Hooton on Greens

Matthew Hooton writes (offline) in the NBR:

According to their own rhetoric, and that of the foreign environmental lobbyists who dictate it, the Green Party believes that the next century, and perhaps even the next decade, will be characterised by severe global turmoil.

Climate change, they say, will cause mass migration unprecedented in human history, as hundreds of millions leave equatorial regions for the north and south.

The seas will rise, creating refugees not just from small island states like the Maldives and Kiribati but causing havoc in China and India, with their vast coastal populations.

According to the UN, Indonesia, with its 80,000km coastline, 17,000 islands and 240 million inhabitants, will be the country worst affected by rising sea levels, threatening regional security.

Everyone will suffer unpredictable and extreme weather.

And worse, it seems:

“Peak food” will be upon us, with Sue Kedgley foreseeing “a new era of tightening food supplies, rising food prices, food scarcity, panic buying, long food queues and political instability.”

Food rationing, she said in 2008, was already underway in US, as was rationing of rice in Auckland.

Now I have to apologise to Matthew Hooton. I can’t believe even Sue Kedgley said such things. So I resorted to Google. And it turns out Matthew was right – read here.

Pressure on other natural resources also risks global catastrophe.  When China runs out of energy resources, it’s likely to march.

In an effort to help, the Greens’ population policy welcomes “climate change refugees” but also demands that any effects on New Zealand’s environment, society and culture be limited.

Their new MP, Kennedy Graham, tells us that, with a population of 4.1 million, New Zealand is already part of the global population problem.  The global population, he says, must be “drastically reduced.”

Now again, surely Matthew is having us on. Did the Green Party really say the global population must be drastically reduced? Well Matthew may be prone to occassional hyperbole, but it seems he employees excellent staff to do his research, as he is in fact quoting their official policy.

If the Green Party really believes all this, then it must surely also believe that New Zealand’s territorial integrity is at risk, not some time later in the century, but imminently.

New Zealand is already capable of producing at least 20 times our own food needs.

Our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is 15 times our land mass and the world’s fifth largest, while the quota management system means New Zealand can expect to maintain our fisheries stocks long after others have devastated theirs.

Back on land, New Zealand’s coal reserves are greater per capita, in terms of their energy potential, than Saudi Arabia’s oil.

Total mineral reserves may exceed $10 trillion, which we’ve largely decided to leave in the ground.

How splendid that when everyone else has dug up and burned their coal, New Zealand’s reserves will still be in the ground, waiting. …

It’s true that New Zealand is protected by a 2000km-wide moat but that’s unlikely to be sufficient under the Greens’ prognosis.  You’d think they’d argue that New Zealand needs the strongest possible defence forces, up to and including an independent nuclear deterrent.

At the very least, New Zealand surely requires the capability to credibly threaten to sink a fishing or other vessel or to shoot down aircraft.

Surprisingly enough, this is not their defence policy.  The focus is on the UN, as if that organisation would operate effectively in the apocalyptic future they fear.

The Greens argue there should be no Anzac frigates or other warships, no anti-submarine capability and no air strike force.  All equipment not designed for peacekeeping, search and rescue, disaster relief, fisheries and border control tasks should be phased out.

And remember according to iPredict, Labour and Greens at the next election will only have 3% fewer votes than National, and might be able to form a Government. Dr Graham might be Minister of Defence.

Instead, New Zealand should lead the world in finding new ways of looking at and dealing with conflict.

Yep, that’ll do the trick – in a world, we’re told, where hundreds of millions of people are becoming homeless, hundreds of millions more are starving, the equatorial regions are uninhabitable, oil, coal and fish have run out everywhere but New Zealand and we’re all being bombarded with Hurricane Katrinas.

Could it be that, deep down, the Greens don’t really believe their own predictions of imminent environmental armageddon?

Or maybe they just think the UN will save us.