky Qs directly....there is no forthright and honest dialouge happening anymore.....so I suspect they are pretty aware whats going on but would get beaten up as loon's if they came out and said what they should be saying.
Consider how many companies make wind and tide turbines and who has the money to pay them anything they want. Or that that Nation's Govn will Nationalise the wind/tode industries if it has to to guarantee its own populace power....
and no the sh*t hasnt hit yet.....I think enough Pollies are seeing the dawn but the populace hasnt yet....when they do, National hoarding will be come paramount, and desperation.....
Why do you think ppl want FTAs? becuase it gives them equal rights to walk into NZ and take output without being blocked by Govn...
Some ppl/National Leaders can see the end game I think....either that or they are lucky....
regards
Kate - as with every Party, there will be a spectrum within. The Green support will run from folk like me (not Party members but who realise the tug-of-war rope has to be pulled that way as hard and fast as possible) to the socilist types who've fallen off Labour, and all parts in between.
This policy is aimed at doing the best that can be done in real terms, while still appealing to a still-ignorant-thanks-to-a-silent-media (did you hear Sir Paul Callaghan on RNZ, Sunday?) public.
The S has already started, but of course, it hits the 'poorest' first. A 30cent increase in the price of fuel is a bit of an inconvenience to you and me - but it's death to millions at the bottom end. They are 'the margin'.
benwave- irony of ironies, Sir Paul should have been interviewed by those very reporters he pointed out are well off the pace.
You see, his own aims and claims can be shot down too.
As I've pointed out before, all money expects to buy goods and/or services. They - with no exceptions - need energy to be proffered. (via work being done).
He's advocating earning overseas money, 5-6 years after peak oil. Has he looked at what is happening to money right now? There are other physics Profs in the country telling us that growth is over, and that sustainability is the only valid target.
Boy, wouldI relish a debate with him!
I listened to the RNZ interview - this is the lecture referred to in that interview for those that haven't watched it yet;
Hm. I don't think the idea of producing higher value things rather than lower value things is incompatible with a sustainability. I think it would still benefit us in a steady state model if we were making more valuable things!
In regards to peak oil, I am not as worried about that as I once was. I have seen some of the science behind creating biofuels, and it's really quite encouraging. I think we'll be seeing a LOT of biofuel use and production before the next five years is up, when the price of oil climbs too high.
Oh my God !
Secret email exchange between John Kosy and Gerry Broker and also between Rodney Hurdle and John Smash,
You know similar to Europe the “Greens” could end up to be the winners in this election, gaining another 4-8 seats. We have to do everything to demonise them. Propaganda, towards election needs to be intensified against the “Greens”. Personal attacks against, in fact reasonable good policies from the co –leader, should be on the daily agenda. Talk to the media to rubbish most statement released by the “Greens”- ask them to pose the “Greens” stupid and us simple questions.
It is important, now in difficult times, not work together, but to fight to power against our enemies and squeeze them to apple even better reduce them to lemon juice, worm farmers, tree huggers, watermelon socialists or other green, red, hairy and drunken veggies.
Ralph - there is an excuse for initial ignorance. There is no excuse when the info has been presented, for continued ignorance. That goes particularly for Wally, but for you too.
Get it straight.
Beyond the peak energy flow rate, all things get more expensive.
Welcome to the real world - leave the blame-shifting behind, huh?
I was at a David Caygill lecture, which pointed out just this phenomenon. You wouldn't call him green, or left, but he explained the problem well. First, you cherry-pick the best rivers to dam, at the easiest sites. Sooner or later, you are left with those which have been rejected thus far, and they won't be the cheapest. He a smart man - but his ideology blinded him to getting the import of what he was saying!
Energy is now deep water drilling, fracking, water-cutting. It is lowering through the EROEI's - gas, coal, down through lignite and out the back door. The days of economies being driven by Beverly Hillbilly type gushers, is long gone.
I repeat, everything will get more expensive, from here on. Exponentially so.
Don't blame others, and don't say you weren't warned.
cheers
A wider trend is one thing.
Using it as an excuse for a of myriad of taxes to "force change" is quite another.
