I haven't commented before because, frankly, it just seems so trivial -- apart Mr and Mrs Ewen-Street, I thought, who really cares -- but many people are reading an awful lot into this move.Is it a sign, as some commentators and Don Brash have said, that National are "serious about the environment"? Or a sign that National is a broad church, encompassing both the lazy and ineffective Ewen-Street and the similarly qualified Tau Henare? Or perhaps a sign as Jeanette Fitzsimons indicated that Ewen-Street was always a Tory anyway? Or something else -- or even, perhaps, nothing at all?
For mine it's something else. It's not so much that "National are serious about the environment," but as DPF said: "It is incredibly frustrating that the hard left have captured so much of the environmental brand, and this should help correct that perception." That's it, really: This is all about perception, not about substance. The 'centre-right' would like to massage the perception; expect the substance to barely change.
Ewen-Street is hardly someone upon which to base any substance in any case -- and the frightening news of the lazy but anti-GE Green (Ewen-Street) and the man who called the RMA "far-sighted environmental legislation" (Nick Smith) writing National's environmental policy between them is not something from which to expect anything substantially less wet or less 'left' environmentally than what the Nats already have.
The hard left have captured the so much of the environmental brand for a very good reason: Because almost the entire political spectrum, including the self-described 'centre-right,' have accepted the nostrum that environmental protection requires hard left command-and-control measures to be effective.
But it doesn't. That view is just mistaken.
When the non-hard-left parts of the political spectrum begin to realise that secure property rights do in fact provide the best means for environmental protection (and at the same time for the protection of freedom), then we might be on the road to seeing something new. Something of substance. Something like that which is happening in the States, where alumni of property-rights-promoters like PERC have been getting their feet under the policy table. That would be the right road down which to travel.
But Ian Ewen-Street is not on that road. And neither is Nick Smith or National.
How about you?
RECOMMENDED READING:
- Elizabeth Brubaker's masterful (and free) online book, Property Rights in the Defence of Nature.
- Common Sense and Common Law for the Environment, at Amazon (see below)
- Common Law publications at PERC
- 'The Common Law: How it Protects the Environment' by Roger E. Meiners and Bruce Yandle -- free online report.
RELATED: Environment, Politics-National, Property Rights, Common Law
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