Farm Forestry New Zealand50 Shades of Green protest march - Why trees?
Three of us counter-protestors took our pro-forest placards, marched with the 50 Shades protest and stayed for the speeches on the grounds of Parliament. There were no scuffles or harsh words. There were a lot of good natured people there and no conflicts. Although one or two surly ones said we were at the wrong protest, and one or two others tried to convince us that climate change was not man-made, a few actually liked our placards in favour of trees (or maybe they didn’t understand them). Bearing in mind these were possibly not your average farmers but self-selected activists, my impressions from the day were:
- They deny outright that they contribute to GHG emissions
- They are largely in denial about causing any environmental damage
- They think they can solve the freshwater ‘problem’ themselves and should be left to deal with it without Farm Plans (as if their track record gives anyone confidence they would)
- They are against pines but not against trees on farms
- They really have little idea about the ETS, how it is set up and what It does
- They are angry about losing farmland to foreign investment
- They are happy to invent and spread misinformation to defend their way of life and business as usual.
So, there is still a lot of crap being said by farmers about farmers. Nothing new there, really. But although they gave their opinions and we gave ours, no-one got hurt and it was a fine day. The three of us then we went for a beer.
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