Combatting Global Warming
Climate change and global warming are now undeniably with us. The evidence for them is overwhelming and even former “deniers” now concede that something significant (and unwelcome) is happening.
The real question now is “what do we do about it?” Some response is clearly needed. The biggest obstacle to effective action is the widespread belief, particularly on the part of those who maintain that the market must never be second-guessed, that combatting global warming will be bad for the economy.
We see this particularly when it comes to energy sources. The reliance on fossil fuels – coal, gas and oil – is correctly recognised as the principal factor in creating climate change; not only is the process of getting them out of the ground damaging to the environment, both at sea and on land, but burning them to produce electricity spews vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
But doing without fossil fuels is widely seen as a recipe for economic slowdown. The government’s decision to stop the prospecting for gas and oil reserves at sea, for example, has been lamented as a step backwards in economic terms.
At first sight, this reliance on fossil fuels – and the belief that we cannot do without them – seems surprising. We live on a planet that is bursting with energy sources. We can see energy sources wherever we look – in the wind, the tides and rivers, in geothermal steam, and most of all in the sunshine.
All that we need is a little effort and investment so as to turn these natural energy supplies to account. The technology is rapidly developing to make this possible.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the eastern Bay of Plenty where I live and which is blessed with abundant sunshine. Day after day, the sun shines on our roof and large quantities of potential (and free) energy go to waste.
My neighbours and I have decided to do something about it. A number of us have decided to install solar panels on our roofs and to harvest the energy they will produce. We are satisfied that the benefits we gain will outweigh the installation cost and that we will enjoy a future in which the cost of electricity will cease to be a major burden on our budgets.
More importantly than the boost to our finances, we believe that our investment points the way to
a solution to the climate change issue. If ending our dependence on fossil fuels can be shown to be economically as well as environmentally the way to go, the major obstacle to effective action will have been removed and replaced by an incentive to greater efficiency in every sense.
We have a plan to replace our current car, when the time comes, with an electric one (which we should be able to charge from solar power), so that we will further reduce our demand on fossil fuels. And quite apart from all these material gains, we hope to enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that, rather than exhausting the earth’s natural (but finite) resources by digging them up and burning them, we will be working with the planet to use the resources that it provides to us for nothing and in abundance.
We owe it ourselves, to future generations, and our planet, to use our human ingenuity to preserve what we have and can pass on. Best of all, we don’t need to wait for someone else – such as the government – to do something about climate change; we can take action ourselves.
There is of course a capital cost but it will be repaid by the savings we make; it might well make economic sense, in some circumstances, to extend a mortgage so as to make an investment that produces such obvious benefits.
That is not to say that there isn’t a role for a far-sighted government. Tax or other incentives could well help to stimulate the uptake of solar power (or other renewable sources such as wind power). But the real message is that we need not sit helplessly by, wringing our hands, while our planet fries. We have at least part of the solution in our own hands.
Bryan Gould
5 March 2019
Trump, Kim and Hanoi
The so-called “summit” in Hanoi between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un a few days ago ended with no agreement, despite Trump’s earlier optimism that an agreement was available – the meeting was, in other words, either a non-event or possibly a second date that went horribly wrong.
But behind the smokescreen of fantasy and bluster, what was really going on? The episode tells us a great deal about each of the participants and, in particular, about how far Trump will go to keep himself in the headlines and to distract attention from his troubles at home.
What seems clear is that the meeting was engineered by Trump for no better reason than to serve his own electoral purposes, and was a further indication of his readiness to focus always on getting himself re-elected – which seems to be the only thing he really cares about.
Judged in its own terms, however, the summit was a failure of “deal-making” on the part of both supposedly expert “deal-makers”. Kim’s misjudgment was in believing that he could use Trump’s appetite for flattery to enable him to slide past him a deal that totally brought an end to US sanctions against North Korea while doing little to make good Kim’s promise to denuclearise.
Trump’s misjudgment was in believing what he wanted to believe – that he could soft-soap Kim into giving up his nuclear weapons. He appears to see in Kim a kindred spirit, someone he can admire and emulate and whose dictatorial powers he can envy and seek to replicate.
What is alarming – though not surprising to Trump watchers and critics (among whose number I count myself) – is the President’s willingness to subordinate what could have been an important international interaction to his own domestic political ambitions.
This smoke-and-mirrors non-drama was, of course, being played out against the backdrop of the incendiary testimony of Michael Cohen (Trump’s former personal lawyer) to a Committee of the House of Representatives as to what he knew about his former client and employer. If even a smidgeon of what Cohen said is to be believed, the judgments made by many of us about Trump’s fitness for office have been far too mild.
Perhaps the most significant thing Cohn said in his statement came, however, when he focussed on – not Trump directly – but on the Republican members of the House. “I am now – after ten years – holding Donald Trump to account – something that you, yourselves, should have been doing,” he said.
The point should surely have struck home. In labelling Trump “a racist, a conman, a cheat”, Cohen told us nothing we didn’t know already; he was simply adding his voice and his personal observations on the Trump he knew to many other voices.
