Thread suggestions

[Rod McDonald <rmcdonald@hort.cri.nz>]

I am told there are 45 people on this list, but nobody has posted
anything for a whole week! With so much apathy apparent in the Foresight
community, perhaps thinking about the future would be best left to
people more outspoken, eg politicians.

I was hoping someone with more specific knowledge then myself might
challenge Vincent Gray's rubbishing of Climate Change. If he is right, I
guess FRST can remove Climate Change from its priorities, and free up
some money.

David MacClement deserves some response, so here's mine, in very brief:

> 1/      New Zealand as one of the few commercial sources of "pure" food on the
> planet (I subscribe to Rachel's).

We will not be able to claim this very convincingly until we get a lot
closer to organic production. We do have a better chance than most
countries of doing near-organic on an industrial scale, but there is a
very high level of management skill required. To support this would
require a degree of research and technology transfer which is rather
lacking at present for "organic" farming. "Sustainable" is still a bit
trendy, but specific and practical production techniques don't get a lot
of attention.

> 2/      The possibility of the state being a federation of a few score of
> districts that have a high degree of autonomy ... so that (i) democracy is strengthened ... and (ii) a wider diversity of economic and lifestyle choices
> are available within New Zealand.  (e.g.: cooperative <-> competitive;
> unspoiled-nature <-> cosmopolitan-city)

To get distinctive characters such communities would have to be a lot
smaller than current Regional Council areas, which presently seem to
dominate how local rules are set. Would we want to devolve back to
boroughs, and put building regulations, environmental bylaws, mining
laws etc in their hands? Maybe so.


> "under-populated" "clean" countries like N.Z. need a debate (involving both
> Treaty partners) about who should be allowed in, and at what rate.

Now there's a big one! And should we be planning how to control
immigration? It is not beyond credibility that Indonesia could spawn a
few million boat people in the next few years, if it happened to follow
the path of Yugoslavia. Perhaps climate change, despite Vince's
confidence, might produce the odd famine too. Some of the boats might be
from the Indonesian Navy, which is a lot more potent than ours.  Should
we sink the boats? If so, what with? If not, then what?

> 4/      The plus of "free trade" is that warfare is becoming economic not
> explicitly people-killing, but the minus is that people are being
> pushed-around by big corporations .....In my view, people need to
> get together in moderate-sized groups to decide what they actually want in
> life, not what the commercial powers want them to do.  Moving towards true
> democracy, minimising the suasion of those with the economic power.

Most business leaders oppose democracy, generally without even knowing
it. Their vision is limited by their own self-assurance. Anyone want to
discuss?

> 5/      Why should consumers be required to eat food they would object-to if
> they knew what was in it?  Labelling is usually mandated, so why ....are governments
> seriously considering minimising the labelling requirements?

See previous paragraph.

>         We've learnt from the last 50 years that it often takes decades for a new
> food-related development to show its faults/dangers, (e.g. certain
> pesticides), so there's no way that science can _prove_ there's no danger.

When science does painfully accumulate data showing a good case for
alarm, profit motives in industrially-dominated countries suppress,
belittle or ignore the conclusions for decades - until the cost is
offloaded onto the general public. Consider tobacco, organochlorines,
CFCs, CO2, nuclear waste, tailings dams etc etc. This is the price we
pay for relying on capital-intensive communications media for our
opinions.