Perils of Growth
The goal of finance ministers worldwide is high-growth economies for their countries. This is an addiction that will destroy us long before nanobot weaponry becomes commonplace. None of Russell Brown’s sources’ predictions (“Fast forward”, July 22), can occur without discarding unsustainable production, which means discarding the growth-oriented market economy.
Why do economists not address this? The argument is simple. We have a limited amount of renewable resources (which are largely being destroyed because it’s more profitable than allowing them to regenerate), a limited amount of non-renewable resources (being dumped in landfills because it’s cheaper than reclaiming and reusing them).
Continued growth. Will. Use. These. Up. All of them. No water, no arable land, no clean air. Yet we continue to have scientists predicting continued exponential production, shareholders demanding it, finance ministers encouraging it, and economists, including Brian Easton, to my knowledge, never questioning the idea that economic growth is good.
The only way my children and I will survive our (unenhanced) natural life span is if we stop all waste, and stop using renewable resources at higher than natural regeneration rates. This can only be achieved by radically re-valuing what we consume, by prohibiting unsustainable production, and imposing balance, not growth, as the rigid ideal for economic performance.
—James Redwood (Tauranga)
I was interested to see Brown mention Whisper Tech. This is a New Zealand company. Whisper generators (www.whispertech.co.nz) are micro-combined heat and power units (MicroCHPs), which use a Stirling engine (an external combustion engine) and the revolutionary wobble yoke developed at Canterbury University.
At least one UK power company is supplying these microCHP units to their consumers in a trial of distributed power generation. Such forethought here may obviate the need for new pylons and cables marching across the countryside.
—Michael Clark (Prebbleton, Christchurch)
Later Baby
Finally, your “Looking for Mr Good Enough” issue has uncovered the reality of the modern woman and the modern man living in a metropolitan city.
Ian Hughes has decided that traditional male stereotypes are not his to inherit. Yet his decision is to be male in what he deems necessary and important in his life. This is a breath of fresh air to read. His relationship and his idea of romance is present every day due to his relationship being about that very day.
Naomi Driver has decided that “women don’t really need to be with anyone these days, do they?” and that women “are looking for someone to complement their lives …” But she was at the speed-dating event for a reason. She was very popular and interesting, presumably the desired outcome. Yet she doesn’t need anyone. “Complement” reeks of the desire for a matching scarf or jacket. No wonder a good man’s hard to find; he has to come in a summer, spring, autumn and winter model.
This seems a remarkable role-reversal from the male chauvinist 70s. Has the pendulum swung so far that modern women can’t see that “need” doesn’t mean codependent, and that emotional men doesn’t equate to them being a “snag” or “sap”?
—J Cunningham (Westmere, Auckland)
Contemporary Art
Ian Wedde’s defence of contemporary art (“Before and after Venice”, July 15) fails because it is based on two quotations from Natasha Conlan which make no sense. He quotes Conlan as explaining that “contemporary art … [is] something that requires us to become conversant with the contemporary art world at a very active level” and that it is “important because it is contemporary … it is what is happening now”. The first part of this statement is a tautology that tells us nothing. It is like saying that ultimate reality is important because it is ultimately real. The second part is either another tautology or false. If it means that contemporary art is happening now, it repeats the first meaningless tautology. Alternately, it could be read to mean that contemporary art is important because it relates or refers to what is happening now. If so, it is false because contemporary art, lacking all standards of criticism and offering no criteria for discussion, is a form of idiosyncratic, well nigh autistic display that amounts to anarchy. Whatever it is taken as doing, it obviously does not relate to the contemporary world because that world, though fortunately unprecedentedly liberal, is not anarchical. Wedde’s failure fuels the suspicion that the claims of portaloos et alia by practitioners of contemporary art, are hollow even when curators manage to stretch them all the way from New Zealand to Venice.
—Peter Munz (Wellington)
Wedde is happy to knock political heads together but doesn’t address or even acknowledge the real question raised in Venice: why is our art failing to draw international interest and respect there?
It has been achieved by others.
The Auckland School of Architecture took a work to Venice in the late 80s. It was articulate, light-headedly local (architecture conceived as cloud formation), financed on a shoestring, and took away a gold medal.
