Policies (Draft)

Global Climate Change Policy Summary

 

The following are the policy points of our climate change policy, presented here as a summary. To see the full document including a brief review of the science on which our policy is based, please search our website for the full global climate change policy.

 

Policy points 

 

• Build renewables industrial complex with substantial government funding and equity development. 
• Support innovative strategies with necessary resources.
• Improve disaster management infrastructure and resources.
• Use productivity commission to monitor and improve economic output to energy input ratio.
• Set native forest cover allocations for large private land holdings.
• Prepare to move infrastructure and build new eco-housing 10 m above sea level. 
• Set higher eco-housing standards and support the removal of gas appliances in favour of electric.
• Electrify and innovate the transport system. 
• Promote plant based diets. 
• Transition farming away from animal production to plant based food and bio-fuel production. 
• Set a timetable to stop all imports of fossil fuels and use as little of our own as we can manage. 
• Convert municipal sewage and organic waste management systems to biogas and biodiesel production. 
• Convert heavy transport industry to electricity and biodiesel where electricity alone is not an option. 
• Convert all small engine applications to electric,eg lawnmowers, blowers, hedge trimmers etc. 
• Prepare for an influx in climate refugees and provide international legal support to nations to support their sovereignty over submerged islands.
• We have to make this transition together so that no one group or person has to bear a larger portion of the cost. 
• We must all have input into the strategy so that we can all own it. 
• Everyone will have to be resourced to participate in this effort, which will mean a concerted effort to reverse the extreme disparity of wealth that has occurred in our society.
• Consultation and education will be critical elements in unlocking the human potential needed to solve this crisis. 
• Reorientate foreign aid to include greenhouse gas reduction and prioritising supporting South Pacific nations first.
• We will adopt a wholistic approach, utilising spiritual, mental and social capital to bolster peoples contentment as we transition away from the existing materialistic, consumerist based economy. This will require people to have access to training related to communication, relationships, philosophy, trauma, meditation, stress management and other personal well-being instruction. 
• The cost to the government from funding this transition will be recuperated by equity development in and profits received from the various business entities formed to make this transition.

 

The Progressive Party Aotearoa New Zealand is committed to the all-round welfare of all. We are all in this together. And no one will be left behind.

To understand our climate change policy it would be good to briefly examine the science behind global climate change.

The Science

Back in the 1970s New Zealand and Australian scientists were at the forefront of the science of global climate change, analysing ice core samples taken from Antarctica made as early as the 1960s. By the mid 1980s the science of global climate change was well understood. Looking at data from over 1 million years, scientists could see a close causal correlation between carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and atmospheric temperature. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like methane, trap the heat from the sun and cause the atmospheric temperature to rise. There are other celestial cycles that also cause atmospheric temperature to increase or decrease like the sun’s solar output, the distance the earth is from the sun, because our orbit around the sun is not completely circular, and wobbles in the spin or rotation of the earth itself around its axis of spin. As these celestial impacts have changed atmospheric temperatures carbon dioxide levels have also changed in unison. Together they add up to the natural cycles of global climate change. There are two other natural phenomena that affect global climate change, and they are volcanic activity and the effect of melting ice mass on the stability of the earth’s spin, called the wobble. Insufficient research has been done on how the warming of our atmosphere and melting of ice will affect these two natural phenomena. But it is reasonable to think that they will increase in frequency and severity. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have always moved in unison with atmospheric temperature in the natural cycle.
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution human beings have added considerably more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. But it has only been since the 1950s that the use of fossil fuels have skyrocketed adding huge amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This has created an added human pushing effect on global temperatures. The destruction of forest and other habitats have also disrupted the carbon cycle with fewer trees to absorb the extra carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere. Domesticated animals have also increased carbon dioxide and methane emissions. Methane is a 32 times more potent greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide.
The last time that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were this high, 400 ppm, the temperature of the atmosphere was 2° warmer. We have been fortunate that while humans have been warming the atmosphere with our greenhouse gas emissions, the natural cycle has been going through a cooling phase, an inter-glacial cold snap or mini ice age. But now we are at the bottom of that cooling phase and the natural cycle is in a warming phase having hit the bottom of the trough of the mini ice age. So not only do we have the human effect pushing the temperature up, but the natural cycle is also pushing temperatures up. These two effects piggybacking off each other will create more positive feedback loops. This will result in unprecedented speeds of increasing warming to the atmosphere.
What will this mean? Glaciers and ice sheets will melt and along with thermal expansion, sea levels will rise. Though sea levels have been very stable for the last 10,000 years, 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, sea levels rose by as much as 4 m in a century. We can expect sea levels to rise a lot faster over the next century. We have reached the point where it is almost impossible to stop sea levels from rising by 10 m. This rise could occur in the next century.
The big problem is the positive feedback loops that cause a kind of runaway greenhouse effect. When the Greenland glaciers melt they alone will add 7.5 m to the sea level globally. Ice reflects sunlight back into space. When it melts, rock and water are exposed to the sunlight and they absorb energy and don’t reflect it back into space. There is twice as much carbon locked up in frozen tundra than there is in the atmosphere. Some of this is released as carbon dioxide and some as methane when the frozen earth thaws out. Also methane that is locked up in ice crystal form is released when the ice crystals melt. Remember methane is a 32 times more potent greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide. As peat bogs and wetlands warm, increasing microbial activity produces more methane. Water vapour levels in the atmosphere will also increase with temperature. Water vapour is another greenhouse gas, slightly offset by increasing cloud cover reflecting back some sunlight. Decomposition of growing numbers of dead animals, fish and plants, both on land and in the acidifying oceans, produces more greenhouse gases. And finally forest fires caused by extreme weather events produce additional greenhouse gases.

