Last week a group calling themselves the Sustainable Finance Forum – itself a creation of the self-selected left-wing environmental/political lobby group The Aotearoa Circle – published an interim report. The report is 70 pages long, but don’t let that deter you as there really isn’t much there.
Of course, this is not just any lobby group. On the board of the Aotearoa Circle, for example, sits Vicky Robertson, chief executive of the Ministry for the Environment, and supposedly an apolitical public servant, advising ministers of whichever political stripe. Oh well, never mind those old conventions….. And one of the two co-chairs of the Sustainable Finance Forum is Matt Whineray, chief executive of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and supposedly an apolitical public servant charged with managing a large pool of taxpayers’ money from one government to the next. Somewhat surprisingly (but welcome) the Reserve Bank Governor isn’t a full participant in this body – although we’ve been left in no doubt of his ideological/political colours – but the Bank (together with the FMA and the Ministry for the Environment itself) is described as an observer.
Of course, the participants aren’t all (or even mostly) public servants. Woke left-wingery isn’t confined to the public sector and the second co-chair is a senior manager at Westpac, a bank which goes out of its way to advertise its enthusiasm for all such modern “worthy causes”. There is a “technical working group” of 33 people and probably 85 per cent of them are employed in the private sector (it does seem rather a large technical working group for a report with only about 50 pages of text).
What there isn’t is much substance or much rigour. There are dozens and dozens of grab-bag factoids – some real, some not – but little context. There is no sense, for example, that these people have any real understanding of how our current levels of prosperity were achieved. Perhaps more concerningly, given their breathless enthusiasm for stuff to be done, is that they demonstrate no awareness of the limitations of knowledge, the pervasiveness of uncertainty, or of the well-demonstrated capacity for governments to get things badly wrong. There isn’t much sign either that they have read any economics beyond Kate Raworth. And there is no sign either that they’ve engaged with Chesterton’s fence
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
Perhaps the zealots are right and the end of the world is nigh, all that we have known must be up-ended etc, but it would be more reassuring if they showed signs of actually understanding why things are as they are.
The bottom line goal seems to “the transition to a sustainable economy” and yet this goal is simply not defined. Since these peope are from the financial sector, they talk a lot about a “sustainable financial sector”. In the media coverage of the report there was some coverage to the factoid that 95 per cent of respondents believed that the current financial system was not sustainable. I was one of the people interviewed as part of the project and I was one of the 5 per cent – partly perhaps because I was taken aback by the question: what on earth did “a sustainable financial system” actually mean? As the financial system didn’t seem likely to fall over (even the Reserve Bank used to tell us that before the Governor when chasing capital whims), it had been with us in much the same form for a long time, and had proved adaptable as market demands and regulatory structures changed, it seemed a pretty obvious answer to me. But clearly I wasn’t part of the inner sanctum, because in the report itself defines “a sustainable financial system” rather idiosyncratically as one that serves the ends favoured by the authors:
The aim of the project is to produce a Roadmap for Action on how to shift New Zealand to a sustainable financial system – from one which focuses primarily on (often shortterm) financial wealth creation, to one that supports long-term social, environmental, and economic wellbeing and prosperity for all New Zealanders, protecting natural resources for future generations.
Strangely, there is no mention of the fact that – relatively poor as New Zealand’s performance has been – material living standards here are hugely higher than they were 100, let alone 200, years ago, and for most people the day-to-day experience of pollution is also much less serious than it was 100 years ago. Technology, innovation, and finance have all contributed to those outcomes. There is lots and lots of talk in the report about Maori perspectives and ways of thinking – a better economic model we were told, one with no externalities apparently……. – but no apparent recognition – or concern – that Maori systems and worldviews (pre Western contact) had not exactly been tending towards the sort of high material living standards, and functioning financial system, that we take for granted today.
