Gareth Hughes, Green Party Energy Spokesman
There was a triumphal email in my inbox this morning from Gareth Hughes, buck-toothed saviour of the world.
Kia ora Richard
I had to pinch myself because I almost can’t believe we did it! [Neither can I. – RT]
Today our government has announced the historic decision to end all new fossil fuel exploration in our oceans.
Ending deep sea oil and gas exploration has long been a key goal of the Green Party and today, in Government, we’ve delivered it.
Without question it is our biggest victory yet. We’ve stopped the rigs.
This nuclear free moment of ending the environmentally dangerous and planet threatening search for new oil and gas in our pristine waters has come about because of you and generations of New Zealanders calling for a clean energy future.
For decades Greens have shone a spotlight on the perils of oil drilling and its threat to our very existence. And today we have won.
Our beaches, our whales, our Maui’s dolphins are safer from the danger of a Deep Water Horizon type catastrophe because of the decision our Government has made today.
This victory shows what we can achieve together.
I hope this is just the first of many major victories for our environment our Government will deliver with you.
Gareth Hughes
Green Party Energy Spokesman
Oh God, what have they done?
Oil, Mother Nature’s precious gift, born from the deaths of countless ancient organisms, the wonder resource. It took us about 200 years to master, and the clever wee Greens have decided that for our own good we can’t have it. Well, we’ll make that decision for ourselves, thanks very much. So you won’t get a second term and if you continue in this vein, you might be getting more than mere electoral disappointment. Go away and govern yourselves just for practice. 
The Greens are taking the credit for turning off the local oil tap, though they weren’t elected to govern. Fortunately they cannot stop overseas exploration nor stop us importing oil, but they say their next step is to prevent us from using oil. I can’t wait to hear how they will keep our steel smelter (though it uses coal, they’re saying “leave it in the ground”) running on windmills and God knows what kind of power stations they’ll build (since they oppose hydro and nuclear) to let all those new electric cars recharge their batteries every night (when the sun doesn’t shine), because there is certainly no capacity for that right now.
No more oil? What will they make our electric cars out of? Steel (using the dreaded coal)? Can’t use plastic, that comes from oil. Maybe timber cars.
In a stroke, the government exposes us to the vagaries of international pricing, predatory political ambitions and the simple loss of profit from paying foreigners to produce a resource we are perfectly capable of producing for ourselves. With fracking, we were just about to reap a bonanza in cheap energy, though I wager they’ll let that continue—lots of new taxation to gather there.
Chaos of climate
All this, just as the Royal Society announce they have no evidence that our emissions cause dangerous global warming. Greens and Royal Society activists—idiots all, apparently haven’t noticed that their obstinate, left-wing opposition to capitalists, with their fanciful schemes to bring affordable energy, housing, packaging, medical supplies, tyres and more (see poster on the right) to the masses, is quite unappreciated by the masses.
The warmsters have been scolding us for using abundant, affordable hydrocarbons for personal transport and creating materials from tar and ink to heart valves and aspirin. They demand we stop drilling and mining. In other words, stop creating affordable products that improve and save lives. This is beyond stupid. The Greens’ thinking is an ideology unanchored in reality: all of them on comfortable incomes, ignorant of domestic financial catastrophe, simple-mindedly smiling at higher prices for everything, every one leisured, witless and heedless of people’s needs.
Show us the evidence
They say that our harmless emissions of carbon dioxide are wrecking the planet, but show us the evidence! If you know nothing of science you might point excitedly to computer climate models, over-promoted icons of physics predicting the unpredictable—the pure chaos of climate. It’s true that emissions from hydrocarbons, if raw, cause significant pollution, but modern engineering cleans it up. In fact, running the best modern engine in the world’s worst urban air pollution produces exhaust gases cleaner than the air it sucks in.
The warmsters ignore the fact that high-energy-density hydrocarbons have lifted many millions out of a short, brutish life of poverty and into the health, education, income and comfort levels of the middle classes.
Regrettably, they also ignore the need to gather evidence of harm before banning these good things. So we will remind them.
Views: 517
Yes, the harmful emissions are certainly wrecking western society. Political emissions from suicidal Leftists and false Greens. Talking about “our oceans “, Gareth Hughes and Co are deluded, unless they have a watertight and airtight deal with Chairman for life Our good friend Xi. Even then they are deluded. As a westerner, do not ever believe you have a done deal with the rulers of the People’s Republic of China.
Before the shills and trolls start their shrill trolling, let me tell you I am not racist. This is not about the Chinese, Han or otherwise. This is about geopolitics and the facts of life. New Zealand’s ocean does not belong to New Zealanders. Whatever is under the seabed around New Zealand does not belong to New Zealanders or their government of this today. This ocean and its resources in and under and above it belong to the power which controls it all. Guess which power that might be? The Kiwis have long been Ostriches.
Science 1
Cranks 0
Careful who you refer to as “cranks”, Stephanie. You may just be a loon….
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2018/01/on-climate-nightmares-daft-sea-level-predictions-and-reason/#comment-1543500
So show us the evidence.
Hope the loons enjoy their GW until they freeze. And starve, because the shortening of growing seasons is intensifying as we write (see Joe bastardi’s forecast into May; we have watched this growing for some years now, and are getting some understanding of the ‘Quiet Sun’ phase. People are already dying because of the loons). NZ 1st will have to pull finger…..Brett
All will come to pass. The warm will pass into cold. Probably after I am cold. Then perhaps practicality will prevail.
Also, I don’t think it’s good to make fun of a buck-toothed wanker. It’s just not good to ad-hominise the matter, although quite funny. Not that funny, but it is funny! Not that funny…… but it IS funny!
Never mind, we can still get our oil and gas from Saudi Arabia, a country that executes people by beheading in the street, and lashes and imprisons rape victims.
This is quite a good article from The Spinoff on this topic
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/13-04-2018/wheres-the-evidence-that-the-government-has-thought-through-the-exploration-ban/
The ban is for oil and gas exploration. NZ is self-sufficient in natural gas, so we will have to import all as (for heating and cooking etc) once the gas runs out.
NZ could have exported LNG to other countries thus reducing emissions by displacing coal.
Instead, the NZ government have committed to increasing global emissions and greater costs for local residents. They have done this without any cost/benefit analysis or consultation with industry or the public
This government is dangerous and incompetent .
It’s not just political loons that are the problem, the MSM is also completely on board with climate hysteria and the demonization of fossil fuels. The general public watch TV and read the papers daily and they end up believing the same nonsense.
It’s gotten to the point where greenism has become almost a new Marxist based religion, while green politicians and journalists play the role of clerics. It’s truly bizarre.