36 Profile States of the Nation

STATE OF NZ FEBRUARY

36 States of the Nation

The Great Cultural Revolution will be a life changing era to all who live through it, and its affects cannot be under-estimated.

The changes that are likely to happen will also trigger bitter reactions from the general public - a public who are ill-informed of the bigger picture and the inevitability of the events that will be precipitated. It is certain that the vast majority will be unprepared and will look for simple solutions in order to maintain the status quo. These solutions are likely to be counter-productive and potentially as damaging as the changes. Accompanying the reactions of those who seek to grasp that which cannot cannot be held on to, will be a profound shock of such depth that it will dissipate any remaining mental energies to reduce the daily impacts of change.

In order to counter these two fatal responses people need to be able to see where "things are at" and where "things are headed". This at least may facilitate some life saving abstract thinking which might work itself out in sound decision making.

I propose to track the status of some 36 aspects of national life under the following six headings:

- Environmental Wealth
- Economic Health
- Social Cohesion
- International Relations
- Cultural Vitality
- Spiritual Integrity

This will be done with the crude but highly evolved (or beautifully designed) metric of subjectivity. The results will be published monthly and the status of each aspect will be shown as a colour from a "Chromatic scale". - This all sounds a lot more complicated than it is.

Each of the six headings will have six features critical to the common wealth of the nation. The list is an educated guess at what is important and is intended to capture the broad sweep of national health and activity. Because this is a work in progress some aspects may be replaced with others that are deemed more appropriate.

The list of Headings and aspects follows:

ENVIRONMENTAL WEALTH
- Geological stability
- Meteorological Stability
- Natural asset stocks
- Bio-diversity
- Bio-hazards
- Ability to manage waste

ECONOMIC HEALTH
- Essential services (power/water etc)
- Inflation
- Concentration of wealth
- Paid employment
- Living within means
- Balance of trade

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
- Continuity of oil supply
- Access to markets
- War and peace
- Continuity of communications
- International reputation
- Ability to service treaties

SOCIAL COHESION
- Ability to govern
- Stratification in society
- Law and order
- Crime and decency
- Family life
- Individual rights

CULTURAL VITALITY
- Health and fitness
- Ability to reason
- Education system
- Health system
- Research and development
- Lucidity of expression

SPIRITUAL INTEGRITY
- Lordship of Christ
- Focus of belief
- Unity of believers
- Principalities and powers
- Manifestations of integrity
- Persecution

This list could be longer or shorter and six sets of six is somewhat arbitrary. There is no defining way to model the life of humans in society. If it is found to be useful all very well. If not there are plenty of other blogs to choose from - but time is shor . . .

REVIEW – NZ ENERGY STRATEGY TO 2050

The New Zealand Energy Strategy to 2050, (NZES), published October, 2007 is part one of two government papers to provide guidance about New Zealand’s energy future. The first part “Powering Our Future” covers the over-arching issues and the policy direction with government initiatives set forth to drive the policy. The second part (not covered in this review) is an action plan aimed at those responsible for running households, businesses and industries.

Part One – Powering Our Future is a comprehensive assessment of the NZ energy landscape. From the outset it is abundantly clear that the NZ Govt is aware of the criticality of the energy flows necessary to maintain the economy and the social cohesion it provides. It is also aware of the affects that society has on the natural environment. It paints a picture of a diverse and interconnected set of energy industries in a world that is rapidly changing and a world that is pushing the limits of the underlying resources. Any strategy looking 40+ years into the future is ambitious particularly in the flux of our time in history. When that strategy attempts to pilot a path through the conflicts of economy and the environment that ambition is enormous.

A great deal of effort has gone into planning the strategy and the document has a consistency at macro and micro-levels. The policies are backed with plenty of diagrams, illustrations and textual information. The diagram of NZ’s energy flows on page 107 (inset) is a masterpiece of graphical representation. The tone is positive and with the evidence of the research on the page it creates a feeling of reassurance. For a lay-person such as myself, (Architect), the NZES required an investment of concentration and mental space in order to fully digest the complex subject of a nation’s energy future. The glossary of acronyms and definitions at the rear of the document was essential.

