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Reading the tea leaves

Last Mayday, we held a forum in Blackball on the concept of a Just Transition as it applies to the West Coast. Among those present were mining advocate Patrick Phelps; Savage and Garth Elliott from the E tū union; Green MP Steve Abel with advisors; Labour MP Damien O’Connor; Otago academic Sean Connelly, who studies regional economies; and activists James Cockle and Rosemary Penwarden from Climate Liberation. Richard Tacon of Bathurst Resources sent apologies, being overseas, and Mayor Jamie Cleine was also away—both had wanted to attend. Noticeably absent, though unsurprisingly, were representatives from Development West Coast, the region’s economic development agency, which has never attended a union-organised event. The runanga have only come once. Part of the issue may be that our gatherings are held on weekends, when local bureaucrats are often away. Nevertheless, around forty people attended and the discussion was rigorous. Prior to the forum, there had already been dialogue between the union and Green MPs, including co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.

At the forum, Phelps argued for mining and its role in supplying resources required for new technologies, claiming that ignoring the market would hollow out communities. Savage proposed the Tiriti model as a national paradigm for dialogue across difference. Connelly affirmed the problem of population loss in regions beyond the urban periphery, and spoke of the “different rhythms of change”—communities being slower to adapt because of heritage and historical injustices. He emphasised the necessity of giving rural New Zealand a voice. O’Connor argued that capitalism must incorporate responsibility alongside property rights. The Greens presented their Ministry of Green Works proposal and the concept of social ecology, while the activists pressed the generational urgency of the climate crisis.

By the end of the day, key questions had emerged:

• Who should decide the direction of our green future—who plans the projects and jobs? 
• How do we find out what those needing to transition actually want to transition to? 
• How do we encourage participation and engagement? 
• What are our shared values? 
• What decision-making processes do we need for a Just Transition, and how do we support workers and communities through it? 
• How do we insert community voices into fast-track or political processes? 
• How do we involve young people in local issues? 
• Who has the power to make change? 
• How can we pursue sustainable industrial policy amid global instability? 
• How do we hold extractive companies accountable for funding and for leading Just Transition? 
• How do we deal with mining companies’ ingratiation into local life, making them seem indispensable? 
• How do we build societies of mutual aid? 
• How do we honour Te Tiriti if mana whenua hold differing positions on extraction? 
• How do we address planned obsolescence and the need to reduce consumption? 
• Can increased mining royalties be retained on the Coast? 
• How do we move beyond polarisation—“us versus them”—around extraction? 
• Will corporations consider Just Transition or simply close operations? 
• Can any real solution exist within capitalism and the party-political system?

Posing these questions opened space for meaningful dialogue, even glimpses of action—but also a default position of old suspicions. Green supporters distrusted miners; miners distrusted environmentalists. This mutual suspicion revealed a fundamental relational fracture. And as always, the elephant in the room remained: who controls power and resources?

—

### After the Forum

Two months later, two activists from Climate Liberation Aotearoa abseiled into a coal bucket at Stockton Mine, remaining there for three weeks and causing losses of roughly $300,000. Their protest targeted Bathurst’s use of fast-track legislation to extend the mine’s life by up to twenty years. That act seemed to end dialogue, particularly when Green MPs publicly supported the protest.

To understand the situation more deeply, I interviewed several key players: Richard Tacon, CEO of Bathurst; former mayor, Jamie Cleine; E tū organizer, Garth Elliott; and activist, James Cockle of Climate Liberation.

—

### Richard Tacon: The Employer

Tacon began his career as an underground miner and describes himself as a sympathetic employer of the mine’s 350 workers and 75 contractors. He supports a unionised workforce, arguing that it simplifies management. Bathurst replaced allowances with a generous hourly rate and a profit-sharing scheme that rewards all workers (including management) equally.

He acknowledged the right to protest but found the length of the Stockton sit-in divisive: “Eyes flitted suspiciously at the supermarket—was that stranger an activist supporter?” he said. He defended Stockton coal as “youthful” and “pure,” claiming that, in smelting it acts like baking soda in a cake mix and reduces overall emissions—though this benefit is not recognised in carbon accounting.

