Simple indeed, Kleefer.

If you care to test my argument, form a political party based on the promise to sell it all off and see how far you get.

Oh, wait. Heh.

L

Private landowners generally make much better stewards of land than governments because of the financial and emotional investment they have in it. They can charge for access to the land to help cover the cost of maintaining it and they can choose who they allow to enter that land. They can even (heaven forbid) tell the mining companies where and how they are allowed to mine on the property (or they could tell them to sod off).

Considering the number of people that turned out to protest mining on the weekend it shouldn’t be hard to raise enough funds to purchase considerable amounts of conservation land, particularly when you’ve got wealthy celebrities like Lucy Lawless involved.

But I suspect many of these protesters think that other people should pay to protect the things they value. It’s easy to put other people’s money where your mouth is.

I’m surprised to find this line of argument here. One immediate inference — and yes I took a look at sookie’s comment above — is that the government (or someone) could up the DOC rent and miners could go ahead.. for it to be okay with you.

Given redlogix’ s pov, too, that cons areas are likely leftovers, the whole push for mining explore/exploitation would pass to them at their own risk. More justifiable propositioning..?

What we’d really wanna know for sure is well just what are miners after.? Something, someone not telling..

The matter of damage and damages is something else. Miners doing it for nothing is a real bad look as the BP Deepwater — yeah they’re mining for their own stuff — is making clear elsewhere.

Suggest you sort this out..

Capitalism – it’s a cancer of the world.

‘We’ wanted coal and generations of workers paid in terms of chronic ill health and premature death.

‘We’ don’t want coal? Why should those same workers pay for that too?

The West Coast might be offering a starker contrast than is evident throughout much of the rest of contemporary NZ, but the day of that same stark choice being presented to the rest of us…of to continue in destructive employment and contribute to the market driven digging of our communal grave, or not and be plunged into ever deeper levels of market driven individual destitution…isn’t too far away.

In the context of a continuing market economy, welfare is the only option, if indeed there is to be an an option, to the suicidal business as usual scenario.

The reason why the most interesting exploration areas are in the Conservation estate is pretty much the same reason why the land is in the estate in the first place.

Most privately held rural land is valued for it’s farming potential, which is pretty much in direct proportion to soil fertility and ease of cultivation. It was of course the river flats that were the prized farm land, with hill country very much second best. Anything with actual hard rock and real mountains is useless for farming…and yet these are the places you expect to find valuable minerals. (The obvious exceptions are of course gold/silver dredging and lignite coal, but we already have plenty of that kind of extraction happening on private land anyhow.)

It was the left-over land that no-one wanted for farming that became the Conservation estate, and over time has been valued for it’s intrinsic beauty, wilderness and a last refuge for many threatened species. Of course not that any of these things mean much to big corporates looking to make short-term profits at our long-term expense.

Now they have the dam proposal, although the tourist industry enjoys paying to see the river as it is. But the electricity from it will be a cash cow that they won’t be able to lose money on. I have talked to an environmentalist who says that it is possible to fell a limited number of native trees etc and that regrowth would be enhanced by very limited roading. Perhaps the matter could be looked at again without the rigid environmental fundamentalist input, in exchange for dropping the flooding of another wild and wonderful tourist river attraction.

Really good thinking going on in this thread – government should be coming here for advice.

L

Same thing if mining provides your employment. Meanwhile, I don’t think there exists anywhere in the world a miner who wants to spend their life underground.

If mining and logging disappear from the coast is there any prospect beyond that of a series of ghost towns? Insofar as no other possibilities are being articulated (market orientated or otherwise), it would seem safe to assume that is the only future on offer.

Would you accept that if it was you and your family?

Given the apparent national paucity of imagination and alternatives, any chance of taxpayers paying locals to not mine? And to not log?

Or at least joining with Coasters to fight such a fight?