People make a mess

Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, June 6th, 2012 - 15 comments
Categories: energy, Mining - Tags:

Like the character, Nick Taylor, in the movie, ‘Thank You For Smoking’, self-styled “Oil lobbyist”, David Robinson is a highly paid apologist for the fossil fuel lobby.

Robinson’s job is to counter the environmental movement on one hand, and encourage the big investors to put money into expanding mining and drilling on the other.

The industry not only has to deal with opponents here, it needs to make itself highly visible to big players overseas.

Just as we, Robinson’s opponents, need to make our opposition, ‘highly visible to these same big players overseas’, – to discourage them.

Painting himself as an admirer of the Green Movement, Robinson’s smooth veneer only starts to slip at the mention of the high profile campaign against fracking.

Fracking is the word du jour for people who are anti-oil and gas and there’s nothing more to it than that,”

Robinson keeps a USB stick in his pocket in defence of fracking. But concedes he wouldn’t want fracking anywhere near where he would personally live, and of course he won’t have to. Not with the salary he is on. Just as those who invest in coal mining never have to touch the stuff. No doubt, Robinson will make sure that he lives as far away from the results of his day job advocacy, as possible.

In his final comment to the Herald in what he probably thinks is a genius act of misdirection, Robinson tries to get the spotlight off oil and gas and coal mining, to the pollution created in cities. “People make a mess.” he says.

Brilliant!

You would have to wonder whether the fossil fuel industry is getting value for money.

– Jenny

15 comments on “People make a mess ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Lanthanide 1
    6 June 2012 at 12:50 pm

    Damn all those city-slickers, taking our perfectly natural oil and combusting it in their car engines, making smog and pollution!

  2. Fortran 2
    6 June 2012 at 1:54 pm

    Think – what is Plastic made from ?
    Look around and see what does not have a plastic content ?
    Find anything.

    • felix 2.1
      6 June 2012 at 3:35 pm

      Yep I have a lot of non-plastic stuff.

      But even if I didn’t, what’s your point? That because we’ve got a lot of it, we can carry on indefinitely making the shit?

      Spell it out man.

    • Lanthanide 2.2
      6 June 2012 at 4:03 pm

      See, one of the interesting things about plastic is that it can be recycled, generally quite well.

      Transportation fuels make up 81% of a barrel of US crude oil. If we could significantly curb our oil used for transportation, we’d have ample supply for plastics and other chemistry uses. This in turn would mean we wouldn’t need to drill so much, and so wouldn’t need to be employing practices such as fracking and deep-sea drilling to get our oil fix.

      • weka 2.2.1
        6 June 2012 at 5:37 pm

        How would we transport all the plastic? Esp the stuff that has to go to China?

      • felix 2.2.2
        6 June 2012 at 5:39 pm

        Yes it can be recycled, but in our present reality not particularly well. For a start only a small amount of the plastic we use can be recycled at all, and most of that is only downcycled (meaning you end up with much lower quality plastic than you started with.)

        A lot of people seem to think when they put their coke bottles in the recycling bin they’ll be made into more coke bottles, and while that’s true of a very small percentage it’s far more likely they’ll end up as sewer pipes or plant pots, which in turn can’t be recycled at all.

        But yes in theory, with far more precise and refined processes, we could recycle the stuff indefinitely. As long as we had the energy to do so. Which, if plastic recycling had become economically viable i.e. we couldn’t afford to make it from oil any more, we probably wouldn’t.

    • mike e 2.3
      6 June 2012 at 6:42 pm

      Footrot alot of plastics are now being made from plant fibre.
      Your a redneck simpleton.

  3. TighyRighty 3
    6 June 2012 at 4:08 pm

    He wouldn’t like a big US style operation near where he lived. Quite a different prospect than what is currently being proposed. Don’t let that get in the way of your spin though. Because spin is only bad when someone is paid to do it right? But not green peace or wwf of course.

    • Draco T Bastard 3.1
      6 June 2012 at 4:14 pm

      There’s a difference between spin and truth that you don’t seem to have grasped.

    • Matt 3.2
      6 June 2012 at 5:01 pm

      And he would like, what, a delightful little fracking operation (just cute as a button!) nearby instead? One that just gently coaxes natural gas from the strata, with all the delicacy you’ve come to expect from Kiwi business?

      • Steve 3.2.1
        6 June 2012 at 6:04 pm

        Yes, so long as they adopt similar practices to that of the Dairy industry, she’ll be right.

    • Murray Olsen 3.3
      6 June 2012 at 8:07 pm

      Why does he want them near where other people live then? How much do you get paid for your spin?

  4. Richard Christie 4
    6 June 2012 at 6:46 pm

    Gina Rinehart will populate Fairfax News with climate change deniers and mining advocates should she gain a seat on the board.

    Now there is a powerful apologist that you guys should be worried about.

    • Murray Olsen 4.1
      6 June 2012 at 8:08 pm

      Fairfax News has them anyway, but they’re not rabid enough for her.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.