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Thursday, October 30, 2008

NZ ranked among big polluters


NZ ranked among big polluters
New Zealanders' love for cars is contributing to our huge ecological footprint, which per person is now ranked sixth largest in the world. A WWF Living Planet Report released yesterday shows that only the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Kuwait, Denmark and Australia have larger per capita ecological footprints than New Zealand. The report, regarded as the leading statement on the planet's health, differs from measuring just our carbon footprint by including not just what the country consumes in resources, but how much waste is generated and its impact on the natural environment. Globally the report showed that more than three-quarters of the world's people now live in nations which are ecological debtors, where national consumption has outstripped a country's biological capacity. However, because New Zealand has a relatively small population for the country's physical size it is not yet in eco-debt, with a bio-capacity still up to half greater than our footprint. Chris Howe, WWF-New Zealand executive director, said our global consumption was increasing and biodiversity declining. New Zealand moved from requiring 5.9 global hectares per person in the 2006 report (based on 2003 data) to an average of 7.7 global hectares per person (based on 2005 data). Mr Howe said a global hectare was a hectare with world-average ability to produce resources and absorb wastes. Worldwide, the average ecological footprint jumped from 2.2 global hectares per person to 2.7 global hectares per person. The planet could afford just 2.1 global hectares per person and humans were now exceeding the planet's regenerative capacity by about 30 per cent.

There are those who don’t want NZ to be a leader in green policies because our contribution in pollution is so tiny compared to the rest of the world, I think that’s a cop out. We can lead by example, and look at how wasteful we are with our resources we use 7.7 global hectares compared to the average ecological footprint of 2.7 global hectares, we are running out of global hectares, we will need another planet full of resources if we continue unsustainable growth, where are we going to find that other planet folks? We have the slight luxery of being able to make these changes in an environment that is well supported with public services, how dare we lecture developing countries to use less polluting methods of power generation when we are not even bothering to do our bit? Clean and green NZ is a lie that has been partly spoilt by Dairy Farmers and lazy politicians who are too frightened to spook the cows.

11 Comments:

At 30/10/08 8:00 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

anyone else waiting for Bombers comment on the fizzer? the story he has promised all year, he even said yesterday that nobody would be talking about Winston next week because of this story.

Cant wait for his post!. I think he will attack the Herald.....

 
At 30/10/08 8:05 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Clean and green NZ is a lie that has been partly spoilt by Dairy Farmers and lazy politicians who are too frightened to spook the cows.

Vehicle emmissions are more to blame.
Per Capita, NZ has the second highest car ownership in the world, and we also travel large distances.

Thats what you get when you have a sparsely populated country, with inadequate public transport.

 
At 30/10/08 8:33 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

anyone else waiting for Bombers comment on the fizzer? the story he has promised all year, he even said yesterday that nobody would be talking about Winston next week because of this story.

Cant wait for his post!. I think he will attack the Herald.....


Heh.
The term blowback is quite appropiate.

Of course we are more concerned with what a money trader did 20 years ago than what our Finance Minister is doing in the past year.

 
At 30/10/08 8:44 am, Blogger Bomber said...

anyone else waiting for Bombers comment on the fizzer? the story he has promised all year, he even said yesterday that nobody would be talking about Winston next week because of this story.

Cant wait for his post!. I think he will attack the Herald.....

I said I don't think we will be talking about Winston and Owen next week USA is OK and I said it was either going to be launched at the end of this week or Wednesday next week.

 
At 30/10/08 9:04 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fizzer? Let's look at what is being claimed...

In 1987, head of Equiticorp Allan Hawkins illegally helped Elders Merchant Finance in New Zealand with the takeover of another company. In return, Elders paid Hawkins $66m through a series of sham foreign exchange transactions. There were two so-called ‘H-Fee’ payments, which were fraudulent and illegal. When all this was uncovered, it was described as the biggest fraud in Australasian history. Hawkins and Kenneth Charles Jarrett, the head of Elders, went to jail.

John Key had joined Elders Merchant Finance in 1985. He was head of foreign exchange from 1985 until he left Elders. Key told the media and the Serious Fraud Office that he left in 1987, before the H-fee transactions took place in January and August 1988: “Just one small issue: Three months before any of those deals got decided, I had left Elders.”. Key has also said that, if he had been working at Elders when the H-fee transactions went through, he would have been making the transactions.

Actually, as now established by the Herald, Key left in June 1988, after the first H-fee. That means John Key was the head of Elders Forex when massive illegal transactions were being conducted by that business group. Key himself says that he would have been the one making the transactions. It remains to be seen if Key actually signed off the deals, but he clearly knows more than he led us to believe. Why else would he lie about the date that he left Elders on multiple occasions?


If Key says he would have been handling the transactions if he had been there during the deal and it turns out that he was in fact there when the deals were being made and he lied about the dates.......I hardly think this is a fizzer if Mile Williams has the paperwork that Key signed off on this, you don't expect to see more in the weekend?

Really?

The media are not being fluffed for the moneyshot?

 
At 30/10/08 9:54 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK... We CAN fix this!

If we grab about a net seven million immigrants over the next ten years, we will reduce the distance between people and make it financially viable to build better public transport (preferably by having roads that move rather than vehicles that move on roads, but that's another discussion). This will reduce the ratio of cars:people, and so get us a lower placing on this measure.

Yeah! I know! Our total pollution will go up, but, much like the UK, we'll be in a better position because of those ratio thingees, that always catch us out. Oh! And don't forget that by increasing the number of people we'll actually reduce the number of cattle we can farm (houses do need land ya know!). Our fart reduction will more than offset the increase in other emmissions, making us a poor, but ecologically sound place to live.

QED

:-)


PS, heard you on the radio yesterday - lurve yer werk!

 
At 30/10/08 11:32 am, Blogger bradluen said...

Actual report: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report_2008.pdf
NZ's high per capita ranking is due to "grazing land" and "fishing ground". The method claims to measure the footprint of the consumer, not the producer, but the numbers suggest the burden hasn't been adequately shifted. (Not that this gets NZ off the hook, since producers too have a responsibility to be environmentally efficient.)

 
At 30/10/08 1:15 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Key himself says that he would have been the one making the transactions

Bullshit. Show us where he said that.

You need to stop beleiving everything you read at the Standard.

 
At 30/10/08 1:21 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

said I don't think we will be talking about Winston and Owen next week USA is OK and I said it was either going to be launched at the end of this week or Wednesday next week.

That is true, but then you also said yesterday with regards to this h-fee nonsense:

Do you honestly think this latest story has played out in full do you?

Turns out you were right, just not in the way you though - the embarrassment of Labour spending taxpayers money sending Williams to Australia will be all over the news tonight. AND Helen Clark's fithy lies that she didn't know anything about it just adds more egg to labour's faces. They have been wallowing in the muck for so long now, DESPERATE to find something to pin on Key, that they are starting to look like complete pigs.

 
At 30/10/08 3:18 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

well...hot dang...little ole enzed is a big polluter
lets all hold some more V8 races to bring in some money huh?

 
At 30/10/08 6:09 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

NEWSFLASH!
It's the total emissions that make an impact on the climate. The earth doesn't take into account the 'per capita thing'. The fact remains that NZ could fall off the face of the earth and it would make NO difference to world emissions.

And what sort of unscientific, ambiguous crap is 'global hectare'.

Total bullshit.

 

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