Bonus Joules and the Knowledge Economy
Heated Ups and Downs
Bonus joules is hit by a storm in a tea cup.
Blog by Dave McArthur - published 13 Feb 2006
I did find it a strange experience becoming a cartoon; even if it is a cartoon I drew myself some years ago. However
there I was, living, being the cartoon. It felt a bit spooky and rather hilarious. The occasion: The NZ Association for Environmental Education national conference in Auckland in New Zealand. Here is the cartoon:
The conference organiser’s call is loud and clear, “Bonus Joules! Bonus Joules! Anyone for Bonus Joules and the
Knowledge Economy.” The venue for my seminar has suddenly been altered and now I stand watching as 280 delegates
representing the most powerful in New Zealand’s Environmental Education industry file past. There are… top policy makers
in the Ministry of Education…teachers and lecturers from preschool groups through primary through secondary through
university…educators from Government agencies, city and regional councils, NGOs, “sustainable business” companies,
conservation trusts…and then there are a half a dozen bods like me who come from nowhere. The conference list records us
as a blank.
Filing past are the representatives of a fast growing multi-million dollar industry who have an enormous impact on how
we perceive the world and act. Indeed by the time various industrial and merchant banking sectors leverage off the
activities of these people they can be said to be part of a multi-billion dollar industry in New Zealand. And still they
file past. Finally one person steps aside and joins me. Bonus Joules may have an audience.
My companion is tall, sort of languid fellow from the WWF and his face moves with a wry humour. Together we walk with
the organiser to the new venue. “ This guy is right out of left field,” he tells me with great enthusiasm, “ right out
of left field and I have just gotta see this guy.” I mention I am the guy concerned and ask how he got to see about
Bonus Joules. “…read his stuff on the web and thought wow this is so out of left field. Just where is it coming from?”
It takes a few moments for him to connect that I am the author of the website and he seems a little nonplussed, as is
usual. I have a nondescript, inarticulate presence and do not exude charisma and mana. I am finding my stereotype is
deepening as I fade white and bald. That’s OK as I am more interested in ensuring good ideas happen than in pushing
ideas for their own sake. Let them do the work when people are ready for them.
At the venue the organiser realises my Power Point is not loaded and disappears to find someone. Now I am a very poor
public speaker and, after many practices, I have carefully pared my script down to 37 minutes so I am safely within the
strictly regimented 40-minute time limit. I built the Power Point that accompanies the presentation on the computer of
kind neighbours. As a result I have had little chance to review my creation but have practiced tapping out the time for
each slide, as my good neighbour mate taught me. The organiser arrives with tech help and three other people, one of who
promptly realises she is at the wrong session and departs.
I have no idea what to do with the remaining time. I decide to scrap the script for the extended introduction and just
rip through the slides until I get to the main discussion. I never did get to open my folder of notes and I fail to get
through the slides in the remaining time. At one point I notice one of my audience has slipped away and see my time has
expired – or has it? I have a vague recall that the conference is running 20 minutes behind. Rather than strain the
loyalty of my two audience members we wrap up as other people have arrived to prepare their presentation.
Click through to Bonus Joules Cartoon Strip
It so happens my next session is in the same room - the computer room - and I have time to reflect. It sure seems like I
have hit a dead end here. Unlike almost all the other delegates I pay my own fees and costs. These are over $680 – well
over two weeks of my income (I take home about $290 a week as a school janitor). Many of the delegates are paid to
attend. I am using one week of my annual holiday entitlement of three weeks. A large number of New Zealanders people
could not afford to attend if they wanted to. How on Earth are these educators going to draw on the strengths of our
communities if they restrict conferences to the money making factories we call universities?