Our Response
What can we do about the situation?
We need to understand that this is a civilisation ending event. Nations that have existed for a long time will no longer exist at the end of this century. Many of our island neighbours will simply disappear under the ocean. There will be internal and external conflict within and between nations as they try to deal with shrinking landmasses and more frequent and violent weather events. Many of the world’s cities are in the zone that is only 10 m above sea level. We will see a massive destruction of infrastructure, and displacement of people, all around the world.
New Zealand will have to forge ahead no matter what other countries are doing. We need to act decisively now. We will have to start to move our country’s infrastructure and population above the 10 metre mark. We will have to stop burning all fossil fuels. We will have to build a renewables industrial complex, to provide renewable energy technology for ourselves and the rest of the world. Especially the poorer and developing countries. We have built our affluence on cheap fossil fuels. We cannot afford developing countries to build their wealth on fossil fuels. So we will have to help them with alternatives. We will have to triple our hydro and renewables electricity production, in many cases using smaller more flexible hydro dams as the risk of seismic activity increases. We will have to Increase our native forest cover to 50%. We will have to encourage people to adopt a plant based diet. 15% of our greenhouse gas emissions are the result of eating meat. We will have to convert municipal sewage and organic waste management facilities to biogas and biodiesel production. We will have to increase the production and installation of photovoltaic solar panels. We will have to expand our wind energy production. We will have to electrify, and innovate our transport system. Electrified rail will play an increasingly important role in heavy transport.
Many people worry about the cost of moving from our present fossil fuel economy to a renewables economy. But a renewables economy is much more efficient than the old fossil fuel economy. Also New Zealand is in the enviable position that we have not invested in the heavy industry required to support fossil fuel technology, like internal combustion engine construction. Therefore New Zealand can invest in building a new industrial base to support post fossil fuel technologies at no cost of discarding old production technologies. We also have abundant renewable energy resources, water, sun, wind and biomass/organic waste. Given our level of education, social cohesion , affluence and resources, if New Zealand cannot make this change, then no country can. This is the challenge of our age. This is something that we have to do together. Future generations will look back and wonder at our lack of substance, or applaud our commitment to their future. You have to decide now, which it will be.
The Progressive party Aotearoa New Zealand does not support population control measures because it is clear that people can live zero carbon lifestyles. First nations cultures and contemplative orders use wholistic approaches, leveraging materially simple lives with substantial inner spiritual lives and service, to achieve high levels of satisfaction. Population then is just a multiplier. It multiplies negative effects and will multiply our efforts to become carbon negative.