Tacon noted Bathurst’s efforts to collaborate with those exploring alternative coal uses: carbon foam for local energy storage and construction, and carbon filters for water purifying. These would require less coal and smaller operations. He pointed to Bathurst’s infrastructural fund for local start-ups and its contributions to flood recovery. Mining provides roughly 25% of Buller’s economy. He lamented that DOC land classifications have pushed what was once considered development land into the conservation arena, but maintained that Bathurst operates sustainably, avoiding boom-bust cycles. If granted extension, Stockton could run another twenty years.

“We can’t go back to pre-industrial times,” he said, “but we do have to use less.”

—

### Garth Elliott: The Union

Elliott sees E tū’s role as giving workers a voice and raising awareness of broader social issues. “Workers are protective of their industry—it pays their bills,” he said. Though they recognise changing weather patterns, many resist linking them to climate change. “There’s denial when it comes to floods and their causes.”

Mining remains a short-cycle industry, he said—“maybe twenty years, not a lifetime.” Workers move on rather than slow down with age, and their children often head to Australia. The Westport economy is precarious: Talley’s, he said, is “anti-union and structured around worker vulnerability.”

Regarding the coal-bucket protest, Elliott was blunt: “The workers were horrified. It was completely unsafe. If there’d been an accident, months of investigation would’ve followed. They were very pissed off. And then Chlöe and Steve supported the activists. That sent a message: Never trust the Greens.”

He warned that this divide could have political consequences, with a distrust of a Labour coalition which contains the Greens feeding populism, “through just one stupid moment of activism.”

—

### Jamie Cleine: The Mayor

During his time as mayor, Cleine impressed with pragmatism and open-mindedness. He described Westport’s economy as heavily weighted toward the primary sector (40%), with mining providing 25% of that and tourism only 3%. Nationally, mining represents just 0.8% of GDP, but 25% on the Coast. “Anti-mining lobbyists,” he said, “don’t understand how vital it is here.” Productivity, too, is high—$216,000 per job compared to $149,000 nationally.

Westport faces the reality of climate change directly. “We can’t control emissions,” Cleine said, “so we have to manage the effects and build resilience.” Relocation from flood-prone areas will require funding from government, insurance, banking, and community—a practical expression of Just Transition. “The good times have to pay for the bad.”

He noted growing youth interest in nature-based projects, like carbon sequestration in wetlands, and said that Bathurst’s infrastructure fund was, “a drop in the ocean but a start.” With limited rates revenue, Council can only facilitate initiatives like the Westport Master Plan. “No one else in the world is talking about how to do relocation,” he said. One of Council’s roles, he added, “is to read the tea leaves from Wellington.”

Cleine believes the Greens understand Westport’s situation but are constrained by their urban base. “Most locals feel policy is being imposed.” Development West Coast, despite a chequered record, remains key, though energy and transport costs limit new industries. Ideally, royalties and tourist levies would provide secure local funding streams. “The population has to grow,” he said, “preferably with people bringing their jobs. More people means infrastructure that breaks even.” He gave an example of an events and sports centre with substantial community use but which still loses a million dollars a year because of the small population.

—

### James Cockle: The Activist

Cockle described the Stockton sit-in as “a peaceful direct action to impress upon Bathurst the need to drop its extension plans.” The twenty-year extension, he argued, would cause further ecological degradation. On accusations of endangering safety, he replied: “Mining is violent. We took great care for our safety—but what about the safety of the planet?”

He rejected the argument that Stockton coal is needed for “green” steel: “We need less steel, not more. Much is wasted. We’re building six storey buildings from wood now.” To him, the Coast’s DOC estate is a national taonga, belonging to everyone. “We must accept that coal mining will end,” he said. “Technological fixes—carbon foam, carbon capture—never deliver.”

Cockle cited Jeanette Fitzsimons’ *Jobs after Coal* report, noting its finding of a two-tier Coast society: well-paid miners and an underpaid remainder. For him, Just Transition is revolutionary. “You can’t achieve it by tinkering. The Left failed to look after workers, and that’s why some move right. There has to be a revolution.”

After our interview, he told me by email he had once considered moving to the Coast, but it was too far from family in Dunedin.