The trip up here had been tough on me. I no longer travel by air for a range of reasons. The industry is the fastest
growing source of carbon emissions. The vast energy inefficiency of flying is a needless destruction of our dwindling
oil reserves. The little research that has been done suggests the impact of jets on the stratosphere may be excessive. I
read somewhere that after airlines were grounded in the aftermath of 9/11, a survey indicated temperatures averaged 1°F
cooler at key points across the US continent than they would now normally be. And as health systems break down as
oil/Gas become more expensive, airlines will put us all at much greater risk from pandemics. I figure that perhaps it is
better to promote a more fun, energy efficient global economy by promoting alternative means of travel.
As I sat at home searching the web for maps of Auckland I was constantly confronted by pop ups telling me I could get
flights from Wellington to Auckland for $NZ69. Outside my window, planes land and take-off at the Wellington airport and
I know they will be in Auckland within an hour. My bus fare is $70 and I am splashing out for a return trip on the train
(minimum fare $119 but it was to eventually cost $145). I did ask for the “backpacker’s carriage” as these traditionally
are half price. I am informed they have been taken off and are being refurbished for the Wairarapa line. When I ask why
Toll Holdings does not just import another couple of old carriages I am told if it is money that is required Toll does
not have it. Sorry.
The bus trip up is 11 hours long and by four hours of road travel my damaged neck is locking up. With that comes ringing
in my ears, painful spasms of the neck muscles, intolerance of light and growing nausea. I am unable to relieve the
nausea by spewing as I normally can and the last three or four hours are spent in a twilight existence. Great ripples
graunch through my stomach. I work to suppress their full expression by bringing up my breakfast and lunch. At times I
get chest pains and wonder if my heart can take the strain.
It does and a taxi whisks me to the Baptist Youth Hostel near the conference centre in Epsom. The wonderful kind people
there welcome me and I fall into a blessed 11-hour sleep in a beautifully made bed in a sparkling clean room. (Now I am
a school janitor I notice these things more.)
I awake refreshed next morning though my body is fragile in the aftermath. I wend my way down to Newmarket. There I am
invited to have a free stress test at a stall promoting Dianetics. It’s a simple Galvanic skin response test that
detects variations in our conductivity. I am asked if anything stresses me and mention my recent bus trip. The needle
shoots to the top of the dial. I also mention that I am not enjoying the prospect of delivering my seminar. The needle
shoots right off the dial and the gadget requires several adjustments before it can register me on the dial. The man
asks what lies behind this reaction.
I explain that I come with a message of hope to the NZAEE conference but most people will not hear it. For years these
educators have cultivated flawed symbol uses and images of the nature of energy and of how our climate works. I tell him
how passionate and caring for the environment these people are and how devastated they can become when they realise
whose interests they really serve. Part of my message is that their symbol use is riddled with Greenwash and Spin
generated by the bankers of the Bulk-electricity and fossil fuel sectors. I tell him I bring simple proposals to
ameliorate the unsustainable situation humanity has gotten itself into and I understand the barriers in these good folk
that prevent them seeing and believing the hope in the proposals.
Often the needle swings to high stress levels as I talk of their pain and drops to new lows as I talk of the hope I
know. We talk a while of how sustainable change can occur and how we can tap the immense power and wisdom that resides
within each of us.
That image of the oscillating needle stays with me as I walk away and suddenly I am released by the conversation. It
occurs to me with some force that “These people are my friends”. What does it matter how people react at the conference.
They are my friends, no matter their moments of hostility and anger. From that moment I am at much greater ease with the
challenges I face.
I take a ferry to Devonport and climb Mt Victoria. I breast the brow of the hill and am overwhelmed by the beauty of this volcanic land-sea scape. It is so benign and bounteous and yet is so transparently sculptured by some of the most violent and transforming
forces on our planet. I am aware of the glorious bounty of energy.
Sunday afternoon the conference opens with a long powhiri or Maori welcome ceremony at the University marae. A tui talks
away in the trees that shade us, a cascade of bell tones. The air is balmy on the skin and it does not matter that I do
not understand the long welcome speeches in Maori. I know maybe only two hundred words of the language and for all I
know the speakers may be taking the micky out of us by reading out their shopping list. Fair enough if they are. One of
the inaugural speakers later that day did talk of the unsustainable nature of biculturalism and the Cook Island
delegates I shared the hostel dining room with commented to me that back home they considered it a matter of great
courtesy to interpret all speeches into the tongues of the visitors.