What has been missing from this scenario is any effective response from Trump’s Republican colleagues – any sign that they recognise the nightmare they have helped to launch on the American public and polity. By averting their gaze, and by going along with the diversionary tactic resorted to by Trump in Hanoi, they have made themselves – collectively and personally – complicit in what looks increasingly like a conspiracy against the American people.
We do not need to regard Michael Cohen as beyond reproach – he is certainly not that – but this sounds very much like the voice of someone who has been pushed beyond what he can endure. The American public and the Republicans in Congress now need to find the courage to listen carefully to the opinions and the conclusions of someone who worked closely with Trump as a loyal henchman over many years. This evidence shows that it is not just the Hanoi “summit” that is now at risk.
Bryan Gould
1 March 2019
What Price Warm and Dry Homes?
One of the crippling disadvantages suffered by the children of the poor is that they are too often brought up in houses that are cold and damp. The impact on the health of young children is all too apparent – ask any health professional – and the setbacks they endure can all too easily prejudice their life chances, imposing a handicap from which some will never fully recover.
Most thoughtful people will react to the news that rental properties must in future be heated and insulated, so that children will have warm and dry homes, by saying – about time too! Not everyone though; some claim that it is actually bad news for families and their children.
We are offered this surprising opinion by someone who professes to know exactly how landlords will respond to this attempt to give a new generation a chance to grow up fit and healthy. Judith Collins, no less, rubbishes our supposed naivety when we welcome the news.
“It can only mean that landlords, if they are forced to make their rental houses healthy and habitable, will recoup their increased expenditure by putting up rents,” she says. So there we have it. From somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, she has unerringly put her finger on what she understands to be the true role of the landlord – to make as much money as possible from low-income families who have nowhere else to live but in houses that are a health hazard.
She appears to understand well how some landlords operate – buying cheap properties at mortgagee sales, evicting existing tenants and putting up the rents for new tenants, doing little or no maintenance (let alone improvements) and then selling the property off at a price and healthy profit – (perhaps that should be “unhealthy”) – that reflects the income stream they have been able to screw out of it.
She warns that requiring rented houses to be healthy and habitable could reduce the number of rental properties available, and could lengthen the waiting list for state or social housing – and this from someone whose government sold off large numbers of state houses and stopped building new ones.
Her message seems to be that trying to improve the early years of innocent children is futile because any attempt to improve their health and lives cannot survive the demand by private landlords for ever-rising profits, and should therefore be abandoned.
And this despairing tale of woe is embellished by lamenting the prospect of a capital gains tax which, she says, will further discourage actual and potential landlords from buying rental properties. So, it is fine for landlords to charge high rents that poor families have to pay out of their earned income on which they pay tax, but the huge profits and capital gains the landlords make from their operations must be tax-free?
Any discussion of these issues always calls to my mind a little-known speech made by Winston Churchill in 1909 when he was a budding young Conservative politician. Churchill addressed the issue of those who invested in land or real property, did nothing with it, but pocketed the lion’s share of its increasing development value.
Who creates the development value? Churchill asked. The development value of land and property, he said, is created by the community. It is the community that funds and provides the roads, the railways, the sewers, the water supplies, the communications connections (nowadays electronic) – all the services that allow the property to be developed. It is then the schools and parks and shops and factories that others build around it that enhances the demand for, and therefore the value of, that same land or property.
Churchill concludes by asking the obvious question – why should someone who has done nothing but sit on the land walk off with all the development value? And why should they pay no tax on that great windfall – while others have to pay tax on every penny they earn?
It may be that Judith Collins, in leaping to their defence and professing to know their minds, has unfairly maligned landlords. We must hope that at least some of our leaders have a better and kinder view of human nature.
Bryan Gould
26 February 2019
What Role Should Celebrities Play in Our Lives?
We live, like it or not, in the age of the celebrity. High achievers in entertainment or sport have always commanded attention and headlines, but the reach, in today’s society, of film and television, and particularly of the social media, has meant that the impact of the “rich and famous” is greater today than it has ever been.
It is increasingly clear that this kind of celebrity can be used to exert great influence over the young in particular, but also to make a great deal of money through endorsements and the marketing of products bearing famous names. Millions of young women around the world choose clothes, make-up, social activities and other purchases, following the recommendations of those whose lifestyles are regarded as wonderfully glamorous and therefore to be emulated.
There is a further curiosity about the modern concept of the “celebrity”. The actual achievements or talents of the modern celebrity may sometimes be rather difficult to identify. The Kardashians, for example, seem not to be particularly talented as individuals – but they are, as a family or “brand”, famous for being famous. What is undeniable is that they are very successful at promoting themselves, and providing models that many young women and girls try to copy.
The Kardashians exemplify another common aspect of the celebrity cult – the tendency of one celebrity to team up with another. Kim Kardashian is the partner of the US rapper, Kanye West – and David and Victoria Beckham’s marriage brought together a top British footballer and a singer from the Spice Girls. In instances such as these, the celebrity impact seems to be more than doubled but is multiplied several times over – and children of the union themselves become celebrities and add to the overall impact.