—

### Drawing the Threads Together

In summary: a pro-union company rationalising coal production while funding local infrastructure; a union aware of the crisis but facing worker denial; a Green Party which is anti-mining yet pro-union and unable to risk its urban support base; activists taking direct action out of urgency and risking a populist backlash; a mayor focused on climate resilience and fiscal realism; and mana whenua supportive of the mining company. All this unfolds on whenua seen by locals as their working backyard and by urban New Zealanders as a national treasure. And this whenua, ultimately, is part of the commons.

Any solution will require radical change. With colleagues, I’ve been working on an updated *Communist Manifesto*, addressing inequality, reclaiming the commons, empowering workers, restoring collective decision-making, rejecting violence, and honouring the Indigenous voice.[1] We’ve also drawn on Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s idea of “hospicing modernity”—the need to gently lay to rest the industrial-colonial project built on separation and violence. [2] New research on trauma offers a parallel lens: allowing a focus on the politics of dissociation which occur under overwhelming stress. [3] Synthesising these perspectives begins to suggest a new methodology based on relationship.

In the case of Westport, the first task would be to *destress* the situation—to ensure safety: of jobs and incomes, housing, and environment. From that foundation, community dialogue could widen, rejecting all forms of violence and confronting the violence inherent in open-cast mining itself. Workers would trace the journey of their product; activists would reflect on the impact of their actions on local lives. Education would explore how modernity imposed and continues to impose separations—between people and land, between communities of location and interest—and imagine futures beyond them.

The company would join the conversation. What would it mean for a company to be made “safe”? Can shareholders be part of that process? Who are they, and how are they connected to this place? Could the forces of capital take part in such a dialogue?

How does this community relate to others under stress, both nationally and internationally? Would wider society tolerate or support such shifts? Ultimately, these conversations must be repeated, both nationally and internationally, especially when new threats arise. Over time, they lead to concrete actions. But what governance structures would facilitate this process? What changes are required?

Perhaps all this sounds utopian. Yet it is urgent that we begin to evolve a methodology that offers possibility rather than despair—one that allows us, finally, to read the tea leaves together. Interestingly, it began to happen in Taranaki, albeit briefly.

[1] https://www.tepuawai.co.nz/Updating-the-manifesto.php

[2] Machado De Oliveira, Vanessa, Hospicing Modernity, parting with harmful ways of living. North Atlantic Books. US, 2017.

[3] Bloom, Sandra L. Creating Sanctuary, toward the evolution of sane societies, Routledge, New York and London, 2013.

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The need for urgency

I attended a community meeting called to discuss a spate of vandalism at a car park and found myself in an episode of The Simpsons or a Brecht skit on Mussolini’s Italy.  A local cop, all taser and trimmed moustache and shaving rash had been rapidly tapping the table with his notebook to show how busy he was before he suddenly pronounced that the police were now focused on catching baddies rather than hugging them. That was the directive and he was putting it into effect. Catching baddies is the thing, he repeated. Don’t worry, we’re onto them. The DOC guys looked like bush fairies and simply said they had no money to do anything. The council reps smiled a lot. The meeting of course, resolved nothing. A culture of totalitarianism has appeared, with bureaucrats competing to put the orders from above into practice. One of the main orders is to cut costs (I’ve heard they’re going through contracts to providers line by line).  Another is to catch baddies and jail them. Another is for teachers to focus on essentials. Another is to give the unions a kick in the balls. It’s all about violence.

And then I had a further episode of a cold turning into ‘walking pneumonia’ so needed some antibiotics, which involved negotiating the local health system. Rumour had it that it was taking a month to see a GP, who are clogged up tending to the chronically ill (those with ongoing issues and ongoing medication), so I steeled myself for a visit to A&E as an acute walk in.

When the new local hospital Te Nikau was being designed we were promised a seamless service with the main local medical centre moving there, the pharmacy opening a branch, and then you’d have A&E, before  you get to the wards.  So, you go to the GP, she deals with you, if you need medication you can get it and go home. Or, if things are more serious and you need x rays or blood tests, you may advance to the A&E section, where these services are located and then, if you are seen as in need of secondary care it will begin to happen, with maybe you ending up in a ward. Meanwhile of course, ambulance patients enter via A&E but could, in fact be sent off to a GP if that is really the level of service required. It was sensible and aspirational, emulating what happens in a place like Poland or Cuba.