Something is going wrong, but the blame does not rest on the artists selected, though they are picking up the flak for it. Michael Stevenson’s Trekka installation looked good in theory but flat and limpid on site. Yet he went on to make new work that generated just the kind of international interest Venice management is looking for.
Likewise with Merylyn Tweedie. She is alert, subversive, anti-heroic, while remaining politically and philosophically gloomy and reactive. In other words, a truly local artist; her play on personal identity is an original intrigue and she won the Walter Prize with work that was pretty well universally admired. Subsequent work has seemed laboured by comparison.
The finger of suspicion should now be turning toward their curators. What kind of control and influence do they wield over artists? Is it enhancing or inhibiting the art-making process? Is the making of art now taking second place to the curatorial self-promotion surrounding it?
—Derek Schulz (Raumati Beach)
Welfare Dependency
Congratulations on your well-balanced editorial of July 8 (“For shame”).
The trends in New Zealand that seem to foster welfare dependency are intolerable. Welfare is critical for those in need, but not as a way of life. As Bill Clinton said, welfare is a “help up”.
This against a background of increasingly hard work by the majority of the population. Latest OECD figures show that we are the fourth hardest-working nation of those analysed.
Incipient socialism will never allow this country to move forward. As usual this is a sad reflection of our leadership in Wellington: no vision, no policy and no action steps.
—Tony Rumbold, Scanz Technologies (Auckland)
The current income support system is being reformed along the same lines that produced the 1991 substantial bene-fit cuts (“Who benefits?”, July 22). These meant the basic benefit was not sufficient to provide basic necessities such as food and shelter. To survive, people had to access a tier of additional support that was never intended to meet such costs.
That additional assistance, the Special Benefit, has now been replaced by Temporary Assistance, which is in effect a significant cut in potential and actual income support.
There are endless cases of the current system failing to meet even the ministry’s only guidelines, eg, the proportion of income spent on housing costs. Those with medical and related expenses are continually faced with a battle to have their essential needs met.
—Ian Ritchie (Feilding)
Kahui Twins Killing
Michelle Hancock (Letters, July 9) wrongly assumes that our having a handful of women in top positions means that we are “a country run largely by women”. Helen Clark does not head a Cabinet with a majority of women. Margaret Wilson does not control a House of Representatives that has a majority of women. Sian Elias does not preside over a judiciary with a majority of women, and Theresa Gattung does not have a bevy of sisters with her at the top of Telecom.
We can have no idea what the effect would be if our country was indeed run by women, since there is no model for this anywhere on the globe. At present, the level of domestic violence that Hancock rightly abhors is the primary indicator of women’s lack of real power.
—Jill Abigail (Otaki)
Auntie Power
In the article on Hone Harawira (“Fulltime warrior”, July 15), he was quoted as saying, “We’ve all got those people in our families. Everyone might be on the piss, but an auntie will always come in at some point and say, ‘Where is that child’s shoes, boy?’ ‘Oi, has anybody fed that child?’”
It is patently evident that this is not always the case. Where was “Auntie” when the Kahui twins were killed? And where was “Auntie” in the other cases of child abuse and murder?
—George Tyler (Waikanae)
Jim Mora
National Radio belongs to all of us. Right? So when I put my feet up for a while in the afternoon, I expect to have current affairs, books, adventures and news delivered to my ears in an informative and neutral delivery. But this Jim Mora person is doing my head in. He oscillates between dropping hints of good education and personal discernment, with the odd Latin phrase for good measure, and “cosy” fatuous comments dispersed with text-talk like “gizzy” (Gisborne?), “palmy” (Palmerston North?), “rellies” (Oz-speak!).
He even shortens terms like socio-economic (which is correct in the context of social discussions like the fate of those poor little twins) to “socio-ec” – having 10 bob each way. Is he cultured or clueless? “And the time is now ten paaast fower,” he drawls, obviously reading from a script and playing for time. This delivery is disruptive to the listening experience. Come on Jim, we pay your salary, so if you are well educated, be consistently coherent; and if not, quit the pretence and we’ll get a moderate reader of that script you intermittently cling to.
—Jo Murphy (Upper Hutt)
