Dirty dairying, halving the dairy cow herd – short, sharp sound bites that slip off the tongue, the tactic of choice for pressure groups.
Factually correct or realistic? That is optional or, in some cases, irrelevant. Of more importance is that these factually deficient messages resonate with as many punters as possible.
Such tactics are understandable, given that the average attention span of someone born between 1997 and 2015, a member of Gen Z, is eight seconds.
But it avoids the inconvenient reality that debates about biological farm systems, economics and community sustainability are complex and intertwined.
It is much easier to dismiss that reality by chanting “halve the dairy herd”, or blanket-label every one of the New Zealand’s 11,000 dairy farmers as polluters.
These groups are also prepared, for the wider good, to ignore the risk of being labelled hypocrites.
Anti-oil protesters will blatantly use petroleum-based plastic sheets or kayaks to display messages of protest. Greenpeace executive director Russel Norman was widely criticised for reading a speech off a mineral-dependent cell phone at a recent protest that included opposition to mining.
Against this backdrop, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton, delivered what he called five inconvenient truths in a speech to the recent Environmental Defence Society’s annual conference.
In short, he told environmentalists that if they oppose mining or farming they need say how they will maintain our living standards, a question those in the productive sectors regularly ask.
As Upton says, the growth of renewable or “green” energy, such as batteries, wind turbines and solar panels, requires the mining of minerals, including coking coal for steel manufacturing.
He warned the environmental movement risks polarising the public with the notion that if it can garner sufficient support from those who share its political will and views, the promised land beckons.
The reality of the world for many people is quite different.
Turning to the idea that closing polluting industries will solve many environmental problems, Upton said it will simply result in imported replacement goods unless there is an equal focus on curbing consumption.
He said that in resisting some environmentally damaging activities like mining or the building of infrastructure, environmentalists risk being dismissed as the dog that barks at every passing car.
The often touted claim that change is cheap and a win for all was dismissed because not everyone can make the transition, and telling people they can’t have goods and services they have become accustomed to will not win public support.
He said that to make genuine progress, NZ needs to adopt long-term thinking and planning on research and development.
Other than agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, he said, comparatively little is spent researching issues such as land use.
Upton’s speech shone light on some vexed issues.
His comments to environmentalists were simple reality, providing a description of the world as it is for many people rather than a world some would like it to be.
That is a message that cannot be relayed in an eight-second sound bite or three word slogan, but which needs to be told.