What has happened instead is that the GP practice (who are always short staffed) is overwhelmed with tending to chronic patients. Hence the 4 weeks wait. As well, it’s hard to find doctors. So that section becomes isolated and absorbed in its own crises.

The seamless concept has been transferred to the A&E section of the hospital which accepts walk ins. There are GPs there (usually locums), working from rooms attached to the waiting area. You are triaged and wait for however long it takes (at least put aside a morning). Eventually I saw a nurse practitioner who insisted on a chest x ray and blood tests. This meant entering through the portal to the A&E section. Eventually an X ray technician arrived (he didn’t seem very busy) and then an interminable wait for a blood test. There was only one patient and the staff seemed to be mooching along very comfortably and uninterested in anything much, despite prompting, so I went back to the triage desk and said I had to go. They protested that it was very busy in A&E – I suspect this is always the excuse. I explained that I just wanted a prescription for some bloody antibiotics, last time I’d done a tele call and the whole thing was over in 5 minutes.  There were placatory noises and pleas to wait a little longer. 

And then the shift changed and the nurses from Kerala arrived : gracious, very efficient, a blood test done in a moment, a swab, a bag of fluid to bring down my temperature, and then an antibiotic to take, and a script sent to the pharmacy for picking up. Now, you can go home.  No cost for treatment or medication. With a few more GPs and a greater praxis it would be an efficient service.

But what about the GPs and the medical centre, with the four week waiting list? If there were continuity of care it may be worth it, but there isn’t. Nor do they keep an eye on people. At my age an annual check-up should be mandatory but I’ve never been contacted. I’ve got an optometrist request for a specialist opinion that I suspect will never be processed. And then there’s the Primary Health Organisation. What do they do? I’ve never come across them nor have I been aware of them in the local community.

I can see how the original model could have worked well,  but it would require a greater number of committed GPS (rather than locums). We’ve got our nurses from Kerala, let’s bring in some doctors from Cuba.

Moving up the ladder (just a little), there’s the extraordinary interview with President Biden, arranged to reassure the public after his debacle in the first presidential debate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kpibhlagG0

The rest home candidate, after a few minutes of stuttering becomes animated when he talks about taking on Putin and expanding NATO and confronting China in the South, of capturing the production of semi conductors and of ‘running the world’ – for the US must remain the eminent power. And he’s the scout leader to do it. The nakedness of power is on show. It is an extraordinarily clear example of Hannah Arendt’s wonderfully apt description of ‘the banality of evil’. So, the American people have the choice between a cantankerous, self absorbed, cognitively compromised ‘Emperor’ and the unashamed criminal, Trump.

Before watching this I had caught an interview with the President of Grenada, a humble, erudite, civilised man obviously devoted to his community, lamenting the destruction caused by the recent early hurricane and the failure of the rich nations to address climate change. The poor, island nations are at the forefront. But where is the urgency? He was a despairing, tragic figure.

At a recent workshop at Kotuku the young climate action people there stressed their feeling of urgency in terms of the global order and their willingness to take direct action. It was obviously a visceral feeling and I understood the feeling.

It really is time to withdraw from the Empire.

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Normality

With towns destroyed, a billion wildlife casualties, a European sized country burnt out and people huddled on beaches as at Dunkirk, the Australian bush fires are maybe the first catastrophic climate event, more dramatic than the slow dying of a coral reef or the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Camping in the countryside south of Motueka, the red afternoon sun seemed like a primitive omen conjured by a witch doctor or pantheistic god.

Faced with this event, the concept of normality disappeared and I was struck by the realisation that despite this disappearance, people will nevertheless, determinedly hold onto the normal.

I was with family at a folk festival, a pleasant and gentle way to see in the new year; people singing around the campfire sort of thing, folk music having been resurrected as part of the sixties’ rebellion against commercialisation, mass production etc. – instead, the pure voice of Joan Baez singing of Mary Hamilton. There was a bush poets session with the recitation of amusing doggerel which sometimes approached the ballad. All very pleasant, but there was an elephant in the room. Could we acknowledge it? Two of us did, feeling like spoil sports.

Kids roll down the bank/ The young man from Rarotonga/Sings of love/The white tent throbs with age/The sky is clear, time is still/The tui is not in danger/White tuft of once was/ Once was/ Dust settles/On modern man.

