There's not much about the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that tells a nice story. Long standing failures in planning and infrastructural investment, failure to heed many years of warnings, lack of public transport, a development ethos where the quick buck outweighs long-term considerations, a pathological imbalance in social wellbeing, along with a reckless disregard for our environment and climate, all combined in the lethal mix of this disaster. The polluted and putrid waters of flooded New Orleans have become a much needed mirror for American society to look at themselves more thoroughly than they have for a long time. And one group of Americans who particularly need to look at themselves are the media. This is part of a recent
article from a press agency entitled "Katrinagate Fury Spreads" , it reads:
"But if the Bush administration's reaction to Hurricane Katrina was slow, so too was the media's. The television reporters, particularly, were left scrambling in the first few hours of coverage as they tried to comprehend the scale of the disaster.
Then came the emotion. A CNN reporter broke down as she described the cries of help of people stuck on rooftops in Louisiana. Other journalists also related what they saw in broken voices.
Then the federal officials rolled into town and the press conferences started, with politicians thanking one another for their tireless efforts.
Next came anger. "This isn't Iraq, this isn't Somalia, this is our home," one NBC television reporter shouted. The usually stoic ABC television presenter Ted Koeppel lashed out at FEMA head Brown in a interview, when he could not give any details on the number of refugees waiting to be rescued from the Convention Centre. "Don't you people ever look at television?," the veteran presenter raged. "Don't you ever hear the radio? We've been reporting on the crisis at the Convention Centre for a lot longer than just today."
The line "This isn't Iraq, this isn't Somalia, this is our home" just about says it all. It's ok for hundreds of thousands of childen in Iraq to be starved to death by years of sanctions, it's ok to bomb Iraqis and Afghanis to smithereens, or pollute their land with radioactive and toxic uranium, or it's ok for America to turn its back on Africa - what are these people but foreigners, heathens who have yet to understand the earthly nirvana of American freedom and heaven help them if they don't.
Where were the tears, the anger, the rage, the impotence in Falluja, or the weeping and sorrow and the broken voices in Somalia? Where were these people then? Where was the concern for suffering humanity there? It makes me so angry I want to spit.
Yet of course even America isn't universely like this, many internet sites in the US attempt to correct for the insufferably smug media. Millions of disenfranchised liberals, environmentalists and ordinary concerned human beings work as hard as they can to redirect American society and re-educate the public. For every story of nastyness in New Orleans, there will be many more of courage, commitment and humanity.
Americans haven't liked what they have seen reflected in the waters of New Orleans. A leader the other day in the New York Times spoke about the divisions in American society, that America is 43rd in the world in infant mortality statistics, that a child is only half as likely to reach its first year in Washington as it is in Beijing, and that poverty increased by 1.1 million people last year. There is a sense of collective shame that could be the healthiest thing to have happened to America in many long years.
But the rest of the world too would do well to study its own reflections in the poisoned waters of New Orleans. Despotic regimes subjugate tens of millions, corporations and business rob the poor and despoil the earth they live on, and more progressive governments consider rhetoric and obfuscation to be suffucient in regard to the Iraq war, global warming or environmental destruction, disparity and the wretchedness of Africa.
The Millennium Ecosystems Assessment was called for by Kofi Annan in 2000. (This will be Kofi's greatest contribution to the UN and us all - that is if anyone takes any notice) It has involved 1,360 experts world wide. Each part of the assessment has been scrutinised by governments, independent scientists. I have simply extracted some interesting quotes from the report. I don't intend to comment much further,
download the report for yourself. It bears the subtitle
Living Beyond our Means, four simple words that encapsulate the whole report and but also encapsulate the problems for our planet and us if we don't take urgent action.
There seems to be suicide pact of politicians, business leaders and the media to keep the populace in ignorance. Politicians, except the Greens, have no vision beyond their immediate interests, five years being about the maximum. Business leaders are blinkered, profit driven and wealthy enough to consider themselves immune to future problems; there are exceptions such as those businesses who have written an open letter on global warming to Tony Blair. The media are generally shallow, vapid and populist, challenging the populace might hurt their ratings or circulation. I actually feel quite sorry for the vast majority of the world's population. When future generations come to examine how we got ourselves in the pickle we did, they will wonder how, at a time of the most amazing explosion of information in the world, that we remained so utterly ignorant. But I am merely repeating myself, in my page
Risk and Responsibility I have likened the relationship between the populace and its leaders as being the same between the soldiers and the officers and powerful in the First World War, the basis of both these pathological relationships being a fatally misplaced trust.
Living beyond our means
At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning, human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of the Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.
Protecting our future well-being requires wiser and less destructive use of natural assets. We must learn to recognise the true value of nature.
We each depend far more than we may realise on the web of life of which we are a part.
