Twenty years to disaster?
John Robinson
· An awareness around 1970 of the approach of physical limits to human civilisation led to a forecast of overshoot and decline in a perfect storm around 2030. A burgeoning human population is passing the limits of a finite planet, including food, water and energy, and heading for collapse. Now 40 years of that 60-year period have passed. Events are following the forecast path and the crisis is only 20 years away.
· Many elements of that forecast have occurred as expected, including oil peak, climate change, species extinction and economic crisis. The signs of approaching limits are clear. Our civilisation may soon crash.
· Nothing has been done in the past several decades of denial. Instead here has been an increase in control by a global oligarchy fixated on growth.
· The threat facing us is frightening, but unfortunately it is the reality. The challenge is to stop pretending that the current way of operation is sustainable. We must stop being scared and calmly deal with the real world.
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed, courage
to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
the things that cannot be changed, courage
to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
(Reinhold Niebuhr, 1937)
The key here is to distinguish the inevitable (to be accepted) from a challenge that demands action - where, collectively and as individuals, we can make a difference. That decision requires a comprehensive awareness of our environment and society. Knowledge of the world around us has always fascinated man. With collapse threatening, it is essential.
I commence here with a time, some four decades ago, when the discussion of global trends and limits was far more robust and outspoken than today. The focus was on population, resources and environment. (Further issues such as economic instability were added later.) Variations in climate were recognised. Since the human population is so great as to be straining the resources of the planet, a natural catastrophe could tip that unstable system over and drive a collapse. After all, the global cooling caused by the volcanic eruptions of Tambora in 1815 and Krakatoa in 1883 had caused massive famines around the world. There had been a little ice age from 1400 to 1800). There was uncertainty in 1970 as to whether the world might move from the benign climate of the post-war years to either cooling or heating.
The question of climate change is now answered and global warming is well understood. Recent years have seen a number of destructive events, including drought and flood, earthquake and tsunami. Such natural events, together with further connected factors such as population pressure and resource limitations (including food and water), threaten the viability of societies. It is only common sense to allow safety margins, as with buildings and bridges. But such foresight is signally lacking in civilisation itself.
There is a great deal of information available on the evolution of peoples and civilisations, both in televisions series (such as Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation and David Attenborough’s Life on Earth) and books. Here are a few examples.
· Interdisciplinary archaeologist Ian Morris, in Why the West rules for now (2010), follows the pattern of development of human society, from the first movements out of Africa when people hunted many large animals into extinction. Considerable changes in global climate, such as the end of the last ice age around 10,000 – 12,000 years ago determined much of the subsequent development of peoples, of cities and civilisation. The prevalence of war is clear. “Armies have plundered the innocent since war began, and probably worked out all the possible variations on savagery quite early on, merely repeating them in resounding counterpoint through subsequent ages of horror.” During the cold period between 800 and 500 BCE population fell in northern and western Europe but rose around the Mediterranean. “If such a disruption of the climate system were to occur today, the social, economic, and political consequences would be nothing short of catastrophic.” This is an extremely useful, but flawed, book. The ‘social development’ index is questionable and the discussion of the coming decade is quite weird. However, there is here a comprehensive collection of information presented in an easy style.
· Jared Diamond, in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), explores the stories of a number of vanished societies, including Easter Island, Angkor Wat, Maya cities “overgrown by jungle”, the Viking colony on Greenland and abandoned Native American sites in the USA, and links these past experiences of catastrophe following population growth, climate change and environmental damage to today’s world.
· Barbara Tuchman, in A distant mirror, the calamitous 14th century (1979), describes another cooler period leading to crop failure that aided the spread of disease as the Black Plague of circa 1345 killed around one-third of the European population. That disastrous period followed several centuries of economic growth and the growth of technology, population (European population probably doubled in the warm period of 1000-1300) and cities in a pattern very much like our own time. It took centuries for Europe to recover.
· Fernand Braudel, in The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Phillip II (1972) and Civilisation and capitalism, 15th-18th century (1981), provides a magisterial overview of the history of the last half-millennium based on detailed research by the greatest historian of the twentieth century. His identification of a series of economic fluctuations, with peaks followed by downturns over periods of around 50 years, through the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, suggests that such economic cycles, also identified by Kondratief from the late eighteenth century to the present and markedly similar to the crashes of 1929-1933 and 2008, point to a recurring overshoot-and-decline economic behavioural.
