Written By: - Date published: 1:04 pm, November 21st, 2008 - 98 comments
Categories: climate change, International, national/act government -
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According to a leading financier, carbon credit broker Nigel Brunel, of OMF Financial, New Zealand has become “a bit of a joke” in Europe as National/ACT looks set to delay, even abolish, our Emissions Trading Scheme.
If you’ll forgive me an anecdote, I’m reminded of the introduction seminar when I was at uni in Finland. We were being told what a great country Finland is, sophisticated, egalitarian compassionate. The speaker told us ‘in 1906, Finland was the first country to give women the vote’. Well, my hand shot up – ‘no, it was New Zealand in 1893′ (turns out, it’s more complicated than that). The point is, every country likes to be able to tell itself that it leads the world, especially a wee, easily-overlooked settler-state at the bottom of the world. We love to claim to have led the world on women’s suffrage, the 40-hour week, the welfare state, going nuclear-free. We see ourselves as a society that others should seek to emulate: fair to its members and protective of its environment.
How embarrassing, then, that we have given up our leadership role on climate change and, instead, become a joke. Even as the rest of the world, with the US finally on board, redoubles its efforts to deal with this threat we are moving in the opposite direction.
How backward are we becoming? Well, 17 years after the world’s governments signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change – after years of negotiations the world’s nations agreed there was a real problem. No serious country denies the reality of climate change. Yet, National/ACT is set to have a committee of politicians re-examine the science. While the US and Australia rush to catch up with emissions reduction schemes like our world-leading ETS, National/ACT is going to look at ‘adaption’ instead. That is, rather than reduce the problem now, National/ACT wants to talk about how our descendants can make do in a hotter, stormier, more flooded world that we leave them.
It’s not just our pride, or even just our environment, at stake. Our economy loses out too, Brunel says:
‘We are the antipodes of Europe. Their time zone is the exact opposite of ours, and there’s a real opportunity to have a 24-hour carbon market that starts in Europe and when they go into their night we take over. ’There is real interest in that because carbon is such an important market over there. Some very big players were very keen to establish a market down here because of the ability to then create a 24-hour market. ’This was New Zealand’s opportunity to reinvent its financial markets by being the Asian centre of the carbon trade.’
But this week’s announcement that the incoming government will put the ETS on hold pending a review that will go as far as considering a carbon tax instead of an ETS and will re-examine the validity of the science behind climate change, has jeopardised everything
‘We have just fallen off the radar in Europe,’ he said. ‘They are saying ‘all you do is talk. You’ve been talking since 1992. You are all talk and no action. You maintain that you are so clean and green and try to be leaders and all you do is nothing. You make a decision and then you change your minds. How can we do business with people like that? We can’t take your seriously’.’
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“Delay is no longer an option; denial is no longer an acceptable response”.
Here is Obama’s response to Climate Change.
No country ever ‘gave’ women the vote. Women had to organise, collectivise and fight very hard to win it in every country, over many decades, and persuade enough male politicians to support their cause. Some women were martyred in the process eg that British suffragette who was trampled in a horse race. Others went on hunger strikes and were tortured. In NZ Premier Seddon hadn’t wanted to enfranchise women and thought adding Maori into the motion would ensure its failure. Fortunately, it passed, so Maori and Pakeha women 21 and over were enfranchised at the same time on 19 September 1893. But they still weren’t allowed to stand as candidates for many more years. And you think feminists are bitter!
Tim: Granted, if we were talking about delaying the ETS indefinitely, then that would be a major problem. But one extra year isn’t.
What we have here is a dynamic tension between two powerful axioms: `do it once, do it right’ on the one hand, and `perfect is the enemy of good enough’ on the other. National favour the former; Labour and the Greens favour the latter (ACT favour the ostrich axiom).
