What’s the point of notices in hotel bathrooms asking you to hang your towel up if you’re happy to re-use it if the cleaning staff give you a clean one anyway?
Are they deliberately sabotaging the hotel’s attempts to be green or is the notice just feel-good greenwash?
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Homepaddock 
Ele.
If you are genuinely trying to do the green thing, what on earth are you doing at a National Party conference?
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To get the treasured “environmental boxes” ticked on the accreditation form, the enterprise has to have the “policy” in place, of course monitoring is another matter. Same with “organic food” where it is all about image and very little about truth or substance.
I am aware of a “new manager” of an organic Vinyard who was tripped up at an annual audit when he admitted doing what the previous manager had done with some aspect of disease control and recorded it wheras his predecessor had just not admitted it.
Has anyone drunk wine made from inorganic fruit.
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RG., you are still being a Tosser, there are very many supporters of an improving environment among the center right political parties in this country who approach the environment from a more honest POV than the so called green movement who have as their central philosophy a comunistic/socialistic POV that ignores the central plank in the bridge to progress while they piggyback to their Nirvanna. That to make progress we first need food, shelter, health, the law, respect for our fellows, education and a strong personal belief system. All the above require a growing economy that delivers wealth.
I see a far greater honesty in HP and her environmentally aware fellow members at the Nat Con than with the watermelons who want the wealth creators to pay for there mindless braying.
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GD – there may well be a gaggle of “supporters of an improving environment among the center right political parties in this country”
but they’ll be feeling very uncomfortable, betrayed even, by this government. As for National’s ‘honest POV’ – I whole heartedly agree with you – their intentions are indeed clear and match their actions closely. Overturning Schedule 4, supporting the hunting of whales, repealing Water Conservation Orders, the list goes on and on and on and I find it difficult to believe that your ‘supporters of improving..” are cheering that kind of exploitation.
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RG, I have read several differing opinions on the three topics you mention that you appear to have a problem with.
Would you care to elaborate further, and thereby enable this aging dinosaur to come to grips with the various subjects.
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Fred – you’d like me to expand on:
the attempts by the National Party to erode Schedule 4,
National’s proposals to allow the Japanese to hunt whales in the southern ocean,
the destruction of the Water Conservation Order on the Hurunui River.
That’s a big ask.
Do you have any specific questions?
I’d be happy to discuss the details.
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GD – this fragment doesn’t make sense,
” WATERMELONS who want the WEALTH CREATORS to pay for there(sic)MINDLESS BRAYING.
(I’ve capitalized the parts that reveal your ideological prejudice and added a ‘sic’ where you’ve spelled carelessly, just to show that I ‘close read’.)
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There is only one way to improve the environment and that is wealth creation.
Nobody wants to live in a degraded environment Robert – nobody.
But to live in a nice environment and to keep it pristine takes money.
Which is why Waikanae (wealthy) is a nicer place to live than Cannons Creek (poor) and why Jakata, Kibera (extreme poverty) etc are also extremely environmentally degraded.
National of course, a party of little substance will offer pinches of incense on the altar of environmentalism in an attempt to buy votes and more importantly to take the opportunity line the pockets of themselves and their cronies (eg their ETS).
And like all “environmental” initiatives the long term result is greater environmental degradation.
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Andrei – you’ve bought into a Great Lie, with your belief that ‘Nobody wants to live in a degraded environment’
Farmers, for example, eagerly accept a degraded environment, one that is less biodiverse, less stable, less natural, less species rich etc. than that which their farm replaces , because they can profit from the degradation and the system that they replace the original syatem with. They WILLINGLY accept a monoculture over a multiculture.
Tell me I’m wrong about that.
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Further Andrei – there are environmental management systems that result in the long term in an improved environment, especially where it starts on conventional farmland – essentially a ‘green desert’.
I’m not sure whether your disbelief in this claim results from your lack of study, practise or knowledge, your cynicism or ideological blindness.
Respectfully
Robert
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Robert I have personally seen slash and burn agriculture as practiced in Sarawak and those people live grim, desperate, nasty lives because they have no choices, no options and if we followed your prescription neither would we.
Have you ever seen kids living in garbage dumps, kids for whom a broken leg might mean death!
Don’t get me started there is a whole litany of horrors I could relate, horrors beyond your comprehension that make me want to weep.
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Andrei – I have not described a ‘prescription’ so I’m guessing you are supposing. If you assume that I am proposing ‘slash and burn’ then you are supposing wrong.
A great deal has been learned from the lofty height that affluence has provided and from there we have been able to look at a miriad of forms of land management, something the Sarawak haven’tt had the luxury of doing. From our vast pool of information and experience we are bound to devise a system of land managment that is appropriate to each and every ecosystem. Pastoral farming, as practiced here is not up to the grade by any stretch of the imagination. It pollutes the rivers and watertable. It damages the soil. It requires a near monoculture, thereby destroying biodiversity on a massive scale.It requires enormous input of fossil fuels, it forces people from the country into towns. It contributes hugely to the production of greenhouse gases.
We humans can do vastly better than this.
The present systems that dominate food production and land use around the world are not ‘best practice’ but that does exist. Citing the worst practice you can think of to try to make New Zealands dominant land use practices look good is a red herring, and a feeble, gasping one at that. I’m not fooled.
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