None of which is to be cavalier about where we stand now. There are outstanding issues around water, for example. But it isn’t obvious what role the financial system has to play there – regulatory issues around pricing, definition of property rights, access etc provide the backdrop against which borrowers/investors raise funds and other provide them. And, of course, there is a climate change, but if anything is characterised by uncertainty it has to be that area. One of the bugbears of the SFF (and the Reserve Bank Governor) is the (alleged) short-termism of the financial system, but they never seem to grapple – including in this report – with the fact that a relatively short-term approach is a prudent response to the risks created by uncertainty.
Pretty much every left-wing cause of the decade gets reference in the report. Inequality is a big one for them, but with no substantial analysis one is left with the impression that it is mostly for effect, and mood affiliation. Early in the report there was a referenced claim, for example, that “New Zealand’s income inequality gap has impacted GDP by more than 15%”, but when I looked up the reference it was to a North and South article which itself claimed – without a citation – that
OECD researchers have suggested our gap has hobbled GDP by more than 15 percentage points in recent decades, largely because of disadvantaged families bailing out of education.
Well, perhaps….but since OECD statistics also show that New Zealand employee skill levels are among the very highest in the OECD it seems unlikely. Oh, and returns to education in New Zealand appear to be quite low. And what it had to be with a “sustainable financial system” wasn’t clear at all. Being, apparently, a bunch of lefties they want a “comprehensive response to inequality” but what they mean, or what (if anything) it has to do with the financial system is left totally unspecified. It was the feelings that mattered apparently. They do claim the “current financial system” is contributing to “growing inequality”, but make no effort to justify either limb of that claim.
We got similarly feeble references to the so-called “gender pay gap”. There was a whole page on modern slavery and labour exploitation, some of which was interesting, some of which was fair, but none of which had any discernible relevance to the New Zealand financial system. Hard to disagree, I suppose, with the banner quote on that page that “a financial system cannot be sustainable if it undermines the basic human rights we all hold dear” but even if true – and I’m thinking of exceptions as I type – it isn’t overly helpful or offer any great insight on how the financial sector should adjust/evolve.
At the very front of the document the Aotearoa Circle told us about their vision which includes
They aim to achieve this by reversing the decline of our natural resources.
Which also seems pretty incoherent. I get the impression they have waterways in mind – which is fair enough I suppose, within limits (the benchmark can’t be say pre-1000AD conditions) – but natural resources include coal, gold, oil and gas, timber, ironsands and so on. Did they not notice? Are they proposing to put the coal back in the mountains – the same coal burned in the process of generating the living standards we have now, and the potential to move towards newer (cleaner) technologies? It is a small point in a way, but it is the sort of thing that is likely undermine any good a report of this sort might do among those who aren’t uncritical “true believers” to start with.
There is all the talk about rising sea levels and what this might mean. That partly involves using scary numbers about the value of affected buildings, but without any reference to the twin facts that (a) the dates they are quoting are mostly many decades away, and (b) existing structures depreciate. And then, of course, there is the talk about access to finance and insurance. Which are real issues no doubt, but they don’t unfold overnight – they are some of the better-foreshadowed risks companies have ever faced – and no reason (identified in the report) why existing market participants (and perhaps new entrants) can’t/won’t respond and adjust, in response to their own incentives, as they’ve always done. Same goes for wider climate change issues: the report claims ‘financial markets in New Zealand..are still largely misaligned with climate change and other sustainability imperatives”, but they offer no evidence for this – not a shred.
These people also have a bunch of other ideological causes. They appear to champion the Living Wage as a policy response to New Zealand’s poor productivity. Not only is that incoherent, but there is no obvious connection to the financial system (“sustainable” or otherwise) They rightly lament the high cost of housing – although never point out that were these government-driven distortions ever to be reversed and the market able to function well that housing finance would be a much much smaller part of bank balance sheets in future. Oh, and they are dead keen on Australia’s compulsory private superannuation system – but I guess we should mostly just put that down to (consciously or unconsciously) pure self-interest (it is a great system for financial industry service providers, while our own retirement income system generates very low rates of elderly poverty with a pretty modest fiscal burden).
