Alan Bollard and colleagues dig us a deeper hole

This page comes about following the meeting recently of many of the OECD’s central bankers at Jackson Hole in Wyoming, USA. At this event, all those highly paid financial experts discussed how well they had done in saving the World’s economy, and how things were now beginning to show signs of improvement, those “green shoots” of recovery we are continually being reminded of. Our own reserve bank governor, Alan Bollard was there, and he wrote a piece which was published in our local Dominion Post, however you will need to go to the NZ Herald to find it, as the Dominion Post keeps no archives.

I thought Alan Bollard’s article was shallow and self-serving. Not a single one of these expert bankers foresaw the biggest economic crash in the last sixty years, even when the first stones were falling from the financial battlements. The Queen, God Bless Her, was heard to murmur something about this last year. I don’t quite know what I expected, but perhaps a brief, passing acknowledgement of some failure on his and his colleagues’ part would have been appreciated, it might have given one some confidence that he, and all the others, had actually learned something from these events.

As these events do, it triggered a trip to my keyboard and a letter to the Dominion Post.

Dear Sir / Madam

So, “the worst is over”, according to Alan Bollard’s self-serving article, written from the Jackson Hole central banker’s summit, whereas what we are truly seeing is economic and political quackery without precedent.

Why would we believe anything that Mr Bollard writes? Neither he nor any other attendee forecast the biggest economic crash for sixty years – nor was there a single mea culpa.

The “worst” is not over; the worst has hardly begun. The underlying cause of the economic crash, the naïve and destructive belief in perpetual economic growth on a finite planet, has not changed, merely been postponed. If by some Frankensteinian magic these quacks actually succeed in resuscitating the corpse of our monetarist economy, within a year or two we will again meet the limits to growth, the reality of our place, as a moderately intelligent monkey, in nature.

Mr Bollard’s whole article reeks of uncomprehending smugness.

Mr Bollard displays some talent as an amateur painter; if he were to resign his governorship and lead a quiet retirement improving his artistic skills, we’d be better able to find our way out of the real economic black hole he and his fellow economists are digging us ever deeper.

 Yours faithfully,

The letter was, I thought surprisingly, published. Following its appearance in the paper I got an e-mail from Eva Naylor, whom I don’t know personally, but who has supported my letters in the past.

Dear Dr. Monro,

I was beginning to sink into a deep depression about all the stupidity, greed and apathy around us, but your letter (and the fact that, surprisingly, the DomPost published it) cheered me up no end! I am now trying to organise a number of people to agree on a letter, and sign it, congratulating the DomPost on publishing a letter from someone who had the courage, like the child in the fairytale, to point out that the emperor has no clothes. It may take a little while, but my hope is to stop the DomPost ignoring the majority of letters from people on our side.

Sincerely,

Eva Naylor

PS Derek Wilson, one of the people who will definitely sign a support letter, would like your email address. If you don't mind him having it, please either let me know or email him direct.

It was nice to get this support, subsequently a letter was sent to the Dominion Post, but I haven’t seen it published.

Dear Editor,

We congratulate the DomPost for publishing a letter from Dr. John

K. Monro (Sept. 1) who, like the child in the fairytale, has the courage

to

point out that the emperor has no clothes. Economists, including Dr.

Bollard, seem to think that financial policies and institutions are the be-

all and end-all of our wellbeing. In truth, the root of the problem, as Dr.

Monro points out, is that we are living beyond the carrying capacity of this

planet, of which the economy is a small subsidiary part. Getting back to

living beyond this capacity is not the answer!

We desperately need an alternative professional team of clear thinkers who

understand the finite world, and who can present the full facts and suggest

robust policies.

Sincerely,

Dr. John Robinson, 131 Eden St., Island Bay, Tel. 9345936

Derek J. Wilson,

Noeline Gannaway, 83 Wright St., Mount Cook, Tel. 3842202

George Preddey,

Eva Naylor, 26 Highbury Crescent, Wellington 6012, Tel. 9348956

Lastly, another letter did appear in the paper:

Dr John Monro's caustic response to Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard's optimism  about economic growth resuming  showed commendable restraint.

Dr Monro questioned Dr Bollard's credibility, since neither he nor any other central banker at the Jackson Hole "summit" predicted the worst economic crash for 60 years. The Queen has recently asked similar questions.