· Marvin Harris (Cannibals and kings, the origins of cultures, 1977) shows how many civilisations followed similar paths, with a realistic link to the present. Of interest to New Zealanders is the way that Maori inter-tribal warfare preceding the Treaty of Waitangi followed a common pattern of a society under stress due to the overloading of a pre-industrial ecosystem.
The evolution of societies has always been dependent on climate, environment, population, technology, resources and political power – with frequent warfare. Disaster is possible - it is illogical to ignore the environmental destruction and social collapse deriving from the current careless abuse of human capabilities.
We have entered the Anthropocene, and now humanity is the largest driver of global change. There have been considerable changes in the past, some disastrous. The difference now is that the considerable success and development of recent centuries, with global interconnection, means that the scale is greater than ever, threatening the deaths of billions rather than millions as in the past. The sheer scale of the challenge (covering all aspects of our lives) points to the need for robust action.
THE PICTURE TODAY
A general pattern, evident forty years ago, has been further confirmed and extended by considerable scientific analyses. There have been no surprises, as many forecast events - symptoms of the coming storm - have come to pass.
Extinction
The earth has entered into an extraordinary period of species extinctions. While environmental destruction and extinction of other species has been a constant feature of the spread of humans across the globe, the process has accelerated. Many countries no longer have any remaining natural environment and many animals live in severely constricted areas, some awaiting their inevitable end.
Population
The reason for this global destruction is the human population explosion; we have been born as part of a plague, a human epidemic. The number of people reached 1 billion in 1800, then tripled to 3 billion in 140 years to 1940, and is tripling again in 80 years towards 9 billion in 2040.
Food
Supplies of food are uncertain. A number of global models, based on considerable evidence suggest that once the population has added a couple more billions from the 6 billion of 2000, there will be too many and there will be widespread starvation.
Water
For decades scholars have pointed to water as the key determinant of limits to potential food production. Water shortages are common, with frequent disputes over supplies. One particular concern is the draw-down of aquifers whereby stores of underground water are being depleted and ruined, and much agriculture dependent on irrigation will fail with the lack of water.
Plague and war
The frequent stresses of overpopulation, with a concentration of peoples in cities and eventual resource shortages, have led to plague, war and religious extremism many times throughout history. Current regional disputes will blow out in widespread war and destruction. The terrible 20th century with its murderous world wars will form a template for the even more horrifying 21st century – which has begun with an outburst of religious fundamentalism.
Refugees
The movement of economic and environmental refugees into Europe is well established. It has long been obvious that struggling peoples and the wealthy wishing for a better environment will want to leave overcrowded Asian countries. While the wealthy have long been welcomed, Australia has taken strong action to keep boat people away. New Zealand will be a lifeboat nation.
Climate change
Recent measurements show that the movement of ice sheets off Greenland and Antarctica has accelerated. This is a great unknown; if a tipping point is reached, sea level rise of several metres will be rapid, in decades rather than centuries. The burning of fossil fuels is the major contributor to greenhouse gases, yet 2010 was a record year for greenhouse gas production.
Post-oil
The forecast oil peak/plateau came as expected in 2005 and in 2008 prices zoomed to around $150 a barrel. Our whole economy is dependent on cheap available oil, which will soon be unavailable. The changes required are fundamental; oil cannot be replaced by either electricity or plant fuels.
Economic depression
Western capitalism is fundamentally unstable, being characterised by the formation and bursting of a series of bubbles, leading towards a massive depression akin to 1929-1933 in a pattern I described in Excess Capital (1989). The most recent, the stock market crash of September 2008, followed the collapse of the oil bubble when a price drop from $150 to $50 a barrel removed an enormous amount of petrodollars from the market (about $3 trillion a year). This depression has a way to go yet; overproduction and excess capital continue in a global economic system on the edge of collapse. When things go wrong the financial institutions are supported while ordinary people lose jobs and houses as governments are bullied by the external controllers of world finance (the banks, the International Monetary Fund and the credit ratings of Moody’s and Standard & Poor) into austerity programs that destroy national economies.THE GROWING STORM
The United Kingdom’s chief scientist Professor John Beddington warns that “we head into a perfect storm in 2030, because all of these things are operating on the same time frame”. This is surely the major scientific – and indeed existential – question of our time. That issue is far more serious and much more important than any in the past. The question is not philosophical or religious – it is one of survival. It is also largely ignored.
