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The political house of cards

By Ken Calvert - posted Monday, 19 August 2019


In the past it's been the global Green movement, closely aligned with the UN and the IPCC, that has been able to keep declaring that, clean green invisible carbon dioxide, the life food of all the plants on the planet, is "dirty carbon". They have also stymied many large International development projects, by proclaiming 'Keep the oil in the soil' and 'the coal in the hole'. Two of the most illogical arguments ever. For us, here in New Zealand, it was 'Saving the snails' on the Denniston plateau, (in the frig no less to their sad detriment), and stopping the Nevis hydroelectric scheme to save Gollumi Galaxiidis, that cute little fishie, which turns out not to be a separate rare new species, but simply Galaxiid gollumi, a small sub family of the large number of different whitebait species that gets seriously endangered in their quadrillions every year by our 'conspicuous consumption' of 'white bait', at high cost. It was that Tolkien bit that was the giveaway. Maybe our Green party should launch a campaign to stop eating endangered whitebait, mutton birds, oysters and eels, to save our precious national NZ culinary heritage!

But look, its more than just local, its international! And its not really environmental its political! Its the democratic socialist, not the real environmental side of the greens, their hacks in the press, the United Nations and its political arms, the IPCC and the UNCCC, their Committee on climate change, that have tried so desperately to stay on top of the political haystack, by banning anyone with a box of matches! By that I mean that if it wasn't for horrible nasty carbon dioxide we would be burning our rubbish, particularly plastic, instead of having to pick it up again along 70 ks of west coast beaches after the last big storm. Burn it, and everything else combustible, and turn it into electricity, rather than killing birds and bats with windmills.

I vividly remember the leadup to the big Paris Agreement, the 21st Conference of Parties, in 2015, when Lord Christopher Moncton told us, 3 months before it happened, that Tony Abbot in Australia and Stephen Harper in Canada were up for re-election that year, and they had better watch their backs because the UN climate people were gearing up to get them voted out of power, prior to Paris, because of their hard line against climate change. But even so Paris flopped didn't it? Nobody made a firm commitment to demonise fossil fuels. Indeed, I also think that even though Malcolm Turnbull tried so hard to bring in a climate tax, and shot himself in both feet, the present Aussie PM is only there because of the concerted move by Labor and the Greens to keep Abbot out of power by swinging in together behind an independent candidate in his seat. A guy popularly well known for his sporting prowess rather than his political acumen. That to me has all the marks of political manipulation.

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For years they have been telling us that the world is overheating, the Greenland ice is melting, the polar bears are starving and the 'Statue of Liberty' is doomed to drown. But we now read in real scientific journals, beyond political reproach, that the major Jakobshaven glacier, the biggest in Greenland, is growing again. The polar bear population has quadrupled, and the present sunspot cycle, the 25th, is at its lowest ebb since the last little Ice Age 150 years ago. That means that increasing cloud cover is going to make the world colder not warmer, even though the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are steadily increasing. We have suffered global warming, sorry climate change, or was it ocean acidification, deep ocean warming, climate disruption, extreme weather, shortage of water and now, contrastingly, excessive humidity, which have all hinged on excessive carbon dioxide. All these sequential arguments were purely aimed to stay on the front page. But if atmospheric CO2 will no longer cut the mustard, then this whole political house of cards is going to implode and great will be the fall of it because it all revolves around one thing: to change the world from conservative right wing capitalism to democratic socialism. Would Karl Marx turn over in his grave if he could read about Venezuela. Do our unelected UN Officials think that they can do better? Lets have people that we can vote out of power if we don't like what they are doing.

Do not think that the present diatribe on plastic has anything to do with plastic per se! Its just a new approach. Why fly planes on JP1 and burn up all the petrol and diesel we take out of the ground, and then choke on burning plastic as well? It's all the same stuff. What I can't quite follow is why they have chosen to attack the most convenient forms thereof? Single use plastic shopping bags were never wasted in our household. They went in to line the kitchen rubbish bin and went out full of all the stuff that should be burned not buried. And now herself goes to the supermarket and buys fancy multicoloured plastic bin liners! Who wasn't listening? And as for plastic straws and Starbucks coffee cups, I ask you? 'Impregnated' paper straws need to be burned just the same, even if they will breakdown in 50 years.

If my sense of history is correct it all started with noted socialist Maurice Strong, and the UN'. first political conference at Rio de Janeiro in 1993. Oops did I say 'political'? Have you noticed that all our democratic socialist, US German, French, Belgian, Dutch, EU, Canadian political parties are facing a 'Republican, right wing, conservative, nationalist' backlash? Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, don't look behind you. Yes even our NZ UN Peace Prize contender, even after making Time Magazine by supporting the Islamic cause, is trying to talk down what she calls the 'white supremacy' stuff. And getting famous film stars and autistic little girls to address the UN, and sail instead of fly to the next UN gettogether is not cutting the mustard either. What do those sort of front face people really know? Is it because their mentors went off on energy half cocked, have no really good scientific, economic, environmental arguments left, and have to drum up emotion instead?? It was all really socialist politics not science, and now they can only shout the opposition down as holocaust deniers and throw whatever other kind of mud they can think of that might stick?

But there is more! On the wider sphere, our whole global education system starting with all our universities, (with James Cook Uni in Queensland top of the list), seem to have quietly moved on to the same anti-capitalist road. The noted conservative historian Niall Ferguson, and the even more noted philosopher, Jordan Peterson, have both come out swinging, against the stifling of free speech, and every other ploy to change our political world, by trying to indoctrinate our young educated elite, the future generations of our world. What's the point of telling them not to have kids, when other cultures are having just as many as ever? They don't know how the world really works either, but they will probably stifle free speech a lot harder than the enviro- politicals! And what will environmental issues, social justice, grassroots democracy and peace and non-violence mean then? I say go Boris, go Donald, but just don't eat too much bird seed.

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About the Author

Ken Calvert is a retired waste treatments chemist/engineer and has spent most of his working life in the third world, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, and mainly with coffee processing. For every tonne of Coffee beans exported there is 4 tonnes of dirty water and three tonnes of rotten fruit pulp to be disposed of. His website is www.coffee.20m.com.

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