Posts by Martin Roberts
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is there a better way of talking about this?
Have you heard of Psychology for a Better World, by Niki Harré from the University of Auckland? My wife recently recommended it to me as a book that is reshaping how she presents issues. (Free pdf, even.)
For my 2c, PAS as a community could help each other to understand why so many people are opposing or dragging their feet. I firmly believe that most people are not very cynical, and we've got some bright sparks here with ample connections outside our own right-thinking bubble, so we ought to be capable of finding some ideas with traction.
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My figs take forever to ripen, each one randomly appearing after I've given up hope. Perhaps an adaptation to human cultivation, which increases the likelihood of a bird getting there first?
In contrast, I bottled a full bucketload of guavas yesterday and hope to make pâté/jubes on the weekend. What a pleasant surprise to discover what those scraggly trees half-under the carport were.
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I didn't read the entire previous discussion, but did any of the historical analyses of polling account for the 5% threshold?
If Winston polls 4.9% then I would pick NZF to be in, based on how many people I heard last time saying they might throw him a vote to nudge him over. Possibly they learned something by how big a nudge he got, but there will be new suckers who hate to see other people disenfranchised.
My main gripe is that you can't run your numbers as if the public were ignorant of the 5% line. That's like ignoring the electoral college in the US presidential elections.
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Our group was mostly fairly liberal Australians, and Jordan’s historic and current attitude to refugees made a mortifying comparison for them.
I trust that the Kiwi contingent was not too smug, seeing as we don't even fill our measly quota of 750 refugees and the Aussies are now taking 20,000 p.a.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Rob Stowell,
And how committed our policy-makers are to ‘market’ solutions to everything, even when the market is a wholly artificial mechanism like this one.
Auditing my household's ecological footprint made me a keen supporter of carbon pricing which can be folded into the other costs that contribute to consumer pricing.
An effective price will result in the system working such that consumers need not worry about carbon when they shop and not allow an unsustainable total carbon output. Each issue to be 'conscious' of requires a lot of work. Who has time to account separately for carbon, soil, and fisheries sustainability, even if provided with accurate source data? These will get as little traction as fair labour practises, overselling baby formula, and buying police oppression of environmental activists.
On the other side, my household found that our ecological footprints were most sustainable w.r.t. well-priced resources. Arable land was better than fish stocks was better than carbon.
Total sustainable supply will be more contestable for carbon pollution than land, but there are very physical realities underlying the question. Therefore I don't see that a global cap and trade system would be artificial. Making it work just for NZ and only some sectors is certainly artificial, but imho the worst problems arose from the political reluctance to accept an effective price and the political challenge of global agreement.
Remember that it took a long time to establish property rights over land for the common people, and in many parts of the world they remain tenuous. Constraining the powerful in a new sphere will not be easy.
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I sometimes dream of NZ, Oz, US and the EU forming a global milk exporters cartel to enable carbon pricing to be passed on to consumers worldwide. Surely a long shot, but could an industry so centralised in developing countries be set up as an example case?
That'd be leadership for you.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Che Tibby,
and dairy farmers want to make a shedload of cash. they’ll absorb the cost, push it onto consumers, and keep doing it.
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the theory goes that consumers will push back and consume less milk. but… like petrol it’s something we just grump about, then pay for.I don't see a problem with NZ remaining a huge exporter of dairy, so long as it is properly paid for from the global carbon budget. It is hard to know how expensive dairy will prove in the long run, but there is likely to be more market than NZ alone can fill.
People do just pay up when petrol prices first rise, but next time they buy a car they think about fuel efficiency. Habits are slow to change, especially when reinforced by the built environment, but change they do.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
We should own up to all the carbon emitted from our imported consumer goods, and repatriate it, if only to see just how much carbon we really do emit.
The best footprint data I have found is from Carbon Footprint of Nations. Sadly they have removed the widget where you could see production/imports/exports for your choice of country, and the data is so hard to compile that they basically only have 2004 numbers.
While the production focus of the Kyoto numbers suits a charge-for-pollution-where-it-occurs approach, I find that the footprint data is better for understanding (and changing) my own role in the tragedy.
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If you like the Greens overall, but a couple policies make your bile rise, then why not join up and shape the party's future?
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Has anybody thought to Capture the cyclists at the Avondale Market (or similar)? The 'old Chinese gentlemen' demographic, for example, displays a fine variety of refurbished bikes with ingenious cargo facilities.
Such cyclists rarely feature in discussions like this -- perhaps like the construction workers discussed upthread. Are they considered by planners and advocates? Have they ever been engaged in cyclist community building?