The holistic and interdisciplinary science of the long-term evolution of human civilisation on a finite planet provides the answer. By the 1960s many people were beginning to question the direction of modern civilisation, with Rachel Carson’s whistleblower, Silent spring (1962) followed by lengthy collations such as Population, resources, environment (Paul and Ann Ehrlich, 1969) and The closing circle (Barry Commoner, 1971) describing the considerable environmental degradation and identifying other problems of a finite world. These pointed to further fundamental questions. When might the limit be reached? How would it develop? What can be done?
In 1968 a group of international civil servants and business leaders shared their impressions of the world that they saw in their many work travels. They noted the repetition of the same problems in all parts of the globe, and concluded that many problems had become global in scope. They formed The Club of Rome and commissioned a study by a MIT computer group. Their report, The limits to growth (Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William Behrens, 1972), raised the possibility of a global population decline due to food shortages and pollution by mid-21st century – not immediately, but within one lifetime. The forecast was for overshoot and collapse, involving a massive population decline. It is important to note that this model work took into account developments such as declining fertility, technological advances and increasing productivity.
There have been many further explorations of the global predicament, including, The twenty ninth day (Lester Brown, 1978), The global report to the President (Barney G O, 1982) and Five holocausts, by New Zealander Derek Wilson (2001).
The forecast has been tested. A CSIRO analysis (Graham Turner, 2008, A comparison of “The Limits to growth” with 30 years of reality, http://www.csiro.au/resources/SEEDPaper19.html) showed that “30 years of historical data compare favourably with key features of a business-as-usual forecast called the ‘standard run’ scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century.” It is not difficult to follow the trends (in population, global pollution, resource supplies) further to 2010, to show that the forecast has passed the test for a further decade, moving still nearer to the collapse date (I forecast around 2030).
This was a one-world model. During the decade following its presentation a number of more comprehensive models were developed, as well as many extensive multidisciplinary research projects. Most conclusions were presented as alternative scenarios, with little effort to consider which possible future was the most probable. All, however, recognised the possibility of massive breakdown, in particular across southeast Asia. That is, a series of far more detailed models showed that the Limits forecast is certainly possible. It has never been disproved.
For a while that challenging and robust debate on the evolution of civilisation on a finite planet was fashionable. However, the existence of such limits demanded a considerable response, a move from growth to a leisure society. This was a challenge to powerful interests with a stake in profit generation, and the counter-revolution led by Thatcher (1979, Great Britain) and Reagan (1981, USA ), aped by Douglas (1984, New Zealand), brought policies designed to protect the interests of transnational corporations and global finance by opening up trade and selling public goods. The growth imperative was reasserted and has remained dominant.
My own development of the forecast continued, in a pulsing pattern, moving between the whole picture and particular studies or briefs. The forecast suggested areas demanding further information, and the briefs informed the development of the core forecast.
I am a scientist. I have followed the guidelines of science - to consider all the data, to choose carefully which features will dominate, to test given information against facts and further to continually test the forecast against events as they unfold. The basic feature of a scientific hypothesis is that it can be tested; the forecast must be formulated clearly, so that it may be found to be either true or false. When looking ahead, the final test can only come when the full time has passed. But even more important than proof of ultimate accuracy, is the setting of tests along the way. The forecast must be formulated in such a way that it may be shown to be wrong; “a statement should be falsifiable”. (Jacob Bronowski, A sense of the future, MIT Press, 1977) This is one forecast, not a series of ‘possible’ scenarios providing a varied choice to suit the requirements of the client.
Scientific knowledge is based on the accumulation of observations and “the repeated overthrow of scientific theories and their replacement by better and more satisfactory ones.” The replacement of accepted dogma is a fundamental problem for any science that makes a challenge to the status quo, whether considering motion round the sun at the time of Galileo, evolution of species in nineteenth century Britain or the limits of a finite world in today’s growth-fixated society.
This is then a risky topic. The required “independence, in observation and hence in thought” leads inevitably to conflict with the status quo.
