Save the Humans

Slowly or Quickly Better?

New Zealand needs some serious changes to increase its productivity growth, which is hopeless. Some of the things I can see are:

• Reducing government expenditure (since the state is not the best in terms of productivity)
• Removing road blocks caused by RMA, health and safety and council policies
• Looking at economic dis-incentives like working for families and welfare dependency
• Improving communications infrastructure (I am not sure about the benefit here, but it can't be bad and everyone is talking about it)
• A general review of the law books, which seem to be stuffed with unnecessary regulations
• Building more roads and upgrading those which are close to capacity
• Building more power stations and a concerted effort to reduce the cost of electricity (by more supply) and the certainty of future electricity
• Turning New Zealand around sideways so it can encompass more time zones

More particularly it is clear that we could have a massive minerals boom here in oil and coal, and we should get into this as soon as possible.

But my real question is this, taken from Antidismal quoting from Forbes.com:

Key's hope is that building good relations now with the Maori Party will pay dividends in later elections where the Maori Party may well play kingmaker. Key may also be hoping that moving slowly with a broader coalition is a better recipe for longer-lasting economic reform than moving quickly with fewer allies. Our hope is that he remembers to move at all.

In my limited experience of reform in New Zealand, the fast approach seems to have worked best. Roger Douglas transformed a number of parts of the economy overnight. When car duty was abolished slowly, at the rate of 5% a year for 5 years (from memory), the industry asked that the duty be abolished immediately, as they could not sell any cars.

While it is nice to think that you can signal a change and then slowly move there, the result is often more uncertainty, less business investment and more consumer pain than if you move quickly. Perhaps the short term pain in this regard is unemployment, which has a bit of a lag. But New Zealand's labour market is significantly more flexible than it was in 1984.

If John Key has a prescription for improving New Zealand's productivity, and I hope he has, then he needs to move on this quickly. He should announce major measures before Christmas to give people time to think over the holidays. He should legislate early and often.

By April next year, we should all feel as if we have been punched in the stomach, and moving forward in some new direction. It would not be good if by then we were vaguely aware of a slight twinge in the lower abdomen, and unsure whether it will develop into a healthy appetite or appendicitis.

People say business craves certainty. It is true that businesses can't / won't invest when they can't form a reasonable view of what is going to happen in the future. National needs to create that certainty, but on its new track.

Is Telecom is a Bunch of Bunnies?

The author of this video seems to think so:

Judith Becomes Nikki

Auckland Central's loss was a pretty sad event for Labour, and Helen Clark. The new MP is Nikki Kaye from National:

Auckland swung strongly towards National in the election, with a 6.9 per cent jump in its share of the party vote to 49.7 per cent - helping it pick up three seats from Labour plus the new seat of Botany.

Ms Kaye reflected the Auckland Central electorate's changing demographic towards a younger, more highly educated crowd.

But it seems that for some on the other side it is a very happy occasion worthy of enormous effort and sacrifice. How else can you explain Whaleoil's latest video? The dialogue is pretty funny!

Judith Tizard will be spending more time with her family.

Worryingly for common sense, Nikki Kaye describes herself as bordering on an environmentalist:

"I know I did win a couple of booths on Waiheke [Island], which is very historic for us," said Ms Kaye, who described herself as "pretty passionate" about the environment.

Of course there is nothing wrong with caring about nature. But when it degenerates into ranting about global warming, peak oil, save the whales, etc. it is dangerous and expensive stuff. Maybe she is keen on trees and fresh air, rather than the nuttier causes.

Let's hope this doesn't mean the government will fill up with environmental types. We have enough of them in the wild.

Mean Deluded Journalists

Am I the only one that finds this comment from one Linda Burgess sad?:

Most bizarre footage of the night was the arrival of our prime
minister-elect at election HQ. For five minutes or so what we got was a
group of The Sopranos – Uncle Junior lookalikes in rumpled suits
looking as if they were doing a deeply uncoordinated square dance.

They shambled slowly forward. Trapped in the middle of them, unsure
when to Do-si Do, was an understandably embarrassed-looking Mr Key –
surely even he knew this was his Obama fantasy taken to ludicrous
extremes.

They certainly didn't look like a family of extroverts who have done it all before. They looked dreadfully normal, a bit like any family you might meet wandering around the neighbourhood. How wonderful.

But the night was Miss Clark's. Here was someone who has been mocked
for being childless, surrounded by her family – her parents, sisters, a
line-up of adoring and exquisite nieces. She looked tired, she knew it
was over, and with total graciousness she told us she was resigning as
leader of the Labour Party.

In terms of facial expressions it was striking how similar the Labour and National background people were.

Helen Clark's speech was anything but gracious. Our group were singularly unimpressed, particularly after Mr Peters had done such a wonderful speech, and particularly with her nasty comment about right wing people undoing all her work. She mentioned Mr Key only once and never said anything nice about him.

For the record, 'gracious' is when you congratulate your opponent, talk a bit about his good side and how he has New Zealand's future at heart just with a different take on it, muse about the future of the country under the new leader, and wish him the very best of luck. Listen to John McCain's speech for a few ideas.

There's a lot we don't know yet. But what we should know is that for the past nine years we have been served by a very fine person indeed. An exceptional prime minister.

Many would agree. In fact, few would disagree with that now that she is gone. Let's give Mr Key a chance though, just for a few weeks. He obviously has some clue, right?

Chris Trots Out the Talking Points

Chris Trotter has his moments. But this piece, an attempt to explain Labour's loss (rather than National's win) is not one of them.

