Posts by Idiot Savant
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I agree with the earlier comments about National's clever avoidance of policy itself. Labour will campaign on WFF, Kiwibank/saver etc but I've still got no idea what National will do beyond cut taxes (in line with Labour too)!
Not be Labour.
What's scary is that they think that's enough.
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Ben: check out Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers. The real danger is to plants, from shifting climate zones rather than sea-level rise. Plants aren't particularly mobile, and can't do much when the area around them dries up and their range effectively shifts 100km south. And being at the base of the ecosystem, this is expected to have a severe effect on the animals which eat those plants, or call them home, or eat things which do either.
To give a concrete example: most of Australia's eucalyptus species occupy discret areas and very narrow temperature ranges. If Australia's temperature increases by 3 degrees (an average prediction for this century), half of them are going to find themselves outside their prefeerd temperature range and go extinct. This is already happening in Tasmania.
Forests can "migrate" in geological time. But they can't cope with change this rapid. Animals find it easier, but there are usually significant barriers to migration, both from topography and from people. Basically, we're looking at a significant mass extinction event.
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Yup. War in Iraq and climate change clearly need similarly timed responses. Now if only we could match their budgets.
I saw an estimate a while ago that the entire US power system could be replaced with renewables for ~US$300 billion. George W Bush has already spent US$500 billion on his little war, and the overall cost is estimated at US$3 Trillion.
Says something about the man's priorities.
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And sure, Parliament has passed a law outlawing bypassing TPMs. But with format-shifting so ingrained, do they really expect anyone to give a damn?
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Also, the Media 7 promo on the front page of tvnz.co.nz describes its host as the "king of the blogosphere". Does that make us his loyal servants?
Nae King! Nae quin! Nae Laird! Nae master! We willna' be fooled agin!
(Channeling my inner Feegle)
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Stephen: sustainable production requires not just low-energy agriculture, but also good policy settings around land-use change. Obviously, some poorer countries don't have them, or can't enforce them, or both, so we ned to help them fix their problems.
In NZ, we have potential for tallow and waste to supply the initial target of biofuels sustainably (and we need the Biofuel Bill, or something very much like it, to make sure it happens). In the longer-term, our prospects are very good indeed. We have the technology now to run the entire country's transport network off celulose ethanol from trees (Scion has a report on it last month). It would require roughly doubling our current area of exotic planted forest, but we have plenty of marginal land to plant, and the result will be sustainable transport. The trick is getting there, setting the policy framework so that it encouages the investment required to make that change.
On the broader question, not everyone is as lucky as us on the sustainable energy front, and not everyone is going to be able to do this. Some countries are goign to have real problems coping with decarbonising their energy supply. I'm a technological optimist - there are obvious technologies we can use to replace liquid fuels at least for land transport (e.g. hydrogen and electricity, though each has its own challenges) - and the trick is getting there. But there's no question that decarbonisation, whether voluntary or due to peak oil, is going to radically alter the world energy map, and lifestyles and living standards with it. New Zealand is well positioned to cope with these changes, if we make the right choices. Other countries could face real problems.
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Steve: the benefit of biofuels is that (__if__ produced by sustainable methods - i.e. not in the US) they're carbon neutral. The CO2 you emit when you burn them simply replaces the CO2 sucked out of the atmosphere when they grew. They're not a carbon sink, and its a mistake to pretend they are. But to the extent that they displace fossil fuel burning, it is a net reduction in emissions (which is different froma carbon sink - a temporary storage of carbon).
Biofuels are not a magic bullet. They're a transitional fuel which allows us to continue using current technology until we can develop something cleaner or change our behaviour and lifestyle (depending on whether you're bright or dark green). There's a promise there of a future sustainable fuel supply, but it would be much smaller than the current petrochemical industry, and so if we want to maintain our current lifestyle, we need to use the time they give us to develop the technology to get us off carbon forever.
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It's also the possibility of the crop switch to biofuels. Now there's established technology and wide acceptance of turning food to fuel, food prices have begun to track oil prices. And with oil prices going up, that can't be good.
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I don't think the claim that 5-10% of NZers have some sort of racism is out of line. I know several... in fact, I think if I explored the issue with a bunch of people, I could probably get to double figures out of a couple of hundred acquaintances.
Or you could start with the 43% who according to the TVNZ7-Colmar Brunton poll in the "Kingmaker debate" said they thought Maori were the most privileged group in our society.
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Steve: By doing that, you are accepting the legitmacy of their interest, and turning it into an empirical debate rather than a moral one. And that is a mistake which gives ground to the racists and the bigots.
If Brown was right and ethnic diversity was causing serious social conflict in New Zealand, would his proposed solution of state racism be acceptable? No, it would not. Discrimination on the basis of race is always wrong, no matter what lofty aim you claim it is directed at.
Turning it into an empirical matter also invites similar empirical arguments on other private issues, such as religion, political belief, sexual orientation and family structure. It radically undercuts the very basis of a liberal society: the recognition that, no matter what our differences, at the end of the day we all live together, and so have to lump each other and try to get along.