The agenda presented in the strategy is the paramount importance of living sustainably. As such there were no surprises and the directions advocated appear to be in the nation’s best interest. Some effort was devoted to prepare the public for the roll-out of potentially unpopular policies such as the (carbon) Emissions Trading Scheme and NZ’s energy obligations to off-shore entities such as OECD that contribute to NZ’s energy equation are mentioned. The difficulties that energy providers have had getting projects off the ground because of the Resource Management Act were also addressed.

NZES clearly and lucidly separates vision from action. Action is teased out under main headings of :

- Resilient low carbon transport

- Security of electricity supply

- Low emissions power and heat

- Using energy more efficiently

- Sustainable energy technologies and innovation

- Affordability and wellbeing

The strategy however, has an “Achilles Heel” in its benign evaluation of future oil supply. Whilst acknowledging the advent of “Peak Oil”, the NZES adopts a so-called “mainstream” view on the matter. The International Energy Agengy (IEA) projects that world demand for oil will rise to circa 117 million barrels per day by 2030. This projection has wide support, however the IEA’s projections of future supply have been highly contested by those studying the peak oil issue. Those critical of the EIA are senior analysts and geologists who have come from within the oil industry and have formed the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO)[1]. The NZ Energy Strategy quotes IEA’s - World Energy Outlook 2006;

“the world’s proven reserves (including non-conventional oil) should be sufficient to meet demand to 2030” [2].

EIA’s own records of actual oil production in the period from 2005 to date shows the IEA supply projection to be greatly and increasingly wide of the mark. Not only is the wedge between demand and supply ever widening but it looks like a full blown delamination is happening, the consequences of which cannot be under-estimated.

One presumes that this critically important matter was carefully thrashed out in the offices of the MED prior to publication and that the final spin was adjusted for political reasons. In the currently optimistic economic environment it would be extremely difficult to come up with a publicly acceptable energy strategy based on the oil production peak that occurred May 2005, at 74.3 million barrels per day[3]. With every month that has passed since that date, it is becoming clearer that the actual supply trend is already downward. It is obvious that even without the political instability of OPEC countries in the Middle-East, real production is unlikely to ever exceed 90 million barrels per day let alone push through the 100 million barrels/day mark.[4]

An energy strategy based on the true trend-lines would be very different from the one published, and it would not create a feel-good factor. The Governors of New Zealand have therefore elected to post-pone the inevitable until circumstances make it obvious to the electorate that Draconian measures are what is actually needed. This will only result in reducing the time to prepare mitigation measures and make the affects more acute. In this the NZ government is no different to most Western governments which all founder on the shoals of a short term election cycle. The meta-problem of ever-increasing needs in an ever-depleting world, as illustrated by oil energy, will severely test the resilience of the Democratic process.

Meanwhile, the MED Discussion Paper: Options for Government Response to an Oil Supply Disruption has been quietly circulating since Sept 2006. This is a much more targeted document and does not try to set up a grand plan of managed actions to transition to a new sustainable economy. In my view a combination of both documents will form the strategy that will be adopted in the not too distant future.

Despite the crucial flaw discussed above the New Zealand Energy Strategy to 2050 is still an important document for New Zealander’s to read. There is much to learn about the issues that are unfolding and there is plenty of valuable information that is not wrong. All New Zealanders need to see how their personal choices fit into a nation’s attempt to chart a course into a very uncertain future.

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[1] Matthew Simmons (oil investment banker) is just one of many who have written extensively on the subject. A copy of a detailed analysis titled Another Nail in the Coffin (Nov 2007 ) leaves no doubt about the true state of world oil production.

[2] NZES - Box 7.1, p47

[3] This figure is for Crude Oil + Condensates.

[4] To put this into perspective, the most oil NZ has ever pumped is about one million barrels in one year (2006).

MUSKETS SPADES & BLANKETS

Not so long ago a museum installed an exhibit comprising a topographical map of a large coloured area that had been sold by its original Maori owners to European settlers. Alongside the map was a small collection of spades, blankets and a musket, which formed the exchange. The commentary and presentation was a fairly overt exercise in propagating the view that the original owners had been swindled by the new arrivals. Such post-modern approaches to history are nothing new, and despite the lack of objectivity the example was worthy of further consideration.