And we get the best part of a full page on the Reserve Bank/FMA crusade around bank culture and conduct, all of which skated over the fact that when those agencies reported back (on their largely ultra vires activities) the bottom line was that there was little evidence of any sustained problems. But I guess that wasn’t the narrative these left-wing crusaders wanted to channel.
Buried amid the blather there are probably a few sensible paragraphs on a few specific regulatory issues, but what might be valuable is largely lost amid the rhetoric, and the rhetoric itself is of much-diminished value because there is so little hard-headed substance. We know for example that the Orr/Whineray NZSF could get away with making a big active punt on climate change, and so mask the punt that we can never properly hold them to account for it. But that is the weakly-accountable government for you. Most investors, most savers, want more than idle calls for the financial system to work for the “good of society”, however ill-defined that may be. All manner of chancers and opportunists (public and private sector) will tell you their project, their plan is “the one”. The challenge of anyone – especially anyone investing other people’s money – is to be able to recognise the good from the bad, manage the risks etc. And none of that is easy. None of us knows what the economy will look like 30 years hence, let alone this time next century. Not even Whineray and Silk.
There is an opportunity to submit on the interim report (link here). I’m not sure I’ll even bother. It is so bad (and so ideological) they’d really be better off ripping up the report and starting from scratch with a much more hard-headed approach to thinking through the issues and challenges, constraints and opportunities, including demonstrating a thorough understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the current system But I guess that wouldn’t suit their mates in the Labour and Green parties, for whom reports like this help provide cover, even when largely devoid of substance, insight, or sustained robust argument.
croaking cassandra 
It’s my week for quoting sociologist and philosopher Philip Rieff.
He describes each of the three distinct epochs of human history as characterised by “fate, faith and fantasy”, with the latter being our present experience. We have become almost completely unmoored from reality, the evidence being all around us including the loss of objectivity in the report you have described.
We should limit governments and their agencies to operating within the hypocritical oath, their first responsibility being ‘do no harm’. (which is really another way of expressing the Chesterton fence analogy). As soon as governments decide it’s their role to ‘do good’ in the world, then we enter the realm of unintended consequences that results in (amongst other things) 10% of all working age New Zealanders supported by welfare. Something Michael Savage could never have envisioned when he instituted the welfare state.
If we start with a utopian understanding of human nature and combine that fallacy with unswerving faith in the governments ability to deliver ‘wellbeing’ for all New Zealanders, then we are deeply located in the world of fantasy described by Rieff.
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Thanks Brendan. At this rate you will finally prompt me to read the Rieff that has been sitting on my bedside table for months.
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Opps, that should read “hippocratic oath” 🙂
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I liked it better with the original phrasing
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Reblogged this on Utopia, you are standing in it!.
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Sorry but how is concern for the environment a ‘left wing’ cause. I always thought a price on carbon a ‘right wing’ cause as it was somewhat obviating the the negative externalities tha carbon causes.
Another irony is you write this on the very day 11,000 climate scientists warn about the planet’s future.
Given we have been given the responsibility for the dominion of this planet you have a very strange attitude for a christian
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My point isn’t that concern for the environment is a left-wing cause, but that this group is clearly left-wing in its wider orientation, incl its view of possible solutions and its grab-bag of other political issues.
More generally, recall that this piece is notionally about the financial system. My view is that the fin system will adapt, as it always does, to the opportunities/constraints that markets and regulators throw up. In other words, set a carbon price (say) and both borrowers and lenders (and funds managers) will respond to facilitate the adjustment sought.
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Surely a sustainable financial system is one where lending is concerned about the future. Our RBA has said climate Change is a subject very important for the financial sector.
I would have thought that would go hand in hand with a price on carbon if one was a conservative ( like myself). Unfortunately the right wing in Australia sees climate change as the right wing in the USA. A few disagree, Gerg Mankiw for example but ironically it is all about ideology and a poor one at that.
Sydney Anglicans are as conservative as you can get yet they see climate change as a problem in theological; terms.
