Tagged: Politics

Tim Flannery and the new eco-conservatism

Last Tuesday night, it was impossible to get a seat at Tim Flannery’s lecture at Otago University on climate change. It attracted an overflow crowd. I haven’t read his popular books yet but look forward to it, as I have just got the Weather Makers out of the library.

I managed to catch him talking to a much smaller crowd the following night at the Cafe Scientifique held in the old school surrounds of the University Staff Club. He was joined by a couple of other academics from Otago, and the Minister of Climate Change David Parker.

Tim Flannery gave a fairly direct talk about the imminent threat of climate change to the survival of humanity – all of it solid, sound stuff. Yet I was more than a little surprised at his response when I questioned David Parker about the need for New Zealand to put control of power and electricity generation under democratic public and community based control. (David Parker is a good solid right winger whose quote of the night was that “wealth is generated by capitalism” – the standard view for the ghoulish Labour Party in New Zealand today.)

Professor Flannery chipped in with the view that private ownership of power (and water!) was a good thing. His example was how “heavily unionized” publicly owned coal power was being used in Australia whereas private companies were coming up with eco-friendly solutions. This seemed to me to be at best disingenous (and at worst simply wrong.)

His comments stand in interesting contrast to the views of another high profile Australian academic Sharon Beder who spoke in Dunedin recently (much to my regret I missed her talk, but have read some of her work.)

She points out the social and environmental effects of privatized power in a number of books and papers, including in the Australian context.

So I found myself concentrating a little more on Tim Flannery’s speech. Over the rest of his talk I began to notice a few recurring points that made me think that while his scientific grasp of the problem and possible technical solutions were extremely sound, he lacked a political grasp of the driving forces behind environmental devastation.

He suggested the use of hybrid cars, which of course the vast majority of people will not be able to afford, even if top level academics and business people can. Then he suggested that legal cases could be brought against environmental polluters in the same way as cases were brought against tobacco and asbestos corporations.

This to me seemed nonsense. The fact is the workers who got asbestosis weren’t around to enjoy the pay out. When we are talking about climate change, there won’t be much opportunity to hire top gun lawyers when the planet is collapsing around our ears.

The fixation with legal or “market” fixes like carbon trading, which I see as a bogus solution, seems to be a major problem. There seems to be a repetition of the slogan that we can’t do “business as usual” but all the economic and political solutions proposed many revolve around just that – business as usual.

I have a strong sense that as climate change deniers begin to vanish, we will see their replacement with a new breed – system change deniers. The system change deniers will ensure the “sacrifices” will be made once again by the working class and those with little money or social power, as the solution is found in market forces (rationing based on ability to pay.)

This is the impression I also get with the Al Gore approach. The effort goes into meeting with the “movers and shakers” to convince them to buy hybrid cars, but the solution can only lie in constructing an economic and social democracy based on the values of solidarity, equality and concern for the environment and the common good.

However, the other academics at the talk (whose names escape me) had some good solutions. One favoured abandoning globalization and the other proposed subsidized or free public transport and the rejuvenation of rail.

That’s the type of solution that indicates we are serious about climate change – and about the wellbeing of human beings. I suppose the key lesson we need to take away is that while Professor Flannery and other scientists can provide an excellent analysis of what is wrong, and possible technical solutions, we can’t rely on them to provide the political and economic solutions to climate change.

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Jack Yan on the downsides and upsides of globalization

My friend Jack Yan just posted a thought provoking article about globalization and the relationship between economy, business and society on his blog.
Jack is speaking at an open to the public session later this year at the Alliance Party conference in Dunedin on these very topics – and based on his above article, it should be well worth catching.

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New film by Alister Barry

Went to the new documentary from Alister Barry at the Film Festival last night. Alister was there to give a talk and was selling copies of his movies including a new DVD trilogy “The New Right is Wrong” featuring Someone Else’s Country, In a land of plenty and the new one A Civilized Society.

All well worth seeing as they comprise some of the few serious documentaries on New Zealand politics, history and economics that have been made in recent years.

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Rod Donald

Sad to hear about the death of Rod Donald in the weekend.

Earlier in the year, during the election campaign, I spoke at a couple of meetings for the Alliance Party where he was speaking for the Greens. He tried to sign me up at one event, which I declined. Although I agree with many Green policies, I think to effect real change you need a broad-based socialist party that gets working class people involved. I don’t feel the Green Party is that vehicle; also I don’t like the hippy, new age element that seems to come to the fore in the activist base (having said that, I count some of those hippies as friends – on a purely individual level!)

