Fonterra is trumpetting the fact that its staff will be participating in Clean Up Week, and helping to clean up our roadsides, parks and beaches. Meanwhile, their Longburn factory has been granted resource consent to dump up to 8,500 cubic metres a day of effluent into the Manawatu River. So much for "keeping New Zealand beautiful"...
That's market economics for you. There's no point in blaming Fonterra.
ReplyDeleteit's classic b/s "CSR" in action.
ReplyDeleteso, does one of NZ's largest commercial enterprises publish an annual environmental report?
must be about time to start publicising Fonterra's environmental efforts in Europe, eh?
can you spell B-O-Y-C-O-T-T ???
-tochigi
Who owns the river?
ReplyDeletePublicly owned resources will always be subject to the tragedy of the commons, and in this case it seems that the "national interest" has beaten more abstract values.
My solution: privatization. Let the owners decide. In this case ownership of the river would probably pass to the local iwi.
that's absolutely right.
ReplyDeleteif we don't privatize the air we breath and the rain that falls into the rivers, who the hell will give a toss?
no enforcable private property rights = rational pollution (5th Law of Thermodynamics)
Privitisation? Great let's have more of what's causing the problem in the first place, undermined democracy and market economics.
ReplyDeleteThe solution to the problem of externalities is not more market economics. This stale rhetoric reminds me of the "free" market fundies, who're largely responsible impoverished the planet we are faced with, telling us that more market economics is the solution.
The only sustainable solution to such a problem is a change in the way our culture views the planet (as nothing more than a resource to exploited and dominated).
As for institutional changes, far from more destructive privitisation and more market economics (i.e. hierarchical economics), a better solution is to get rid of the institutions that have caused the problem and, my preference, to implement a participatory economy, where those who are affected by such decisions have a say in proportion to the degree they're affected.
See: parecon.org