Policy points

Build renewables industrial complex with substantial government funding and equity development.
Support innovative strategies with necessary resources.
Improve disaster management infrastructure and resources.
Use productivity commission to monitor and improve economic output to energy input ratio.
Set native forest cover allocations for large private land holdings.
Prepare to move infrastructure and build new eco-housing 10 m above sea level.
Set higher eco-housing standards and support the removal of gas appliances in favour of electric.
Electrify and innovate the transport system.
Promote plant based diets.
Transition farming away from animal production to plant based food and bio-fuel production.
Set a timetable to stop all imports of fossil fuels and use as little of our own as we can manage.
Convert municipal sewage and organic waste management systems to biogas and biodiesel production.
Convert heavy transport industry to electricity and biodiesel where electricity alone is not an option.
Convert all small engine applications to electric, eg lawnmowers, blowers, hedge trimmers etc.
Prepare for an influx in climate refugees and provide international legal support to nations to support their sovereignty over submerged islands.
We have to make this transition together so that no one group or person has to bear a larger portion of the cost.
We must all have input into the strategy so that we can all own it.
Everyone will have to be resourced to participate in this effort, which will mean a concerted effort to reverse the extreme disparity of wealth that has occurred in our society.
Consultation and education will be critical elements in unlocking the human potential needed to solve this crisis.
Re-orientate foreign aid to include greenhouse gas reduction and prioritising supporting South Pacific nations first.
We will adopt a wholistic approach, utilising spiritual, mental and social capital to bolster peoples contentment as we transition away from the existing materialistic, consumerist based economy. This will require people to have access to training related to communication, relationships, philosophy, trauma, meditation, stress management and other personal well-being instruction.
The cost to the government from funding this transition will be recuperated by equity development in and profits received from the various business entities formed to make this transition.

The Progressive Party Aotearoa New Zealand is committed to the all-round welfare of all. We are all in this together. And no one will be left behind.

In order to save time and space the information points are unreferenced. Please feel free to fact check them yourself. All information is widely available on the internet.

Purpose:

To move New Zealand through the Covid-19 pandemic to a state where Covid-19 is endemic, meaning that New Zealand can expect seasonal outbreaks of different strains much like annual influenza outbreaks.

 Principles:

 To seek to minimise mortality, disability, and general suffering.

1. Health is based on freedom and trust. Free human beings can decide about their health. Free societies decide in democratic discussions how to deal with their health.
2. To uphold the rights and privileges of people as expressed in the NZ Bill of Rights which guarantees free choice of health treatment.
3. In our opinion fear of the pandemic restricts our freedom. It makes us see vaccination and lockdowns as the only way to get back to normality. The fear engendered in the public is not proportional to the threat to their personal health and the health of the economy posed by covid-19. Therefore New Zealand’s public health and economic response to the virus needs reviewing.
4. To cultivate robust debate and produce and disseminate accessible data and research so that people can decide how best to protect themselves and their loved ones and so people can exercise true informed consent.
5. The doctor-patient relationship should be safe-guarded allowing doctors to treat the patient in a professional manner without any intrusion or restriction on what they prescribe or advise. This also includes seeing the patient face to face rather than being forced into an online or phone consultation which raises the risk of misdiagnosis.
6. To adopt a pro-active approach in ensuring the integrity of the scientific research upon which the government relies. This should include the establishment of an independent body of experts to determine what research is needed, outline and monitor best practice in the setting and conduct of studies. Oversight should also cover the collection and evaluation of the yielded data. The public should be able to rely on government disseminated information being based on the best science and free from conflicts of interest.
7. To adopt an inclusive, holistic, interdisciplinary approach to dealing with this crisis.
8. To be mindful of responsibilities and obligations explicit or otherwise contained in “The Treaty of Waitangi such as Maori having rights to involvement in health planning and provision for their iwi.
9. To be flexible with developing strategies as information and new research findings arise, and to cultivate a culture of transparency and information sharing nationally and internationally.

