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September 17, 2008 9:55am by David Farrar

Enviromental Forum in Wellington

Forest & Bird asked me to promote this meeting tomorrow in Wellington.

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Comment32

NZ Politics
conservation
Election 2008
environment
Forest & Bird

Comments (32)

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PhilBest

EnviroBullshit.
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September 17, 2008 10:37am
pushmepullu

DPF, I’m always saddened when you feel the need to dance at the command of radical lobby groups like Forest & Bird. I know you want to be seen as fair-minded and encouraging debate but we are rapidly reaching a s tage where calls for ‘debate’ are simply coded calls for the promotion of ideas that will do great damage to New Zealand’s economy and the livelihoods of everyday people.
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September 17, 2008 10:58am
stephen

Why don’t you put out a call to ban them too? Anyway, FFS, it’s a forum for political figures and people who want to ask them questions, not Forest and Bird. Read the poster.
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September 17, 2008 11:03am
Chris S

DPF, somehow I get the feeling the promotion won’t be too effective around here.

Stephen, why should he let facts get in the way of a good old “who gives a shit about the environment amirite?” rant?
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September 17, 2008 11:23am
pushmepullu

Stephen, you may scoff but the fact is we live in dangerous times. The political discourse (to use the term VERY loosely) is almost totally dominated by leftist ideas – sometimes environmental-leftist ideas, sometimes islamic-leftist ideas, sometimes homosexual-leftist ideas, sometimes just plain old socialist-stalinist-leftist ideas. Those who advocate freedom and prosperity struggle to even get their message out there.

The only way to provide effective resistance to this blizzard of leftist propaganda is to call it out wherever and whenever it appears. Never give a leftist the benefit of the doubt. Never fail to point out just how corrupt and corrosive their ideas are. Never allow their ideas to be expressed without firmly and decisively pointing them out for the intellectually flawed, deeply harmful and divisive propaganda they are. Leftist thought is a titanic enemy and the only way to restore some balance to the sadly anaemic realm of ideas in our sorry country is to never ever resist and never ever give up.

I hope one day DPF realises this.
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September 17, 2008 11:29am
David Farrar

Chris S – I think you are confusing commenters with readers.
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September 17, 2008 11:33am
stephen

I will most likely continue to scoff at you pushmepullu, but not so much at the spirit of what you wrote in the second paragraph – ‘political engagement ‘, which is great, but for some reason you don’t seem so keen on what F & B are doing, which is as I said is merely providing a forum for MPs and the public to engage. Without the forum, we have no choice but to listen use the media, or go online to a party’s site, both of which are distinctly second-hand experiences compared to the first-hand engagement that is talking with MPs in public. Go to the meeting if you feel so strongly (and live in the right area) – plenty of other people will be!
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September 17, 2008 11:38am
stephen

Chris S, a point perhaps.
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September 17, 2008 11:47am
james_bioengineer

Our environment is a major economic drawcard, and its importance will continue to grow. Get with the picture. Caring about the environment is not a ‘leftist agenda.’
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September 17, 2008 11:56am
The Optimist

Are these the people that keep bleating on in the paper about dairy farming and water? The organisation appears to have been captured by energetic environmentalists. The fact that they are working with Greenpeace says it all. Given the economic damage exacted by these people for the sake of their religion, this is one organisation that desperately needs some light shone on it. I hope as many people attend as possible.

The rest of us will be working late at work to keep the economy going.
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September 17, 2008 11:58am
pushmepullu

Stephen, when will you learn that the monopoly the left holds on the instruments of public discourse means that genuine political engagement in New Zealand does not exist outside the blogosphere?