Click through to Bonus Joules Cartoon Strip
Dick Hubbard, Mayor of Auckland, opens the conference. His is a thoughtful speech. He is prominent in the movement
promoting triple bottom line accounting (environment, social and economic) and speaks of the tensions in our current
culture. He is a breakfast cereal manufacturer and speaks of exporting rolled oats (20,000 kilometers/12,000 miles) right around the planet to Scotland, home of the
rolled oats technology. He knows it is bad for the environment and such trade practices are unsustainable yet the
Government pats him on the back for improving our trade balance with his exports. He offers it as a graphic example of
how in our current culture a benefit to one bottom line comes at a cost to another bottom line.
I am reminded of when I opened one of his cereal packets one breakfast a couple of years ago. It contained his usual
folksy newsletter. In it he wrote of having his firm audited for carbon emissions. He had never thought of things like
the impact of all his air travel around the globe. I contemplated the packet and realised that his firm could reduce its
impact by doubling the volume of the packet. The surface area would stay the same so it would still fit the same shop
shelves. So I wrote to him suggesting that by doubling the depth of the packet he could reduce all the carbon emissions
from logging, cardboard manufacture, aluminium smelting, transport, waste disposal by 17% and increase carbon sinks by
the same percentage. A double positive whammy.
I received a most kind letter back explaining that the UK is their major market and British consumers do not like large
packets. Also New Zealanders have a “$5” mind-barrier in supermarket purchases. So I wrote back saying I am sure people
will respond to education and I would provide Hubbards with graphics illustrating the awesome nature of the atmosphere
and the balance of the trace gases that enable our civilisation. What better time to mull over the wondrous miracle of
our existence than at breakfast time. The extra packaging would provide the graphic space and people could feel good
knowing they can make a difference by bulk purchases.
I never did get a reply. About that time I reverted to the wisdom of my parents who, now in their 80s, still sustain
themselves daily with a simple bowl of porridge for breakfast. By doing so I estimate I have reduced my carbon emissions
from cardboard/plastic packaging by over 90% and from aluminium smelting by 100%. Sorry, Dick. And I find a simple bowl
of pog is actually more delicious too.
Monday morning and Joe Harawira gives a keynote speech –or rather creates a religious experience. It is an emotional
evocation that reveals how Maori legend links them to the past and to the future and to the land. I recognise it as a
powerful means to remind our people, especially our young, of the awe and humility that resides in us. Unlike the next
keynote speaker, Joe goes to the heart rather as well as the intellect. To that extent he extends beyond the academic
treatise and works the primal lands of our minds so dominated by the PR industry. However neither speaker confronts the
spectre of the PR’s sector’s power and domination of our lives.
So here I am sitting here late Monday afternoon, wondering if there are better things to do with my time than attend
this conference. Already I have heard the despair as delegates joke how their friends joke how they will go down with
their champagne glass clasped high as humanity drowns when our supporting ecosystems collapse around us. For a brief
moment I wonder if I should join them. Yeah, what the hell. There’s a lot of good wine out there and this conference
cost me half a new roof on my cottage.
At times like that I pray to the greater wisdom for guidance and ask the universe what would it have me do. Then I
notice a curious thing. An instant sign or response to my prayer?
The computer screen contains one link, just one link. It is to Jason Clark’s speech at the inaugural national conference
in Hamilton in 2002. Jason came from “the dark side” as he put it – the world of PR with its excesses of lies, fear
mongering, “damage managing” and greed breeding. He explained that while our formal education system tends to focus on
the intellect only, education forces in the PR industry bypass this region of our beings completely and focus on our
emotional-primal responses. As a result they are the dominant force in our lives.