I don’t have a problem in principle with the idea of taking a year to do things right, but the problem is twofold; 1. that it isn’t likely to be just another year because of the desire to align with Australia; and 2. another year or more of moral hazard (bear in mind, it’s been six years in discussion already) will compound upon an eventual emission reduction mechanism which is less effective in terms of reducing our Kyoto obligation, not more effective. Most of National’s six points are policy jargon for just this direction:
* `not balancing economic interests with environmental interests’ is code for `is too strict’ in general
* `needs to be aligned with the Australian scheme’ means an indefinite delay, since Australia are only now beginning to look seriously at matters we began looking at six years ago;
* `gives industry incentives to leave NZ’ is code for `doesn’t cut industry enough breaks
* `penalises SMEs’ is code for `doesn’t cut SMEs enough breaks’
* `flawed treatment of Ag/Fish/Forestry/thermal’ means `didn’t cut those sectors enough breaks’
So what National are saying isn’t that the ETS is flawed in principle or in its general function, but that:
* It is too strict
* it is implemented now, not later
* It doesn’t cut industry enough breaks
* it doesn’t cut small business enough breaks
* it doesn’t cut farmers, fisheries, forestry or thermal generation enough breaks
… so tell me, was there anyone who National thinks was cut enough breaks?
The Labour ETS was already full of moral hazard by way of special exceptions and allowances for industries known to be the worst emitters, with some or all of their emissions liability picked up by the taxpayer in the name of the national good for the rest of the current generation. I disagree entirely with this in principle, but to an extent I recognise its necessity in practice, however extending that moral hazard beyond the current generation into the next is unconscionable. Doing so distorts the market and will act to safeguard moribund practices and prevent them being replaced by the ordinary march of progress by more efficient or cleaner practices, and will ensure inflated Kyoto obligations bills to come. It’s short-termism and will be subject to the same flaw you initially identified – if the moral hazard is seen to be unfair, it will not endure.
L
Lew:
What’s new? It used to be called raping and looting.
how cute, the standard aligning with a sales spruiking broker from OMF.
[lprent: How cute - an idiot thinks that a program has an opinion. Why not talk to the person?
Programs are dumb logic. It is a pity that you missed out on the logic.
You do understand that I equate trolls with programs that need serious debugging don't you?]
Lew. Scientific orthodoxy is how it should always be. It’s when potentially billions of dollars are being traded that the relationship between the business & science side of things become somewhat clouded. Is there any place for self correction with the substantial interests being employed here?
Carbon trading is enron for unicorns.
[lprent: Ummm BB are you trying to join the ranks of the poets on this site? Special dispensations are available..]
Oops – I really have to tone down that sarcasm. Its the Irish whiskey, keeps shoving up the graphic equalizer at one extreme.
If some smart young thing could actually challenge the science behind AGW there’d be no shortage of funding to make the case, or prestige in doing so.
PB: I keep waiting for that as well. It is pretty distressing that over the last year I’ve seen a whole pile of skeptics come here with a whole pile of ‘facts’ that I can refute easily with stuff I learned (and throughly understood) almost 30 years ago.
The
anthropomorphicanthropogenic release of stored carbon is easily demonstrated. The fact that there are buffering actions in the atmosphere and water systems is easy to demonstrate – and almost irrelevant. However the effect of this on the heat transfer in the biosphere is likewise easy to demonstrate. Of course that has no effect on the planet or the biosphere as a whole, it will survive the extinction of humans and their culture without a problem. This has all been evident since the 70′s.What the dickheads seem to fail to recognize is that (at present) there is really only two solutions that would allow them, their children, and their grandchildren to avoid the consequences of their actions;
1) demonstrating a sequestration mechanism to store carbon that is currently unknown.
or
2) changing their behavior
In the absence of 1), then they’re really going to have to try 2). Otherwise their grandchildren will probably hunt them down for acts of extreme stupidity.
Updated: The Irish made me forget the correct word. Lew recovered it….
Yes Billy I am that Frankly Mr Shankly
Coge: Is there any place for self correction with the substantial interests being employed here?
Of course there is. Where orthodoxy is disprovable there is always a market for disproving it, and so it will be disproved – and if not, someone is missing an opportunity.
In any case, this begs a fairly important question: that the preponderance of reward is on the side of environmentalists and universities, and against almost all of the world’s major business interests. In fact, it is the opposite; those very interests – fossil fuels, heavy industry, agriculture and the military-industrial complex – who have the most to gain from disproving anthropogenic climate change also have the greatest reward to bestow upon the disprover. So, by your logic, should the fact that science continues to affirm the existence of anthropogenic climate change in the face of this obvious incentive to cover it up, ignore it or put it on hold not a triumph of the scientific method and its fundamental commitment to truth over convenience?
PB/Lynn: Right. I’ve more or less just reiterated what you said, and like you, I’ve had this particular argument about a hundred times and haven’t lost it yet.
