Mike's Minute: There are lessons for us to learn from this war

Do you think we will learn some lessons or change our mind now that the war is essentially over? 

Do we need to be more oil independent or, overall, is the way we do it for good reason i.e. it's cheaper to buy refined product?

Do we need to seek out new markets for products that have previously been brought blindly through the Strait, like plastics and gases? 

In Canada the left-leaners are in a lather. The NDP (New Democrat Party) have a new leader and he's very green and very pro-climate change. He's in trouble because his party leaders in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan are riding the oil wave. Alberta's deficit is being wiped out as oil money rolls in, in a way they never forecast. 

So you can be a leftie but still understand the economic reality, if not necessity, of fossil fuels. You may not like them, but they work, they are needed and they pay the bills. 

Here, surely, if we have learned nothing else it's just how dependant we still are on stuff we allegedly hate, can't get rid of fast enough and thought we were living without. 

Power is renewable, broadly, and that is good. But it was very quickly determined cars are no such thing and, more importantly, nothing that carried anything was an EV. 

Trucks and cranes and diggers and industry generally is a fossil fuel game and it's not changing. Would we not be better to accept that and get on with it rather than wrestling, clearly hopelessly, with an ideology that, when push came to shove, got found out badly. 

The quote of the week came from Plastics NZ when they said "plastics are in everything. 

Whoops. I thought getting rid of the straws and supermarket bags was it? There's a small problem though with the downpipes, or pipes in general, not just through the Strait. Are we making pipes out of paper too? Where are those renewable pipes? 

So how about we accept that as well? Plastic is real and it isn't going anywhere. 

Covid sort of gave us a taste when the place closed down, but the war has been a better wake-up call. 

Our actions don’t match our words. The conversation has been hijacked by zealots. We are doing our bit for climate, which is good, but we are not getting rid of plastic, and we are not moving on from oil. We are not giving up the stuff that makes the world go around and life actually work. 

In these past five and a bit weeks reality has had its mic drop moment. 

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