In the midst of this unprecedented period of spending Earth's natural bounty it is time to check the accounts, this is a sobering statement with much more red than black on the balance sheet.
Nearly two thirds of the services provided by nature to humankind are found to be in decline world wide. In effect, the benefits reaped from our engineering of the planet have been achieved by running down its natural assets
This need not be a counsel of despair, the natural balance sheet we bequeath to future generations depends on choices made at every level and in every corner of the planet.
As human societies become more complex and technologically advanced, it is easy to gain the impression that we no longer depend of natural systems.
This is a dangerous illusion that ignores the vast benefits of nature to the lives of 6 billion people - we may have distanced ourselves from nature, but we rely utterly on the services it delivers.
Whilst the value of food production and water services and forest may be calculated, many other of nature's services do not appear on conventional balance sheets, but are equally essential for our survival. Their true worth is often appreciated only when they are lost.
The economic benefits of sustainably managed ecosystems always turn out to be greater than those of converted systems, even if the private (market) value appears to be greater in the converted system.
Humans now use 40-50% of fresh water running off land to which the majority of the population has access. In some regions , such as the Middle East and Africa and SW USA, use 120% groundwater supplies, i.e. they are depleting the resource
More land was converted to cropland since 1945 than in the previous two centuries. About one quarter of the Earth's surface is now in cultivation.
Nitrogen application now exceeds all natural nitrification, and half all the fertiliser ever used has been used since 1985.
At least one quarter marine fish stocks are overharvested. , fish catches are now declining, in some areas total fish harvests less then one hundredth of that caught prior to industrialised fishing.
Species decline, maybe upto 1000 times the natural rate, and future extinctions ten times the present rate.
There has been a check on 24 natural services. 4 were increasing, five were stable and fifteen were in decline.
Food supply increase 2.5 times, population 2.0 times since 1960.
Fish farming now provides on third of all fish and shellfish production.
World wide fishing has peaked in the 1980s, and has been declining since. This is depriving many poor communities of a valuable source of protein. This is not helped for instance by the EU paying some poor countries to allow access to EU vessels to fish in their waters, often in subsidised fishing boats.
Up to a quarter of water supplies is being used in larger quantities than the local resources can provide.
In 2001 just over 1 billion people survived on less than $1 per day.
Inequality in income and other measures of human well being have increased over the last decade.
Per capita food consumption inequality has also increased. Food production in sub-Saharan Africa has decreased
1.1 billion still lack access to improved water supply. , 2.6 to improved sanitation.
Since 1960 ratio of water use to supply has increased by 20%.
Those people most lacking in minimum standards of human well being are generally those most vulnerable to the deterioration of the natural systems.
Addressing the threat to the planet's natural assets therefore must be seen as part of the fight against poverty, or to put it the other way round, efforts to relieve poverty without addressing environmental concerns may well be doomed to failure.
There is real concern for the drier regions of the world, and high population growth in these areas.
The negative impact of climate change will fall hardest on the poorest parts of the world.
In most societies a large number of natural services are treated either as free or with no reflection in their price of the real cost of using them.
The overriding conclusion of this assessment is that it lies within the power of human societies to ease the strains we are putting on the natural services of the planet, while continuing to use them to bring better living standards to all. Achieving this however will require radical changes in the way nature is treated at every level of decision making. Resilience and abundance can no longer be confused with indestructibility and infinite supply.
The party definitely seemed to be coming to an end. In June we were seeing
figures from the US which showed a major fall in SUV sales in the four months of this year to May, about a 20% fall. Folks like me were saying, about time. The SUV market in the US has been the prime example of the criminal stupidity and short-sightedness of car manufacturers and policy makers there. Unfortunately too the fashion for these sorts of large, cumbersome, unsafe and inefficient vehicles, both in the use of metal to make them and the use of petrol to drive them, has found its parallel in other markets such as the UK and Europe and this country. The continued distortion of the car market in the US by legislation that allows businesses to make large tax write-offs against these types of vehicles has ensured that the US now has a vast fleet investment in vehicles that before long no-one except the rich will be able to afford to run. That the profits of the major US car manufacturers, Ford and GM, depended on fashion and tax breaks for this sort of primitive vehicle, means that these two companies are likely to crash heavily very soon when no-one wants their vehicles. The owners and managers of these companies are dinosaurs and ostriches. They deserve all to go down with their companies, but it will be the workers who go down with the company ship, while the captains of industry have quietly accepted their multimillion dollar life-rafts.