And that is the issue. To acknowledge a coming apocalyptic age is difficult and everyone, as in a war, seeks normality, even though there is the knowledge that normality is no longer possible.

Except in the ads. The ads become a comfort, for everyone in the ads is happy. All is well. All you need to do is buy this or that and life will be wonderful. Consumption is the answer. We are suddenly at the heart of the matter and at the heart of our inability to make the necessary decisions and make the necessary uncomfortable changes and face up to the realisation that capitalism doesn’t fit the bill. To put it simply, in Aussie, the fire was consuming consumption and the sun was glowing red. Nevertheless, the cruise ship beckons, the new sofa, the new television, the new car, the shampoo, the bathroom cleaner… producing smiling faces and bonny families  All will be well as we hang onto a normality which no longer exists.

The French philosopher, Badiou, believed that a big event can give direction to the complex and diverse evolving multiplicities that make up modern society. I suspect this is not the case for the climate event, which instead, reduces the multiplicities to a singularity: destruction.

The folk music continued: Mary Hamilton went to the tower, we laughed at a funny song about the kiwi bloke and his shed, applauded a skilled performer on the penny whistle, munched a pie in Murchison on the way back. Normality. The Aussie PM pitches to tourists – it’s still okay to visit our natural wonderland, people stitch leg bandages for kangaroos, celebrities donate money, the ads continue…

Normality.

bushfire

Photo: BBC.com

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Tragedy

We hear the word ‘tragedy’ an awful lot, for it is used to describe most sudden traumatic deaths, from traffic accidents to mine explosions to house fires to tourist disasters such as the recent White Island event.

As a dramatist I can become irritated at the loose use of the word, which, for me, is most valuably associated with a form of drama ‘of elevated theme and diction with unhappy ending’ to quote the Oxford English Dictionary. Yet the OED gives a second meaning: ‘sad event, calamity, serious accident or crime.’ This then, is how the word is generally used and my irritation smacks of snobbery.

I’m faced with a choice: accept the endless, almost daily tragedies, or see if there’s some connection between the two definitions – can the theatre form which comes from the Graeco-Christian tradition, tell us something about the more general use of the word and vice versa?

According to Raymond Williams, who wrote a very good book on the subject, the drama tradition of tragedy began in the theatre of Ancient Greece when three masked characters separated out from the chorus in order to enact ‘the grievous stories of particular ruling families’ as they encountered the vicissitudes of fate and the judgements of the gods. The stories were both myth and a form of history. In the last century the story of the Kennedy family, for a period, had this quality.

010618-17-Greek-Tragedy-Literature

In the Medieval period the tragic story became more about an individual turning aside from contemplation of God and jumping onto the wheel of fortune and being struck down by ‘sin, misgovernance, pride and cruelty’. We have moved from the Kennedys to the Trumps.

Medieval tragedy

Shakespeare explored the tension between the two spaces.

220px-HamletSkullHCSealous

But with the arrival of the bourgeoisie, the tragic story, writes Williams, becomes more about an individual retaining dignity through a time of suffering caused by moral error, with redemption being possible if that moral error is corrected. Here we could use as an example, the Royal Family and the Diana episode, with a new kind of action, including the idea of poetic justice and the need to restore ethical order and unity after an individual is destroyed. We see the same structure of feeling when people overcome addiction.

18th century

With the late 19th  and 20th  centuries we find a tragic mode which is more opaque, for in this mode, suffering is rooted in the ‘nature’ of man. Suffering is, in fact, normal, evil is all powerful and fate is blind. Ordinary people can do each other the greatest injury because of the ‘cruel and indifferent but also immensely fertile law of nature and life.’ In this world view, nature is all powerful and civilisation is a lie. This is revealed in the turgid tales of the court page but also the horror of the death camps. Faced with this, resignation is the order of the day.

But we are also in the tragic realm of the climate crisis where dissolution and chaos is not an individual or even family fate but an event on a planetary scale with the above belief system leading to the tragic action (or inaction) of denial, with everything reduced to the accidents of blind fate and the only position to take being one of resignation.

