What Rosa Parks' Story Tells us Today

This post is for all of us who have been beavering away working to talk about climate change and other major environmental issues and who wonder if it is all worth it.   
Remember Rosa Parks?  She’s the woman who many think was the person who triggered the American Civil Rights movement by refusing to give up her seat on the bus.  
Actually, she wasn’t the trigger. 
The fortunes of that movement DID change then but only because many many people had been, and were, working really hard to make things change at the time.  Without them, it is unlikely that Rosa Parks would ever have done what she did.  And if by chance, she had, it would have gone unremarked. We we don’t hear about another woman who did the same thing earlier than Rosa.  This woman was arrested but the lawyers decided that the fact that she had a record meant that the risk to the outcome was too great, so they didn’t make their move then.

No-one knew when or how or even if the change would happen, but those involved kept on trying to change things because they simply believed that it was the right thing to do and that it needed doing.
 
Many people I talk to feel that what we do as individuals makes no difference – but no matter how small the change, there IS change.  Many of us feel that we are walking into an environmental crisis of rather alarming proportions but we aren’t working for change because we have this idea that if we can’t see that change and it doesn’t make an immediate difference then it is not working. 
That idea is both wrong and dangerous since nothing will change if people don't just keep working to make them change.  

The critical lesson from Rosa Parks and others like her is that we must keep working with hope. 

Greta Thunberg might be our Rosa Parks but she couldn’t have had the impact she has had without the prior and ongoing work of thousands around the globe – thousands of people who have had conversations, changed their lives, sat and marched in protests, got arrested, gone to meetings, written submissions, written letters, written articles, completed research, developed plans,  posted on Facebook or other social media, or whatever.  

So it is time to do something – do anything.  Start at home and work outwards.  Cut down your car running, talk to your friends about issues you see, ring the Council to point out an issue, learn about issues that matter to you, learn where the leverage for change is, experiment with action, write a song or a play to highlight the issues, learn to write submissions, join a clean up, a planting day, or a protest. 

And whatever you do, find others with that same interest so that you don’t feel like you are doing it all on your own. 

Some thoughts about the Overseas Investment Act

These are some notes and thoughts from attending a public meeting on the reform of the Overseas Investment Act.

The reforms of the Act are focused on
1)What assets overseas person need consent to own or control in  NZ
2) Who needs to get consent to acquire sensitive NZ assets
3) How people and corporations should be assessed in order to be given consent to buy NZ assets


In Christchurch, by far the most time was spent talking about Water bottling consents and this was a direct result of what has happened with Cloud Ocean.  It was interesting to note that the Treasury folks felt that there was not much that the OIA could do about managing water bottling and export and that that was more a focus for the RMA (which made a lot of people sigh)
However, a few points were covered that could be of interest and worthy of putting into a submission
We all own the water because it is a common (the opposite of what John Key asserted i.e. "nobody owns water').  It seems that consents effectively privatise it as evidenced by the fact that now if the CCC wants to take more water from the deep aquifer that Cloud Ocean have been granted a 30 year consent to take from, they have to negotiate with Cloud Ocean.
We felt that foreign interests should not be able to "own" "our" water and should be paying for it.  
Part of the issue is in Free Trade Agreements such as the Agreement with China and the TPPA (another sigh)  According to one of the Treasury people, the Govt cannot discriminate between local consent holders and overseas consent holders who come under the jurisdiction of these trade agreements.  (That does mean that there is some possibility that a charge could be made if that charge is also made to NZers taking water)


WHAT 
1) Overseas investors have to get permission to buy a residential property but under the OIA they don't have to get permission to buy property that has a water consent attached which seemed a bit odd to all of us.  They have to get permission to buy sensitive land (eg land on a foreshore or that has public access over it) or to buy land next to sensitive land or land with a house on it, but it is not sensitive if it involves natural resources such as water. 

WHO
A couple of issues here from what I can see - smaller investors don't need permission.   The threshold seemed to me to be quite high and it could be worth advocating to have that raised.

HOW are people assessed
Individual people are assessed but corporations are not.  It seemed to me that we should actually vet corporation based on the way in which they conduct business overseas.  I'd like to see things like Do they pay their fair share of taxes?  Do they provide good pay and conditions for workers?  and Do they have good environmental codes of conduct that surpass what is required is developing countries and at least meet compliance in developed countries with good environmental legislation.

There are of course more things for people to think about - you can look at the discussion document here 
The Campaign Against Foreign Control in Aotearoa have some comments on their Facebook Page here.

Submissions close on 24th May.

Climate change in the National Business Review

I was in a cafe today and thought I'd peruse the NBR - The National Business Review -  dated 3rd May 2019.
I read on the front page an article saying that King Salmon are keen to see the Government do something about climate change because rising sea temperatures are affecting the survival of salmon in the Marlborough sounds.  I that article King Salmon chief executive Grant Rosewarne points out  the Government's lack of political will and how the company losing up to 800 tonnes of farmed salmon due to warming seas.
Bravo I thought - it is good to see businesses discussing how climate change is affecting them.

I turned a few more pages and read some quite interesting articles mostly about business as usual in many different spheres and then I came across this patronising article from Rodney Hide who clearly hasn't talked with any ecologists, biologists, physicists or climate scientists about our changing planet and if he has he just prefers to deny the science.

At a time when so may news outlets are not printing articles that so completely demonstrate a denial of climate change, perhaps we should be working on media outlets such as the NBR which purport to provide well reasoned and supported advice.
What are they doing and can we really trust ANYTHING that they publish if they are prepared to publish this kind of tripe? 

Mindfulness and what it has meant to me

A couple of decades ago I was invited to go on a 5 day meditation retreat which set me on an interesting and useful path. I learned that this kind of meditation (Vipassana or Insight meditation) was a way of studying the workings of my own wayward brain, which, I've learned, is like most other people's brains.

Our minds are amazing tools with a life of their own. They come up with the most inopportune thoughts seemingly for no reason.  But they also make useful connections and can be incredibly creative.  They can also focus and help us learn.  But this is not all they do. 

Anyone who has watched their own mind and its workings will know that it tends towards the negative:  It jumps to false conclusions, generates negative emotions and often leads us to actions that make situations worse.  We can, however, train ourselves to see things differently and to understand what is happening inside other human beings when they do things that trigger us (and often they intended no harm at all).

Mindfulness is a form of brain training in which we try to reinforce and use pathways that lead us to be kinder and happier rather than being controlled by brains that tend to focus on the negative and being driven by our deepest, unexplored fears.   Like all training, it takes time and when it comes to performance, we can have good days and bad days - sometimes being kind is easy while on others it is hard to remember to even try.  Despite that, training helps us to do things better more often and to notice it when we don't and see it for what it is.


I found it incredibly useful and have found that by understanding my own mind, I can understand much more about others.  It helps me recognise pain that is often disguised as aggression. And THAT means that when people are horrid and mean I don't have to take it personally.  That on its own has been and invaluable result of participating in practices that foster mindfulness.