Or perhaps you know that already, and like a good leftist, think it’s all good as long as people don’t get to hear anybody argue with you when you tell them that Aunty Helen will tuck them in safe to bed at night, and never mind that she nicks off with the contents of their piggybank while she’s at it?
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September 17, 2008 12:02pm
stephen

pushmepullu, GO-TO-THE-FORUM, very hard to talk to MPs on a blog. When I said the media was ‘second-hand’, I did not mean that as an endorsement. The blogosphere varies wildly in quality, but certainly has its uses. Start a right-wing think-tank maybe? Suharto nicked the contents of the piggy bank, not sure Helen has.
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September 17, 2008 12:15pm
pushmepullu

Stephen, I refuse to validate this leftist love-in with my presence.
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September 17, 2008 12:24pm
Helen

It ain’t Leftist, Rightist or any other ist. It’s trees and rivers and birds and beaches and dolphins and stuff. If you don’t like ’em, by all means don’t come along. But if you do, you might like to hear what politicians from ALL the parties have to say about such things.
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September 17, 2008 12:35pm
Buggerlugs

A little tui just told me they didn’t invite Nick Smith. This little tui has been unreliable in the past, so who knows? Wouldn’t put it past Greenpeace, but might have given F&B more credit…
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September 17, 2008 12:37pm
RRM

Helen, around here it’s “Common knowledge” that environmental concern in any form is a scam by leftie socialist academics, in some ivory tower somewhere, who want to take away our freedoms, raise taxes and stop honest men from doing a day’s work. Until you accept this “truth” you’re going to have trouble engaging with anyone here!!!
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September 17, 2008 12:39pm
PhilBest

Vaclav Klaus, President, Czech Republic, speech on 8 Sept 2008: (EXCERPTS)

“…….the recently created panic as regards dramatic, in the past allegedly unknown global climate changes and their supposedly catastrophic consequences for the future of human civilization must not remain without a resolute answer of the – until now – more or less silent majority of rationally thinking people, especially classical liberals, libertarians and other freedom loving men and women……

“….Many of us know (or at least should know) that this panic doesn’t have a solid ground, that it has not been set off by rational arguments, that it demonstrates an apparent disregard of the past experience of mankind, and that its substance is not science. It is based, on the contrary, on the abuse of science by a non-liberal, extremely authoritarian, freedom and prosperity despising (and destroying) ideology which I, together with many others, call environmentalism……

“…..In the past, the market was undermined mostly by means of socialist arguments with slogans like: “stop the immiseration of the masses”. Now, the attack is led under a more seductive slogan: stop the immiseration (or perhaps destruction) of the Planet.

This shift seems to me dangerous. The ambitions look more noble, more attractive and more appealing; they are also cleverly and very efficiently oriented towards the far away future and thus practically “immunized” from reality, from existing evidence, from available observations, and from standard testability…..

“…….hese ambitions are not only accepted but loved by the politicians, the media and all their fellow-travelers among public intellectuals. For the same reasons, I consider environmentalism and its currently strongest version – climate alarmism – to be, at the beginning of the 21st century, the most effective and, therefore, the most dangerous vehicle for advocating, drafting and implementing large scale government intervention and for an unprecedented suppression of human freedom……

“…….We need more books like Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource, Indur M. Goklany’s The Improving State of the World, Bjørn Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist (and others). We should try to explain to the silent majority what Julian Simon’s “ultimate resource” is and that the only resource endangered by environmentalists’ plans and activities is man, his inventions and genuine efforts.

I used to live in a world where prices and property rights were made meaningless. It gave me an opportunity to see how irrationally resources were used (and often depleted) and how damaged the environment was as a result. We should not let anyone to again play the market and dictate what to produce, how to produce it, what inputs to use, what technologies to implement. It would result in another, these days world-wide disaster and in the true “immiseration of the masses”, especially in developing countries. We already see some evidence of it……

“……We have plenty of reasons to expect that technological changes will be – as they have been in the past – more important than any imaginable climate changes. There is no need for technologic skepticism and as I have recently argued elsewhere, there is no reason to expect that we will enter a stationary world – unless the environmentalists win the debate and stop human progress…..

“……he much more affluent people in the future will have enough time and motivation to make rational consumption and investment decisions without our today’s “quasi-help”. Economic growth and the accumulation of wealth do not lead to deterioration of the environment and the empirical work in the field of the environmental Kuznets curves gives us reassuring arguments about it.