L
Yeah it gets rather boring. Especially when they keep saying things like “the models are wrong”. Hell we knew that before they built the damn things. Models are always wrong – that is what they’re there for. We build them so we can find out what we don’t know. I haven’t built climatology models for 30 years, but I did build a hell of a lot of management simulations (especially to annoy MBA students). It is the art of the thing.
The question that they try to avoid is is the basic science wrong – that I haven’t seen yet. They’d prefer to argue about if it is them, the children, or their grandchildren that cope the first major effects. Then they get annoyed when I say that it is most likely them – if they are under the age of 40.
The primary characteristic of the models is that they are consistently wrong. They always under-estimate the onset of the timing of the effects. They’ve dropped from centuries to decades in my adult lifetime.
Yawn… te right wing bore above quotes, from his sources the ‘canada free press’ thus:
“The revolt against new carbon rationing and taxes affecting New Zealand now encompasses much of the world including India, China, Indonesia, Brazil, Poland, Italy, Germany and the whole Ex-Soviet bloc. There is naturally no support for carbon rationing from the OPEC world, and falling support from Canada… blah blah.”
The ‘canada free press’ is the weird right wing rantings of these two (from their website):
“Arthur Weinreb is an author, columnist and Associate Editor of Canada Free Press. His work as appeared on Newsmax.com, Men’s News Daily, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com and The Rant.”
and
“Klaus Rohrich, Senior Writer for CFP also writes topical articles for numerous magazines… and is currently working on his first book dealing with the toxicity of liberalism. His work has been featured on the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and Lucianne, among others.”
aha that sounds just like the sort of journalists those actoids approve of. The canada trouser press by the way feature rodney rawhide as a global warming expert. Truly.
Google, and be amused.
Lynn: The question that they try to avoid is is the basic science wrong
When it comes to this people seem to skip right down to `those dastardly scientists are faking it all’.
(But only some of them … not the ones I trust my life with whenever I fly in a plane, or take prescription drugs, or eat prepackaged food.
The primary characteristic of the models is that they are consistently wrong. They always under-estimate the onset of the timing of the effects.
Right. And somehow this is justification to throw them out entirely …
L
The biggest argument against the ETS has to be why would we ever think it a good idea idea to transfer the best part of a billion dollars to the Russian kleptocracy? I know they have fallen on hard (relatively) times with the recent reversion of commodity prices to the level of 18 months ago but keeping these blokes in super yachts shouldn’t really be our concern. A sound mechanism for incentivising emitters to reduce emissions is a good thing but I’m not sure the ETS is that. A carbon tax would at least leave the revenue in the NZ inc coffers rather than buying credits from dodgy provenance countries. Corruption within an ETS is a very real issue in some jurisdictions. And then you have the distortion between regimes with grandfathering and without – even NZ was a good case of that with regards to forestry.. Unless of course we do what Europe did and magically make the cap well above actual emission levels.
I think in NZ most debate would reduce in volume if we were clearly seen to be following global consensus rather than trying to lead it. If there is no economic benefit for NZ in leading opinion why impose a competitive disadvantage on our exporters when the rest of the world isn’t doing the same?. If we were responsible for a large share of emissions then sure, we have a duty to lead, but we are an insignificant speck. Our performance as a terrible emitter over the last 9 years hasn’t hurt us internationally at all- foreigners still think of green grass and cute sheep when they imagine NZ.
The debate should not be one of “is global warming real”, it should be framed as “do we have an effective mechanism to keep us in line with mainstream international opinion and policy”. The answer to that has to be no – clearly not over the last 9 years and probably not over the next 3. Although 4 or 5 quarters of negative or nil growth will be quite helpful in that regard.
And isnt it ironic that (say) Norway as one of the worlds largest oil producers (ansd other oil exporters) incurs very little Kyoto liability from sucking out all that North sea oil, yet because we have cows we have a high liability (both comparisons relative to GDP).
And pulease, the self serving comments from an OMF broker who saw a chance to come home, set up a business and avoid getting sacked overseas are just that. Self serving comments. Likewise comments from NZX – cui bono……. who profits from setting up carbon credit trading schemes? Good on them for having a go (after all they are risking their own capital) but don’t confuse their profit motive with touchy feely, hug the environment thinking.
Smartest thing we could do is to 1. announce a commitment to meeting Kyoto targets, and 2 chuck out our existing scheme and start again in tri-partisan manner (both wings of parliament plus business) to come up with a policy that might actually work, and would survive future changes of government.