“Independence of mind and reasoned dissent in speech are virtues in the world of science, though in many polite circles they would be regarded as vices. … An age of reason may be anxious to persuade the unreasonable – and independent minds are always unreasonable – but it must be more anxious to ensure that they are not browbeaten.” (Bronowski)
I have formulated one most-probable forecast, setting aside my wishes and the knowledge that a much better world is physically feasible. The result is a very worrying, but robust, forecast, describing events of the past decades as well as dire expectations for the future. It is uncomfortable, but that is where the real world is heading.
The topic, dealing with the direction of societies and economies, is inevitably very political. One key guiding question has been whether behaviour will change fundamentally in response to the challenge, or whether existing policies, driven by the present powerful, will continue. My early observation and forecast that major players on the world scene will not change their behaviour, but will act forcefully to protect their interests, remains accurate. The demand for unthinking growth that has been a dominant feature throughout the past half-century continues today.
Much of the detailed information required to flesh out the global framework – such as the growing evidence on global warming, on water shortages, on species extinctions and on pollution of the seas – has been readily available. Some required judgement and common sense, as when the International Energy Agency disagreed with the majority of analysts by denying the forecast of an oil peak around 2005. Their analysis was poor, and events have shown that they were wrong. (The Ministry of Economic Development still relies on the IEA.)
The treatment of long-term economics was woeful, and it was necessary to prepare a brief (Excess capital, 1989), which described the evidence of past cycles and considered why there had not been a collapse following global over-production in 1970.
Since the Second World War, western capitalism has operated as a command economy and not as an unfettered free market. The welfare state has maintained spending and somewhat reduced the impact on the economy of poverty. The global authorities of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have considerable powers and have acted to stabilise the system – with policies that benefit big capital and so often harm the people, as in Greece today. Centralised control is with big business and a massive military. The growth of the military-industrial complex that USA President Dwight Eisenhower warned of in 1961 has continued and the USA is responsible for 44% of the $1.5 trillion world expenditure on arms, a considerable stabilising force on the ‘free market’ but with enormous harm to society.
“The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” (Eisenhower 1961)
Many colleagues in Europe studying the overshoot-and-decline pattern of the Kondatief cycle had forecast collapse in a year or two, by 1984. I disagreed, noting that overproduction had commenced many years before, around 1970, without bringing collapse. I concluded that the global economy would stagger on, with a series of crises (as occurred) through the remainder of the 20th century, with meltdown probable in the first decade of the new century. The resultant forecast (formulated around 1980) was for an unsteady continuation for the remainder of the twentieth century before a crash in the first decade of the new century, driven by the impact of excess capital. That occurred in 2008.
Other briefs have included articles on what will precede and follow the crash (Learning from scenarios; the future may be with us as foreshocks precede forecast events, 2002 and An exploration of the late twenty-first century, 1998), and books on the New Zealand situation (NZ 2030, the world’s lifeboat, 2009), the car (Cars at the end of an era, transport issues in the New Zealand greenhouse, 2011) and ethnic grievance (The corruption of New Zealand democracy, a Treaty industry overview, 2011), available from me.
The considerable mass of information and many analyses provide a robust forecast of global collapse around 2030. This forecast is based on work with many international organisations, with reference to many global model projects and the publications of many diverse think tanks, and with the comparison of forecasts with events as time passes. The general pattern that became evident by 1970 has been confirmed and extended by considerable scientific analyses and subsequent events.
This does not foretell the end of life on earth, the death of humanity or the end of civilisation. Many will die, but many will survive. Inequalities, which are so considerable across the current world, will intensify, just as in that terrible fourteenth century. Many futures journals present an optimistic spin, with articles on technological advances describing a wealthy, high-tech future. Some of those forecasts too will come to pass, with the coexistence of two very different societies in the future, the rich and the poor (A review of some forecasts to the end of the century and beyond, report to the Foundation for the Future, 2000). This pattern is frequently observed, as in medieval times and in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. It is the reality in many parts of the world today.
A few will survive in luxurious gated compounds or lifeboat nations. Most will experience a horror like that declaimed by the dying Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s novel of the Belgian Congo, Heart of darkness (1899), and repeated in the more recent experiences in Rwanda, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia under USA bombs and then the killing fields, the holocaust and Palestine today.
Many past events suggest that the global population will drop by one-third to a half (some peoples have even disappeared completely). Even here in New Zealand, this is nothing new - a similar population collapse occurred in 1800-1840 when Maori population dropped by around 40 % as a result of inter-tribal war, aided by disease.