As Dr Monro observes, the worst isn't over; it's hardly begun.

As any physicist would know - I'm one, though retired - economic growth in a finite biosphere is ultimately unsustainable. Scientists conclude that the biosphere cannot sustain the current global economy, let alone a growing one.

The consequences of exceeding limits to growth have been known for 40 years: sudden and drastic decreases in industrial capacity and human population by mid- century. Research at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation validated these dire predictions as recently as last year.

Dr Bollard's optimism, if justified, would mark an acceleration to the precipice.

The biosphere is experiencing a mass extinction unprecedented since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Stupid humans are driving this mass extinction knowingly by unfettered economic and population growth.

Dr GEORGE PREDDEY

Wadestown

But life as normal continues. Increasingly over the last year or two I have come to realise that if global warming, pollution, oil depletion and all those other environmental issues are the reality of our future, then we, humanity, aren’t going to deal with them in time. Here are a few recent things that convince me, in New Zealand, some of which I pointed out to Kathryn Ryan in her Nine-to-Noon programme the other day.

Dear Kathryn and Team.

It seems to me that talk of "geo-engineering" the planet to deal with the consequences of our greed for fossil fuels is like trying to treat the obese without trying to get the patient to confront his or her gluttony. It is doomed to failure. 

Kathryn, we live in a country where the present government has cancelled a renewable new electricity generation policy, has cancelled mandatory fuel efficiency standards for cars, has diluted by two-thirds the home insulation programme, is enthusiastic about burning tens of millions of tonnes of low quality brown (lignite) coal, is spending over $4 billion on new roads, and is working hard to lower emission reduction targets prior to Copenhagen. This is our reality. Giant fly-swatters are not. 

Talk of geo-engineering is a fatal diversion because it  promises politicians and business leaders  a cop-out for the destructive results of their craven inaction. 

Yours faithfully,

Yesterday we hear that Solid Energy, the government owned coal company, are planning to open a mothballed paper mill in Gore, in Southland (in the South Island) which would process about 100,000 tonnes of lignite a year, to make home-heating briquettes, therefore adding about 220,000 tonnes of CO2 to our burgeoning emissions. (Lignite contains about 60% carbon, and one tonne of carbon is equivalent to 3.66 tonnes of CO2 when burnt.) You can read about this here The article contains not a single mention of CO2 emissions or global warming. The plant would create ten jobs, that is one job for every 22,200 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

And yet more dire stupidity in the form of a proposed giant shopping mall in Johnsonville, an unprepossessing suburb of Wellington a few miles north along the motorway and already well served by a shopping centre of supreme architectural mediocrity. Yes, another letter to the editor:

Dear Sir / Madam

There are all sorts of addictions I regularly deal with in my patients –  alcohol, drugs, smoking, gambling, food – that are often intractable, and even though  patently self-destructive, this abnormal behaviour can be impossible to eradicate. So it is with our society, our addiction to our oil fueled, exhaust poisoning, car-driven and  non-stop shopping utopia is just as self-destructive, just as intractable and obviously just as ineradicable. So when I hear our council is likely to approve a $100 million giant shopping mall in Johnsonville, with it's 1,000 car parks, it finely gets hammered home to this stupid and naive individual - what else would I expect? If oil depletion, global warming, a collapsing economy, a nation indebted to $160,000 per family of four and a surfeit of retail outlets aren't collectively, or individually, sufficient to bring our society to its senses,  then nothing will. Like so many of the addicts I try to help, our society's course is tramlined for sorrow, poverty and, when reality finally does intrude upon our dulled and shallow intelligence, painful recrimination. What a town, what a country, what a world; please stop it, I'd like to get off.

Yours faithfully,

So we’re going to deal with oil depletion, global warning and all those other environmental issues bearing down us like a global tsunami? Michael Laws, an opinionated and rather unpleasant reactionary Mayor of Whanganui, who used to be a politician, suggests that us liberals and environmentalists are “humourless”. That isn’t true, but when you are discussing the fate of the planet, a serious and responsible attitude seems to be appropriate; being critiqued for a lack of humour is hardly more appropriate than criticising Einstein for his lack of sporting skills; what’s the relevance?