After nine years of left-wing government, New Zealanders by the narrowest of margins have elected a government of the Right.

I think National won seats 2:1 against Labour. Only the list votes saved Labour from deep embarrassment. Under FPP this would have been a landslide and it is about as close to one as possible under MMP. National also won more seats than the left put together. It's hardly a narrow margin.

Because the 2008 election campaign really began the night the 2005
general election ended; the night when New Zealanders courageously
refused to stick to the Right's carefully crafted and lavishly funded
script and returned Helen Clark's government to office.

Now that was a close thing. If South Auckland had run out of chicken on election day, things might have been very different.

In terms of funding, Kiwiblog's analysis suggests that the left funds far more lavishly. Of course this ignores the free manpower that the unions provide.

In the intervening three years, the angry drumming of the Right's multi- faceted campaign has never ceased to assail our ears.

Talkback radio: hard-right from one end of the dial to the other.

Soft right maybe. But people out there simply aren't as left wing as Mr Trotter wants them to be. The class struggle days are over. People care about issues that affect them. Does Mr Trotter want to ban calls who refuse to expound left talking points?

The daily press: partisanship on a scale not seen by New Zealanders in more than 30 years.

Certainly they have railed against the EFA. Most would argue that is their job. But many supported the smacking bill with obedient stories of child abuse, ran Labour's reaction to a National point rather than the National point, and asked the environmentalists for their point of view on just about every article where they might have an opinion. To me the press seems hopelessly compromised towards environmentalism, and to a lesser extent, the left.

Television: dumb and dumber.

Hard to disagree, although I am not the most conscientious TV watcher. But there has been clear left bias there also - witness TV3's role in the secret tapes despite the enormous loss of credibility it has created.

Strangely this seems to have evaporated during the election as National is getting only positive now. Is this the honeymoon?

Right-wing lobby groups: the Sensible Sentencing Trust, Family
First, the Free Speech Coalition quoted, feted and funded as if their
reactionary gobbets of fear and rage were the products of sage and
sober reflection.

Perhaps it is true that the silent majority did start to take an interest in family, sentencing and free speech matters. For this to happen they have to feel highly threatened. There is far too much going on in most peoples' lives to mess around with this sort of thing. Perhaps Labour's sorties in these areas bit a little too deep into the comfortable understanding built up over years of ambivalence.

For example, Brad Shipton, convicted in a pack rape case, was released 3 years into his 8.5 year sentence due to a change in the law that Labour made.

The smacking bill is all I need to say about the family.

The EFA obviously frightened many people enough to get them out on the streets.

Labour's politicians, up on the stage, felt the grinding and the clanking of scene-shifting machinery more acutely than anyone else. It is what led them to make the many strategic and tactical errors that ultimately led to their downfall.

I don't think they ran a bad campaign. Looking at it, it seemed to me that Labour had a very real chance of victory. The fact that the environmentalists and Mr Peters failed on the night was all there was in it.

Mr Key was a formidable opponent, and the actions of government over the last 3 years are not immediately forgotten just because it is election time. A weaker campaigner may have just given up before it started. Miss Clark appeared to work hard and expect victory right up until the final debate, at which point she folded.

The "overspending" in 2005 had to be paid back, essentially requiring the governing party to fund the equivalent of two and a half election campaigns in just three years.

Without the deliberate and dishonest overspending (remember, Labour was advised it was illegal, promised not to spend that money, and then decided that they would anyway) which may have altered the result of the 2005 election, Labour would have had more money. So what?

But it is hard to see that Labour was poor. Billboards everywhere, online ads all over the place (I never saw one for National), a red Labour sticker on the newspapers a day before the election... The signs were of a very well funded campaign.

The Electoral Finance Act, intended to shove a great big spanner in the right-wing works, fell victim to the law of unintended consequences. Denied the opportunity to lobby in the traditional fashion, Labour's enemies were forced to press the one institution which the EFA did not regulate – the news media – into their service.

If that was the EFA's purpose, then Labour deserved to lose for that reason only. You are not supposed to rort the electoral system to screw your opponents.

It was the news media that dubbed Sue Bradford's attempt to confer upon children the same protections against assault and battery that adults enjoy "the anti-smacking bill", faithfully reproducing Family First's public relations talking-points.

And the talking points of about 80% of the population. What a silly, silly bill! How people raise their children is no concern of the state, anyway. This is the same government that argues that what people get up to in their own bedrooms in their own affair. Next the government will be regulating permissible acts there.

More than any other factor, it was this misrepresentation of Ms Bradford's bill as an attack on parents' rights that soured so many of Labour's traditional supporters, especially in its crucial working-class heartland. The drop of eight percentage points in Labour's share of the party vote in Auckland represents a huge victory for a resurgent Christian Right.

Describing this as a misrepresentation states very clearly that Mr Trotter still doesn't get it. It may take years for Labour to understand this issue. Until they do, they will not be back in power. Lots of people have families, not just Christians.

It was the news media, too, which characterised the EFA, Labour's attempt to drive a wedge between wealth and influence, as an attack upon democracy. Poorly drafted, and introduced without bipartisan support, the act proved to be a sitting duck for the shotguns of the Right.

And fair enough too. Although I would point out that it had a lot of criticism from the left also. It was a shoddy and cynical piece of work. For one thing it tried to allow the unions to do what they wanted.