At the time I observed mixtures of disbelief and even anger at him written on the faces of the delegates around me. Many
clearly felt insulted. For my part I was elated, for here was someone who understood how the Environmental Education
industry really works. I was relieved to learn I was not alone with my views and Jason’s speech gave me added strength
to carry on these last four years. Search the net as I might I had not been able to establish contact with him to get
the text of his speech and thank him.
Coincidence? Serendipity? A sign? It seems a bit much that the one link on the computer should be to Jason’s speech. The
poor guy running this seminar on bloglines is a bit stuck. His password that worked so well when he tested it at
lunchtime no longer works and the University support staff have gone home. I only had three people to be concerned for.
He has two-dozen people staring at locked screens.
While we wait for help we chat and I ask him why he chose Jason Clarke of all people. He tells me that he considers that
speech the only standout speech of any NZAEE conference so far. It had absolutely transformed him though he knew of no
one else who had liked it. This was a phenomenon I had observed. Many educators said they understood what Jason was
saying but their actions since clearly revealed they did not truly believe it. They have continued pouring Greenwash and
PR Spin into our schools and households on ever increasing scale, despite all the evidence indicating it is counter to
their objectives. In particular I am thinking of the Climate Change Office resources and Enviroschools. Many delegates
talk of the latter in hallowed tones.
That night I pull into an Internet café and check my email. It is bursting alive with commentary on Lovelock’s new book
and with links to scientists’ commentary on it. The conference feels a curiously virtual reality by comparison.
Another small sign occurs next morning that perhaps I should carry on with this work. I have bought a supply of shirts
for one week and on Tuesday I throw on a tee shirt gifted me by the Wellington Marine Education Centre. A delegate stops
me. He says he now works for a Government agency and has inherited the task of communicating atmospheric and ocean
issues. I explain I am really here pushing an energy efficiency concept of bonusjoules. He almost falls over with
disbelief. He has cartoons from my website “plastered all over his office” and has even used them in a presentation.
Yes, who knows where a seed lands and what it grows into. I think of our prominent climatologists like Jim Salinger and
Kevin Trembath. They fly all over the world communicating climate issues to all who will listen and yet never question
the science underpinning their communication. I have long been at loss at how to communicate to them. Maybe there is a
way yet? I will keep on with this stuff despite all.
The next keynote speaker is Sir Jonathon Porrit CBE. Jonathon is chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission and Programme Director of the Forum of the Future. Seems like he has pretty direct contacts with Prime Minister Blair.
Well its also seems like Jonathon is struggling to retain hope. On his plane flight to New Zealand he had read James
Lovelock new book. James generated the great modern symbol of Earth as a living entity he called Gaia. Just about all sustained civilisations have used similar symbols to express the living entity that is our planet and
to remind humans that they ignore its balances at their peril. James, using 86 years of insight and experience of this
global civilisation, now feels we have triggered unsustaining changes to our atmospheric balances. This means over the
vast bulk of humanity may well soon perish.
This is a probability I have long confronted along with the risks of destroying global oil-Gas reserves this generation.
It is easy to lose hope, as most have. Jonathon struggles openly and honestly with his ability to retain hope before the
whole conference. People listen intently. He then proceeds to discuss how he had spent time at a session listening to
how Enviroschools is being implemented throughout NZ schools and the great things it is doing. He stops at this point,
bows and shakes his head before speaking with passion. What he could not help noticing, and maybe I paraphrase him, is
that amidst all the quantities of data and presentations of Enviroschools there was not one single mention of carbon, not one single mention and yet our use of carbon is the great issue, the
overwhelming issue, the most enormous issue facing us all at this time.
There is a profound silence in the hall of 300 people. One solitary person at the back of the hall begins clapping. The
clapping echoes on itself in the silence and for some reason I am reminded of the ancient meditative exercises where one
imagines one hand clapping and where one asks if a tree makes a sound falling if there is no one in the forest to hear
it. Surely soon others will join the lone clapper but no one does. Surely others see the fatal flaws in the symbols
employed by Environmental Industry in New Zealand and beyond? Not one person joins the lone clapper. I cease quickly as
it more fully dawns on me that I am that lone clapper and probably will remain so.
