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Andrew Dickens: Is everyone over the climate change hysterics?

Author
Andrew Dickens,
Publish Date
Wed, 10 Oct 2018, 12:15PM
Has everyone stopped listening to climate change concerns? (Photo / NZ Herald)

Andrew Dickens: Is everyone over the climate change hysterics?

Author
Andrew Dickens,
Publish Date
Wed, 10 Oct 2018, 12:15PM

So I could start these thoughts with the call for property managers to become licensed and accredited.

26 organisations, including the Real Estate Institute and large real estate firms, say the issue is so important that they united and have presented an open letter to the Housing Minister.

Now, Phil Twyford understands the problems but wants to finish laws to protect tenants first.  This seems a strange thing to say to me since it sort of says that the government’s only capable of one thing at a time.

This sort of thing is worth fast tracking because in the business of renting a home both tenants and landlords have skin in the game. Both need the income and shelter but property managers are just providing a service.  Churn is in their interest which is why they are strong advocates for shorter tenancies.

And let’s not minimise the job.  Providing shelter for yourself and your family is a basic necessity of human life and when a third party can become involved you should be able to implicitly trust that they will act fairly as a true intermediary between tenants and landlords.

My question is not whether we should do this but why hasn’t this been done before and why isn’t it being done quickly.

Now yesterday I did a bit of talk back about climate change after the strident IPCC report that said we now have just a decade to radically change our lifestyle or we’ll consign millions to heat related death. I also said that the climate change bandwagon is so far down the track there is no way you can negate the belief amongst a sizeable chunk of humans and countries.

Today, I find my inbox full of pseudo scientific rants from listeners about all the reasons why the perceived human effect on climate change is a fiction.  All of which I’ve read before and much of which I don’t disagree with.

My point has always been this: To say there is no human effect on the environment is as myopic and unprovable as the climate change advocates who say that human activity is causing any global warming.  It’s not either or, it’s exactly how much or how little.  

My stance switched a while ago to stopping any ridiculously abstract ideas and policies that are waiting to defraud us and on that count I’m happy to say I don’t like or trust the Emission Trading Scheme.

But here’s an observation: maybe the whole thing is dying a slow death.  I’ve seen little or no comment on the IPCC’s grave warning from any leader. Nothing from Presidents Xi or Putin.  The White House just shrugged and said their emissions have dropped since 2005.  Even here on the day the report came out the Labour leader was busier trying to lower the price of petrol than she was trying to stop global apocalypse.

Maybe the climate change advocates have cried wolf so often and now so loudly that bit by bit people aren’t listening.

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