The dark side of the Right's campaign was, of course, the unprecedented political assault upon Winston Peters and NZ First. Brilliantly conceived and ruthlessly executed, the attacks upon Mr Peters removed from the stage the one individual, and the one party, which could have prevented the Right from assuming power. The NZ First leader has paid a heavy price for spurning the advances of Don Brash in 2005.

In Trotter-world, this is no doubt gospel truth. In the real world, Mr Peters was the architect of his own downfall, with lies, misleading statements, dodgy accounts and unwarranted and dishonest attacks on journalists and opponents. Few mourn Mr Peters' passing. If he is honest, neither does Mr Trotter, except for the fact that he might have supported Labour for another term.

The only good thing to come out of it was Mr Peter's concession speech, which was the highlight of the evening, and one that I will remember for a long time. I don't know if he wrote it, or the angels did, but it was brilliant.

Encouraged to see their government as arrogant, high-handed and fatally out of sync with their most cherished moral values, the hundreds of thousands of Labour supporters who simply stayed home on Saturday have also paid a heavy price.

We will see. Whether it will top the $250 a week price of Labour's increased government spending remains to be seen. I think it is unlikely. National will probably be a much cheaper government.

In Helen Clark they have lost the most accomplished political player of her generation. Returned in an election in which just 77 per cent of enrolled voters cast a ballot, National takes the stage on the second-lowest turnout in a century.

At last a point I can agree with. This election was not particularly inspiring. Labour had 'trained' its opponents to agree with everything it said, or face nasty press headlines. Mr Key did exactly that, swallowing all the dead rats, and then, confounding the left, producing a few dead rats of his own and swallowing them also. Labour purchased a dud railway for way over valuation - National promised to keep it. Labour brought in middle class welfare - National expands it with unemployment insurance.

It started to look like Mr Key would swallow any rat. Labour had to stop producing rats and think of another idea. This is quite different from last election, where Don Brash choked on the rats and ended the meal.

Looking at the show from the electorate, it is not surprising that people were not impressed. While many voted for National in the end, it was really 'change' they were voting for, just sick of the same face on the TV each night. Without the EFA and smacking, perhaps Labour could have survived that for another term, particularly with Mr Peters in tow. But with the EFA and smacking, people wondered whatever next - crappy showers maybe - and bailed.

Mr Trotter shows a remarkable lack of understanding about the reasons for National's victory. National's billboards weren't great, their messages were simple but not particularly polished, and frankly boring. They did little or no online ads. It could simply be that National won because the voters wanted a National government. Stranger things have happened.

Being out of the country for the 90s I haven't seen a National government since i was a kid. I still remember old Muldoon. I hope this next few years is going to be interesting.

Mr Trotter needs o cheer up and join a yoga class.

UPDATE: Well he has quit. Read the comments here.

Why Labour Lost?

The Dim Post has a great analysis of the reasons behind Labour's election rout. Harsh, but fair, as the Aussies might say. It's quite short so be sure to read it. To quote a few lines:

Congratulations to the Green Party for their improved result, and special congratulations to Sue Bradford; her bill closing the Section 59 loophole in the crimes act was the other key ingredient in making the evening what it was. Your hard work in pushing through trophy legislation in the face of overwhelming public opposition has helped put Judith Collins (or some facsimile thereof) in charge of the New Zealand welfare system. I hope you think it was worth it.

Ouch.

And congratulations to all those who promoted and supported the Electoral Finance Act; I trust you are thrilled with the outcome of the election and that you will enjoy the process of watching the National Party write their own electoral laws in the same spirit of spiteful hyper-partisan vengeance with which Labour passed the EFA. I’m sure new ACT MP John Boscowan will be delighted to help them out and that he’ll also take a very keen interest in gutting the MMP electoral system while he’s at it.

The only march I have ever gone on in my life. Who would have thought Mr Boscowan would end up in parliament over that?

I suppose a general point is that when you think you are the natural party of government, and cannot lose, there are no restraints on the silly legislation you will pass. Some might call this dangerous extremism, but for others it is fact the natural centering effect of democracy, when they get tossed out.

The Precautionary Principle Paradox

The precautionary principle is an inherently silly concept, which is often mentioned by environmentalists. It holds that you should not do anything that might be dangerous, until proven safe.

The principle is at its most dangerous when strictly applied. No child would ever learn to cross a road if this was applied. No doubt electricity, the large hadron collider, the Boeing 747, A2 milk and that new corkscrew I got the other day would all be banned. Few things can be proven safe on invention. After all, the new thing has only just come about, often using the pinnacle of technology in that area: almost by definition we don't have a higher pinnacle from which to view the first one and decide on its safety.

It is worth thinking about the actual outcome of the precautionary principle. Take us back 100 years and work forward through each new advance in technology. Which would have been banned on discovery? Quite a lot, I'll warrant, including things like the green revolution. The result would be a massive increase in human suffering, overall.

You can also see it in practice. For example, Europe has banned lead in solder, and it has been replaced with a number of dodgy compounds, the long term effects and properties of which are not well understood. The precautionary principle didn't apply in this case, or did it? Neither and both...the precautionary principle is an inherent contradiction since you don't know whether you are safer with what you have or safer to try something new.

This business of 'don't do it until it has been proved safe' will be the death of us all. It needs to be seriously challenged and discredited.