In this situation a new tragic story has to be told in order to confront the ‘grievous disorder’ and to find resolution. Enter Greta Thunberg and the climate justice kids, who link the suffering of ordinary people in the developing world and of indigenous people everywhere, to the need for human agency(acknowledging what scientific knowledge is telling us and acting accordingly) and ethical renewal.

SchoolStrike4ClimateIt It is the grandest of tragic tasks and one in which myth and history or myth as history, are key, which is why their small actions resonate so loudly.

greta

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Greta

Late last year I wrote a remake of Waiting for Godot, called Waiting for Greta. The prospect of climate extinction seemed to match the existential angst of Becket’s original (which was perhaps influenced by Hiroshima and the subsequent threat of nuclear holocaust); the Swedish girl had just appeared on the scene and I was impressed by her address to the Climate Change Summit.

Since then, especially since venturing into New York, the heart of the beast, Greta Thunberg has become a prophetic (Naomi Klein’s description) force. Millions of kids have taken to the streets and now workers have been called in to support the movement. She is in the media as much as Trump or Johnson. She addresses parliaments, talks with the Pope, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Obama… and is subjected to the outlandishly intense scrutiny of the modern media and the lunatic babble of social media.

She seems to survive, unphased. Most of the time she gives the floor to her admirers. When in the midst of her peers she seems shy and marginal. Yet when she speaks the message is crystal clear and very repeatable by others of her generation:

  • We need to listen to the scientists who are telling us that the planet is under extreme threat of warming to the point that human life as we know it will be impossible.
  • Young people and future generations will pay the price. The leaders for the last thirty years, despite knowing the situation, have done nothing. The current leaders remain hesitant or are bent on destruction.
  • The least fortunate in the world will suffer most because rich people hang onto their privilege.
  • Continual economic growth is not the answer. The system has to change. Young people need to take to the streets and make that change.
  • No one is too small to make a difference.

There’s been nothing this clear and succinct since the Communist Manifesto of 1848. And the message is being forged, and the movement led, by this prophetic sixteen year old with Asperger’s.

Both the conservative right and the liberal left try and cut her down to size, either by dismissing her as a hysterical, mentally ill teenager, or by patronising her. Conspiracy theories abound. She’s in the employ of a PR firm. What’s the story with her parents? Some adults must be behind this. She’s a communist figurehead…

But then, she herself increased the intensity when she addressed the UN in New York. She took off the mask to show the anger, grief and pain of a generation. It became a poor theatre moment which created a frenzy. ‘She’s hysterical. She’s making young people anxious and suicidal. Why don’t her parents rein her in?’ For politicians don’t do this, nor do adults when in public. They can pretend anger and abuse one another, but only the mad reveal themselves in this way. Yet, in actual fact, she was on script. Here’s a quote from a book, The Uninhabitable Earth, a story of the future, by David Wallace-Wells:

‘Rhetoric often fails us on climate because the only factually appropriate language is of a kind we’ve been trained, by a buoyant culture of sunny-side-up optimism, to dismiss, categorically, as hyperbole. Here the facts are hysterical and the dimensions of the drama  incomprehensibly large – large enough to enclose not just all of present day humanity but all of our possible futures as well.’

Greta suddenly acted out this enormity (and immediately a Death Metal band turned it into a song). The adults are terrified at being called to account. Is this going to be something like Mao’s cultural revolution? The honest ones, like Michael Moore, are willing to admit failure. Obama? – no wonder he wants to be seen shaking her hand.

Greta’s secret of course is her Asperger’s, which means she doesn’t ‘play the social games you folk are so fond of’, to use her words. She’s focused, obsessed perhaps, sees the issue without compromise, doesn’t chat, remains a vulnerable figure physically. Prophetic because in this situation, to quote Wallace-Wells again, ‘there is no analogy to draw on outside of mythology and theology’.

She is also remarkably astute. In a sweet interview with a Swedish talk show host, safe in her language and culture, she talks about her Papa – she won’t let him go shopping in New York, he’s untidy and probably sick of having to follow her around (having to pick her up from the UN rather than the school disco). She will keep assessing the public exposure and withdraw if it gets too much. I’m sure she’ll be capable of disappearing for a while just as effectively as she appeared. And she’ll have a remarkable knowledge of the way the political world works.