Although not touched by the quite the same degree of cupidity as their American counterparts, European manufacturers have been just as guilty of spending billions of dollars developing such cars as the VW Touareg, the Porsche Cayenne, the Range Rover, BMW X5 in the luxury 4WD market, and many other 2WD luxury vehicles with spectacular performance but less than stellar fuel consumption. All these car makers are going to get their bonnets burned in the next year or two. I cannot believe that amongst those highly paid executives, designers and engineers who work for these companies, that there doesn't appear to be a single person who can see the writing on the wall for this kind of vehicle. What thought processes do these people possess who can't understand this: what use is a car which can do 250 kph and 0-100 in 6 seconds when the energy necessary to achieve these wondrous figures, hundred of kilowatts, comes from a fast depleting and shortly highly expensive or maybe unobtainable resource?
But, tigh-ho. Suddenly newer
figures from America show a great surge of car buying in June and July, and SUVs are selling well again. John, you must be wrong, there isn't any sign yet of a slow-down in SUV sales. But what is happening? GM and Ford, both companies who's shares have the status of junk bonds, have entered a suicidal price-cutting war, selling their vehicles at employee prices, knocking thousands of dollars off, moving great volumes of vehicles at a likely, but of course not admitted, loss.
Do these new figures cause me to think again? Will I leave the ranks of the fuddy-duddy pessimists and join the great consumer throng and admit I was wrong? I don't think so. The fundamental picture is quite unchanged. Oil is getting ever more expensive, we are at the cusp of production, and this continued heavy demand for this gas-guzzling private transport merely ensures the day of reckoning will come sooner, rather than later.
In fact by Sept. 05 we have some further figures to ponder - GM's
admitted loss per vehicle sold is $1227 per vehicle and Ford's $139. Contrast this with Honda, Toyota and Nissan who make between $1200 and $1800 per vehicle. (
Link). And after that last final fatal fling, this
article paints a very sober picture of the American vehicle industy - "SUV sales aren't just slowing -- they're crashing to a halt". The Wallmart mentality that is what passes for consumer thought in the USA, sees these vehicles as bargains and in doing so has brought their economic suicide just that much closer. Every vehicle sold is a further nail in the coffin of the American car industry, and a further nail in the coffin of the Wallmart economy that is America.
3rd October 2005
Sales of large sports utility vehicles are down 7.3 per cent in the United States so far this year and one analyst predicts they will plummet 25 per cent within the next two years. GM, Ford and Chrysler face large losses of US$3000 ($4390) to US$6000 ($8780) a vehicle as hundreds of thousands of large SUVs go on auction as their leases expire.
"Right now a full-size SUV that gets ... 16mpg (17.6 litres/100km) doesn't look very good."
However, executives said petrol would need to reach $US6 ($8.78) a gallon to have the same psychological effect as the fuel shortages of the 1970s. They don't see the good times and high profits of big SUVs ending any time soon.
"Americans like big," said Jim Press, head of Toyota's US operations. "We have big distances to cross. We like large homes. We like big hamburgers. We like supersize. There will always be a proclivity in the marketplace for large vehicles."
And there'll always be a proclivity in the human species for large egos and tiny minds.
Letter to the Dominion Post, published 23/9/05
Dear Sir / Madam
Although the election hasn't been quite put to bed yet, here's a word of warning for the politicians and the voters. The supreme issue for the next 20-30 years will be energy. The so-called "peak oil" is just about upon us, and has the capacity to revolutionise our lives, or possibly destroy them, as does global warming. The choice is ours. The only party to even begin to address these issues was the Greens. So when I hear that Peter Dunne is refusing to cooperate with Labour if the Greens are part of the government, not only is Peter Dunne extremely arrogant, he is also extremely misguided. United Future has proposed building a four lane highway from Kaitaia to Bluff, motorways in Auckland and the Transmission Gully route - Peter will have some explaining to do when billions of dollars have been seriously misallocated on these white elephants. I would suggest that Peter, and all those who think that human beings live in some parallel universe where the normal rules of nature are suspended for mankind's benefit, take some urgent lessons in sustainability, lessons the Greens and environmentalists have been trying to teach for many years.
Yours faithfully,
Dr John K Monro
And a reply (October 3rd) :
Scratch a Green and......
Dr John K Monro needs serious lessons in basic economics. The laws of supply and demand ensure that "unsustainable" energy will price itself off the market. Sustainable energy will be adopted as it becomes the more affordable option.
Toyota and Honda are already boosting production of their hybrid electric cars. Brazilians have run their cars on sugar-cane alcohol since 1980. New Zealand scientists believe we could do the same from milk or wood but expect the Greens to put the kybosh on any plans that involve cutting down trees, as with their mindless ban on even the most sustainable form of logging.
Scratch a Green and underneath find a communist opposed to our democratic freedoms. The worst misallocation of billions of dollars in tax-payers' money on white elephants would be Green plans for trains and "light rail" that can't take us where we want to go when we want to go there.
The people have spoken and we want roads now.
The "sustainability" of our cars' motive energy sources is a separate issue that will take care of itself.
C McLean, Wiawhetu.