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I’m not sure I”d buy into that description. To me, a sustainable financial sector is one operating with a reasonable and rational expectation of being paid back (across the portfolio as a whole). After all, in principle there is nothing much wrong (at an individual level) with borrowing for consumption. I’d probably be thinking about a definition also that included something about not corroding its own future scale/viability (eg a financial system lending heavily to a country’s mortal enemy regime might not be “sustainable”).
I guess my view of central banks rushing into this issue is that it is more about virtue signalling, political positioning, and the personal ideologies of many senior mgrs than anything else. That is probably more so in the RBA case – which isn’t a prudential regulator – than in the RBNZ case.
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Ah yes, the 11,000 climate scientists…. I wonder how many geologists are among them? I expect zero as they have a view of climate change that extends beyond the last 40 years, and provides a more rational and insightful perspective on our present situation.
In the BBC report of the ‘event’ there are obvious non-sensical claims including:
“The authors include a range of data which they believe represents a suite of graphical vital signs of climate change over the past 40 years. These indicators include the growth of human and animal populations, per capita meat production, global tree cover loss, as well as fossil fuel consumption.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50302392
Unfortunately for these 11K climate alarmists, there has not been any “global tree cover loss” in fact quite the opposite. The planet has actually become much greener over the last 20 years. To quote from the NASA report (URL Below): “There are now more than two million square miles of extra green leaf area per year, compared to the early 2000s – a 5% increase.”
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows
This is one obvious and clear benefit of increased Co2 in the atmosphere.
Unfortunately for the 11K, their many fatuous claims have resulted in their creating zero creditability with those who have taken the time to fact check them.
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really.Thanks for the withering repartee
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I agree. There is no evidence for “man-made climate change”. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere increases with warming of which the primary driver is solar activity. There is therefore a correlation but it does not involve causation. Thirty years ago the Berlin Wall fell and communism was thoroughly discredited. Now “man made climate change ” is being promoted by the Far Left to support the same old discredited totalitarian dogma when it comes to the operation of the economy and the structure of society. It is shameful to see senior public servants whose salaries we pay lending their titles to this nonsense.
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complete bollocks. There are those on the bright, centre and left that accept global warming. I have already shown at least one academic.There are plenty more.
From where i sit it is the anti-intellectual right ( a small but influentiual bunch) that has made climate change an ideological issue.
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Another irony is you write this on the very day 11,000 climate scientists warn about the planet’s future.
——————
Warnings about an impending Armageddon used to be the province of shamans. What is an optimal climate anyway? The one prevailing inn Kamchatka? Or perhaps the one encountered in Singapore?
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You reference “11,000 climate scientists” warning about the planet’s future… this is not correct. The Green movement regularly invokes large numbers of scientists to support its claims (see also the IPCC’s reports). Delve a little deeper and you will see that the total number is not made up of climate scientists (whatever that is – presumably meteorologists, some physicists) but a diverse range of scientists from multiple disciplines some having nothing to do with world climate (e.g. marine biologists, entomologists), and some persons who are arguably not even scientists (e.g. psychologists, economists).
The announcment you refer to is a case in point – have a look at the supplementary attachment to their press release (bottom of link below). This lists the names of the persons putting their name to this and their respective disciplines.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806
I haven’t gone through line by line, but it seems very few obvious climate related discplines among the names. Admittedly that press release discusses wider things beyond climate change, but it is still misleading to imply there is a corpus of work from 11,000 scientists directly backing this claim.
In the case of IPCC, they will say X,000 scientists have put the report together – yes – but a small part of the report is about the science of CO2 affecting climate – the rest is predications about what this will do. So a tropical diseases expert will be one of the X,000 scientists, but their contribution is to say +1C warming = +12.36% cases of malaria. Ok fine, maybe – but this assumes the climate model is correct….
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Nottrampis: “concern for the environment” in a general/moderate sense is probably neither left or right wing in particular. However, when you attempt to then put under the same umbrella concerns relating to “negative externalities that carbon causes” and related climate change dogma, then in my observation, it is much more clear cut.
