There are so many bullshit narratives being spun by the right as Climate Deniers attempt to distract us with more bullshit…
Farming lobby group revs up ‘drive 4 change’ campaign
The founders of farmer lobby group Groundswell drove tractors out of Invercargill on Friday, headed on a 10-day journey to Auckland to raise awareness that “things are bad” and “you need to vote for change”.
…the Biggest Lie in NZ Politics is that NZ Dairy is the cleanest and greenest in the world when the reality is that it’s a cherry picked nonsense that leaves out pollution so NZ Dairy can get to the numbers to pretend to be clean and green…
Russel Norman’s take down of this Dairy propaganda on The AM Show recently was just ruthless…
“NZ is the biggest seller of a simple commodity called dried milk powder, the cheapest of the cheap, and if you look at what is happening in food production around the world they are looking for more environmentally sound food products.
They are looking for higher value products.
We’ve gone down the pathway of the lowest quality commodity you can produce in the world.
NZ is mid range in terms of its environmental cost per kilogram of milk solids, there is nothing special about it, and we do feed a small number of people compared to the billions on the planet and the economics is very clear that you can be just as profitable if you pull back on the stock rate, pull back on the amount of fertiliser and actually produce a higher product.
Organics is in fact doing incredibly well globally, so why don’t we become a producer of dairy rather than the producer of the cheapest commodity on the planet which results in us trashing our water ways and being big climate producers, that’s a better pathway isn’t it?
…he’s so right!
We always ignore that the 40million number is based on us selling milk powder as a base line ingredient filler for the manufactured food industry. The PR spin pretends it’s wholesome NZ cheese and milk and meat those 40million are eating when the truth is the vast majority of what we export is basic bitch milk powder used as a filler ingredient!
Ultimately it is the climate that will determine all and we are seeing spikes in temperatures and climate events that are beyond our capacity to repair in time for the next weather event.
We are seeing this in real time right now in NZ!
The Climate Crisis was some event we feared at the end of the century, what we are seeing is an unleashing of heat events well beyond what we feared…
As climate envoys from the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters prepare to meet next month, temperatures broke June records in the Chinese capital Beijing, and extreme heatwaves have hit the United States.
Parts of North America were some 10C above the seasonal average this month, and smoke from forest fires blanketed Canada and the U.S. East Coast in hazardous haze, with carbon emissions estimated at a record 160 million metric tons.
In India, one of the most climate vulnerable regions, deaths were reported to have spiked as a result of sustained high temperatures, and extreme heat has been recorded in Spain, Iran and Vietnam, raising fears that last year’s deadly summercould become routine.
…there are mega fires burning in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, British Columbia, SIBERIA, Spain and Chile.
All in the past few months.
Siberia holds one and a half trillion tons of carbon and methane in the permafrost, what happens when it burps all that enormous amount of gas into the atmosphere?
We know from the ice record this has happened in the past, 635million year ago and it caused catastrophically abrupt climate change.
We are seeing enormous craters of methane erupting already.
Look what is happening in Turkmenistan…
The US is in negotiations with Turkmenistan over an agreement to plug the central Asian nation’s colossal methane leaks.
Turkmenistan was responsible for 184 “super-emitter” events in which the powerful greenhouse gas was released in 2022, the highest number in the world. One caused climate pollution equivalent to the rate of emissions from 67 million cars.
…singular events that produce the pollution of 67million cars?
What happens when these events get triggered?
There is just no plan to adapt to this new reality when it should be the driving force to begin immediate and radical adaptation for what is coming.
We have no comprehension of what is coming and we are simply not prepared for the age of consequences.
Watching National, ACT and Corporate Farmers use their economic and political muscle to avoid responsibility for what comes next can only be resolved by civil unrest and a campaign of civil disobedience against those interests.
This is the age of consequences.
Just consider how the Corporate Farming Lobby have managed to avoid any tax on their pollution since mid 2004!
They have pushed and pushed and pushed it off for 20 years!
National have already promised ANOTHER 5 year extension which will mean the agricultural industry have managed to stop any tax on their pollution for quarter of a century!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That photo of a National MP driving tractor up the steps of Parliament was a declaration of political war and they have lived up to that declaration.
John Key sold 49% of our Hydro Assets to create a $400million irrigation slush fund that was used to intensify dairy farming while polluting our water and generating climate changing gasses!
The entire economy is forced to bend over backwards for a sunset industry that will crash the millisecond the fast food industry can create a synthetic milk powder!
Claiming that NZs emissions mean nothing in comparison to China and India isn’t a justification to do nothing, it’s an acknowledgement that radical adaptation is the only move left because those Goliath economies have already doomed us to a dangerous climate change future!
We are out of plays and the focus surely must be self sufficiency over trying to eternally trade on a burning planet.
The Left must force a bargain with Farmers for strategically essential reasons.
They are going to feed us when the famine comes.
A recent report on food security found NZ had incredibly low food security because it was so open market driven and refused to subsidise farmers.
Which is where we on the Left must drive the debate.
We should absolutely consider subsidising food grown by NZ farmers and horticulturalists and our seafood and meat and dairy that generates a 15% price reduction for all NZ produce consumed here.
