I’m afraid you deserve to die

No one really likes listening to the impending environmental doom proclamations from those on the left. It’s not so much that our friends on the right don’t care, they just hate having to agree with hippy lefties who have been screaming about this problem for 15 years. After so much derisive comment thrown at tree huggers, God forbid they actually turn out to be right all along. The consumption culture of capitalisim and all the wasteful pollution it has wrought is far preferable to boring topics like sustainability - who wants to connect this selfish greed with the general lack of compassion for our fellow human beings when there are plasma TV’s and cosmetic surgery to dream about?

Why just the other day I was watching Paul Henry do his usual slap stick routine laughing at environmentalists, I wonder where he will live when the ice caps melt?

Whenever I paint the right as uncaring on the environment I get the usual howls of indignation that I am creating a strawman argument just to have a go at the right – bullshit! The right wing haven’t given a fuck about the environment any more than a rapist cares about the woman he has just raped – that the National Party have only just now gotten around to ‘thinking’ about the environment has more to do with trying to woo over liberal voters than it does to any belief that global warming is happening – even Don Brash is yet to be convinced. Sadly for our right wing friends they can pretend no longer. Sure, they spit on environmentalists and ignore scientists (or worse, focus on the anti-global warming nuts who are funded by oil companies), but the right can’t deny one of their own acolytes, this time an economist. Forget trying to point out that we are one race and have responsibilities for eachother, don’t try pointing out the destruction to our only home planet – such wider issues of compassion have no anchorage in right wing theory – just point out the fuckers are going to bleed through their wallet, and lo and behold – CHANGE!

Climate change 'brings huge cost'
Climate change could end up cutting global growth by as much as a fifth unless drastic action is taken, a key report obtained by the BBC has warned.
But taking action now would cost just 1% of global gross domestic product, economist Sir Nicholas Stern said.

Without action up to 200 million people could become refugees as their homes are hit drought or flood, he added.

An international plan to tackle climate change is needed to prevent a global recession, the UK review said.

"On the basis of Sir Nicholas Stern's report, we would be crazy not to take action," said the BBC Business Editor Robert Peston.

"Stern calculates that not doing anything would be a reduction in the value of the global economy of 20% - we would all be a fifth poorer as a result of climate change - which he says would be as big a shock as we would get from a global war."

The study will spark a fierce political debate on green taxation as this is the first major contribution to the global warming debate by an economist, rather than a scientist.