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CoffeeWaffle
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Thursday, 17 May 2007
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The Minister for Social
Engineering, the Hon Ben Dover, announced today that the government would soon
announce details of its child abuse credit trading programme. It is expected that under the plan those
wishing to abuse children could purchase credits from individuals and
organisations which care for and assist children. An official said: "it might work like
this... a Plunket nurse could sell the credits accumulated over any financial year
from the care of children to any individual or organisation without credit or
with a shortage of credits to abuse children." The Ministry would be issuing a schedule
of abuse, grading various
activities and the number of credits required to carry them out under the
scheme. National's spokesperson on social
engineering condemned the government's attempt to bring in the scheme and said under
National child abuse would be regulated by individual hardworking New Zealand
families. A Maori Party
spokesperson said that gangs should be allowed to trade in the credits just like
any other organisation. The
Greens objected
to the plan as being inferior to their own proposal to tax child abuse but
said, nevertheless that they would support the government. Winston Peter's office said the
Minister, presently touring refugee camps on the French Riviera could not be reached for
comment.
(Written by my friend Ron Resnick as a letter to the editor of our local newspaper. Trying to get across the absurdity of carbon credit trading in 200 words or less is no easy task, let alone getting it printed. I think Ron nailed it with this and it's one of his best letter writing efforts to date.)
4:49:06 PM 
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Friday, 4 May 2007
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Don't buy a smaller car. I know that sounds like something I wouldn't normally say. A greenie like me should be all for selling those SUV's and buying up electric hybrids as quick as they can build them, right? well. no.
I overhead a conversation today between a group of people admiring a shiny new car one of them had just bought. I was a nice compact, economical looking thing. The part of the conversation I overheard went something like this.
Admirer 1: "So you've traded down then?"
New car owner: "Oh no. I'm reducing my enviromental footprint."
I bit my lip and kept walking. Why didn't a shake their hand and say good on you? Well, because what they did probably had little or no effect on their "environmental footprint" at all. You've got to do the math. The whole equation from start to finish...
By the time a new SUV reaches it's proud new owner, it has already cost the planet about as much fossil fuels in the materials and manufacturing as it will consume in it's lifetime. The materials, the power for the assembly factory, the shipping of the parts and finished product, etc etc. Everything must be included in the equation. And here's the bad news. The enviromental cost of a brand new hybrid is not far removed from that of the SUV. Think about it; they are still made of the same materials, using the same manufacturing process, and they are still delivered on a truck.
So what has the person that sells their old SUV to by a nice new hybrid actually achieved for the planet? In reality they might as well just keep driving the SUV for the rest of it's life. Their "enviromental footprint" (I just love this feel-good buzzword) would remain the about the same.
If you want to make a difference by changing your mode of transport try a bicycle, public transport, or walk. Better yet, work on reducing your need to travel and stay at home. Buying a feel-good, technofix, economical, CAR is not part of the solution.
7:36:19 PM
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© Copyright
2007
Murray Neill
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Last update:
17/05/2007; 8:20:02 p.m.
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