Everybody else is going, so why can’t we?

Written By: - Date published: 8:11 am, November 28th, 2009 - 16 comments
Categories: climate change, john key - Tags:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon have called on world leaders to attend the Copenhagen talks on the new climate change treaty. President Obama will be attending as will the leaders of most major countries. Yet John Key still says he almost certainly won’t go, even after New Zealanders raised the money to get him there.

This is what people are talking about when they say Key is a do-nothing Prime Minister.

He doesn’t literally ‘do nothing’, of course – if you want someone to launch your boat or a cycleway opened or a clown for your kid’s birthday party he’s there in a flash.

But when it comes to the big things, the stuff that matters, he does nothing. Unemployment? Do nothing. Wages? Do nothing. Environment? Do nothing. Copenhagen matters, even National seemed to think so when it was ramming through its shambolic ETS this week, yet Key’s still planning to do nothing.

If you look at the international trips Key has gone on they’ve been meaningless talkfests, a speech to the UN General Assembly at 6pm on a Friday when no-one was there and some amatuer stand-up.

Copenhagen is the real deal. What is being negotiated there (and, probably, in follow-up meetings) is the most significant international agreement, arguably, since the UN charter outlawed the wars of aggression. More countries than ever before will be signing up to legally binding emission reductions. The treaty will be a unique supranational effort to confront a uniquely global crisis.

The world’s leaders will be there to shape the agreement, except for Do Nothing Key. And I guess that tells us what kind of a leader he really is.

16 comments on “Everybody else is going, so why can’t we? ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Rob Carr 1
    28 November 2009 at 8:22 am

    Even if he does he go unfortunately I think it will just be for a bid on the security council.

  2. quenchino 2
    28 November 2009 at 8:45 am

    Key made his real position on AGW clear years ago, back when he was a relatively junior member of the Opposition and it didn’t matter too much if he spoke his mind.

    Subsequently he changed his public stance in order to come across as that nice uncontroversial smiling Mr Key, but privately nothing has changed… and it shows because even now he says as little as possible about the topic as possible.

    Worse still Key knows that attending Copenhagen would not only be a sustained exercise in personal hypocrisy, but deeply stressful having to smile nicely at rooms full of high-powered AGW believers… while inwardly he seethed.

    Doing nothing no doubt seems by far the easier choice.

  3. Thomas Beagle 3
    28 November 2009 at 9:25 am

    I think it’s a bit unfair for you to blame Key for not going – it’s not like he was invited.

    He’s not a world leader, he’s just a fast follower.

  4. vto 4
    28 November 2009 at 9:49 am

    I betcha 2c he will go.

    You can see him already lining up the possibility and clearing awat the previous debris.

  5. Bill 5
    28 November 2009 at 10:45 am

    But since Key agreed with the US to announce a CO2 reduction target that made the more recently announced US target seem not so totally out of the ball park…what is the point of him going again?

    NZ is not going to say anything without the say so of the US.

  6. Bill 6
    28 November 2009 at 10:58 am

    As for you and me (as in the ‘we’ of the post) going or having our concerns and opinions included in any way whatsoever…..you are kidding aren’t you?

    ‘Cause that would be like, oh I dunno, democracy or something.

    Meanwhile, in the real world, if I do something which makes a real and lasting contribution to reducing CO2 I won’t be getting $$ in the shape of carbon credits. No. What I’ll get is ignored at best and in all probability financially penalised for kicking against the pricks.

  7. travellerev 7
    28 November 2009 at 11:06 am

    John Key doesn’t need to go to Copenhagen.

    He’s already done his masters bidding. We are doomed to pay Carbon tax for merely breathing out CO2 while this week the scandal that is the climate change scam broke.

    Here’s a climategate for dummies for those of you who want to do right by our planet and are willing to take the consequences of your behaviour and who have been conned by the international banksters into believing that a carbon credits will help fight our destructive behaviour.

  8. randal 8
    28 November 2009 at 11:07 am

    ha key has just cashed another one of his three dollar bills.
    his constituency is about one removed from the cars can run on water but the oil companies bought the patent brigade.
    I imagine his biggest topic of conversation would be whether grey shoes were still hip…oh and how much they cost of course.

  9. sk 9
    28 November 2009 at 12:22 pm

    The problem is that John Key is a conservative politician whose model is Holyoake or – in some ways – Muldoon. His ambition appears to be leave NZ as he found it, and then bugger off. He tells people that if not for going into politics he would not have come back into NZ. So he has no real affinity for the people or the land, beyond being a platform for his personal ambition.

    He is a fine chap at getting along with people, but the challenge NZ and the world faces needs more than fine chaps right now. Fine chaps are good at toasting the Queen, but not much else . .

    He should be at Copenhagen, but at a personal level does not believe in AGW, just like he supported the Springbok Tour.

    • Huub Bakker 9.1
      28 November 2009 at 1:56 pm

      And well done that man Key, he’s obviously not that gullible.

      Global warming is over. It’s a dead man walking.

      The computer programs that were leaked with emails from the Climate Research Centre (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, the very home of global warming research, have now been shown to be perpetrating a callous fraud. A Congressional investigation is now underway in the States.

      Here’s a gem from the files:

      “Eric S. Raymond is a software developer and advocate of the open source software movement. He wrote a seminal paper called The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which explained why open processes are more effective than top down ones. He has been studying the code used by the scientists at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, whose work raised serious questions about the quality of the research being used to underpin the proposed $1 trillion Cap’n Trade bill stalled in Congress. Here’s what Eric found in the computer code:

      “From the CRU code file osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro , used to prepare a graph purported to be of Northern Hemisphere temperatures and reconstructions.

      ;
      ; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
      ;
      yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
      valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
      2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
      if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
      ;
      yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

      “This, people, is blatant data-cooking, with no pretense otherwise. It flattens a period of warm temperatures in the 1940s — see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the century.

      “All you apologists weakly protesting that this is research business as usual and there are plausible explanations for everything in the emails? Sackcloth and ashes time for you. This isn’t just a smoking gun, it’s a siege cannon with the barrel still hot.”

      • Eddie 9.1.1
        28 November 2009 at 2:12 pm

        But Key just passed an ETS. National acknowledges the reality of climate change, despite what a couple of emails of a couple of scientists say if you view them through biased eyes.

        National wants the taxpayer to pay the cost of climate change, that’s the problem.

      • quenchino 9.1.2
        28 November 2009 at 3:28 pm

        Hilarious. If one of your students handed that in Huub, as ‘proof’ of anything, you’d fail them…wouldn’t you?

      • quenchino 9.1.3
        28 November 2009 at 4:23 pm

        D- Fail.

        And it seems you failed the Ethics 101 course too.

  10. BLiP 10
    28 November 2009 at 2:13 pm

    At least Key acknowledges that he has nothing to contribute to the discussion in relation to AGW, I suppose.