First Impressions.
Growing up in the new millennium has its challenges for Bonus Joules
Bonus Joules BLOG March 30 2005
Click To Visit Bonus Joules Website
Market forces determine pay rates.
So reads the headlines in the Wellington Dominion Post (5 Feb 05). The local investment guru is pronouncing on why the
average wage in New Zealand is lagging behind other indicators in an "expanding economy". I am cynical as I took the
gentleman's advice a decade ago. As a result I now I have a mortgage and a much reduced lifestyle. This is not what
disturbs me. No. What worries me is that if he is right about market forces, then human society faces catastrophic
failure and vast misery. How different if it might have been if the headlines read:
Click To Visit Bonus Joules Website
Common Decency determines pay rates.
In my last blog I mentioned the concept of negawatts. The intent behind the concept is most admirable. It is a move towards common
decency and runs counter to the truly daft age we live in. People are paid the wages of professors to stand up in front
of vast schools of impressionable people and teach them that if a use of energy cannot be measured and taxed then, it
does not exist. This is the dark world of modern Economics. It is a murky, violent, amoral, heartless world. A miserable
world of deprivation and crisis. "Energy in crisis."
With the symbol negawatts Amory Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute colleagues are attempting to show there is another world – a world of sunshine, colour, joy, poetry and fun. It is a
world in which a person sits in the sun and keeps warm and does not make the Gross National Product shrink. Their
decision to enjoy the solar sourced warmth and not huddle over an electric heater is seen as a positive act, an
efficient use of energy. The units of electricity not consumed can be measured and are called negawatts. And traded.
I first meet the concept in the early 1990s.It comes as a vast breath of sanity. Believe me, it is the sweetest salve.
Like meeting a dear and long-lost friend. You have to understand the insanity of the Economic Reforms being inflicted on
New Zealand at this time. Sure. A negawatt seems a pretty daft concept. How can you measure something that is not used?
What’s the limit of the amount of energy we can say we don’t use? The mind boggles.
Click To Visit Bonus Joules Website
But wait. It is no way as daft as is the new Economic Order. In this doctrine, even concepts of personal and
environmental well-being do not exist. Any such thinking is a being excised from the national consciousness by an army
of MBAs with the precision of a lobotomist’s scalpel. They call it “restructuring” and “releasing.” The latter term
brings to mind ancient practices of drilling holes in people’s skulls to release the demons inside. And lancing boils.
A revealing joke of this time is that if you wish to make the greatest contribution to the Economy, then develop
terminal cancer, get a divorce and write your car off. Derailing a train in the process was even better. Combined, this
really puts a rocket under the precious, gross-consumption statistics. By comparison the heathen who insists on
remaining sane, healthy and perhaps writes a love poem in the sun to their family is an anathema to the New Order.
Worse. They undermine The Economy!
In this miserable world anything that cannot be taxed and traded by the corporations does not exist. Our most sustaining
and civilised uses of energy do not exist. A hug of friendship counts for nought and less. A fist propelled in violence
to another is positive for The Economy. Our universities overflow with business schools overflowing with people
overflowing with this doctrine. There is no money in swimming against this tide. Only dinosaurs and cockroaches dare to.
Yes, that is how the New Economy evangelists dismiss us. It is the 1990s and “no one owes you a living”. Times are
getting tough for those of us who persist in believing there is more to life that the GNP.
Click To Visit Bonus Joules Website
2000 Fortunately they do not know that dinosaurs are not extinct. Birds are living dinosaurs and we continue to fly.
Somehow we survive into the 21st Century. We are surrounded by a feeding frenzy over the remaining fossil fuels. A new
wave of slaughter is about to be released. SUVs choke our roads and lungs. Enrons and OnEnergys thrive. Arthur Andersen
and Co rules our lives. The flow of funding for the creation of negawatts dries up, diverted through the coffers of
corporations to become floods of Greenwash. Caught in this vast sea of corporate spin, it is easy to feel like a sparrow
trying to cross the Pacific Ocean. The concept of negawatts, flawed as it is, is the most welcome atoll. Blessed relief.
ENDS