Those who believe in the more extreme views swing left. This is not surprising given the anti-capitalist slant evident in climate activism and the Marxist roots of much of the Green movement. That left-wingers want more government intervention/control, more taxation, more submission to globalist bureaucracies, also want “action” on climate change through these methods shouldn’t be surprising. Nor should it be surprising that right-wingers typically want less of these things and are more suspicious of the increasingly outrageous claims of climate alarmists be surprising. That leftists are eager to suppress and/or ridicule alternative views should not be surprising either given their inherently totalitarian tendencies.
If the science was truly settled there would be no need for wholesale data tampering of the historical record, model fiddling, the conflation of extreme weather events with climate change and so on. And the Maldives would now be under water (predicted in 1989 within 30 years). Oh and we would be entering a new Ice Age – yes in the 1970s that is what the climate scientists were predicting with global temperatures having been falling for a few decades. There may well have even been 11,000 who would have attested to that if asked.
“Given we have been given the responsibility for the dominion of this planet you have a very strange attitude for a christian”
My reading is that God’s instructions to human beings were to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over … every living thing.” (Gen 1:28). Noah and his family were given similar instructions, but with the promise that “while the earth remains seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease” (Gen 8:22). Frankly these verses, if anything, contradict the global alarmist view and I see no reason why a Christian’s attitude either way on climate change should be regarded as “strange” or a measure of Christian virtue, and find the suggestion that it may to be somewhat arrogant.
(I would also be extremely skeptical of the claim that in general “Sydney Anglicans” are “as conservative as you get”.)
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Where to start.
somehow believing in negative externalities in this case carbon emissions is somehow marxist??
I hate to yell you this but people who v believe in the pigou club as Greg Mankiw says or its variation a ETS believe in markets. They simply want negative externalities to come up in the price of that good or service.
Is thje science settled. of course it is. Does that mean all scientists are in agreement .no but nor were they over tobaccy. A few held out despite overwhelming evidence .Climate is change is very much like tobaccy..
Like so many deniers you are conspiracy advocate despite almost all information being public anf thos authorities like ours in Australia patiently and diligently explaining their methods yet it obviously does not get through to some people.
As for god’s instructions you need to understand what dominion means. It is not our planet but God’s. allowing it to go to rack and ruin is not part of having domion.
Remember too this was said to Adam BEFORE the fall so it applies to all Christians.
As for Sydney Anglicans, you assertion is silly. pray tell (pun intended) of a more conservative theological diocese
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by the way David Kirtley demolished the global cooling myth some time ago.
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“As for Sydney Anglicans, you assertion is silly. pray tell (pun intended) of a more conservative theological diocese”
Some Anglicans are pretty liberal. Try any Brethren church (open or closed) or reformed. That’s where the heart of conservative evangelical Christianity really lies.
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Brethren think the KJV is inspired! That is not Evangelical. noe do they evangelise!
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“somehow believing in negative externalities in this case carbon emissions is somehow marxist??”
Didn’t say that. But I did say that those with the more extreme climate change views tend to “swing left”. That is manifestly true.
“The science is settled. Of course it is”.
(And to be clear, the topic is man-made climate change. No one disputes that climate changes over time.)
In a free society you can choose to believe the” science” underlying man-made climate change change is settled. But likewise in a free society I should be able to examine the evidence on both sides and choose to remain sceptical or agnostic – and should be able to do so without being dismissed as being a “denier” as if that was akin to flat-earthism. If you are advocating huge changes to the structure and make-up of the economy – “dismantling capitalism” is a phrase I’ve heard – because of perceived climate threats, then we should and have a right to question and challenge. Especially when so much of the “scientific predictions over the years have been so spectacularly wrong and where political and financial motivations are also clearly in play.