Jonathon then goes on to tell us how he did recently have a wonderful experience up in Scotland. There he discovered
children were calculating their schools impact on carbon balances. When you entered the school entrance the results were
there for all to see. He tells this as a story of hope. Clearly what none of his hosts have told him is that 10 to 12
year olds were doing this in hundreds of schools in New Zealand in the 1990s through their community-owned
Bulk-electricity distributors.
Then I note the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment sponsors his visit. Suddenly Jonathon’s ignorance makes sense. The Commissioner’s published history of the
Bulk-electricity system in New Zealand reveals no knowledge of life before the Electricity Reforms of the 1980s.
Seemingly what was the world’s most advanced electricity system came from nowhere as the Commission ignores the
extraordinary role small communities played in creating this remarkable system over a period of 90 years. It was they
that were teaching about the potential impact of carbon emissions and how we can reduce our use of fossil carbon.
Similarly the Commissioner’s publications on Environmental Education such as See Change make no mention of the Energy
Action programme, despite or because its external reviewers were the top Environmental Educators in our universities –
Canterbury, Massey, Victoria, Macquarie… Life does not exist before 2000 for these guys or the Commissioner. That
happens to be when funding ceased for the carbon education programme as community ownership of local grids was destroyed
by the Electricity Reforms legislation and the new Parliamentary culture/ertia.
Afterwards I slip up to Jonathon and inform him that the absence of carbon is no mistake. Enviroschools is easily a case of Greenwash and is designed to enhance our Government’s Clean Green Image programme and to obscure New Zealand’s Unclean Ungreen
Practices. No programme that effectively communicated about our carbon use and its possible impact on the environment
can get funding from Governments here now. I sense he believes me; his eyes go a bit bleak. I hasten to inform him that
ideas are happening in NZ that he will not find out about on this visit and he should know they could give him cause for
hope. I wonder to myself whether maybe he will one day check out the ideas I presented to the conference and find hope
there?
At lunch time secondary school students show us their award winning work for the environment. One group has worked to
restore a local stream destroyed by local industry practices. They worked to involve the community, promote better
agricultural practices and in general succeeded in their attempts. They made a humorous video explaining how they
achieved their aims that won them second place in an international competition. The spirit of their video entrances the
audience while my own faith in the power of our youth to sustain us is reaffirmed yet again.
My mind goes back to 2001. Energy Action has folded for lack of funds. There is no coherent climate education programme
anymore. I am realising that to the extent the Government is serious about reducing the negative impact of our carbon
use on the atmosphere and our children, it is doomed to failure by its use of symbols.
I write a long and detailed proposal to the Climate Change Office suggesting they create a video competition between
schools at Level 4 (11-12 year olds). Students would create a video 3-4 minutes long portraying the nature of trace
gases and the fact that trace gases, including water vapour, together constituting only parts per thousand of the
atmosphere keep Earth’s surface 33°C warmer than it would be in their absence.
I knew our students would come up with brilliant ways of portraying the huge numbers, tiny fractions and leverage
involved, whether it was filming a thousand beans or human beings and dicing the thousandth one into pieces or whatever.
The six best videos would be compiled on a disc as a peer-peer education resource and I suggested that one reward would
be to get the State owned TV1 to broadcast a video a night just before the 7pm weather forecast in for the week of the
2002 Rio+10 Conference on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. I fail to receive even a letter of acknowledgement
from the Climate Change Office to my several page detailed proposal. This is despite sending it to a couple of people
there.
