Barack Obama seeks to move the goal posts by postponing the Copenhagen agreement. Observing there is not enough time to make meaningful changes (which it is implied, would need to have been started during the reign of King George to now be appearing before the Senate). It seems American Health Care was the priority.

New Zealand, having been an economic little engine that could, expanded its economic base by allowing much foreign investment. New Zealand has increased its greenhouse gas emissions by some 22% during the Kyoto era – the highest in the world. It illustrates the real problem we face, attempting to mitigate human expansionism.

That Kiwi colloquial “she’ll be right, mate…” dissolves into that other one, “Yeah, right.”

Part of the NZ problem is importing capital inevitably leads to more or everything. Kyoto sought to LIMIT the output from human activity. If you increase the number of the industrially capable by allowing immigration of people and capital, greenhouse gas emissions rise, demonstrably.

Reduction targets as a goal seem ignore a fundamental problem. We are overheating the world by increasing our activity levels year on year. It is politically unsound to rail against productivity growth.

As New Zealand’s population has increased, its per capita increase in greenhouse gases is particularly of concern as it driven by primary production – the making of animal foods – in an economy that is the very model of new right thinking unleashed. Someone had to do it, unprotect everything, tax everything. NZ’s eradicated farming subsidies twenty years ago; subsidies still protect American and French farmers – the danger seems that removing them will introduce new efficiency and expansion into the food production chain on a far larger scale and make matters exponentially worse.

If we limit activity, but increase population, the result is inevitable: poverty.

The solution is that economic growth be shackled by the requirement for clean and efficient energy, and economic planning to reward population reduction. Plus, if we change technology, we can grow with less concern.

The new watchword must be “100% clean energy”. All the scare stories about global warming are not changing our behaviour; the solution seems to be to utilize our behaviour.

The problem remains. Human greed. If we were not wired that way, we would not have evolved. We did, now we must attend to the heart and lung health of the world. We are a miracle, let us be inventive enough to advance without polluting.