What you conveniently describe as conspiracy theories are factual. There was a global cooling scare in the 1970s, there are numerous documents and newspaper articles from the time about it, not to mention the data that spurred those concerns of the day. My comment about Maldives is also a fact, it was given 30 years in 1989, it’s still there, and apparently is something of a magnet for investors and developers who seem remarkably unconcerned about it being swamped.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/egg-on-their-faces-the-maldives-still-above-the-waves-30-years-after-environmentalist-prediction/
“As for god’s instructions you need to understand what dominion means. It is not our planet but God’s. allowing it to go to rack and ruin is not part of having domion.”
Dominion means authority, jurisdiction, control. The text specifies having “dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth”. It seems to be explicitly in reference to living creatures, it says nothing about the earth itself and is silent about “allowing it to go to rack and ruin”. So, at this point I stand by my original comment.
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internalising negative externalities enhances the capitalist system.
Pigou possibly being the first to state that.
This is the only time you have conspiracy theorists claiming a conspiracy on publicly available information.
The global cooling of the 70s was a myth.
A bit like the mythical pause which is now a large acceleration if they were consistent but of course they are not. Numeracy is not something they are good at.
How can you have dominion over everything that lives or moves on the earth but not the earth???
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I’m delighted to learn so many powerful public servants have expressed a desire in writing to change NZ’s financial system “”to one that supports long-term social, environmental, and economic wellbeing and prosperity for all New Zealanders, protecting natural resources for future generations.””
Essential to protecting those natural resources is a national population policy that persuades more Kiwis to emigrate and stops foreigners arriving. At last we have an argument for curtailing and rolling back international tourism with its ever increasing CO2 emissions and its inevitable destruction of New Zealand’s natural resources.
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It was particularly disappointing to see the RBNZ press release lauding that report.
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Indeed – and thanks for the reminder (I should have mentioned that in the post).
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Many years ago I saw an interview with a Chinese trader in Rhino horn; he was asked what would he do with the last herd of rhino and his reply was ‘kill them all’ so he could own the monopoly. This worries me.
Definition: “”A ‘financial system’ is a system that allows the exchange of funds between lenders, investors, and borrowers. “” It replaced the less efficient system of bartering and when the ‘financial system’ does collapse (eg hyper-inflation) then bartering returns. Finance and financial systems are amoral (asis plumbing).
I am concerned about a sustainable future for my children and grandchildren. Destruction of the planet whether by nuclear war or consumption of critical non-renewable resources or the unanticipated effects of pollution would all count as not sustainable. All three of these possibilities could occur with a smoothly working ‘financial system’ as we return to the stone age and sell our children into slavery using bitcoin rather than pieces of silver.
Do our experts distinguish between sustainability of a financial system and sustainability of our modern way of life?
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The theme of the report seems ok.
Sustainability really means mitigating as many externalities as you can whilst living within financial sustainability.
Much of what they are arguing needs to be backed up/disputed by financial analysis as well as social economic cost benefit analysis. NZ as a whole needs to do this to & follow Bill English’s lead.
Slightly off topic but very relevant.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/
Provides strong mathematical justification for “left wing” redistributive policies
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Thank you for a fascinating link. I read a similar article maybe twenty years ago that mapped wealth distribution to molecular velocities in a gas – apparently a good match except for an excess of the extremely wealthy which was explained by them not trading fairly (prior knowledge of takeovers, bribing the regulators, etc).
The results are not surprising to anyone whose has played a few games of Monopoly; chance is the most significant factor in success.
From the article: “” the virtue commonly attributed to wealth in modern society “” which is sadly true; the comment about the rich man going to heaven being like the camel getting through the eye of a needle seems to be out of fashion.
Both left and right wing politics redistribute wealth from those that have it to those that have less. The right wing politicians allow the really wealthy many loop holes to avoid taxes and the left wing prefer distributing it to the indolent rather than the deserving poor. Both enjoy targeted benefits with means testing.
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“I read a similar article maybe twenty years ago that mapped wealth distribution to molecular velocities in a gas ”
I may have mentioned this before, but see https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations for the 99.97% correlation between US spending on science, space and technology and suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocating.
