I am surprised there hasn't been more comment on this gloomy article from David Round, who can normally be relied upon for a dose of common sense.
Just read some of these absurd quotes:
Do not believe them. I will tell you the truth. Our age, the Oil Age, which we assumed to be eternal, is ending. Some "crazy optimists" (their own significant description) still insist that resources are infinite.
I am certainly an optimist, but it is Mr Round that is crazy. The Oil Age will not end for lack of oil. I am confident that when we stop using oil, reserves will be at an all-time high. We will give it up because there are better alternatives available through our technology, not because we can't find it anymore. New oil finds, new extraction technologies and higher prices are forcing a massive new advance in reserves.
Civilisation as we know it rests on oil. Food production requires oil for fertilisers, irrigation, cultivation, processing and transport. Although the secretary-general seems unwilling to mention it, the world's population continues to grow at something like 100 million more mouths every year. The wildest optimists estimate that the population might plateau after 2.5 billion more people are added.
Possibly 3 billion or so, but this is not optimistic. It is the current standard estimate. It is not particularly optimistic or pessimistic.
With the best will in the world, with universal sharing and no biofuels, there simply will not be enough to go around. And then, of course, climate change droughts, heat waves, floods, storms and so on will disrupt even existing agricultural production.
This is a ridiculous statement. But for the environmentalists' drive towards biofuels and against free trade, the current food crisis would be much less pronounced. There is no need for 'sharing'. Just a bit of common sense would do.
These problems are insoluble. International charity certainly will not solve them, and we ourselves will be far more hard-pressed in the future.
Just watch us, Mr Round. You will eat those words.
Strangly, the article then becomes a rant against immigration. Well actually he may have a point when he says we shouldn't invite loads of useless new people here, but he neglects to mention that we have plenty of our own. This comment for example:
We must stop trying to be the nice guy. Immigration must be for our own hard-headed benefit, and no other reason. We must be discriminating. Any immigrants must be of the highest quality. It is not enough to accept simple, well-built people, good at sports, aggressive when drunk, who might get jobs as cleaners.
I have no problem with that, however our immigration policies are already like this. We have a points system and try to encourage the best to come here. Apart from Pacific Island quotas and refugees (policies which to some extent are the result of NZ trying to be a good Pacific / world citizen however misguided) I cannot understand Mr Round's issue here.
He then goes into some sort of biblical rant:
The sea murmurs. A dreadful storm is brewing. It will cleanse from the world much that is rotten, and sweep away much that is wonderful and good. Soon the peoples of the earth will claw and tear each other as they frantically try to clamber out of their sinking ship.
The environmentalists are coming!
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