Election Thoughts

Well that was a night, wasn't it. We had a little do with a few people. We also had a list of party cocktails to be drunk when that party did well. The favourite drinks were Maori (Toblerone) and Act (Dancing Angel). The environmentalist drink (Prohibition) was mostly tipped down the sink - recycled, you might say. By the time it was National's turn, as Mr Key gave his wooden but nice victory speech, no one could face another cocktail - champagne instead, Labour supporters included. We never got to drink the 'Helengrad', unlike last time. Miss Clark's speech was not gracious, despite John Campbell's views on the matter.

The question all night was how far National's vote would fall, but in the end it didn't fall enough to grant Labour another term. Winston getting almost enough to be back, but not quite, was a sad result for the Labour First axis.

The strange thing about MMP is how it accentuates the extremes. For example, environmentalists seem to have a lot of control in the last term, with the ETS, the smacking bill, the coal fire power station ban, more DOC land purcchase, etc. Yet they had only 5% of the vote in 2005.

This time, had voters given National just another few percent, they would have been able to govern alone and might have had a very centre government. (Oddly, commentators on the left painted this as a more scary prospect that coalition with others). Instead, National needs Act to govern and you can be sure that Act will want paying. Act's less-than-4% support will likely see the ETS watered down, some crime sentencing changes and maybe even repeal of the 39% tax rate.

In terms of tail wagging the dog, MMP has a lot to answer for. Act is of course very happy.

But for me, I am very relieved about two things. Firstly that the environmentalists did not get to form a government with Labour. In my view this would have sent New Zealand even further into the environmentalist dead end, of banning all forms of energy, production and exploitation, ultimately resulting in no power, goods or jobs.

Secondly, I am relieved that the environmentalists did not get the 10% hoped for. A figure of 6.5% is far too high and surely reflects the fact that voters have not spent enough time reading policies and engaging their critical thinking facilities. But it could have been a lot higher, and in fact even Winston Peters got 5% last time. It seems that a well organised contender can get 5% just for showing up. In that respect, the environmentalists have been kept in check.

The reasons for that are not clear to me. Some say that the environmentalist vote doesn't often present on election day. Perhaps soccer mums drive around in their tanks and dream of voting for environmentalists to assuage their enviro-guilt, but in the cold light of the polling booth think better of it.

Perhaps voters can see through the deep dishonesty of a campaign based around images of children, by a party which seeks, not to put to fine a point on it, to wipe them out. Our little group groaned every time Jeanette Fitzsimons mentioned children in her speech last night. That was a surprising number of groans. Sadly Mrs Fitzsimons' remarks are not on the web site.

Those who claim that environmentalists are hamstrung by their dedication to left wing politics are missing the point. It is not possible to be a right wing environmentalists, or at least not a very good one. Environmentalism requires state intervention, global government, tight limits on the contest of ideas, a focus on procedure rather than people, massive regulation and rule by a small elite. If that sounds a lot like communism then it is no accident. Environmentalism is a left wing game. National's Nicky Wagner take note.

Overall, the election is a good result. Not just because there is a change of direction (but to where?), but because it is a clear result. Early in the evening we discussed how many weeks it would be before we knew the result of the election. While the detail is sketchy, the good news it that the bones of the government were set in place by 11pm on election night.

For MMP at least, this was a good result.

Ozone Holier Than North America

Well even the Pope would be proud of this. Apparently, despite the rampant piety of the USA (where half the country goes to church each week) and Mexico (where even the drug dealers are Catholic), it seems that Antarctica wins in the holiness stakes,

In a shocking announcement in the Auckland Herald, NASA says that this year's ozone hole was the 5th largest ever recorded. They even have a picture:

It seems that banning CFCs did no do the trick. It is possible that in fact we don't understand this phenomenon as well as we think. In fact there is not much in the way of reliable data before 1979 (about 20 years worth, from ground measurements) so we're not even sure what 'normal' is.

Greg Bodeker, Niwa principal scientist, told the Herald
the ozone hole was shrinking, but very slowly. He said the chemicals
that mostly depleted ozone, chlorine and bromine, were decreasing at
about 1 per cent a year but there were annual variations.

According to folklore, the ozone hole is a new thing and never happened before we started using fridges. We don't have data to prove it, so all we hope is that in fact the banning of CFCs will sort it out.

Well the ban has certainly reduced production:

Sadly the ozone hole does not appear to have noticed yet:

The other point is that this 1% per year reduction in the amount of chemicals is bogus. The variation swamps this data. We were originally told that CFCs could last for years in the stratosphere, perhaps 12 years, and the hole dropped ozone down by perhaps 70%. So you might hope to see a reduction in the ozone hole size by now. But nothing.

We are also told that a single chlorine atom can destroy a hundred ozone molecules. Or is it 1000? Or 10,000?

Perhaps it is just a natural thing?

Also please stop telling us that it has anything to do with sun strength. Apart from the fact that the ozeon hole closes up before summer, it isn't over New Zealand. Also, anything that the sun hits will absorb the rays, including Oxygen. Maybe we should pump lots of large molecules up into the stratosphere to soak up the rays? CO2 might work...

Another Shower Video

You may have seen Whaleoil's shower video.

Well now Whaleoil has posted this video featuring a 7-year-old star, short by his 10 year old sister. Kids and technology are a dangerous combination. They complain about environmentalists' attempts to regulate our showers. Anyway, do watch it, it's quite a laugh.

Good Luck President Obama!

If it wasn't clear before today, it seems clear now that Barack Obama is the next president of the USA. This is going to be very interesting for a number of reasons.