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Reblogged this on The Inquiring Mind and commented:
A lovely debunk of ‘woke’ stupidity from government and it’s sycophants. Unfortunately,I suspect the ‘woke’ faction will triumph,at least in the short term.
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nottrampis
“This is the only time you have conspiracy theorists claiming a conspiracy on publicly available information.
The global cooling of the 70s was a myth.”
What publicly available information? It is not a myth, it happened and can be seen in the data and in the real-world impacts it caused. I would imagine there would be intense pressure to “prove” it were a myth, since it does undermine the entire CO2-based global warming claim. What is your source for saying it is a myth? If I’m wrong I’d like to know. Meanwhile please take a look at these videos, which examine historical climate records and reports from the time and show “before and after” data tampering.
And if you tell me that the scientific consensus back in the 70s, which was that the world was cooling, is wrong then I don’t see why we should give any weight to the current “consensus“.
“How can you have dominion over everything that lives or moves on the earth but not the earth???”.
Perhaps because it is God who holds dominion over these things? It seems kind of meaningless to talk of having dominion over a rock or a piece of dirt, they are simply things God has provided for lifeforms in order for them to live and survive. God clearly has “dominion” over the earth in terms of the seasons, seed-time, harvest, the day, and everything else or He wouldn’t be able to assure their continuance as part of His covenant with Noah and his offspring, Your entire assertion, that God said human kind has certain responsibilities for the planet (such as those related to CO2 emissions) because of its “dominion” is seemingly based upon a fallacious understanding of the word dominion in the scriptural context and requires reading things into what God said that simply aren’t there. Again, I stand by my original comments.
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Mate,
I have already given you who demolished that. in those articles you can also read a journal article on that myth.
The data ‘tampering’ has also been explained. You do like your myths.This is the only conspiracy whewre the data is publicly available.
No God is on control.
He gave us dominion as he is in control. Earth is his.Having dominion means you do not all ow Earth to go to hell in a handbasket.
Perhaps you need to understand both the word and why he gave some dominion of the earth.
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I looked at David Kirtley’s article, and I can’t believe you’re serious. There are almost no facts, no data, a lot of rhetoric and know-it-all pontificating. If you’d bothered to look at the videos you would see there is actual empirical data from the time that scientists had on hand to back up the claims of global cooling.
Data tampering has not been “explained” certainly not by you. Revisions to some of the historical temperatures have occurred, this is a matter of record where we can see the new vs the original data.
As I have patiently shown, there is no direct Scriptual backing for your claims about what dominion “means” in this context and you have not provided any. Even if I were to grant you that “subdue [the earth]” implies dominion (and I’m not sure it does), it doesn’t change the basic fact that the word dominion carries the meaning of sovereignty, authority, control – and that no dictionary definition I checked suggested the word carried any connotation about how that dominion is, or should be, exercised. Suggest you check your own “understanding”.
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Thanks but I see no reason to continue this.
your ‘interpretation’ of our dominion of earth is ahem unique.As for Kirtley’s demolition you cannot be serious.
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PS. I will concede that with the command to subdue the earth you might reasonably infer some sense of stewardship or responsibility for the earth, which I suspect this is where you are coming from. However the text doesn’t directly state this and I would maintain that taking what is an arguable inference, and then applying it to all Christians as some kind of commandment from God about Christian duty in relation to (alleged) man-made climate change is entirely inappropriate – way, way too big a leap.
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agree there’s no point. Apart from parroting patronising shallow and rote learned mantras in response to every point it’s clear you can add nothing to my understanding or anyone else’s. You persuade or convince nobody.
These are serious issues for which discussion should not be shut down by your ilk. We have a highly productive multibillion dollar industry – oil and gas mining and exploration – that is being hobbled as a result of man-made climate change claims, with real financial consequences to the economy and to those involved in the industry.
Worse you also want to drag Christians into the fray, misusing Scripture to judge them and pretend that God is on the side of climate alarmists because of your interpretation of a single word. Enough.
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look in the mirror sunshine.
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