Hard And Dirty
The National Party is set to announce its Cabinet line up in next two days. Former Shadow Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee is likely to feature as Energy Minister.
This is the same Mr Brownlee that has publicly professed a strange coal fetish. He has gone so far as to call this climate-killing energy dinosaur “sexy”. Best Gerry stays well away from Huntly if that’s the case.
He’s also a big fan of gas, another fossil fuel and contributor to climate change. This was all reflected in the party’s energy strategy, released just prior to the election. The strategy failed to even mention climate change and read like something from the 1970s.
National is expected to do away with Labour’s 10-year ban on new fossil fuel electricity generation and the target of 90 per cent renewable electricity by 2025. To do so would be short-sighted and stupid. It’s embarrassing enough that the head of State Owned Enterprise Solid Energy Don Elder has just been appointed chairman of World Coal Institute (talk about flying the wrong flag for New Zealand), but for our new Government to turn its back so supremely on renewable energy initiatives would confirm we’re backwards and don’t give a toss about climate change.
Last year Greenpeace commissioned a major report into sustainable energy which found that we can infact achieve 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2025 whilst maintaining security of supply. The New Zealand Energy Revolution: How to prevent climate chaos, would make good late night reading for Gerry, assuming he’s not too busy pouring over Coal Weekly.
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National apears to want to appear moderate until they have successfully got rif of MMP by the end of this term and locked in a new voting system for 2014 - one that will give them a majority with 40% of the vote (be it FPP or SM).
Having done that, if they get a second term they will be able to more or less as they please, knowing it will be much harder to defeat them in 2014. Even in the worst case, if they are defeated in the last MMP election in 2011, they can come sormig bac to a “landslide” in 2014….with 40% of the vote.
They are the embodiment of reactionary denialism supported by the willfully ignorant. Any student of human nature knows that denial is the first response to any perceived unpleasantness.
We are a civilization in denial…and will remain so until reality DEMANDS we move onto acceptance. That, of course, will be far too late for any prudent action.
Democracy is our best hope and makes it the first target for attack.
Why have the New Zealand people not already taken to the streets to protest the environmental policies/intentions of the new government? Just how unwelcome they are in power must be made very clear to them on a regular basis.