Kerre Woodham: We live in comfort thanks to the earth's resources

In an ideal world, I would rather not dig up the ground and the sea bed to extract their resources. But we created certainly not an ideal world, but a comfortable world precisely because mankind learnt how to do that, to extract the riches from beneath the Earth's crust. Mankind's gone from living in a harsh and inhospitable environment to living in relative comfort thanks to the extraction of those aforementioned resources that give us light and warmth and convenience and communication, just about every modern technology needs oil or gas or minerals. Whether we like it or not the world needs to mine and drill.

In 2021, New Zealand was at its lowest levels for self-sufficiency and energy since reporting began in 1990. While renewable energy sources are increasingly providing more of our energy, it's nowhere near enough and it's not reliable - yet. We have the resources. Crude oil is produced in New Zealand, but it's exported because it's not suited to current refining capabilities and it can achieve a higher price on international markets. We can import oil cheaper than we can make it ourselves. Half our national coal production is exported, and so in 2021 we became a net importer of coal, again for the first time since reporting began. Where were the protesters calling out the Labour government for the importation of coal? 

 Like it or not, we are dependent on resources that come from below the ground. And if we don't get it, we rely on other people to do so. As Shane Jones says, some people argue against minerals extraction, but gladly rely on the conveniences of modern society that are enabled by these resources. The protesters taking selfies of themselves protesting for climate change, protesting against the the weakness of governments and instituting reforms that will bring about lower emissions, they wouldn't be able to take their selfies if somebody, somewhere, that they hadn't seen hadn't extracted minerals from the ground. As long as it's not in my backyard, it's okay. 

Shane Jones says the problem is that we're relying on other countries to meet many of our minerals needs and their supply can be fragile, volatile, unreliable and sometimes, without the regulatory rigour, he says, we apply to our own operators. And if we want to diminish our reliance on oil, coal and gas, he says we're still going to need to mine to do it.

If Kiwis want greater resilience and less vulnerability to overseas geopolitical vulnerabilities, we've got to turn around and we've got within the context of what's reasonable and wise, extract our own minerals. Look, I've got the authority of cabinet to roll out the strategy today, encourage investment and remind people that unless we use our own resources. We're going to continually depend on countries and other sources of natural minerals that are not as stable as New Zealand.

Exactly. That was Shane Jones talking to Mike Hosking back on the 24th of May when he announced that this government was going to look at opening up certain fields for exploration. It's just hypocritical in the extreme to say New Zealand can't do it, but will get poorer countries to extract the mines from their backyard, so long as it's not ours. We can do it better. We can do it more expensively. We can do it cleaner, but no, we'd rather march in the streets taking selfies of ourselves doing so, relying on equipment that's being produced by other people's mining, doing the very thing that you're protesting against. It is utterly, utterly hypocritical. In an ideal world, you don’t despoil the earth but we don't live in an ideal world. It's a hell of a lot better than it was before we started mining and extracting, that's for sure. And we've come to take those comforts for granted without questioning where they come from, how they get here, how they're put our hands. You have to own it, if you want it you have to be prepared to acknowledge where it came from. It's the same with anything, if choose to eat meat, you can't then complain to the butcher that there are carcasses hanging in the shop, which has happened. You have to acknowledge where it came from. And if we have it, then we should do it and we should do it properly.

Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.