The global crisis will span many decades, from its buildup which is clearly under way now, through the considerable series of crises as food and resource shortages, starvation, disease and death, conflict and war spread from one region to another. The consequences will be felt for centuries to come. As today, attention will move from one crisis to another with little appreciation of the full picture of the inevitable consequences of human over-population along with continuing thoughtless expansion.
This will be a time of great disruption. As Jared Diamond pointed out,
“the world's environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies. While all of those grim phenomena have been endemic to humanity throughout our history, their frequency increases with environmental degradation, population pressure, and the resulting poverty and political instability. Examples of those unpleasant solutions to environmental and population problems abound in both the modern world and the ancient world.”
New Zealand is caught up in the modern predicament. There are however still some remnants of the natural world here. New Zealand is far from the crowding and pollution of many highly populated regions, and is isolated from the worst of the coming strife. To the rest of the world New Zealand will be a sanctuary from a collapsing civilization, a lifeboat nation. There will soon be a flood of refugees from a hellish world, some wealthy enough to buy their way in, some distressed and starving.
So New Zealand will be a place of escape, a favoured place, where people may survive far from swirling disaster and conflict. How can we react to the demand for places on one of the world’s lifeboats? The harsh reality is that the time is coming for some very tough decisions. Do we allow ourselves to be overrun or do we man the barricades?
“Our first imperative is to survive, but soon we face the appalling question of who we can let aboard the lifeboat? And who must we reject? There will be no ducking this question for before long there will be a great clamour from climate refugees seeking a safe haven in those few parts where the climate is tolerable and food is available. Make no mistakes, the lifeboat simile is apt; the same problem has faced the shipwrecked; a lifeboat will sink or become impossible to sail if too laden. The old rules I grew up with were women and children first and the captain goes down with his ship. We will need a set of rules for climate oases.” (James Lovelock, The vanishing face of Gaia, 2009)
These are difficult questions demanding forethought, but that is lacking. The situation is made worse by the failure of a half-century of leaders to permit robust discussion. INFORMATION OR SPIN?
Modern media and advertising brainwash and control their audiences, who are conditioned with the constant repetition of calls for mindless consumerism and hedonism. The population is told what to do, what matters, what to aim for and how to behave. The media, with so much owned by and serving international corporations, is dependent on the advertising dollar (even ‘public’ broadcasting), is driven by the profit motive towards sensationalism and is lacking core principles. The information provided is dumbed down and slanted.
That pattern is the inevitable consequence of market forces. It was recognised and described by Vance Packard in The hidden persuaders (1957) and The waste makers (1961). The message is to consume. Big business cannot allow satisfaction to take root.
This is a wasteful system, with considerable effort turned away from the simple satisfaction of basic needs or the provision of universal social services. The highly expensive advertising industry takes skill, knowledge and technology, studying human behaviour and running opinion surveys, finding which key words will produce the best reaction and which images will sell products. People are told to consume, to travel and not to preserve the earth’s oil and climate.
These big corporations look good by providing the fix of sports features and entertainment. The extraordinary national media fixation on the Rugby World Cup, requiring substantial public funding, provides a good example, as does the subservient attitude of Prime Minister Key towards Warner Brothers.
Information gathering and policy analysis are also controlled within the public sector. The public service no longer aims to serve the public. Instead, Government agencies are required to serve their master, the departmental Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who is in turn answerable to the Minister, who listens to an army of lobbyists.
The consequence is a lack of critical thinking. Examples abound. Tourism New Zealand and the Ministry of Economic Development encourage travel, thus supporting climate change and encouraging the waste of remaining oil. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority is sponsored by car manufacturers and supports electric cars. Record amounts are being spent on expanded use of the car, led by ‘roads of national significance’ in a country that increased energy greenhouse gas emissions by 70% between 1990 and 2007. The pattern is widespread, across all departments, including within the Treaty industry that is poisoning race relations in New Zealand (Robinson, The corruption of New Zealand democracy, a Treaty industry overview, 2011).
Research institutions and universities are similarly subservient, being dependent on funding that is tightly controlled by a massive bureaucracy and focussed on growth. Those scientists who most profit from this controlled system are given honours and feted as they talk of the need for ‘entrepreneurs’ and ‘innovation’, drawing attention away from a looming catastrophe by calling for a boost driven by the very forces that have created the problem.
