I was at the very cool and slick launch of Pure Advantage last night. There’s been a bit of media around it, but the message is simple – NZ is clean and green and it’s not only a great thing but we can leverage it to make money out of it. Check out their facebook and website.
A line from last night:
China has committed a trillion dollars to alternative energy. And it’s not because they care about trees.
There’s money to be made in being green.
Of course China has committed to it. They have 90% of the earth rare earth minerals. If they get every one else to go “Green” they get to dig great big holes in the ground so they can sell rare earth minerals to everyone.
Of course they don’t have environmental protection laws, an RMA or hordes of luddites telling they can’t do it, so they will. Just so long as we can’t see the devastation and it is over there we can all fel good about being “green” when we aren’t even remotely close to it.
$$$
$$$ 
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China restricted exports of rare earths a while back. This article makes for interesting reading on the present climate regarding those restrictions.
Instead of things like the RMA, China has unchecked pollution causing untold amounts of cancer, which is their leading cause of death.
China has nearly 500 million people who lack access to safe drinking water and only 1% of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.
Many of China’s coastlines are so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life. New Zealand can capitalize on this if we protect our fish stocks from over fishing and limit farm runoff and other pollution sources such as pulp and paper mill effluent.
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China’s coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. According to the Journal of Geophysical Research, much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China.
All these environmental problems get harder and more expensive to address the longer they are unresolved. China has no other choice but to change to a green format if they want to survive. There are already uprisings because of the impacts of pollution in that country.
If New Zealand develops sustainable production practices, we have a chance to capitalize on other countries failures and inability to produce enough to sustain their populations. There really is profit to be made in this way.
However the real benefit will be in reducing the negative impact associated with unsustainable practices. This alone could save New Zealand and the world a huge amount of funds. However the pay off to implementing a clean green and sustainable practices is more than just financial.
All Jackal says about China is true, but it’s also that China is moving very rapidly to address these issues, including closing down older coal-fired generators and building new generation, cleaner, plants.
Of course, this addresses the pollution but not the carbon dioxide emissions.
However, being an authoritarian state, China has more capability of restructuring its economy as the technology becomes available and we can expect to see the US and others, including us, straggling in their wake unless we get our acts together.
Catastrophic climate change is fast approaching, and in democracies the courage to truly tackle the scale of the problem is pretty thin on the ground outside Europe.
“Catastrophic climate change is fast approaching, and in democracies the courage to truly tackle the scale of the problem is pretty thin on the ground outside Europe.”
Ha-ha-ha. What a stunningly ignorant statement to make, in direct opposition to the scientific records of recent years. Of course they arent falling for it anywhere else. They arent as stupid as us.