Yay, I made my first government submission Options

[Pisces]

I feel political. I am a politics student so it was something which comes up a lot but I had never done, now I can say I have! You can read if you want. Just wondering how many other people here have made a submission to parliament, been in protests, wrote to their local MPs. Now I have made a submission to parliament I have done all of them. Yay merrily.

In 1999 Tourism New Zealand launched the "100% pure New Zealand campaign. This campaign was hugely successful not only for tourism industry but agriculture industries as well; In 2002 the Prime Minister stated "...government will work with the private sector to develop a consistent brand image of New Zealand across our industry sectors. As well as being seen as clean and green, we need to be more widely perceived as smart and innovative.” Industry has had to make significant sacrifices to maintain the clean green brand for the benefit of the entire New Zealand economy. By not ensuring that new greenhouse polluting developments like Marsden B are properly scrutinised for their climate-changing impacts, New Zealand as at risk from potential international embarrassments and the undoing of previous investment and damaging to the commitment local industry has put into maintaining Helen Clark's projects and could even be seen as a betrayal by parliament.

Climate change is a real concern, the critics of global warming are having more and more trouble insisting that it is a "natural cycle" and lack reasoning on how carbon emissions released from million year old coal and oil deposits will disappear in a matter of years or how the environment will be able to cope with rapidly increasing carbon levels it has not evolved to deal with. There is no evidence to suggest that gaseous carbon structures like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane do not contribute to global warming and there is no evidence to suggest that burning buried carbon products do not produce gaseous carbon structures.

For these reasons I am seriously concerned about climate change and its irreversible effects, and I am also concerned about the effects of holes in New Zealand’s climate change protection regime on the image of New Zealand in the international market and as a potential role model in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations under the lobby group previously called JUSCANZ. I am disappointed that parliament removed the powers of regional councils to consider greenhouse pollution impacts before a national regulation was introduced, and I am in support of the Resource Management (Climate Protection) amendment to allow regional councils to consider and control greenhouse pollution during the Resource Management Act consent process.

Not sure how formal I was supposed to be because the government submission guide webpage is down so I left it fairly informal guessing that they probably get bunchs of informal nutters sending them submissions all the time, they will be used to it, note I did include formal headings and such but I took them out when posting. I probably should have proof read it but I'm lazy. And I am mainly doing this so I can say I have.

[Konji]

You missed off a " after new zealand campaign....

But otherwise nice and formal so good stuff.

[Ibis]

Very interesting and a good subject to petition about. And I see you've been in a protest too. What was that about I wonder?

Never knew you were a politics major. But that does seem to fit your personality now that I know it.

[Pisces]

I major in both politics and biology. I don't plan to do both and one day I will have to focus on one but so far I have managed to keep it exactly balanced, doesn't leave much room for anything else though, but if I am clever (or extremely stupid for putting all the effort in) then I can get both a BSc in biology and a BA in Politics in 4 years. Though I don't really want 2 degrees in 4 years because it sounds scary, like I'm some sort of uber acedemic when in reality I think I just spelt academic wrong (I must of atleast once now). So I am quite tempted to get a full time job and do university part time so I get get 2 degrees in 6 years like a normal person, but good full time jobs don't come around everyday. Many times I have been tempted to apply for this one http://www.bfound.net/detail.aspx?jobId=37544&CoId=131&rq=5 but there are many minor issues with it and I'm scared I might get trapped in it. I am wanting to put a expression of interest at environment canterbury but they seem to only hire students at Augest each year which is quite some time away. However I check the CCC and ECan websites regularily to see if any job suitable for me opens up.

This post has been edited by Pisces: May 12 2006, 11:25 AM

[Olav]

Well that job seemed very intreresting, and personally I would choose biology over politics, but that's probably because I have no interest in politics, and I dislike most politicians...

I realise that the careers are quite similar in that they both give you an opportunity to make the world a better place. So sad that politicians and environmentalists have so many disagreements. If you can do both, and become a great politician who actually cares and works for the environment, that would be the best of both worlds...

[DoomedOne]

Really nicely done.

As for my political scheming, funny you should ask, I've been politically active in letter writing, protests, organizing, making leaflets, and for the most part I've been a major failure, but I've managed to get myself on the news paper, and I've managed to piss off most of the school board, school administration, two city councils and two senators (Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, I called them traitors to the progressive movement once after the 2000 election, and they refused to back any congress members trying to draw questions on the legitimacy of Bush's election, and again after the Patriot Act, which they did not vote against), and now that I've moved, I'll have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN, and now I'm in a red county so there's a whole lot more people that will be against me.

Well, thinking I was a total failure at organizing, having started two failed clubs, and never managing to get a protest together, it was a massive surprise to me to receive a letter in the mail saying I was being honored as a prominant student activist in a county wide activist organization. At the end of May there was to be a ceremony where 50 some odd people from the area were to be honored for their work.

But I hate bragging about it, and that's probably the last time I will. To me it's not about showing off or trying to get recognized, it's just that I can't sit still while all this injustice all over the world takes place and few people in power try to do anything to stop it. I wouldn't say I'm political as uch as I just pay attention and bad mouth all the people that make the decisions. For me it's not even an attempt to start from scratch, because then people sort of segregate you in their minds as an irritant. I act as any college driven student would, getting a position on the schoolboard or whatever, then I see some injustice come across, or something I disagree with, and initially take a strong stance against it, and then when they say I'm not in a position to assert such a position, I organize sit-ins or whatever else.

This post has been edited by DoomedOne: May 13 2006, 12:12 AM