Why did Maori of the 1840’s trade so much land and hard won commodities such as flax fibre, timber and kumara for a single musket, a few spades and some blankets?

The musket projected shot (and power) and with it – respect.

The spade provided leverage of the soil – food

The blankets insulated them from the cold – health

Food, respect and health are vital to any community and are essential for harmony. The lack of any of these creates conditions of dis-comfort and dis-harmony, and therefore conflict. Thus the acquisition of muskets, blankets and spades was one way in which Maori attempted to increase their well-being and security in the land in which they lived.

There is of course a lot more to the story than that, but the main point I wish to draw out has got nothing to do with moralising about the fairness of the transactions. It is simply to see that at the time of the transaction, the decisions were made with a certain amount of pragmatism in achieving an immediate outcome, and perhaps less thought about the cumulative or later affects of such trade.

What we can learn from this is that values change as a result of a shift in the underlying conditions. In 2008 a single acre of rural land could be traded for many guns, spades and blankets. Perhaps just a few acres would be able to equip a small army with guns, spades and blankets. [Once an army was brought into being then the conditions affecting the locality would change again – for a time].

How our own generation will be judged by those of the future with their different value-sets will depend on the conditions and circumstances they find themselves in and the perspective that results and the degree to which knowledge is transmitted. Will we be a parable, a legend or an enigma? Will there be museums to show how our generation traded its present abundance for another generation’s destitution. Just how will the curator’s of the future present this story?

HAT WEARING AND HEDONISM

Those with an interest in photographic history will know that hat wearing as a dominant feature of social scenes faded from view some time in the 1960’s. With that shift in fashion, once essential items such as hat stands, hat hooks and hat racks required less consideration for architects and builders, than toilet roll holders and thermostat control units currently do. Prior to the 1960’s, gatherings of men (particularly outdoors) could often be glimpsed through fields of Panamas, Fedoras and Straw boaters. One of the striking observations is the uniformity of hat styles that can be seen in photos of such gatherings.

Women of course had the luxury of expending small fortunes on these identity forming (or was it concealing?) garments and social hat wearing is now generally reduced to casual wear for protection from the sun or when one really wants to be noticed at the races. The last vestiges of indoor hat wearing has been conserved by religious groups often in out of the way places with little pressure to change. The spine of fundamentalism resident in such sects as The Salvation Army, the Brethren and The Taliban has given these hats, heads to sit upon and tresses to pin them through, as a counter-measure to the winds of “bare-headonism” that have blown and gusted for nigh on half a century. Hat wearing at the beginning of the 21st century is chiefly a matter for firemen, construction workers, farmers, bishops and monarchs who need either protection from falling objects including ultra-violet light, or who have need to project their badges of office to the world at large. Hats are also adopted by those of both sexes who’s hair has fallen off their heads through disease or sheer forgetfulness. But why did hats get blown off heads in the period when Dylan was singing ‘How many times can a man turn his head”?

The answer to that question is of course blowing in the wind, and Dylan’s generation expressed it perfectly when they let the hair on their heads grow longer and stronger to the point that hats popped off with every breeze. In fact it was fashions of hair that put the boot into the statistics of unemployed hat-makers, and underpinning this trend, like all trends, there were reasons why hair grew and hats flew. During this period to “let ones hair down” became something of a cliché expressing antipathy towards ones parents, and more particularly against the oppressive values that shoe-horned the previous generation through war and austerity. With peace handed to them on a gold edged plate, the post-war generation thanked those who gave this gift, with all the petulance of a pampered adolescent. Personally I blame the parents – but what did they do wrong?

