I agree in general with the argument against continuing dependence on fossil fuels, and I agree of course that the ultimate solution to both environmental degradation and unemployment is a restructuring of society along post-capitalist lines, but I think that it has to be remembered that the vast majority of New Zealanders and (I strongly suspect) Coasters are not as clued up about this stuff as most of the people participating in this thread. If they say 'what are we going to do for jobs and power?' and we say 'get rid of capitalism', their eyes are likely to glaze over.

I think then that we need a set of practical alternatives to the new coal mine, which address the needs of the Coasters for jobs, and the need of all New Zealanders for power, as well as the needs of the environment. It sounds like bobo and others already have some good ideas - it'd be interesting to see them in more detail.

I think that eco-tourism is problematic for three reasons.

In the first place, there is a great danger that it will pay poor wages and in many cases provide only casual work. Who wants to dig out latrines for American tourists for the minimum wage during the summer months, when they can earn relatively good money the year round in the quite safe conditions of an open-cast mine?

There's a related problem of attitudes to the new work on offer in regions like the Coast. Many New Zealanders who remember the old industries that provided jobs in the regions feel miffed by suggestions that they ought to work in the tourist sector: they see the work that this new 'industry' provides as much less dignified and meaningful than labour in the freezing works or the mines or the timber mill. There is a strong resentment of the middle class urban liberals - from Auckland and Wellington, as well as California - who keep the tourist industry afloat.

There is also the problem that, by its very nature, the tourist industry only reinforces the dependence of the New Zealand economy on its big brothers, the United States and Europe. New Zealand has remained basically a primary producer economy dependent on exports for its survival - the destruction of much industry and sale of assets under the neo-liberal 'reforms' of the 80s and 90s only reinforced this fact.

The only way to improve the lives of ordinary New Zealanders, particularly those living in the regions, is to take control of resources back from overseas capitalists and actually do something with the primary produce of this country. (The classic example is the forestry industry: New Zealand has vast tracts of exotic forest, yet they are owned by multinational companies who have been content to close down mills, paper plants, and other knock-on industries, and send the 'raw' timber overseas for processing, from whence it is imported back to New Zealand. Meanwhile timber towns like Tokoroa, Kawerau, and Moerewa suffer massive unemployment!)

Of course, the people who dominate the Green Party and parts of the environental movement represent a section of the New Zealand middle class/petty bourgeoisie which benefits from eco-tourism and from other economic activities that draw on New Zealand's 'clean, green' trademark. They are in most cases either oblivious or actively antipathetic to the traditional working class communities in the regions, and would run a mile before they endorsed a programme which called for the setting up of real (though clean) industries in places like the Coast. The liberal petty bourgeois vision that these people push has generally dominated radical politics in New Zealand, marginalising other political tendencies like Marxism, but the West Coast was one of the places where it did not enjoy hegemony. The Coast was the birthplace of the Red Feds, the Communist Party, and (less gloriously) the Labour Party, and arguably the only place in New Zealand where the working class has seized political power, albeit briefly (during the general strike of 1913 soviet-style workers' organisations took control of several West Coast towns for several days).

Len Richardson's classic book 'Coal, Class, and Community' tells the story of the Coast's revolutionary history, and should be required reading for everyone who opposes Kiwi mine. Opening new mines may not be the way forward today, but nevertheless it's the West Coast tradition of class struggle politics that environmentalists have to draw on today, if they want to formulate an alternative to Kiwi that appeals to more than eco-tourism operators.