Recently, however, there seems to have been something of a backlash against the cult of the celebrity. A week or so ago, it was reported that the use of celebrities on websites in the UK to encourage gambling online for young people was coming under fire and that the big internet companies and websites had been persuaded to desist from that practice.
I might add my own two cents’ worth. As a regular watcher of TVNZ’s quiz programme, The Chase, I politely observe that the weekend version, when so-called celebrities make up the team challenging the “chaser”, succeeds in reducing what is an excellent quiz show to a rather embarrassing parade of egos and self-promotion.
That, however, is a minor point. The real case against the undue deference shown to “celebrities”
Is that it can lead not only to young people being misdirected in their private lives as to what real happiness and success might look like, but also to the abandonment of normal standards and processes in the public domain.
An early instance of this latter phenomenon was the treatment accorded in the US to Martha Stewart, a television star whose Martha Stewart Show presented her as a “domestic goddess” to an adoring viewership. She was, after several years of enjoying her celebrity, convicted of insider trading and obstructing justice, and served a prison sentence. She was then restored to her television show and resumed her place in the affections of the American public; it seemed that her celebrity protected her against any longer-term downside.
More seriously, the same phenomenon of celebrity seems to have been a major factor in the election of – and continued support for – Donald Trump as President. The voters, despite the evidence before their own eyes and ears of his complete unfitness to exercise such responsibilities, seem to have been unwilling to trust their own judgment and to have been dazzled instead by the “star power” of a television celebrity. The price that the US – and the world – have had to pay is virtually incalculable.
There is no obvious or immediate antidote to this phenomenon. We can but hope that those who are happy to reap the rewards – earned or otherwise – of their celebrity might increasingly recognise the responsibilities they have to ensure that people, especially the young and vulnerable, are not misled to their disadvantage by following them in directions that lead at best nowhere, but at worst to shattered dreams, disappointment and unhappiness.
Bryan Gould
19 February 2019
The Chinese “Message”.
The indications that China is displeased with New Zealand cannot be mistaken. China is a country where nothing of this kind happens by accident; the government’s reach into every aspect of Chinese life is virtually unlimited. Nothing happens without the government’s say-so.
There can be little doubt that the Chinese government has decided to send our government a carefully calibrated message – and that message has been to the effect that our hitherto excellent relationship, and particularly our trading relationship, with the new super-power is at risk. The import of that message has potentially serious implications for our economic future and is no doubt intended to arouse considerable anxiety in some circles.
Nor can there be any real doubt about the reason for sending the message. It seems painfully clear that the Chinese government has reacted adversely to New Zealand’s decision to exclude the Chinese IT giant, Hua Wei, from any involvement in setting up our new 5G network.
That decision was taken on the grounds that Hua Wei, like many major Chinese companies, is best regarded as an arm of the Chinese government and our government was warned by our security services, the GCSB, that there could be risks to our security if an enterprise with such close links to the Chinese government were allowed a central role in our internet system.
That advice mirrored of course similar advice tendered to and acted upon by the security services of some of our principal allies who have found themselves embroiled in even more direct retaliatory responses from China. Our government is criticised by its opponents for allowing this situation to develop – with the inevitable corollary, it must be assumed, that we should hastily backtrack and reverse the decision concerning Hua Wei’s role.
But are we really at fault? And is the Chinese response justified? And should we yield to the threatened reprimand, as some critics seem to suggest?
The first point to make is that our trading relationship with China, like almost all trading arrangements, is a voluntary one between equals, and is not – nor should it be – one of master and servant. New Zealand and China trade with each other because they each see advantage
In that trade; the Chinese gain access to goods that they need or at least want, and we earn foreign exchange which helps us to balance our books.
There is, or should be, no implication that we are being done a favour by the Chinese in deigning to trade with us – a favour that will be withdrawn if we upset them in respect of a completely separate issue. And the Chinese have no one but themselves to blame if their governmental system makes it difficult for us to disregard the fact that a company like Hua Wei is in reality not just another commercial company but is rather an arm of government.
It is the Chinese, not us, who have introduced, into what should be a straightforward trading relationship, the complexities of security issues and the need to choose between China and the US in an apparent power struggle in the Pacific between the two super-powers – and can anyone really be surprised in the light of our history – in times of both war and peace – that we continue to give priority to our long-standing alliance with the US?
And when we review our own recent history and the value we have placed on refusing to be bullied – our nuclear-free policy, despite American hostility to it, was a classic instance of our insistence on independence – are we really being enjoined to yield to blackmail in this case?
Our proper response to the “message” sent by the Chinese is that we regret that they have taken umbrage at our decision on Hua Wei but that we can see no good reason why that should affect our mutually advantageous trade and tourism links and that the remedy that would qualify Hua Wei as a participant in our G5 rollout lies in Chinese hands.
If we were to follow the advice that we should reverse our decision, we would have cast aside a long-standing and hard-earned reputation as a small country that is not to be pushed around or bullied. Our future relationship with China will be all the stronger once they realise that good trade relations do not depend on one partner’s ability to dictate to the other and are harmed if that claim is made.
Bryan Gould
17 February 2019