By the way, I do acknowledge their is clearly an anthromorphic effect on the global climate – it’s nutty to presume there is not, but I also think there is a sniff of “Club of Rome” style extrapolation going on as well. But I would rather be in the better safe than sorry camp.
What we really need is a technological solution then we dont have to change our lifestyles. Fantastic. I have seen surveys of technology which could allegedly work (I think in Wired?) but have no idea whether this is really practical. The coolest idea I have seen for power generation(as opposed to solutions to recapture CO2 or create shade) is space based power generation with microwave transmission – http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/ – this is really cool but I’m not scientific enough to know truly how practical.
“And pulease, the self serving comments from an OMF broker who saw a chance to come home, set up a business and avoid getting sacked overseas are just that. Self serving comments.”
Well, yes. How about the comments of Fed Farmers and the BRT and the National party though? Same thing applies though the specifics differ. Shall we set the price for the Carbon tax at the equivalent price for traded carbon credits? Otherwise it ‘seems self serving’ to suggest it, no? Perhaps we should kick that off before we start the talks as a sign of good faith.
Why should business get a seat at the tripartite table exactly? Who elected them? Should the IPCC? Or NGO’s? Sounds like more pretty words in service of delay gomango, with twist of self serving gerrymandering on the side. Sorry to say.
I said in one of the other threads, and I’ve seen no reason to change my mind, National is running a scam here, trying to shift the costs of pollution onto taxpayers and away from polluters as much as possible, for as long as they can get away with it. If you go along with it you are either a sucker or complicit.
We have been talking about this for years. Y.e.a.r.s. Why do we need yet more talks from scratch? Nothing in the science has really changed, (except to make action more important). So shouldn’t National have an actual plan already, or haven’t they being paying attention?
Pascal – we’re not exactly on opposite pages here.
You make exactly the point I was making – everybody has a vested interest, and there won’t be any kind of long term viable solution if only one set of idealogues have input. If you read what I wrote (not that I believe you have to!) I did say I believe a carbon tax is the best way to go. Tax production of greenhouse gases. Simple. No one can cheat. Every emitter comes into the scheme. Like GST – everyone pays, and cheating is hard. Rate can change easily in line with both what’s required to meet the emissions target and what is occurring overseas. Forget linking the tax rate to the price of credits, thats not the outcome you need to achieve – though that price mechanism looks good now with recent crushing of carbon prices. UN credits currently trading at EUR15 – on the back of reduced growth they’ll be trading at EUR 5 by June next year. What you want to achieve is whatever the Kyoto target is – how you get there doesn’t really matter, it just becomes a tradeoff of what are the other effects of your scheme (ie on growth, jobs,exports etc). Defending ETS is different to suggesting a viable solution. ETS is deeply flawed for all number of reasons – there has to be a better way.
And at the end of the day, what we do doesn’t matter in the global scheme of things one jot, either practically or reputationally. National does have a plan and it was obvious before the election they would slow down and delay because of growth concerns. No surprise there and most of NZ wont care in fact they’ll endorse this approach – bigger things to worry about now. 95% of the people reading this blog might care but 90% of the greater population doesn’t care at all and won’t until they can put job insecurity, cost of living issues, house price defaltion etc on the backburner. For most people, worrying about the environment right now is a luxury. And what are your thoughts about us being forced under the ETS to buy credits off Russian polluters who just happen to have fudged their baselines with full complicity from their Govt?
lyn/standard showing his usual degree of stunted interpersonal skills.
LOL.
[lprent: At least you tried to address a person that time. Of course the name is wrong and the point is incorrect. But at least you made an effort. Now all you have to do is find something to say that is worth while saying, and that the others can be bothered engaging with.]
gomango: Just picking up one point. The “better safe than sorry” – you’re arguing from the wrong analogy. Look at fishing for a closer one.
There is a significant difference between the Club of Rome models and the climate change models. The COR was interesting because their projections started missing virtually as soon as the projections were made. The reason is pretty apparent. There were price signals on the resource constraints that showed in that model – so the technology and processes changed to accommodate that. That is what markets do well.
As the price of a resource like copper started to increase, four effects started to happen. More exploration, technology and system changes to use less copper more effectively, more recycling, and people started to buy products with less copper. Same with the other major constraints to growth that the CoR identified.