Firstly, those who claim to not be anti-American, but only anti-Bush, have now lost their cover. It will be interesting to discover the truth of this. We will see in the next year or two how the attitude of New Zealanders changes with respect to the US. I have found the anti-Americanism pretty hard to take at times.

Secondly, those who claim that America is racist have also lost their cover. A country which believed that blacks are inferior in some way would not elect one as its president.

Thirdly, the democrats now have control over all three branches of government. The fiasco of the past 2 years, where Democrats were unable to get any of their proposed agenda through into law could possibly be blamed on President Bush, although he vetoed very little. That cover is gone and it will be interesting to see the result.

Fourthly, in Europe, Obama was clearly the favourite candidate, perhaps by a margin of 4:1. Therefore we can expect an opening up of Europe to the USA. To some extent this has already happened in France and Germany, but we can expect Spain and the northern countries to come to the party also.

Finally, given that Obama was endorsed by Hamas, supposedly bin Laden, Iran and many other enemies of America, we can hope for an end to terrorism and a new era of peace.

OK so the last one may be a bit much to hope for, cynic that I am. But even terrorists might keep their word. An attack on the US during Obama's presidency would be a massive betrayal and not be good for the terrorists.

All in all this is a very interesting and promising result. No one can predict the future, but it seems clear that in 2012 his presidency will be judged either as just the tonic the world needed, or a massive disappointment.

Given Mr Obama's obvious abilities, I hope and trust that he will make good on his promises, and that the US and world will be the better for it. Even his ability to communicate must count for a lot, as Ronald Regan showed.

Good luck President Obama.

Obama: Will the USA Go Down the Loo?

An interesting article from Real Clear Politics, which I will quote a bit:

After the big gamble on subprime mortgages that led to the current financial crisis, is there going to be an even bigger gamble, by putting the fate of a nation in the hands of a man whose only qualifications are ego and mouth?

Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.

...

Flashing his special phony smile, Biden said, "I think I have a much higher IQ than you do." He added, "I went to law school on a full academic scholarship" and "ended up in the top half" of the class.

But Biden did not have a full academic scholarship. Newsweek reported: "He went on a half scholarship based on need. He didn't finish in the 'top half' of his class. He was 76th out of 85."

Biden sounds a bit like Al Gore. No doubt he will finish up in environmentalism and tour the world doing speeches about global cooling in a few years.

If the USA is to have a black president, then this is presumably the time to do it. it will certainly shut up those who claim that the USA is racist. It isn't. But there are lots of dodgy things about Mr Obama, the people he associates with and the views he appears to hold. Let's hope that he has great advisers and is as good a listener as he is a talker.

Add to Obama and Biden House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and you have all the ingredients for a historic meltdown.

Let's hope not. I thought we had that already.

Hat tip: Power line

Peak Oil: A Man-made Phenomenon

A comment on my recent peak oil post deserves fuller treatment, so here it is.

Your dismissal of Peak Oil is naive and confuses demand destruction of oil by global economic recession with ample and increasing oil supplies as the cause of the precipitous drop in oil prices.

This is not a case of confusion. My point is that the price of oil is based on demand and supply (and speculation on what the future of that will hold). The market looks at all the information available and makes a decision on what price the oil is worth. When the price of oil was rising fast, environmentalists were quick to revel in the gloom of rising prices and attribute them to oil running out.

Therefore when the price collapses, it is only fair that pro-humans should revel in the wonder of unpeaked oil.

The former is fact the latter is fiction.

The reduction in demand is real enough and this is why we are all having a good laugh at the moment at OPEC's attempts to predict demand. But as I have pointed out, there is no let-up in the finding of new potential oil fields. In fact there appears to have been an explosion of new finds in the past few years, precisely because the price has been so high.

The idea of peak oil depends on there being no new oil, and running out of the old stuff. Neither of these is true.

Peak Oil pundits have long predicted precisely the decline in oil prices caused by economic recession attributed in part to higher energy prices triggering the default of sub-prime mortgages and the realization by finanicial institutions that their loans and business as usual model is not valid in the face of higher energy prices and stagnating oil production rates.

Actually the price of oil has not caused the economic recession. The recession is much more related to the amount of debt about and has been coming for years. Rich countries are much less dependent on the price of oil for their economic growth than they were 30 years ago. In fact the recent rise in prices didn't really even qualify as an oil shock.

As for the thought that the price of oil changes entire business models, what? Where? If anyone was silly enough to make decisions based on a few years of higher oil prices then they will be feeling foolish now, and even more foolish if OPEC don't manage to cut production fast.

Oil production rates are not stagnating - see my previous graph on this topic. Having said that OPEC has cut production, but not because they are running out, but because they want the price to go up.

Furthermore, the drop in oil prices has caused concern and alarm in the oil industry which will naturally retard - not enhance - continued oil development.

Of course this is true, although $60 is still a reasonable amount of money for a barrel of oil. The Saudis pull it out of the ground for about $2. Oil companies have made bumper profits recently, and have invested some of that. These projects may slow at $60 a barrel, but most are viable at that price. The only worry for oil companies is that oil drops to $10 again.

Having said that, with 40 years of reserves sitting in the bank, so to speak, it doesn't make sense to look too hard for new oil, unless it is significantly cheaper to extract that from existing wells.

Non-conventional oil projects and alternative energy projects will also be slowed, deferred and cancelled.

Yes indeed they will, but they have hardly had an impact on the oil supply market anyway. What the price peak has proved is that at $100 a barrel you can squeeze oil out of marshmallows and still make a profit. All sorts of bizarre schemes have been cooked up. Of course some of these will now fade away. But if the price were to rise again, they will come back.