I also find it hard to buy into the self righteous "you have been warned" delivery the greens seem drawn to. But for the green movement stepping on people dones't evne need an apology because the end justifies the means and the end is saving the whole planet no less.
Ralph - that's pretty much how it is, and the later you leave it - thanks to exponential growth, and lack of accounting for Natural Capital at more than immediate opportunity cost (which manifests as pollution/degradation/depletion) - the worse it becomes.
Worrying about what your money might or might not buy, in the increments you are talking about and in light of the above, equates to worrying about where you put your wallet as the Titanic sinks under you.
Kind of irrelevant.
Sorry, but an unfettered population wanting unlimited rights to consume, will always come unstuck on anything but an infinite planet. Worse, that kind of growth is in trouble half-way through the extraction, not when it is exhausted.
http://www.oilcrisis.com/bartlett/hubbert.htm
I predicted this would happen between 2000 and 2010, back in 1975. I've been 'getting ready' physically for perhaps 10 years (in between gallivanting and living) and I reckon I'm late (so does Chris Martenson).
Good luck to you.
That's all fine so far as it goes.
Your money comment cuts both ways - if the money is not irrelevant then you won't mind leaving me mine then.
If you want to plan for what you perceieve to be a looming disaster and I decide I don't - do you have a right to use the law as a moral weapon against me?
To use law as a moral weapon against others is almost a text book definition of facism.
A free lesson for Mr Norman on the consequences of putting State planners egos over the spontaneous order of free markets:
- Republicans are investigating why the White House approved a half-billion-dollar loan guarantee for a solar panel manufacturer that it was citing as a model for creating "green jobs" but which subsequently went bankrupt.
- Mr Obama cited Solyndra as an example of how the economic stimulus bill would create jobs. When it filed for bankruptcy, saying it couldn't compete with foreign manufacturers of solar panels, 1,100 employees were laid off.
Heaven help us if these totalitarian wannabe rulers of men, and me, ever got any real power.
The Aussie version, a grand plan to insulate the nation, ended with four workers dead and a political scandal from shonky work practices.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/batt-man-peter-garrett-retreats-t…
Hey Tribeless I thought you were a bit more worldly than to be believing anything that the current Republican party says.
I get where youre coming from re letting govts decide what industries rise and fall.....but the current status of american politics is so utterly corrupt i don't believe a single word any of them say...except maybe ron paul but he's got too much aynrand in the membrane for my liking.
Anyhoo, I seem to remember a quote from a saudi oil dude who said "the stone age didn't stop because we ran out of stones." I feel the same way about crony capitalism and the oil economy - it's out of date and needs to be replaced. I bet the replacements won't be perfect from day 1 but i'm prepared to give it a red hot go for the sake of future generations.
I suspect we agree on a number of things around this, but for the sake of keeping things interesting you'll always be a blindly idealistic right wing dreamer with no compassion and and attachment to an ideology who's time has passed ;-) Have a good night hippy.
As you know I'm not right wing: I'm classical liberal, that is, libertarian.
And as for compassion, you need to read the parable of the piss head.
How'd the birthing thing go?
yeah the latest addition to my Tribe is now 3 months old, but her blood was a bit ill so had to go to a public hospital to get fixed up - the private health insurance she has didn't cover her. ;-)
and i'm not even going to touch the fact that your last headline was "As you know I'm not right"
too easy.
Well now - laissez faire capitalism was/is an ideal - much as Marx's version of communism was/is an ideal. But then neither of those two ideals have come to pass - yet. And maybe they never will.
I'm surprised how little regard there is for Marxian theory within the liberalist movement, given his vision of a communist society was for a stateless, classless society - so no command and control intention in that - quite the opposite. And indeed freedom from oppression is another ideal both libertarians and Marxists have in common.
We have to perhaps stop thinking of capitalism in terms of what it's become and communism in terms of what it's become - and then go back to these old masters taking the best from both.
Marxism has certainly had its chance: it showed it's chief mechanism was oppression. It has literally been responsible for the slaughter of over 60 million Chinese and 80 million Russians, and that's only the start.
