(Hat-tip: http://blog.endemicworld.com/2010/05/ours-not-mine)
(Hat-tip: http://blog.endemicworld.com/2010/05/ours-not-mine)
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 at 12:04 am and is filed under conservation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I Like it!
But lets still get it!
There are ways we can extract New Zealand’s Mineral Wealth without destroying our essential ecology and in the course we could boost our innovative market as well as paying for the sins of our fathers.
Its prime traction that any serious party should be investing money into right now, lets have a look at it!
We live in the purest country in the world by brand and by nature. That is our identity. No nukes, no whaling and no mining. Baby boomers who would sell our nation’s heritage to line their Tory Toyotas in their senescence, beware.
Unfortunately, New Zealand is not the most purest country in the world! that’s a misnomer! Cow crap in the rivers 1080 in the forest’s, Shell fish polluted and forest’s missing!
It’s time to wake up and smell the uranium!
N.Z.’s been trying to keep up with the rest of the developed nations for some time. We are smart people who love our land. It’s high time someone grew enough stone’s to actually preserve something in this failing world!
The only way we are going to do something like that, is with true innovation, by using every technology available to us in this current climate!
Just sitting back is not going to work. It has not worked, We need to innovate!
We must stop the onslaught by offering better solutions!
Wasn’t it JAnderton who caused the pine forests to be prematurely removed a few years ago?
Great Poster!
Sadly it needs one more slogan
A picture of Gerry Brownlee saying, “He thinks its his”
@Levi: “There are ways we can extract New Zealand’s Mineral Wealth without destroying our essential ecology and in the course we could boost our innovative market as well as paying for the sins of our fathers.”
Yes, and one of those ways is by extracting it from somewhere that’s not a national park.
Actually it is not mining that is the problem. It is where it is mined. We should support mining in non conservation land especially if the miners can surgically do so. If we try and oppose all mining support will be lost.
@ PDM, yes I recall it was. And his party got a nice little donation from Juken Nissho Limited, which, of course, had nothing to do with anything.
If a keyhole mine entrance was placed on non conservation land and tunnelled under nearby conservation land to extract valuable rare minerals the land above would look as before. This is the essence of modern surgical mining.
@ Fisiani reagrding modern surgical mining – Its realy not that simple or surgical.
Pike river is a very good example of how it can be done though.
The big issue is the stigma it gives to our clean green image and the loss of tourist dollars from this. There are parts of conservation land that will never be seen by anyone and is not that significant, we could mine these, but the stigma of mining our conservation land will still be there.
And who’s really profiting from the big digs?
One kg of mined silicon = $4.
One kg of silicon based microprocessors = $40,000
Maybe NZ should be developing an advanced high value added economy, where the money really is.
@Fis – Just because the land underneath isn’t visible, doesn’t mean that it’s not important. It has a function, plus we don’t want waste and pollution underneath.
The problem with long held ideological views is that the become extremist and eventually end up as dogmatic doctrine!
Lets be pragmatic for a second here. New Zealand is sitting on top of billions of dollars in mineral wealth.
It’s a common conception that the earth’s mineral resources are dwindling, the cost of the resources rise and the viability of extraction rises with it.
Godzone starts to look pretty darn attractive. My point is this;
Multinationals want it because we live on a planet addicted! Sooner or later someones going to give it to them. Looks like the sooner is more likely than the later.
A: We need to ensure that we get the maximum value (I like your post big red)
B: We need to ensure development of innovations that will not only conserve the ecology but can be heralded as world firsts, to maintain our clean green image (if not in fact boosting it).
Everyone is happy to jump to the lesser of two evils when it comes to issues like prostitution law reform or lowering of the drinking age, why should this issue be treated any differently? Asides from a long running clean green ideology which alluded to earlier which in my opinion has in some people become so extremist that it’s nothing more than useless unhelpfull dogma!
The same basic human elements exist here, They’re going to do it anyway and we should be regulating for the best possible outcome! If we take the dogmatic approach and these schemes push ahead (as the most likely will sooner or later) then I predict two highly likely scenarios;
A: We get ripped off and end up with a huge clean up bill
B: We lose our clean green image and spoil big parts of our remaining natural beauty for generations to come.
Pragmatic
@Levi: While regulating for the best possible outcome is noble, I do feel the mining industry takes an all-or-nothing approach. I’m highly disingenuous of the arguments that Big Mining won’t come here if we don’t give them head, let them not clean up after themselves, and give away all the royalties to them. It’s worth pointing out that the Aussies have the luxury of hectares and hectares of desert wasteland that would be otherwise worthless.
And the wider issue hasn’t gone unnoticed by the international community…
- The Grauniad
- The Sierra Club
- IUCN
- The Economist, of all publications.
I’d be potentially concerned if an anti-environmentalist ultra-nationalism emerged in response to ‘meddlesome foreigners’, in the same fashion as the pro-whaling lobby in Japan calling for Pete Bethune’s head on a sushi platter. Like the anti-nuclear movement but without the saving graces.
@deep red: The story in the economist proves my case and point exactly.
My point of view is a rather pragmatic approach, people are simply going to keep on doing what they do if it’s profitable, makes their lives easier or if it’s an ingrained habit.
These are three main reasons why greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise (asides from the fact that the only thing being done to curb them is taxation and more proposed taxation! Yawn!)
The same can be said of mining, it’s highly profitable so at the end of the day it’s going to happen whether we like it or not. There’s always going to be Some idiot or idiots who just can’t see past the dollars (and the dollars will always rise to meet the occasion). Which is why taking an “all or nothing” approach against it doesn’t work and simply increasing the tax take on it’s own is of no real long term benefit either.
It’s my belief that imposing conditions on extraction which gives rise to the need to innovate (and rewarding those that do) is more than just noble, It’s just plain old common sense. As waterboy mentioned, the pike river project is a good example of a way it can be done.
pike river
“Everyone is happy to jump to the lesser of two evils when it comes to issues like prostitution law reform or lowering of the drinking age, why should this issue be treated any differently?” – Because unlike mining in schedule 4, prostitution and under age drinking were already rife across our land!
The thing with decriminalising prostitution is that it gave protection to those workers.
Gooner and pd, are you suggesting Brownlee is getting a big donation tot he National party in return for pushing mining?
…and our prostitution laws ignored the Johns and punished the prostitutes. Regulated prostitution is safer for everyone, punters and workers.
Kia Ora
This is one last push for submissions against Mining our precious conservation land. Submissions are due 5pm tomorrow (Wednesday 26th May). Submissions take 2 minutes via this online form. Our natural landscape is surely worth a couple of moments of your time?
Online Submission form –
http://submissions.watchdog.org.nz/
for more information see this great website.
http://www.2precious2mine.org.nz/
Be the change you want to see in the world – make a submission and pass this message on.
Cheers
Kate