So far she has survived the maelstrom of the Empire. After all, it’s nothing compared to what the planet’s going to throw at us. And to copy her in three simple ways would change the world: stop flying, stop stupid shopping and become vegan. Let the whole human race do that, starting tomorrow. Whew! Yet it is possible. That’s the point she’s making.

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Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!

The Coast seems to be rehearsing climate change like an amateur theatre group tackling King Lear. ‘Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!’ etc. Floods, road washouts, bridge collapses, coastlines disappearing, old rubbish dumps exposed and their contents swirling around in the ocean to inevitably come ashore, glaciers receding, and local bodies trying to cope in a fool’s way, without the underlying wisdom of Lear’s capering playmate (‘We’ll set thee to school to an ant…’). Mayors astride bulldozers build walls without consent, asset managers repair sea walls that are washed away in the next king tide, incinerator plants that will bring prosperity disappear at the next meeting of shareholders, economic development managers ride from one stuff up to another with all the reckless thuggery of the sisters’ husbands. Goneril and Regan eye the Provincial Growth Fund, eager for a handout to rearm their troops. And still the denial: Well maybe something’s happening but it’s not human driven, it’s just our old friend, or enemy, Nature. Meanwhile the Chinese watch (‘I smell mortality’), waiting for the signal to come and sort things out.

King Lear, (the old Coast) staggers around pathetically, having rejected his daughter, Solidarity. His voice (the local paper) becomes schizoid. Environmental disasters are pasted next to the latest case of some P addict robbing his mother, an eighty year old publishing her first book of poems rests near inaccessible glaciers, the gala day next to a bridge washout, the school swimming sports next to an exploding sea wall, some nostalgic heritage photos next to Trump and Brexit. No one knows what’s hit them. They’ve all been blinded. What might it mean? Give up coal and oil, air travel, mass tourism, consumerism… spend life groping around in the dark? Ridiculous.

Time ticks on and the fool sings a song of future chaos on a global scale (‘Look, here comes a walking fire’).

Exeunt, with a dead march.

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A Christmas greeting

As the level of surveillance increases. I do find it an increasingly medieval world. Not only facebook etc,  but insurance companies and government departments use spies and another US state passes a law which means you lose your job or contract if you participate in the Boycott and Divest movement against Israel, even in the gentlest way – for example by not buying a humus made in Israel. And Congress is about to pass a law making it a criminal offence to boycott Israel, which now becomes a new Holy Land, to be taken from the infidel.

Meanwhile, children are endlessly monitored in their learning, no longer the occasional exam to gauge progress but weekly results reported to the MOE. The 3 Rs have been analysed to the nth degree in terms of stages. The use of metaphor is no longer a discovery, no longer something organic, but taught like a military drill. Thou shalt use metaphor on Wednesday, simile on Friday.

Cargo cults form. Suddenly sports teams take ice baths after games. Very unpleasant it seems, with no evidence of benefit, but it becomes a bonding ritual, this experiencing of pain together. There are often insufficient baths so wheelie bins are commandeered. The mind boggles at the image of the nation’s sports people sitting in wheelie bins packed with ice on a Saturday afternoon. What’s the figure of speech?

In the midst of chaos, Joan of Arc appears in the form of fifteen year old Greta Thumberg, labelled as Aspergic (if that’s a word) because she studied the climate change issue and became depressed that such a crisis could be wilfully ignored. She started to go to parliament and sit on the steps with a placard rather than go to school.  She’s become something of a phenomenon because she tells the truth.

‘…we have to speak clearly, no matter how uncomfortable that may be. You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children.

‘But I don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet. Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money. Our biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. It is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few.’

Perhaps it will simply mean that Greta has her ten minutes of fame. I hope not. Perhaps all the children of the world will opt out of surveillance and data collection and ice baths and simply overthrow the system in a truly symbolic moment that will not fit the achievement model held by the MOE.

Meanwhile, there are some lovely anticipations of a future world happening, for example, kids going to school on a bike bus. Bike buses might become a universal means of transport. Mary, Joseph and little Jesus, the three wise men and the shepherds all pedalling toward Jerusalem to burn down the US embassy. And the Australian; and the Saudi Arabian, plus the settlements…

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Take care.