Rebuilding a direct link between the harvest grown here, the people who grow it and a grateful local market who enjoy the product WITH a 15% price reduction.
Climate change will kill global free market supply chains, we are locked into hyper-regionalism. We need to build new economic structures, subsidising NZ kai for the domestic market would lock in certainty for producers while strengthening food security for the population.
We have to find new ways of working together to ensure we can survive what’s coming.
We are a nation of fatherless children raised by angry solo mothers, a low imagination horizon juvenile settler culture built upon stealing indigenous land and polluting it without restraint. A rugged individualism dependent on exploiting a low wage economy and rigging under-regulated capitalism for the rich.
The old greeds, the old hates and the old exploitations will no longer hold the system together if that system is melting in real time.
Super-rich warned of ‘pitchforks and torches’ unless they tackle inequality
Global elite told at London’s Savoy hotel of real risk of ‘civil disruption’ if more is not done to help struggling millions
This is the age of consequences.
They won’t be pleasant.
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New Zealand has to have big financial innovation so that that entrepreneurs can borrow against ETS credits. Why dumb National would try and keep the agriculture sector out of an ETS is so much ass.
Yeah well, we can’t escape the hand of capitalism, that’s the big lie. They push narratives upon us thanks to owning the mainstream media and controlling the actions of government. Foolish of the Farmers in thinking that the other side of the broken political system will serve their interests. The Farmers will be led a merrier dance (listened too more) by the Right side of the political illusion, but ultimately, the creme of the capitalist tree runs this show (narrative), thus both political sides will adhere to their interests sooner rather than latter. The Farmers will soon realize this, if many of em don’t already, bearing in mind that Farming is under attack all over the world, bearing in mind also, that the Capitalist class has a ready-made farming alternative waiting in the wings. Such is the beauty (or power) of the very top of the Capitalist class tree, aye, cherry picking our minds (spoon feeding us) the information that is needed that best serves their interests while demonizing all those who dare get in their way.
“Get in behind” (the interest of the powerful) they bark…
In pursuit of profits and growth, Climate Change is capitalist exploitation of natural resources that demands we break through all natural boundaries of the planet to maximise profits.
Not to down play how terribly dangerous climate change is to all life on earth. ‘War’ is again the biggest immediate issue confronting humanity.
Afterall, if we can’t restrain ourselves from killing each other. How can we possibly hope to restrain ourselves from killing the planet?
Climate change, pollution, war, the root cause is the same;
Regulation of growth and profits can not be tolerated by market economies.
No limits to growth are recognised by market economies. Market economies demand “growth” at all costs.
Not recognising any limits to growth, market economies break through natural boundaries to pollute.
In pursuit of growth, market economies demand we break through national boundaries to wage war.
Writ small, the Groundswell movement are an example of the problem.
Modern industrial farming as practiced in New Zealand is at war with nature and the climate.
John Steinbeck called farms, “Factories without rooves”. The owners of these ‘factories without rooves’, like all capitalists big and small, are in a competitive race with their rivals, to dominate the market in agricultural product to maximise profits. This leads to many unpleasant realities.
Exploitation of our large vulnerable migrant workforce, the over use of agri-chemicals, winter grazing, cruel live sheep and cattle shipments, colonial dispossession and occupation and destruction of the phosphate islands, are all examples of maximising profit at the expense of people and planet. Groundswell want to continue our all out war on nature.
Writ large, capitalist growth economics and competition is the cause of war.
If we can’t stop war we can’t stop climate change.
Why not organise a slow-moving roadblock at strategic parts of their journey to hinder their progress. The South Island has many places where there is only 1 practical route so if a sufficient number of slow-moving vehicles, signs & people congregated at those points it could provide good video evidence that Groundswill (I think that spelling is a better description of them although spell check did not agree with me) does not have the only opinion.
Climate change deniers and climate change affirmers are a powerful combination. When Jacinda Ardern professes that “climate change is our nuclear free moment” and then when in a position to do something about it actually brings in policies that aggravate the supposed causes of climate change (tourism, immigration and war being major contributors) then people start to suspect that she doesn’t really believe a word that she is saying about the climate. Then when she abandons the position which gave her the potential to do something constructive in order to go gallivanting around the world on a massive global ego trip, people don’t just suspect, they think they know that she does not believe in fossil fuel induced climate change. The public conclude that the climate change affirmers are lying, and the deniers, whose actions are wholly consistent with their narrative, must be the ones telling the truth. Most people cannot stretch to the other possibility which is that the colonial regime’s politicians are immeasurably stupid and incomprehensibly solipsistic, just like Ms Ardern.
Wow Geoff that coolaid really has had an affect on you. Talk about immeasurably stupid and incomprehensibly solipsistic.
A lot of the milk powder produced in New Zealand is for infant formula. While it is good to have an alternative for breast feeding, the model is to push this infant formula on as many mothers as possible. The health benefits of breast feeding are clear. In essence we’re polluting our environment to make babies overseas less healthy.
Farmers are so heavily invested in farming because they have been encouraged by banks, governments, corporate’s and offshore investors. Whether they are right or wrong they are fighting for economic survival.
Of course their pissed off.
farmers have had it too easy for too long now they need to feel their rightwing fantasies like the rest of us