This is precisely why the price can never get too high - there is ample oil at $10 a barrel, and at $100 a barrel there is more than we could ever imagine using, from the likes of tar sands, shale, etc.

Consequently, when the World's economies once again find sound financial footing and strong growth, the oil & other energy supplies will not be there to meet demand which will cause the price to eclipse the $147 per bbl high achieved earlier this year. Just watch.

Of course I will watch, hence my post. But you are sadly deluded. The market has learned its lesson about peak oil and won't make the same mistake for many many years.

Peak Oil is alive and well and there is no valid evidence to the contrary.

Environmentalists would love that to be true, and will do everything they can to bring it about. Things like:

• Banning drilling
• Banning coal mining (and coal to oil/gas technology)
• Banning oil transport in tankers
• Raising oil / petrol taxes
• Subsidising other forms of energy
• Hassling coal fire power stations
• Attacking carbon fuels through the global warming scam

It should be clear to most observers that peak oil is not so much a natural phenomenon as a man-made one.

Try a Flash Blocker to Speed up Web

If you haven't already done it, I recommend installing a flash blocker add-on for Firefox here.

With a lot of tabs open, and flash running, Firefox can really be hammered by some sites. Most flash animations are fine, and I haven't figured out why some are a problem. But anyway, having ads bounce around in front of you when you are trying to read doesn't make for a pleasant experience.

The blocker turns every flash animation on the page into a play button, a bit like Youtube. When you click play, it plays the flash animation. You can also tell it to allow flash on certain sites (such as Youtube).

Act Hits the Mark

Like many people I was probably turned off Act by Rodney Hide's manner a year or two ago, and all the nasty things people say about them. And Roger Douglas gave us GST! But Mr Hide has apparently 'reformed' now (dance-induced born-again actoid, if that doesn't scare you, it should). Have just visited their youtube site and found a great video.

You can sort-of watch it below

Except you can't watch it. Probably because the environmentalists are taking legal action to defend property rights or something. Those would be the property rights that the environmentalists don't believe others should have.

Perhaps those suffering under environmental bans and threats (like dairy farmers, supermarket owners, pubs, coal mine owners, forest owners and telecoms companies) might wonder at the irony of legal action being taken to defend property rights by those least interested in upholding the rights of others.

Here's a transcript that I took (errors are mine). Look at the image and read it for yourself.

if you really want to vote for me you'd give me opportunities, not
regulations; choices not controls. You wouldn't tell me what light
bulbs to use or showers or how many children I could have.

Because if you do, I probably will go overseas. Then all there'd be is empty space.

As a parent with children, considering our future in New Zealand, this ad really hits home for me.

It has obviously hit home with the environmentalists also. They are very upset:

I do however wonder how Aila and her photographer father must feel having had her image used without her consent.
...

It’s apparently not Aila but another photoshopped model, so ignore my last comments - But they’ve obviously been saving money on production costs as well as creative ideas.

With Rodney guaranteed to win Epsom, and Act's strong focus on showing up the environmentalists, I wonder if their vote will increase this election?

UPDATE: Whaleoil points out that the environmentalists stole it from the education department in 1988.

EFA's New Chilling Effect - Disrobing MPs

You have to laugh at this:

The Electoral Commission wrote to Mr Hide yesterday, saying that under the act the jacket might be an "election advertisement" and therefore required an authorising statement.

If there is a finding of "illegal practice", Mr Hide could be fined $10,000 and Act's financial agent $40,000

This is the chilling effect that we were told the act would have. Still, it is getting into summer - Mr Hide will be warm enough most days.

Mr Hide said he did not know why the commission had taken so long to act, as the query was made in July.

Well, it was winter then, and probably they felt sorry for him!

Nia: Pack it In

[This is the last topic in the world I want to write about, but I have to say something]

The poor little thing probably didn't even know what hit her. No I haven't read the story and neither should you.

I don't mind a bit of blood and guts but I am finding the Nia story really hard to take. Violence and crime is bad enough but child abuse so bad that it results in death is beyond my tolerance level. It makes me feel physically sick. I have not read a single story about the case, nor watched a TV segment, but I have been unable to avoid seeing headlines over the past few weeks. They have been lurid enough.

So here is a plea from me and all the other wimps out there who weren't brought up in an abusive environment and managed to survive our childhoods: please keep the details in the story. A headline of 'More Nia Stuff' is enough to warn us away.

Don't think by this that I have any time for child abusers. But in my view much of the problem is created by people having children they don't really want, and that comes back to welfare (DBP et al).

For mothers and fathers: children should not routinely be exposed to strangers - the new boyfriend should at least be on probation for a while before he gets to be alone with the kids. Even your own children can drive you nuts at times - think what they might do to someone who doesn't really care about them that much. This is an issue of parental responsibility, which goes beyond who the latest boyfriend / girlfriend happens to be. It is no excuse to say 'I didn't know s/he would abuse my children'. It is your job to know. Maybe you haven't been out with the girls for 6 months and the new boyfriend seems lovely and offers to babysit. Give it another month. None of this relates directly to the Nia case, but let's face it, there are plenty of other cases.

Worse than private failure is that government policies create an environment where abuse thrives. We try to find out about it at the hospitals, with the result that parents bringing children in with common injuries are subjected to the third degree. Far better to look at welfare policies which encourage people to have unwanted children.