I preface the answer by mentioning that in the circumstances we would do no better, and probably much worse – the circumstances being huge relief that the war was over, that the horrors of death and destruction had had their season and the discipline adhering all levels of society was no longer essential to prevent collapse of that society. This has been commented upon by many examining the fashion explosion of the 60’s and the reasons that the value sets of the baby boomer progeny were so different from their parents. An immediate consequence of the post-war shift in values was a relaxation of the demands of authority over the individual, and the boomers were able to inhale deeply of the oxygen of freedom and self-expression absolutely denied their parents by circumstance. Thus was the teenager born to the sounds of Elvis and others in the delivery room of the 50’s.

Concurrent with this freedom, the material benefits of wartime research were re-mobilised to service the general public (instead of destroying it), and luxuries such as indoor sanitation, better housing, personal mobility and increased leisure became part of the post-war largess. These technologies attended a brave new world in which science was king, engineering was admiral and capitalism was Marshall in the field. The new technologies required energy to function and resources were both abundant and cheap, permitting droves of manual labourers to leave their fields of toil in the country and enter factories of production in growing cities. Hot water was plumbed into every house and people washed more often including their heads - and even in winter.

Hats which had previously had the multiple functions of protecting heads, projecting identity, and adorning or concealing the state of their wearers’ heads and hair became generally superfluous (to the detriment of bald people) and wearing hair longer and more facially visible was a natural reaction against the cult of disciplinarianism deeply ingrained during the war years. The freedom from authority, to see and to be seen was like a draught of fresh air on the scalp of the newly bare-headed and so it has generally persisted with few exceptions, those who don’t want to be recognized such as secret agents and gangland hoodies being a case in point. Those people in third world countries who trudge daily through rice paddies in all weathers of course have yet to make the transition to bare-headonism and it is likely that they never will.

What is more likely is that we, the bare-heads, will gradually re-adopt hats as an essential accoutrement, as our circumstances slide away from the prosperity and self-confidence of the post war era. We will probably find that hats are an affordable practical response to the twin challenges of climate change and fossil fuel depletion. Hot water use is likely to decrease in direct proportion to the cost of heating, making us all smellier and unkempt. Air-conditioning usage will go the same way and we will learn to live with open windows and if we can afford them, fly-screens. Personal mobility will decrease and we will re-learn the subtle arts of crowding onto public transport and losing our personal space and identities as we merge with the hundreds of armpits and sweltering heads also on board.

For the above reasons we can expect to see hats make a come-back -and probably re-introduced with retro-hype and eco-marketing. And as we don our new found head-gear with our reduced identities and smart new conformities, some may even draw strength together in religious communities. Faith will once again become the asset it always was. Even so the rejoinder to Dylan’s song will still be able to be heard wafting gently in the wind.

Richard Heinberg Peak Oil Update

Richard Heinberg of ASPO and author of the Peak Oil Protocol gave a talk at Victoria University of Wellington, NZ on Thursday 11 Oct, 2007. Richard first outlined what Peak Oil is about, gave some up to date statistics and discussed some of the responses that are being taken in places around the world. The main points I gleaned from his talk are as follows:

1) Conventional Oil production peaked in 2005 at 74.2 million barrels/day.

2) All liquid fuels peaked in July 2006 at 85.5 million barrels/day.

3) The energy content of all fossil fuels will peak circa 2010.

4) The 200 year period of coal availability is seriously wrong. Coal production is expected to peak in 15 - 20 years.

5) A sudden switch to nuclear energy production will exhaust supplies of uranium within an even shorter time-frame.

6) The Oil Export Quandry will exacerbate fuel depletion as follows:-

• Net oil exporting country becomes flush with money

• A boom in the local economy causes internal demand to rise

• This leads to a reduction in exportable fuel.

Net export availability of fuel is THE critical indicator to monitor.

7) Scarcity of fuel will be a bigger driver of society than fear of climate change, according to an almost buried US DOE report written in 2005.

8) Governments are not doing enough. Pressure MUST come from constituents.

9) Optimism is a deliberate attitude that must be adopted in the face of the uncertainties ahead.

10) Transition towns and sustainable communities are springing up in various places and enabling people to become optimistic about making changes that will be necessary.

Richard focussed on the positive aspects of culture change and carefully avoided exploring the gloomy mechanics of economic collapse and its inevitable conflicts. His talk was well received by the fairly full lecture theater.