We should also explain to the non-experts the idea of discounting as the only rational basis for intergenerational comparison. This issue lies at the core of social sciences and especially economics……

“…….Indur M. Goklany published a whole book about the precautionary principle (10) in which he suggests ways to formulate hierarchical criteria and rank various threats, which is, of course, quite different from the application of the unstructured precautionary principle. Using several well-known examples, he demonstrates the tendency of environmentalists to systematically overestimate the negative impacts of human activities and to forget their positive impacts. Such approach can not bring good outcomes.

Even more frustrating is the fact that we do not pay attention to the abuse of the words “market” and “price” by the current global warming alarmists. They want nothing else than to tax us but speak about the market-friendly “emissions trading schemes” instead…….

“…….the Orwellian use of the words ‘market’ and ‘price’ to persuade people to accept a degree of control over their lives which is unprecedented in the Anglosphere, except in time of war. The climate fraternity succeeded in persuading the politicians and the media that these “market friendly” trading schemes are better than simple restrictions and prohibitions. In this respect, I prefer explicit prohibitions. They are much more understandable and, eventually, defeatable…….”

There is much, much more…….READ THE WHOLE THING:

http://klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=KaTffYUet0Rm
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September 17, 2008 12:46pm
PhilBest

THIS is incredibly prophetic: Hayek, in 1949; He might as well be describing how the whole AGW beat-up has got its traction:

“….There is little that the ordinary man of today learns about events or ideas
except through the medium of this class(Media “intellectuals”); and outside our special fields of work we are
in this respect almost all ordinary men, dependent for our information and instruction on
those who make it their job to keep abreast of opinion. It is the intellectuals in this sense
who decide what views and opinions are to reach us, which facts are important enough
to be told to us, and in what form and from what angle they are to be presented.
Whether we shall ever learn of the results of the work of the expert and the original
thinker depends mainly on their decision.
The layman, perhaps, is not fully aware to what extent even the popular
reputations of scientists and scholars are made by that class and are inevitably affected
by its views on subjects which have little to do with the merits of the real achievements.
And it is specially significant for our problem that every scholar can probably name
several instances from his field of men who have undeservedly achieved a popular
reputation as great scientists solely because they hold what the intellectuals regard as
“progressive” political views; but I have yet to come across a single instance where such
a scientific pseudo-reputation has been bestowed for political reason on a scholar of
more conservative leanings. This creation of reputations by the intellectuals is
particularly important in the fields where the results of expert studies are not used by
other specialists but depend on the political decision of the public at large…….

“Yet it is not the predominant views of the experts but the views of a minority, mostly of
rather doubtful standing in their profession, which are taken up and spread by the
intellectuals.
The all-pervasive influence of the intellectuals in contemporary society is still
further strengthened by the growing importance of “organization.” It is a common but
probably mistaken belief that the increase of organization increases the influence of the
expert or specialist. This may be true of the expert administrator and organizer, if there
are such people, but hardly of the expert in any particular field of knowledge. It is rather
the person whose general knowledge is supposed to qualify him to appreciate expert
testimony, and to judge between the experts from different fields, whose power is
enhanced. The point which is important for us, however, is that the scholar who
becomes a university president, the scientist who takes charge of an institute or
foundation, the scholar who becomes an editor or the active promoter of an
organization serving a particular cause, all rapidly cease to be scholars or experts and
become intellectuals, solely in the light of certain fashionable general ideas. The
number of such institutions which breed intellectuals and increase their number and
powers grows every day…….”

Read the whole thing:

http://www.mises.org/etexts/hayekintellectuals.pdf
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September 17, 2008 12:54pm
stephen

PMPU, if your method of dealing to lefties is just grandstanding on kiwiblog, don’t be surprised if you aren’t effective in beating the bastards back.
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September 17, 2008 12:56pm
PhilBest

Another guy that we MUST know about in this context, is Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace:

“……..I am often asked why I broke ranks with Greenpeace after fifteen years as a founder and full-time environmental activist. While I had my personal reasons—spending more time with a growing family rather than living out of a suitcase most of the year—it was on issues of policy that I found it necessary to move on.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, Greenpeace, and much of the environmental movement, made a sharp turn to the political left and began adopting extreme agendas that abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism. I became aware of the emerging concept of sustainable development—the idea that environmental, social, and economic priorities could be balanced. I became a convert to the idea that win-win solutions could be found by bringing all interests together around the same table. I made the move from confrontation to consensus…….