And finally, I don''t like sarcasm, but cheers, Sue Bradford. Your 'child abuse' law has been magic.

Why Teens Can't Vote

From the environmentalists...is it just me or are they getting loonier before polling day? Perhaps it is because they are excited at winning all those seats. Or perhaps they are just giving us a taste of what is to come when we get to meet the 'candidates' further down their list than Sue Bradford.

I've often thought what might happen if teens could vote. Luckily I wonder no longer after watching this monument to our indoctrination / education system.

Congratulations to all the teachers and curriculum writers who have made this ad possible.

As someone pointed out in the comments, the ideal of children disowning their parents is not new. Communist China got there already.

Many children were also pressured to criticize and disown their parents. In an account of
a girl grew up in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, it was told that she disowned her
father completely after being told by her teacher that her fathers was a Rightist. She
wrote her father a letter to denounce him and did not even write a salutation at the top
of the letter as she did not feel that an enemy of the people was fit to be her father.

But then, these children would know more about global warming than communism, no doubt.

I wonder when all this madness is going to stop and whether environmentalism will be able to top communism's record of 100 million dead.

[updated to fix an error and spelling]

New US President will Bankrupt Coal Industry

This video is pretty scary given who is likely to win this week:

Save the Wails

Watch this only if you can bear it. If you can bear it, write a comment about how you managed and I might send you a prize. It is second only to The Office in its cringe-inducing power.

It is a small group of environmentalists who probably need to spend more time buying the land that they care about, and less wailing about it. Tip to the environmentalists: if you buy it, you get to say what happens to it.

Hat tip: Not PC who also has a nice cartoon

Environmentalists with a Brain: Winston is Toxic

Environmentalists are not all bad, and one thing you hear quite a bit about our own environmentalists is that they have morals. In fact it is often their morals which get them into trouble, in that they don't have much understanding of economics.

But I think the environmentalists should be proud of the fact that people who completely disagree on most points still expect them to do the 'right thing'. In my time in the blogasphere I have seen many examples of this.

I say all that because they have announced what has been clear for a few weeks now (and perhaps longer for some): Winston is polluting the political environment with corruption allegations and has been unable or unwilling to dispel the various problems identified.

The environmentalists have now made it even clearer that Winston is not for them:

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman today ruled out his party sitting around a Cabinet table with New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.

The party has called for a commission of inquiry into allegations of donations being used to get policy gains.

All we need now is for Labour to do the same. I can't really understand why Labour will not - surely they cannot be so desperate for power that they would invite him into a Labour-led government? Better to walk away, surely. I expect that Helen Clark will make an announcement in the next few days.

Dr Norman said he did not know enough about the Dunne case but said allegations swirling around Mr Peters meant the Greens could not sit around a Cabinet table with him should Labour win the election on Saturday.

Well done. A bit more effort spent on the political environment, and a bit less on the natural one, would do New Zealand a great service.

The Trouble with Environmentalists

I cam across this comment on a message board:

I have come accross quite a few anti Green sentiments in various
Threads on this message board and in a few other places too. I'm just
wondering what it is about them that people find so objectionable?

Yes, some of their ideas are a bit extreme and impractical-ie the
6lt/min Shower head thing, but at the end of the day we've ony got
*one* enviroment, and we *have* to look after it. As the saying goes-
"We don't inherit the world from our parents, we borrow it from our
children." So what kind of a world would the anti Green brigade leave
to their children I wonder?

So here is my take on it:

• There is very little to like about an environmentalist. They care about the environment more than anything else (hence the word). Like any fundamentalist, their belief trumps all reason. Oddly the government has passed a law (the EFA) to ban the Exclusive Brethren (who you might call Christian fundamentalists, althought I admit I don't know much about them) from public debate, yet it happy to actually have environmentalists in a government!
• We don't borrow the world from our children, or inherit it from our parents. The world itself is public property. We have parcelled up bits of it into lots which are owned by particular people. Vast amounts of land is owned by governments. The oceans are owned by no one. This is a silly saying designed to pretend that we mustn't touch the world because our children will be angry. They are much more interested in having a long and fulfilling life, and much of this depends on how fully we exploit our natural resources. Locking up resources is just a recipe for poverty, which will continue into the next generation.
• We have only 'one' environment is also rubbish. If I turn on my car it affects only people within a few meters - others cannot even tell. If a plane crashes into a mountain somewhere we might see it on TV, but we don't feel the effects of the pollution unless we are close by. There are lots of 'environments', all of different sizes and we in New Zealand don't care a jot that communist China is polluting its rivers and air. We can't even tell. Similarly, if China were to go bust and shut all its factories, we would notice is by the price of our imported goods, not by smelling the air

The term 'anti-environmentalist' is silly also. We don't talk about anti-Exclusive Brethren. I am not anti EB, I just don't belong to that group. If there is a term for people like me, it is 'Pro-human'. I think that humans are more important that the environment. The environment needs to be clean only because we like it that way, not because of any higher or deeper purpose.

So what sort of world would I leave to my children?

• Richer, where our children have larger and cheaper sections and houses, higher pressure showers, better education options for their children, cheaper travel, cheaper energy, more leisure time, better electronic gadgets, more to watch on TV, tastier and cheaper food, etc., etc. Every one of these is under attack from environmentalists
• Massively more integrated, with every nation's economy depending hugely on trade with others. Apart from anything else this is the quickest and best way to achieve world peace, since no country could afford the economic loss caused by annoying the others too much. This is also under attack since environmentalists hate trade

Far, far too many people look at environmentalists from about 10,000 feet and decide that they are nice people. This is how the environmentalists get so many votes.

