Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2642 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 9:02 pm Post subject: Greens release secret enviro report 13th chapter
Greens release secret enviro report 13th chapter
Quote:
The Green Party today revealed the existence of a damning unpublished thirteenth chapter to the state of the environment report released by the government ten days ago.
“Chapter 13 states some inconvenient truths about the causes of environmental decline in New Zealand – causes such as dairy intensification, increased car use, and consumption. And it makes some inconvenient recommendations for action such as national environmental regulation and more public transport. Moreover it warns our economy is threatened by our poor environmental performance,” says Dr. Russel Norman, Green Party Co-leader.
“Chapter 13 points to industrial dairy as the largest cause of environmental decline in New Zealand. The Chapter says that land-use intensification, particularly pastoral land-use intensification, is ‘arguably the largest pressure today on New Zealand’s land, freshwaters, coastal oceans and atmosphere.’ (p.4, emphasis added)
scoop _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2642 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 9:45 pm Post subject: Re: Greens release secret enviro report 13th chapter
Nandor: A radical departure
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One of Parliament's more colourful characters - Rastafarian Green MP Nandor Tanczos - intends to leave to return to his radical roots.
Mr Tanczos - who gained a high public profile initially because of his youth, his Rastafarian beliefs, pro-marijuana stance and dreadlocks - said he would not stand in the 2008 election and may leave Parliament before then to allow another MP to take his place in the lead-up to the campaign.
One of Parliament's more colourful characters - Rastafarian Green MP Nandor Tanczos - intends to leave to return to his radical roots.
Mr Tanczos - who gained a high public profile initially because of his youth, his Rastafarian beliefs, pro-marijuana stance and dreadlocks - said he would not stand in the 2008 election and may leave Parliament before then to allow another MP to take his place in the lead-up to the campaign.
nzherald _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2642 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 10:26 pm Post subject: Re: Greens release secret enviro report 13th chapter
New Zealand can't become carbon neutral?
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New Zealand can't become carbon neutral? Absolute Rubbish!
The ideas that New Zealand cannot become carbon neutral and that carbon trading will push up the cost of pastoral farming are both total nonsense, according to farm business sustainability specialist Peter Floyd.
"The Business Roundtable maintains we have no way of becoming carbon neutral, and DairyNZ warns that a carbon trading regime might push up the cost of farming, but they are both ignoring the huge potential that farmers have to lock up very large amounts of atmospheric carbon in their soils," says Floyd.
Some Australian farmers have begun 'carbon farming' to sequester soil carbon, and are already selling the carbon credits earned on the Chicago Climate Exchange. There is no reason why we could not do that successfully here.
Floyd points out that farming to accumulate organic matter and increase soil depth actually removes very significant amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. The techniques don’t just sustain the environment they improve it, he says, and lead to healthier soils, pastures and animals. In the process farms become more profitable.
"Australian scientists have calculated that a 0.1% increase in organic carbon across just 10% of Australia's agricultural lands would sequester more than half of that country's total annual greenhouse gas emissions," says Floyd.
In New Zealand we’ve hardly begun to think about it, and yet large areas of our country are in pasture. We need farmers to change farming practices to increase carbon sequestration and help the country become carbon neutral. Some are already doing it, and finding it profitable even without carbon credits.
scoop _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2642 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 10:37 pm Post subject: Re: Greens release secret enviro report 13th chapter
Ministry stands by decision to drop conclusion
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Ministry stands by decision to drop conclusion chapter
The Ministry for the Environment is releasing the draft conclusions chapter of the state of the environment report Environment New Zealand 2007 to provide transparency around its content. Todd Krieble, General Manager Reporting and Communications, says the Ministry stands by its decision not to have a conclusions chapter in the report. "The decision was made to let the facts in the report speak for themselves. The substance of the draft conclusions chapter is contained in the Minister's foreword to the report, the separate summary document, and throughout the report itself."
"The Ministry looks forward to the discussion about what the facts in this report mean for New Zealand's environmental management."
scoop _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2642 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:31 am Post subject: Re: Greens release secret enviro report 13th chapter
For those of you who want to know more about Green Party policy, you might be interested to read this speech by its Co-leader, Jeanette Fitzsimons (excepts below - full text in link):
Address in reply speech - 2008
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Today I challenge the voters to see through this tired old game and look for the vision and the action to bring us together as a nation and make us what we could be - vibrant, prosperous, compassionate, and sustainable.
Instead we are presented with a vision of New Zealand as a society cowering before the tiny minority of its violent youth, while waiting on a tax handout. No plan for how our families, our workplaces and our country will cope with the looming realities of peak oil and climate change, and the income gap between rich and poor. In particular, neither major party has offered New Zealand a vision that sees the best in our young people, and that helps it to flourish.
NZ's largest and most expensive transport project ever is to be a new motorway tunnel in Auckland. More than $2 billion, so that all the people who were starting to think about using public transport now that it is gradually improving are sent back to their cars. Just think what that money could do to improve public transport services in Auckland - a rail tunnel to link the western and southern lines and a link to the airport so we would see the start of a real electric rail network. Safe cycle routes with intersection priority. A new busway like the northern one, to the south east. That's what Auckland is going to need to reduce carbon emissions and cope with rising oil prices. But no, the contradiction of this government is a vision of a world first in carbon neutrality and a reality of more coal, more dairy, and more motorways.
The public expect the Greens to be the environmental conscience of Parliament. Just about every environmental advance, and many of the advances in social policy, over the last 8 years have been the result of prodding and goading by the Greens, and just in the last week we've seen what an important role that is. Whoever sent us in plain wrapper the censored chapter 13 of the new State of the Environment report knew we would not sit on it but would hold the government to account.
The main report shows that in the ten years after the first State of the Environment the crisis in our biodiversity has not overall improved, although there are some local success stories. In addition, we now face major problems of environmental degradation caused by land use intensification and increased road transport, which in turn are leading to more water quality problems and greenhouse emissions.
The originally unpublished 13th chapter identifies the causes or drivers of the environmental decline. It fingers increased land intensification, with more fertiliser and more stock per hectare; greatly increased use of motor vehicles, and increased consumption.
Chapter 13 explicitly acknowledges the conundrum of trying to grow our economy while reducing our environmental footprint. Economic growth is placing increasing pressure on our environment, and yet the economy is dependent on our environment. Our tourism industry is built on 100% Pure branding, our dairy industry sells itself as clean and green overseas.
In other words, by failing to protect our environment this Government is putting our economy at risk.
Chapter 13 dares to speak of environmental limits and points out that some of those limits have been reached - for example, freshwater in parts of the country. It calls for national level regulation or guidance and for the polluter-pays principle to be adhered to.
scoop _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
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