The basic difference between that and climate change is that it is a ‘tragedy of the commons’ problem. No-one owns the resource (the atmosphere), there are no major costs associated in dumping into it, and there are no incentives for the polluters to improve their performance.
It will wind up like the north Atlantic fisheries. The abusers of that spent a lot of time ‘proving’ that there was no real issue with their practices to potential regulators. Mainly by wildly over-estimating the regeneration rates and poking holes in the scientists models. They also set up industry ‘scientific’ institutions just to do that. They caused the regulators to keep delaying or putting inadequate controls in until it was too late. It was also a multi-national problem, so countries were busy playing for relative advantage right until the end. Now this sounds awfully familiar.
Since those fisheries collapsed about 20 years ago, the fisheries haven’t regenerated – the whole ecosystem was devastated. Of course they will eventually. But a sustainable harvesting of protein from the north Atlantic at anything like an optimal level is probably going to be inviable for many more decades.
There a a number of similar cases worldwide. Anthropogenic climate change is just one of them. There has to be a cost associated with the pollution. When that happens then there will be the innovation to reduce the effects. Delays will just lead to worse outcomes.
Lynn,
The basic difference between that and climate change is that it is a ‘tragedy of the commons’ problem. No-one owns the resource (the atmosphere), there are no major costs associated in dumping into it, and there are no incentives for the polluters to improve their performance.
Worse still there is no clear governance entity that can compel polluters to improve their performance. What we have instead are voluntary agreements like Kyoto, that only work as long as everyone honours them. The right wing mentality simply sees these kinds of non-enforceable agreement as an opportunity to cheat, to avoid their communal obligation in order to maximise short-term profit. Typically cheating tactics include misdirection (denying the obligation), procrastinating, or shifting responsibility to others. In terms of climate change, we can see the polluters heavily engaged in all three at once.
The original ‘tragedy of the commons’ problem was resolved when various nation state governments assumed responsibility for them, and enforced laws and codes to protect the commons. Progress toward protecting the global commons will remain however, sporadic and unsatisfactory, until we have a global governance mechanism capable of holding those who exploit and damage the biosphere directly to account.
gomango: And at the end of the day, what we do doesn’t matter in the global scheme of things one jot, either practically or reputationally.
It’s beginning to anger me that people make this frankly ridiculous claim as if it’s a statement of indisputable fact. It sounds like an analogue to the old denier claim of `how could we puny humans possibly harm something so big and grand as planet earth?’ (which I accept you’re not making).
I work in the reputation management business where, as we say, a 60-year reputation can be destroyed in 60 seconds on 60 Minutes. New Zealand’s competitive advantage in the world is wholly tied up in reputation, as I explained pretty far above. Bobo, also pretty far above, mentioned that in the absence of a strong ETS, all it would take would be Jamie Oliver running a Ministry of Food special on food miles talking about how irresponsible it is to eat NZ produce and that’d be the practical end of our high-end export market in the UK. Even in low-end markets like China, reputation matters. I’ve paid ¥40 (that’s about NZ$10) for a NZ Natural ice cream on the Bund in Shanghai, and they can charge that much for it in a country where a hot meal costs a fifth of that because it bears the words `NZ Natural’. Fonterra was associated with San Lu and rightly or wrongly all NZ products have to an extent now been tarred with the melamine brush – that’s not to do with climate change; it’s to do with reputation.
So if you have any actual evidence for reputation not mattering beyond `John Key wouldn’t put NZ’s export industry at risk’, I’d love to hear it.
L
Lew – maybe that statement of mine was a little ott, but fundamentally we are a commodity exporter, something like 75-80%. I think the issue you’re moving into is about using climate issues a tool to erect trade barriers – clearly a valid issue given our experiences over the last 30 years. But m position is really is that as long as we are seen o be no worse than good practice in our export markets and that individual exporters can prove their green veracity, i think this whole concept of global leadership is overblown. We’re not seeing our tourism projections bear up in the face of recession as thousands of Germans and Yanks say to themselves “never mind the economy, i’ll still holiday to NZ as they have a wonderful ETF in place.” A cynic would also say that despite terrible performance versus Kyoto targets over the last 10 years our “100% Pure” branding campaign overseas has worked very well. Yet in relative terms NZ is one of the worst villains in the OECD.