“……..Anti-forestry activists are telling us to stop cutting trees and to reduce our use of wood. Forest loss, or deforestation, is nearly all caused by clearing forests for farms and cities. Forestry operations, on the other hand, are geared towards reforestation and the maintenance of forest cover. Forests are stable and growing where people use the most wood, and are diminishing where they use less. When we use wood, we send a signal to the marketplace to plant more trees and produce more wood. North Americans use more wood per capita than any other continent, yet there is about the same forest area in North America today as there was 100 years ago.

Trees, and the materials they produce, are by far the most abundant, renewable and biodegradable resource in the world. If we want to retain healthy forests, we should be growing more trees and using more wood, not less. This seems lost on activists who use chilling rhetoric and apocalyptic images to drive us in the wrong direction……

“Environmentalism has turned into anti-globalization and anti-industry. Activists have abandoned science in favour of sensationalism. Their zero-tolerance, fear-mongering campaigns would ultimately prevent a cure for Vitamin A deficiency blindness, increase pesticide use, increase heart disease, deplete wild salmon stocks, raise the cost and reduce the safety of health care, raise construction costs, deprive developing nations of clean electricity, stop renewable wind energy, block a solution to global warming, and contribute to deforestation. How sick is that?”

(Patrick Moore, “Miami Herald”, 2002)

Visit Patrick Moore’s site and browse for hours…….learn about the evils of radical, irrational environmentalism…….

http://www.greenspirit.com/logbook.cfm
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September 17, 2008 12:59pm
PhilBest

Visit Patrick Moore’s “Greenspirit” site and browse for hours…….learn about the evils of radical, irrational environmentalism…….

http://www.greenspirit.com/logbook.cfm
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September 17, 2008 1:00pm
RRM

Phil, ENOUGH already!!! You’ve convinced me.

All environmentalism is BS, all “experts” are ignorant/incompetent/out of touch, all media are Greenie sycophants, and the best thing we could do for the environment is to just dig a new coal mine!
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September 17, 2008 1:08pm
Chris S

Philbest, gyofb.
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September 17, 2008 1:16pm
redbaiter_baiter

DPF, good on you for promoting this worthy cause though I did think I was on the wrong blog initially.
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September 17, 2008 1:31pm
pushmepullu

Well Stephen we’ll see who wins in November and then you’ll get a chance to have second thoughts on the effectiveness of conservative activism
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September 17, 2008 2:05pm
stephen

…I think the most effective conservative tactic would be to do nothing and let Labour do all the work for them, which isn’t too far off what is happening I’d say. I really do hope your ‘conservative activism’ is a bit more than the afore mentioned blog-posting though.
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September 17, 2008 2:08pm
philu

best..are you a first year student..?

and..pushmestrokeyougently..is..barking..and thick as a brick with it..

..who has clasped some perverted version of rightism to his flacid bosom..

..don’t expect any rational thought/dialogue..

phil(whoar.co.nz)
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September 17, 2008 5:54pm
Mike Readman

Where’s the authorisation? Suerly this could be seen to be encouraging people to vote for a certain party. It’s green and has “Greenpeace” on it.
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September 17, 2008 6:00pm
stephen

You’ve gota be joking
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September 17, 2008 8:16pm
OECD rank 22 kiwi

Your chance to ask the questions that really count is election:

When is the ETS going to be repealed?
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September 17, 2008 9:44pm
OECD rank 22 kiwi

Your chance to ask the questions that really count this election:

When is Green party going to stop its BS social agenda and get back to actually caring about the environment through conservation?
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September 17, 2008 9:48pm
stephen

It seems that they actually do both. They released their conservation policy a couple of days ago.
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September 18, 2008 8:59am

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