Impacts of Covid-19 Lockdowns and Restrictions on Society

Summary

• The adoption of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) which is built around the concept of focused protection for people in society most at-risk from covid-19 while avoiding the social and economic consequences of lockdowns.
• The GBD advises the containment of a highly contagious respiratory disease is impossible and allows resources to be diverted to the most at risk which includes the elderly and people with compromised health conditions.
• A successful health strategy has been adopted by Sweden which did not universally lockdown, shut small businesses, close schools or implement mask mandates.
• A non-lockdown strategy reduces mental health issues, unemployment, poverty, hunger and significantly saves government spending used to subsidise businesses and people.
• Learning to live with covid-19 without fear allows public health to focus on their core activities and reduce waiting lists for treatment of other conditions.

This is an appropriate time to reflect on the devastating health and societal consequences of the lockdown and covid-19 restriction policy, followed in New Zealand and many other governments worldwide.

Over a year ago, on October 4, 2020, the Great Barrington Declaration (gbdeclaration.org) (GBD) [i] was released, which was authored by Sunetra Gupta, University of Oxford, Martin

Kulldorff, Harvard University, and Prof. Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford Medical School. The Declaration is built around the concept of focused protection – using resources to protect people in the society most at-risk from covid-19 while avoiding the large-scale social and economic consequences of “one-size-fits-all” lockdowns. [ii]

The release of the GBD shattered the notion that there was a scientific consensus in favor of lockdowns. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed the GBD, including tens of thousands of medical doctors and scientists. The Progressive Party of Aotearoa New Zealand also supports this Declaration.

The GBD advocates understanding that large-scale containment of a highly contagious respiratory virus is impossible, and society should instead use its resources to protect those most at risk. Hospitalisations and deaths overwhelmingly occur in the population over the age of 65 – so much that the risk of death after infection is thousands of times greater than for school children, the vast majority of whom have mild cases of covid-19 if infected, with full recovery. [iii] Children have lower mortality from covid-19 [iv] than from the annual influenza. [v] For people under the age of 70, the infection survival rate is 99.95%. [vi]

Once we re-calibrate our viewpoint and accept the scientific fact that covid-19 is indeed an age-stratified disease, we can use our resources far more wisely. A successful strategy adopted by Sweden was to keep their schools open and let younger members of their society – who have no voice in the concerns of the day – get back to their lives. For them, the covid-19 restrictions cause many more problems than covid-19 itself. Such a strategy would help minorities and the poor, who have also been silenced in the current debate. Many have suffered far more adverse outcomes from covid-19 and the lockdowns than the working professionals who continued to work at home without financial hardship during the pandemic.

Under the guidance of chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, they did not universally lockdown, shut small businesses, or implement mask mandates. Seniors and other high-risk individuals were asked to stay home, social distance and mask up, while all others were free to live much as they normally would. As noted by Tegnell, “In Sweden we have chosen a voluntary way and it’s proven to be sustainable and effective.”

In a September 2021 interview with U.K. website Unherd, Tegnell continued to support Sweden’s less restrictive pandemic response, stating “ they did not fare very badly at all” considering they had proportionally fewer excess deaths in 2020 than some European countries that imposed lockdowns.[vii] Regarding children, he said “they have definitely been affected by the pandemic, but to a lot lesser degree than children would have been if we had closed the schools.” [viii]

A rational covid-19 strategy would also significantly improve the mental health of all people, everywhere. The lockdown strategy has explicitly induced fear of covid-19 in the population, without regard to the greater risk older vulnerable populations face. This fear has led to elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and suicidal tendencies. [ix]

In New Zealand this includes an increase in children attempting suicide and presenting to hospital. Unemployment has increased since March 2020 with a 30% increase in eligible adults requiring the job-seeker benefit over the period in which covid-19 restrictions have been imposed. Special needs grants also spike over lockdown periods, indicating that these policies come down most severely on our poor communities. Severe lockdowns have cost the country at least $1Billion/week, a figure that is well outside the amount usually thought to be reasonable for such health spending.

The strategy we propose helps the public accurately contextualise the risk from covid-19, putting in context against other risks and accurately conveying the sharp age (and selected other chronic diseases) differences in risk posed by covid-19. The strategy will help people explore how to learn to live with covid-19 without fear as it becomes endemic in our society.

None of the lockdown policies and covid-19 restrictions, including many of the highly intrusive non-pharmaceutical interventions, promote public health.[x] Their directives have served to undermine trust in public health when it is most needed and have failed to protect the people that need the most protection during this difficult time.