Once New Zealand had a scientific system that allowed independent research, as shown in 1973 when I commenced a study of The limits to growth when I was a scientist at Applied Mathematics Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). The organisation of science after the Second World War had been based on wide-ranging discussions by leading scientists from other Commonwealth countries and followed the ‘Haldane Principle’, which calls for the separation of research from administrative departmental control. The resultant Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the DSIR, worked well. The benefits of placing science under the control of scientists, free from control of the purse strings by politicians and bureaucracy, has been shown in a number of subsequent international studies.
Yet in 1992 politicians, guided by a business ideology, broke up the DSIR and organised science into business units - Crown Research Institutions or CRIs. They set up a fragmented system of institutions with a powerful bureaucratic centre, based on a quite inappropriate business model. The mission of the new control agent, the Foundation for Research Science and Technology (FoRST, a true monolith staffed by the ignorant with little understanding of science) became “Actively growing value for New Zealand by investing for results from research and development.” Since it is simply not possible to second-guess the outcome of scientific research, such a goal is unreachable. Tight control both stifles innovation and prevents critical thinking.
The consequences have been disastrous. A considerable amount of the time of scientists (estimates are in the 30% to 50% range) is taken with funding applications rather than research. Around 89% of applications fail and much of the effort put into those applications is wasted. Funding uncertainties and strange decisions limit and disrupt science - projects which take some time to carry out may stop midway and linked projects may fail when a significant stage is not funded – and the control structure, including the extensive funding rounds, is expensive and wasteful. The output, guided by the political correctness necessary to obtain funding, has distorted understanding and provides a biased education to new generations of students, who are taught more to keep their noses clean (to guarantee employment) than to experience the joy of knowledge and the search for the truth, the thrill of discovery.
Alternate thinking is now rejected out of hand. Once I worked on global limits in the DSIR. The situation has been completely transformed. In the last two years a paper on the current lack of science in New Zealand and the need for an independent interdisciplinary study has been turned down by the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand and the New Zealand Journal of Science, with no feedback or discussion in either case. Approaches to the Royal Society of New Zealand (both the national office and the Wellington branch) and the New Zealand Association of Scientists for a debate on the limits to growth and the modern predicament have been turned down, in one case because this is too confrontational. The Victoria University Institute of Policy Studies, like the Green Party and so many others, invites tame speakers and refuses a robust debate. Consequently this discussion paper is provided by a small group of enthusiasts, acting outside ‘professional’ circles.
POLICY FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW
The world is approaching the limits to growth, with overproduction and increasing damage to the environment. The obvious response is to cut consumption and production, and to reduce population.
This is physically possible and largely beneficial. Reducing throughput involves the careful management of resources, reducing waste and consumption, reducing excess production and unnecessary employment, and then providing useful employment with decent work conditions to all. That requires a considerable extension of Government services, and points to a mixed economy, much as was built up over previous generations and existed until the parliamentary revolution of 1984 sold off public assets and cut taxes to the better off. Taxes must increase considerably on higher incomes and financial dealings. The first stage is to return to the situation before 1984, when New Zealand was a more equal society and when we collectively owned and ran many essential services.
Such a transformation can bring a greater emphasis on caring and belonging so that every one of us can feel part of the community. The must be an end to race-based privilege and the divisiveness of the Treaty grievance industry, a desire for equality free of inherited position. The situation of many Maori will be considerably improved by the disappearance of the underclass.
A move back towards a reasonable level of self-sufficiency will (as in the past) provide jobs as we ourselves produce our own clothes, shoes and other goods. The cost will be greater than imported goods produced by cheap labour elsewhere, but our society will be stronger. Exports will be guided by the value-added concept – for example, with an end to the export of logs, which will be turned into finished products here. When we are masters in our own home, we may take steps to reduce the work week, and to provide a job to everyone who wants to work – as a right.
Control of our destiny and the provision of basic services (hospitals, schools, police, etc.) demand collective action. This is national effort, not fragmented local action. There is no place for an unreal and romantic vision of self-sufficient villages, where the viability of each will depend on their particular wealth and resources.
