tarred and feathered are us

I am opposed to this permit to drill for a multitude of reasons. It won't create many jobs, the money mainly goes offshore, it is environmental brutality, it is too risky for this country, and we should be looking to sustainability not continued digging and drilling. So brownlee and key sell us out to a multinational oil company - we are the suckers being used to help them all make more money.

From NZH

"International oil giant Petrobras has been awarded a five-year permit to drill for oil off the North Island's East Cape.

Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee said "Given Petrobras's expertise, and financial and technical pedigree, this is an exciting step into areas of New Zealand until now unexplored."

The permit awarded to Petrobras covers 12,333 square kilometres.

So while the world looks on in horror at the destruction caused by drilling for oil - what does gerry brownlee do? - he puts in head in the sand and pretends it isn't happening and cannot happen here.

What an absolute idiot - we know brownlee isn't the sharpest knife in the draw - but here he has proven his mettle - he hasn't got one.

Other horrified people include

"Greenpeace last night labelled the agreement "a bad joke".

Climate campaigner Simon Boxer said it was "unbelievable" that the Government was pursuing deep-sea drilling.

"The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico shows that it is extremely difficult to control activities in the deep sea."

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe was "game changing" for deep-sea drilling.

"The inability to control it is demonstrated live on the internet every day.

"Things have changed, and nothing is going to be the same for deep-sea oil drilling ever again."

Footnote - And isn't it interesting that as obama puts a six month freeze on oil exploration brownlee and key refuse to accept what he has accepted, that is

"Where I was wrong was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios," he said. "It just takes one to have a wake-up call."

"... he was ordering a six-month freeze on the opening up of the remote waters of the Arctic to oil exploration and on the drilling of 33 deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Proposed lease sales off the coast of Virginia and in the western Gulf would also be cancelled."

The US president said he was calling the pause to plans by Royal Dutch Shell to begin drilling exploratory wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, after studying an interior department review of the Deepwater Horizon disaster."

We are going to have to stop this.