By narrowing society’s focus to a single respiratory virus, this policy has led to catastrophic collateral harms to other aspects of population health, including harms to cancer [xi] and heart disease prevention [xii] and treatment in developed countries and dire food insecurity and poverty in poorer countries. Public health authorities have used the news media to minimise the miseries that come from the various interventions in the public’s mind, hiding them in a media storm of confusion.

We must bring this sad state of government-promoted mandates to an end. [xiii] And we must follow the wisdom the field of public health has acquired over a hundred years about what works, what protects people from both covid-19 and other health risks, [xiv] and what protects the social fabric.

The Plan for New Zealand                

1. Offer targeted enhanced protection and treatment for covid-19 to vulnerable people, and invest sufficient resources to identify at-risk people, especially in generally low-risk categories, like the young. Since approximately half of the early fatalities in developed nations with covid-19 have occurred in people living in rest homes, this should be the focus of protection.
2. End mass testing, contact tracing, quarantine, and lockdowns since covid-19 cannot be eliminated which is evident with the failed attempts to control the infectious delta and omicron variants.
3. Vaccination to be voluntary and with informed consent and transparency of both efficacy and safety data.
4. Increase capacity in hospitals and intensive care units to cope with seasonal demands of respiratory illnesses, including covid-19. Public health to broaden their range of treatment options at each stage of the process for prevention, infection, and recovery.
5. Schools, childcare centres, and universities should not be subject to restrictions and face-to-face learning should have no restriction since children are at extremely low risk of a covid-19fatality.
6. Undergo a phased risk-based re-introduction of normal travel across New Zealand’s border.
7. Vaccination passports or any form of discrimination based on vaccination status should be abandoned since the vaccines do not convincingly reduce covid-19 transmission. [xv]

References

i Kulldorff M, Gupta S, and Bhattacharya J (2020) Great Barrington Declaration, Oct. 4, 2020. https://gbdeclaration.org/

ii  PublicHealth Leadership Society (2002) Principles of the Ethical Practice of Public Health. American Public Health Association. https://www.apha.org/-/media/files/pdf/membergroups/ethics/ethics_brochure.ashx

iii  Kulldorff M. (2020) COVID-19 Counter Measures Should be Age Specific. LinkedIn Memo. April 10, 2020. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/covid-19-counter-measures-should-age-specific-martin-kulldorff/

iv CDC (2020) Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts by Sex, Age, and State. Nov. 24, 2020. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku

v  CDC (2020) Estimated Influenza Illnesses, Medical visits, Hospitalizations, and Deaths in the United States — 2018–2019 influenza season. Nov. 24, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

vi Ioannidis JP (2020) Infection Fatality Rate of COVID-19 Inferred from Seroprevalence Data. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. Article ID: BLT.20.265892. https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf

vii Business Insider September 24, 2021

viii Business Insider September 24, 2021

ix Czeisler M, Lane RI, Petrosky E, et al. Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, June 24–30, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:1049–1057. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6932a1

x Kulldorff M, Gupta S, Bhattacharya J (2020) The Great Barrington Declaration, Frequently Asked Questions. https://gbdeclaration.org/frequently-asked-questions/

xi Rutter MD, Brookes M, Lee TJ, et alImpact of the COVID-19 pandemic on UK endoscopic activity and cancer detection: a National Endoscopy Database AnalysisGut Published Online First: 20 July 2020. doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2020-322179

xii Ball S, Banerjee A, Berry C, et alMonitoring indirect impact of COVID-19 pandemic on services for cardiovascular diseases in the UKHeart Published Online First: 05 October 2020. doi: 10.1136/heartjnl-2020-317870

xiii https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/lockdown-isn-t-working

xiv   European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (2020) Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Plans. https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/seasonal-influenza/preparedness/influenza-pandemic-preparedness-plans

xv https://summit.news/2021/12/03/spanish-investigation-finds-vaccine-passports-have-no-impact-on-infection-rates/

1. Concentrate funding on building additional nursing resources and increasing bed numbers in the public health system.
2. Establish a Royal Commission to review Covid crisis response with a broad frame of reference that includes questionings regarding the protection of citizens basic human rights and New Zealand’s sovereignty.