So here is my election message: read the actual polices before you vote, and for each one think about how it would actually be implemented, and what impact it would have on productive society.

You can start here. It should take a person with a few years on the clock and reasonable critical thinking skills about 30 minutes to convince themselves that environmentalism is a dodgy place to put your vote.

But if you still think that environmentalism is the solution, then go ahead and vote for them. That's what democracy is all about, a contest of ideas.

Dumb ones included.

[updated to fix spelling of title]

Peak Oil - Oh Dear Petrol Drops Again, Never Mind

Oh dear this is a bad time to be an environmentalist. How low does petrol have to go before they will admit that peak oil is a scam? My prediction: not until it hits 80 cents a litre (i.e. the petrol stations give it away and all we pay is the tax).

This is about the time that environmentalists are due to pipe up that petrol is too cheap, and it trampling on other more costly energy sources. No doubt they will start demanding petrol tax increases soon. I hope Jeanette Fitzsimons sold her shares in Windflow Technology just in time. She probably knows the writing is on the wall for costly and wasteful methods of energy production, and that voters are tiring of high power prices. Either that or she just thought it was dodgy to own shares in a company when she is trying to influence policy on its behalf. Who can say...

Meanwhile oil is around $68, less than half its peak-oil-inspiring price of $140 in July. The Opec cartel things this is far too cheap:

Members of the Opec oil cartel have called for more production cuts to
boost prices - last week the cartel cut output by 1.5m barrels a day.

Here we go again...

Venezuela has said Opec should further cut oil output by another 1m
barrels a day and set a minimum price target of $70 or $80 a barrel.

The producers are still operating under the illusion that they set the price of oil. They have some control, but there are many factors out of their control, like world demand (which depends on energy mix and economic growth) and speculation (which depends on the price and prospects of other unrelated assets).

Perhaps Opec should disband and oil should be sold for what the market will pay. Saudi Arabia would own more and more of the market for the next few decades, at a price of around $10 a barrel. Then the others can come back later when Saudi runs out (assuming it actually does...)

One final note for those who think the market is not very competitive and the government is not the main thing holding prices high:

Mobil had earlier only dropped petrol by four cents, leaving diesel unchanged and giving competitors a two cent advantage

But Mobil adjusted its price just after 11am, coming into line with competitors

Just a few hours, and they caved! That's what I call market pressure. In most government departments they wouldn't have been able to call a meeting until a week later when all their customers had deserted.

Forget Peak Oil: Peak Candy is Upon Us

While environmentalists lose themselves salivating about the hoped-for time when we will just run out of oil, I believe a much more sinister and real threat is already upon us.

Yes the children are smiling but that is because they are deliberately ignoring the impending doom. If you look closely you can see that the smiles are forced, and in some cases the children are dressed up just a little too well to be believable.

The inescapable fact is that Peak Candy is here. As a registered candyist with the Sweet Party, I have as part of my work been tracking candy collection and consumption for a number of years. Demand for candy from children at Halloween has shown strong growth, particularly in China, and it is now clear that it outstrips supply. In fact, supply has been unable to meet demand for two years now. I have secretly tracked the amount of candy obtained my one of my children in a very scientific study conducted close to home to save on carbon emissions. Here are the results:

The blue line is the main result of my scientific study. Local streets are an excellent proxy for candy availability, so I have graphed the amount of candy obtained by my son over a number of years. Results fit well with other candyists in the field. In early years my son was too young to walk but I have adjusted for this using generally accepted statistical techniques in the environmental sphere*.

There are several points to note from the above graph:

• Candy demand shows no sign of letting up. In fact my son appears to be willing to make himself sick eating candy that he doesn't even need, and I suspect that much candy is wasted in this way. It is clear that the old 'eat as much candy as you want' paradigm will have to end.
• Candy supply is clearly slowing. The graph above shows a number of estimates of future supply. You can see that they are almost unanimous in their view that candy supply is drying up
• The only future supply predictions which show an increase in candy supply are from the candy industry. It is obvious that these self-interested corporate bullies cannot be trusted to produce a reliable prediction and it is frankly disgusting that these big companies have not yet been banned from the prediction business. Similarly Crusty is in the employ of 'Big Candy' and cannot be trusted (he used to sell sweets in a dairy 20 years ago)

Peak Candy has already happened and there is now nothing we can do to stop it. The only option is to adjust to this new environment. Children will have to start collecting other substitute materials at Halloween. Examples of these include raw sugar and home-baked cookies. Clearly these are poor substitutes, and the crisis is already hitting home with our children. Just last night, my son collected a sugar-free lollipop from one house, surely a sign of things to come.

Governments have been very slow to respond to this crisis. In fact, New Zealand does not even have a Minister assigned to Peak Candy. This head-in-the-sand approach cannot continue. It is early days in this crisis, but I am working on a Kaiapoi Protocol limiting consumption of sweets by under-12s. We can only hope that it is successful.

For those who are still sceptical that this is the next global crisis, I implore you: Just listen to the science!

A final note: A little like those who think that electric cars are somehow a response to peak oil (how ridiculous!), The Light Party has formed to provide an alternative to Halloween. However, it is clear that sweets are still involved and while this does avoid door-to-door collection, it is not going to address the real problem, which is blind candy consumption by children who have not yet woken up to the new environment in which they find themselves.

* Invented to fit the required curve