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National and Climate Change

I went along to a talk by the National Party’s climate change spokesperson, Todd Muller. Todd’s a plausible enough, air brushed bloke from Tauranga.  It was interesting to sit with the Nats with their assumptions of leadership based on supposed pragmatic compromise, designer shirts, polished shoes and good teeth, knowing wives and a venal willingness to sell their souls to the highest bidder.

Todd was here to help Maureen Pugh, the local list MP stir the West Coast pot of populism being created by the local business clique of miners, engineers and trucking companies; with the digger drivers and the farmers hovering. They own the councils and the newspapers and they do some charitable stuff for schools and St John. They go to church occasionally and holiday in Surfers, sometimes Bali, and they know which side their bread is buttered on. A local mythology is being re-energised, of the born and bred West Coaster (like the Aryan) having a genetic virtue; of there having been a golden time of economic boom created by extraction and now destroyed by the Greens (Jews) helped by a Labour government captured by Aucklanders and urban parasites more generally. Maureen Pugh actually spoke of dogs barking when a property is trespassed upon. ‘We’ll keep barking,’ she said. Unfortunately the metaphor has some problematic connotations: runaway slaves were chased by dogs, the SS were also into dogs. As for Abu Ghraib…

The local business cartel used to be balanced by the miners and their unions, plus a level of state ownership of economic infrastructure. But that’s gone. Only the Greens have unpragmatic ethics and they’re hated for that reason. The urban-based, identity-politics liberals led by Jacinda have seized power and the regions will get rid of them as fast as they can.  But then there’s Winston and Shane Jones, the other side of the populist coin, confusing things.

As well there’s the really big boy capitalists in the cities (and operating globally) who can sense the chaos that could ensue if the climate is not ameliorated, the smashing of infrastructure past profitable repair, the mad rush of refugees…; so there is tension between the feudal overlords and the local squirocracy. I am sure there’s historical precedence, somewhere around the time of Oliver Cromwell. It’s all very complex, messy and potentially dangerous. Out of these tensions, Trump arises.

Meanwhile an article sent to me by a fellow conspirator at the meeting, Richard Arlidge, describing the period when climate change might have been effectively tackled: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

 

 

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A strange evening

I was called to a person said to be having a heart episode at the camping ground in the small coastal settlement of Rapahoe, north of Runanga. But upon arrival, the elderly couple who manage the site knew nothing about it and there were no obvious candidates in sight. It’s a small camping ground nestled in bush. I went down to the beach, a rock strewn part of the Coast but one of the few spots safe for swimming. People were dotted along the shore but no one in trouble. A couple crouched over a small driftwood fire, forming a primitive image in the fading light.

Searching for a foreign person having a possible heart attack is a strange activity. I went to the motel and the manager was excited by the possible drama but had no guests in difficulty. I tried the pub but it was deserted apart from two elderly  locals. The puzzle remained. I went to the other end of the beach, across the river and the place where I occasionally go for a summer swim. No sign of life. Or death for that matter.

But meanwhile I had become aware of the small clusters of tourists dotted through the settlement for the night, like a band of nomads, off hunting and gathering in family groups during the day and then coming together as a band, that most primitive of human social structures, at night, for protection and sharing of food.

Rapahoe is vulnerable to climate change and the consequent rising seas and extreme weather events. It was recently inundated by Cyclone Gita and the erosion is serious. A sea wall might provide a temporary respite but is expensive and the few ratepayers can’t afford it. It could well disappear.

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As night fell, wandering through the vulnerable settlement searching for a tourist in need, I could imagine the future chaos of climate change, of people returning to a much less structured existence, of disparate bands wandering the Coast in an eco-fiction world where nature is teaching the human species (and unfortunately other species as well), a drastic lesson.

Ironic that the locals in this small community have erected a monument celebrating its coal mining past, a display that features two of the machines that used to operate at the now flooded Spring Creek mine, digging out the coal, the fossil fuel that enabled the industrial revolution but which has  helped cause the planet’s eco systems to become volatile once more.

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I never found the tourist in need. A work of fiction might have them lying in a cave, or washed out to sea, but most probably they recovered and drove off to Greymouth. All that remains is the digital trace of a phone call to the emergency services.

The wind blew strongly as night fell and I headed home.

 

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