London (morning irony)

Today, the sun shines… so in good London style I made like a mole blinded by the light and having briefly emerged from the station building I immediately vanished again beneath the pavement for the remainder of my morning commute.

There are two things that I’m not in a habit of:
1. Reading the “Metro” and similar free papers which would do better as weed matting than adding unnecessarily to the general Beijing-like smog of social pollution; and
2. Let waves of irony sweep over me before 10:00am

Today I broke both. While listening to Radio NZ National’s morning report about Winston Peters turning up to make his final stand in front of the privileges committee, I lazily picked up a discarded Metro, as much to do my bit to make sure it ended up in the correct recycling facility than to read it you must understand, when the tragic irony of a little story brought a cynical smile to my face.

“Global warming is melting the polar ice cap, easing access for oil and mineral exploration”

This was not news to me, not the melting, nor the scramble for Arctic oil, nor Russia’s “see you can tell it’s mine because it’s touching my shoelace” logic to their Arctic seabed claim [Similar logic to that which has seen NZ receive international recognition of its sovereignty over seabed out to the edge of the continental shelf except it’s on our petticoat]. Although perhaps somewhat more blatant than usual, this article and its crude failing to identify the real issue managed to focus my attention back on a perennial gripe to such a degree that I felt a scribble was the only way to purge it from my mind [this being the result some time after the event].

For me at least, it is no longer that the Arctic is melting, nor that there is a new territorial scramble, not even that Russia planted a flag on the seabed. But that you can still print that climate change is threatening civilisation as we know it while simultaneously celebrating the discovery of, or invention of technology which enables the extraction of further fossil fuel resources, or in this case a silver lining (or golden parachute) of global warming. This is like a dying alcoholic, having finally run out of spirits celebrating their discovery that that they can get pissed off that bottle of meths they’ve got in the garden shed if they drain it through a loaf of bread. So what’s your poison? In the northern hemisphere it’s the Arctic, in New Zealand it’s the Great Southern Basin.
Surely we don’t actually need an ice over the Great Southern Basin to be melting as a result of burning the stuff we’re planning on sucking up from under to make us think twice.

Energy and Climate Change Minister David Parker on the opening of the Great Southern Basin to exploration back in 2007.

"Assuming exploration success, the country stands to earn significant revenue from royalties and taxes flowing from this investment, and it will assist in ensuring security of energy supply," said David Parker.

"Although the world is working to lessen its reliance on fossil fuels, we will be dependent on oil and gas for some time to come. It is in our economic interest that the oil we use comes from local sources if possible.

"As with other fossil fuels, it is important that New Zealand take responsibility for the greenhouse gas emissions that come from its use here, just as Japan does for the emissions that come from coal they import from New Zealand."

this is called missing the point