And Redlogix, I don’t disagree with our last post either but the real issue about:
is not here in NZ. Everybody overseas has cheated on ETS – from US, India, China, Aust ignoring it, to the European countries issuing way too many credits in general and in particular to their job heavy polluters to countries like Russia effectively printing carbon credits on an “as demanded” basis. Any cheating in NZ pales by comparison. Your call for a global governance mechanism sounds suspiciously like a “New World Order” – don’t tell travellerev ;smile: icon_wink.gif. But you are right there needs to be a global mechanism which everybody is in – without China, India and the US anything is a joke.
The answer is simple – tax all forms of green house emission at source at a very very low level – strictly emitter pays. Structure the system like GST which works very effectively. Sneak the rate up year by year to massage demand (for emitting). Then in hard economic times (or good) the govt can use this as a fisca tool. In fact they’d probably want to give a carbon tax target to the RBNZ and let them run the fiscal policy around it.
gomango,
Your call for a global governance mechanism sounds suspiciously like a “New World Order’
People who don’t like government, really haven’t worked out that the one thing worse than bad government, is no government at all. All human society has always operated social mechanisms of one sort or another. They have had various goals, usually at the top of the list is the protection of entrenched privilege, and differing structures… but always there is a codified law, and a means to enforce it.
No human system has been perfect, or even close to it. Whatever we have devised we could always imagine something better; the process of perfection is without limits. The correct response to bad government, is not no government…. but a better government.
The problem with global governance is that everyone is afraid that their entrenched privileges might be not be as high on it’s agenda as they would like. And most certainly if you want to posit a totalitarian “New World Order” that is run by a shadowy elite, then yes I agree totally with you… such a thing could be the stuff of nightmares.
But the unavoidable truth is that we are already a global society. If you examine changes in the globalisation of trade, travel, language, communications, standards and technologies since WW2 then it is obvious that such a thing has already arrived. Already many big corporates and banks are more transcendently powerful than most smaller nations states.The need for a form of federated, global governance is ultimately unavoidable. Since the formation of the UN we have been delaying the inevitable for over 70 years, and the longer we put it off the more painful the consequences will be. Ultimately I believe we will get a “New World Order”, whether we like it or not.The only remaining question is what form it will take.
In the end the same principles that apply toward good governance of nation states, still apply at the global level. Namely, transparency, accountability and most importantly the sense of being able to meaningfully participate in a democratic fashion. We will not get any of these things if we keep burying our collective heads in the sand and hoping that the “New World Order” bogey will go away.
will,
thank ye so much for the ‘appreciation’ of CFP..
Lew and Lynn,
might it help these folks substitue ‘prototypes’ for ‘models’..? I can see this applicable to airplanes, new prescription drugs, tho on prepackaged food I am less inclined to opine..
i screwed up the smiley face after my new world comment. If there is anything good to come out of the global economic crisis it will be more transparency across borders,better co-ordination between regulators, central banks etc which is in its most literal sense a new world order. You need to recalibrate your irony meter. To be fair, a lot of changes over the last decade have been toward better co-ordination, for instance every bank in the world that wants to do business with a european or us based counterparty has the same minimum KYC and money laundering rules now. Basle 2, when that kicks off properly will better align bank risk management (if we have any banks left) – looks like citigroup is about to be nationalised over the weekend. And trade rules, etc all point to a greater interdependency and commonality amongst nations, but the issue is its very hard to sanction those that dont play by the rules. Countries like NZ, UK, Canada, Aust, Western europe will typically act in good faith and accordance with treaties they have signed but the next tier of countries tend to be loud on pronouncement, short on action and long on taking benefits inward from their treaty partners.
As an aside I think its generally fair to say that the nations with the strongest democratic tradition are those that entrench individual rights over sovereign rights. US, UK, Canada, France, Switzerland, Scandis, Aus, others.NZ – not too many others. I don’t think there’d be more than (say) 35 countries globally that would meet what you and I would agree are basic standards for democracy, transparency, accountability. The others – I don’t want them to have the slightest amount of influence over NZ. the world is a pretty bleak place – we are fortunate to live in NZ whether under a Key or Clark government.
The others – I don’t want them to have the slightest amount of influence over NZ. the world is a pretty bleak place – we are fortunate to live in NZ whether under a Key or Clark government
A realistic point, and a sticking point for many, many people. At the same time I still suggest that ignoring the inevitable trend towards globalisation is not going to get us the form of it that we want.
It’s really the same as the climate change problem; either we manage it, or it will manage us.