Marxism is a huge prison with a slaughterhouse at the heart of it.
And the current collapse of the West is down to Keynesian Marxism.
Tribeless, I get the feeling you deliberately seek to put the world off reading Marx - his theory of historic materialism - by associating it with totalitarian power seeking regimes. When indeed it's more a forecaster of what capitalism would become, than a prescription about what a communist state should look like. In fact - the words communist and state used together would have been an oxymoron to Marx... as communism (an historical social order) would only be reached when society became stateless and classless.
It's like saying the world need not read Adam Smith because what the US has become is a shining example.
I'm away today Kate, but can a Marxist society exist without each individual's life being controlled by the State? Because if the State planners aren't calling the shots, it's not Marxism, is it.
Sorry, but you're spouting BS: better you simply read history of every country that has implemented Marxism, including the West under the Keynesians over last two generations. But particularly the horrors visited on humanity over 20th century. And people like you would let it happen all over again. We do never seem to learn.
Before posting anymore nonsense, you better read this: the nature of the beast that is socialism:
Qutoe:
Socialism (especially as understood in Orwell’s day) is central economic planning. Everyone must conform to the plan. Individual disagreements with the plan – as well as individual creativity and initiative – are repressed, for these invariably upset the plan.
And with freedom of choice and action necessarily all but obliterated, freedom of thought will practically not be tolerated.
Despite his brilliance, Orwell apparently exhibited an infantile naiveté by failing to see that any government truly committed to central planning is inevitably a government exceedingly impressed with its imagined transcendent powers and sacred assignment.
Is it surprising when such a government brutalizes any and all who stand in its way?
Can a Marxist society exist without each individual's life being controlled by the State? Because if the State planners aren't calling the shots, it's not Marxism, is it.
Quite the opposite - Marx defined communism as a stateless, classless society.
But the point is, I'm not trying to defend or promote communism, socialism, Marxism or any other -ism (i.e. the ideological/political implementation of an economic/social theory).
I'd be interested in your comments on Marx's analysis of capitalism from a theoretical perspective - bearing in mind his was an analysis of "pure capitalism" - the economic concept of a capitalist system without the interference of state/regulation. Here's a good essay;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/pdf/ess_marxsanalysis.pdf
from a book edited by this economics historian;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Heilbroner
For me, I'm astounded at how his "labour theory of value" and his account of historic materialism has played out since he wrote it. The machines replaced people as a means for the capitalist economy to extract that surplus value - and when that wasn't enough (as labour value remained the basis of ongoing profit as his theory suggests) -capitalist production went offshore to find labour at a lower value (a trend he didn't specifically predict - who could expect him to comprehend globalisation in his day).
But the question remains - is it theoretically correct that in a capitalist economy, profit can only be made by the extraction of surplus value from the labour component of production? And therefore, wages must continually be lowered in order to extract a surplus? And as wages are lowered and workers displaced, another revolution/bust is an inevitable consequence of the capitalist social order.
It seems to me that what we have now is the state slowly taking over the means of production (i.e. taxpayer bailouts - privatise the profits, socialise the losses) in an attempt to resolve this boom/bust quality of a capitalist economic system. And are we at that point in history that Marx referred to as a "dictatorship of the proletariat"? If so, he saw it as an interim stage in social/economic history - which would be succeeded by a stateless, classless society where the proletariat (workers) owned and controlled the means of production. At the present time, it (i.e. society as taxpayers) are only "owning" it - but not controlling it.
Here's a link to their website;
http://www.gp.org/committees/platform/2010/index.php
It's what a party not trying to hold onto existing seats can do.
I assume they get no MSM coverage.
"Dr Norman acknowledged the plan was ambitious, the jobs would not necessarily come quickly and there would inevitably be some failures." herald
"some failures"......don't spose he was shaving when that gem popped out of the fat between the ears!
"Line up...line up all who want to join the Greek peasants in a hole so deep the light can't reach the dopes at the bottom".....Doctor Norman will lead the way...borrow heaps to splurge in a gamble that will have some failures....you too can live like the Greeks..."
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