The response to the challenge of global warming must be met directly by reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. There must be an end to the import of gas-guzzling large private vehicles. Now. There must be an end to the hypocritical merry-go-round carbon trading scheme, which provides yet another artificial currency to fuel another financial bubble, with profit to financial interests coupled with a failure to address the real problem.
Information must be set free. The scientific enterprise must be controlled by scientists, with the goal of questioning, and seeking the truth. This would put an end to the continuous calls for ‘innovation’ by ‘entrepreneurs’ from both politicians and their captive scientists, which aim only to protect and continue the status quo. The public service too must be freed from the current tight control, allowed to serve the public and not their political masters.
The global population is a key factor stressing the finite resources of the planet. As members of the human family we too must control and reduce our numbers. The future will see an expansion of refugees escaping the collapsing centers of civilisation. The country may become overcrowded with refugees, with the high population numbers bringing environmental depredation and resource shortages - or New Zealand may be colonized by wealthy refugees. It would be preferable to remain in control and protect this land of ours, with self-sufficiency and a limited population.
In brief, we must together chose an economic system to suit the demands of society and the challenges of our time, and refute the outdated requirements of growth capitalism.
The resultant spirit of collective concern and caring will provide a direction for the nation and a meaning to life for ordinary citizens who will be asked to belong, to join in this collective enterprise as we together tackle the enormous task that is facing us. Inclusivity will replace current rejection.
But since equality means that those in control would lose their dominance, power and much of their wealth, this is not allowed in today’s conditioned society. We are passengers on a bus that is directed by a small elite clustered at the front, concentrating on improvements to the mechanics (innovating the engine and ignoring the direction) and heading in a direction that provides them – and them alone - with immediate reward. Most of us are passengers clustered in the middle. At the back, which is open to the wind and rain, are the many poor struggling as best they can and often falling off into space. The bus is headed for a cliff, but those who look ahead are told to shut up while the passengers are kept happy with a steady diet of entertainment and advertising shown on modern brainwashing screens. Although it would have been possible decades ago to stop that mad careering along and to picnic all together with the plenty already achieved, the bus is driven on relentlessly towards that looming cliff.
A change in direction requires taking over the wheel, gaining control of our destiny - determining the direction of our country and cutting the existing dependence on (and control by) the global oligarchy. We must break free from that control.
This is a powerful system, with a massive industry telling us how to behave. The dependence of media on the advertising dollar has created an extraordinary propaganda machine, conditioning people to a deep belief in the need to consume ever more. That indoctrination must go. Mass media must be run by professionals free of narrow commercial or political control.
Here is the crux of the matter. The steady state, and an emphasis on the well-being of everyone, is anathema to capitalism, which is an economic system that requires growth in order to operate. The end to the expanding merry-go-round removes the promise of profit. There will no longer be any assurance of new investment opportunities, to produce further gain. Banks and financial institutions must operate within tight guidelines, to carry out limited tasks and no longer gamble with borrowed money.
Other powerful lobby groups, such as the private transport and tourism operators must come to realise that their day has passed. Steady, planned cutbacks, together with the scrapping of massive road building such as the ‘Roads of National Significance’, will help the transition and free finances for other uses.
Many years have been wasted. We are all together on this one planet, part of a human plague that destroys other species, harms the environment, threatens the viability of our civilisation and promises widespread starvation. We cannot plan for sustainability, for our current way of life cannot be sustained. We are entering a time of massive disruption, and must consider how best to survive the storm. If we tackle the task this will be a satisfying time, bringing fulfilment and togetherness as we join together to do the best we can.
This is a big ask. It requires challenging, provocative thinking. Each of us must function as a truly alive human being, not as a directed zombie.
‘Swim against the current: even a dead fish can go with the flow.’
This is a dysfunctional society that has taken us to the brink of calamity. The aim now must be for survival rather than sustainability. We must wake up and face the future with determination and solidarity - in difficult times we must roll up our sleeves and get to the task.
We head into a perfect storm in 2030. Recent observations support The limits to growth standard run scenario of 1972, which forecast global collapse.
In 20 years New Zealand will be a place of escape, a favoured place, where people may survive far from swirling disaster and conflict.
For 40 years we have known that the extraordinary population explosion on a finite planet would over-reach finite limits. Many species have gone and others are going, resources are overused, the environment is damaged and mass starvation can be foreseen. The leaders who have insisted on growth bear a heavy responsibility for their inaction and denial.