However, that political difference aside, Rod was one of the most effective advocates of the Green philosophy, and seemed to have a strong grasp and interest in the economic issues that the Greens needed. Personally he seemed like a genuine bloke with a real energy about him. A real loss to the progressive side of NZ politics.

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Street Scene Dunedin

I attended an interesting protest action today on behalf of the Alliance Party with a couple of other local activists.

A local disability group called Gutted is asking for better treatment for those with disabilities and their caregivers. It was a small but very spirited demo and made the TV3 news.

Earlier on I had helped out briefly at the Radio One market day in the big hall on an Alliance stall trying to raise some money for the campaign. Good to be getting out and talking to the people. Some of the students were surprisingly up with the play. It’s hard to believe it was ten years ago when I was working at the Critic newspaper down there and fifteen years since I saw BailterSpace play a mindblowing set at Orientation 1990 in that same big hall. Beer in plastic glasses never tasted so good.

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Fear and loathing on the campaign trail

That was the name of the late Hunter S. Thompson’s book on the Nixon/McGovern fight for the US Presidency back in the early seventies. Of course the wrong candidate won then, as is so often the case.
But Thompson’s title has suddenly come to have a new meaning for me.
This blog may have a change of focus for the next few months.
I’ve put my name forward to run for the Alliance in this years general election.
That’s the left-wing party in New Zealand politics.
On Thursday night we have a selection meeting for the two Dunedin electorates. So far we have had a candidate put their name forward for both Dunedin seats – myself in Dunedin North and an old friend Chris Ford who is standing in Dunedin South.
It’s going to be an interesting year. I intend to post daily from here on in, for my own sake as a kind of diary, and for anyone else who is interested.

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Lucky country :: wild book :: mammon’s people

After recovering from a dose of the midwinter flu and blues I’m looking forward to going on holiday.

Heading across the ditch and doing a slightly unusual trip on the Indian Pacific from Sydney to Perth. I’m fascinated by Australia especially the natural environment, and I realized I hadn’t been there for over twenty years. Good times.

Found my first “wild book” in the Octagon the other day and checked out the system at Book Crossing. Total geeksville but I kind of like the idea.

Finally paid off my student loan. Good for me but what a stinking system. If student loans meant cutting class sizes for kids and spending the money on fixing the poverty in this country and elsewhere, i’d be all for them. Sadly all the money goes in tax cuts for the financial elite and the corporate sector growing fat on the profits they bleed from the productive sector, i.e. the working class. And to think they were brought in by a “Labour” Government. The really sick thing is the State making profit out of the interest rates. Isn’t the idea of society to help out the next generation? Not when the baby boomers running the show are a bunch of pampered middle aged greedies who enjoyed **free education** **full employment** and **social welfare** when they were young – then spent the next generations inheritance on tax cuts for themselves. Ugly.

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Hard to find that groove when the right cramp your style

For the middle of winter, we’ve enjoyed some clear, peaceful days at Warrington. However, I haven’t been able to enjoy my walks along the beach because of the screeds of ugly, fascistic junk that seems to be filling the media in recent days.

I sometimes wish that I could just ‘turn off’ and ignore the crap, and make the most of apathy and walks on the beach in my quiet corner of the universe. Unfortunately, I just don’t seem to have the ability.

Top of the hit list: taxpayer funded advertisements that have been run by the National and New Zealand First parties attacking Maori and an “immigrant crime wave” respectively.

Where do the creeps get off? Millions of dollars of public money to bash minority groups – it’s a sick, sick world.

Also in the headlines a confused and bigoted rant by the Catholic Cardinal of Wellington who lays the blame for the ills of the world on . . . “liberalism.”

In an apparent attempt to return to the good old days, the Cardinal has lashed out at the “moral wasteland” of the modern world. But when exactly was the golden age of moral strength ? In 1917, when young men were sent up against the machine guns from the trenches of the Western Front? Or how about in the years when homosexuals were abused, reviled and prosecuted by their “good Christian” fellow citizens? Maybe the Cardinal was referring to the fifties and sixties – the same years when children were abused by paedophiles active within the Catholic (and other) churches?

The verdict on Cardinal Crusty – before plucking the splinter from someone elses eye, take the plank out from your own.

Do this eruption of right-wing boils on the body politic indicate a resurgence of the political right in New Zealand? Let’s hope Michael Moore’s new film takes the shine off the greedheads/warheads bald domes here as well.

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