Since then we have seen New Zealand’s carbon emissions rocketing, inordinate investment in carbon emitting technology,
the scrapping of the proposed Carbon Tax, Carbon Trading has become a fiscal laughing stock/liability and the scrapping
of the proposed Methane tax. Overseas readers should know we are unique in New Zealand in that our methane emissions
from industrial process are even greater than our carbon dioxide emissions and, of course, methane is over twenty times
as potent as a Warmer Trace Gas. Our schools have produced a remarkably ignorant group of farmers and journalists. These
people believe methane is largely generated from the farting of livestock such as cows. Hence they dismissed the Methane
tax using the derisory symbol “Fart Tax”. They do not understand even the basics. Ruminating animals produce four times
the quantity of methane from belching as they do from farting.
Click through to Bonus Joules Cartoon Strip
Tuesday afternoon and our bus inches and idles its way down the crowded car park which is the expressway to EarthSong, a “sustainable housing development”. A minor tropical storm is affecting Auckland. Trees are falling over and vehicles
crashing into each other. Coming from the boisterous climate of the Cook Strait where this is considered only a breeze I
am bemused. Conference members doing field trips to the local islands are being sick in their boats.
I chose to go to EarthSong as I lived for a decade of the 1970-80s in a community development in Christchurch till I
could take the city’s smog no longer. Creekside then had seven houses spread over two acres. Half of the 27 people were children and many of us adults had determined
we would have only two, one or no children. Commodities such as vehicles, laundries, freezer storage, lounges,
televisions etc were pooled to reduce our environmental footprint.
EarthSong with a planned 33 households is even more sophisticated. They do not have innovations that we had such as an
intercom so one household could baby-sit four other households in the evenings. However they collect rainwater off their
roofs for all but cooking purposes. Their ground catchment system easily contains the heavy rain falling on their land
today. Each house is built to the sun and has solar heating. (Goddam ugly things – the sooner the guys who made SUVs so
sexy start designing solar technology the better. And who is thinking ahead so the systems can be adapted to smart
Whispergen, wood pellet type technology that they stick the tanks on the roof? I doubt EECA is.)
A most advanced feature is that the community bulk-purchases its Bulk-electricity. You buy into a low amp society and
soon learn to not put on all your heavy consumption appliances at once. My last bill for 555 units over 35 days was
$131. Their reward is a $30 bill per month, $40 at most. Their system has vast positive implications for our hills,
valleys, rivers, lakes and our lives in general.
I groan as I think of the environmental and social devastation that the flog-off of Vector Ltd to a couple of overseas bankers is going to cause.
Wednesday morning and I am really lit up. Dr Jenny Su is an absolute gem. In four and a half years as Executive
Secretary for the Division of Environmental Protection at the Ministry of Education in Taiwan she has transformed school
campuses and their communities throughout the island. Hearing her is to understand how she does it. She does not own
ideas or expertise and works to draw out the wisdom of institutions and their communities.
Schools, and I include universities, come to her with a proposal and she asks “ What is the benefits for your community
and show me how they support you.” If they cannot show the connections they are sent away. Her Minister is so impressed
with the gains in sustainable practices he has offered her a billion dollar package to work with. She has refused to
take it up, as she believes that sustainable change best comes from communities and it is more vital that the Government
really supports this ideal.
The cracking of the jaws dropping onto desks in disbelief was hilarious. Conference delegates are stunned that anyone
might turn down a billion dollars in Environmental Education. Coming from the community-owned Bulk electricity days I
understand the wisdom of what she does. I think of our current anti-community, fragmented and secretive Bulk-electricity
structure and our hostile Parliament. I think of our fragmented competitive school system with institutions scrambling
over top of each other as they strive for student numbers and funds. I think of how our formal Environmental Industry is
riddled with intellectual dishonesty and PR spin as each sector in it scrabbles and fights to keep its pet project
alive.
Jenny was confronted with this too and yet now has university professors and graduate students enthused to share their
knowledge with their colleagues and communities. Principals no longer dread the topic and instead delight in talking to
their communities of their work in making their campuses more sustainable. Some schools are even off the
Bulk-electricity grid and place zero demand on local stormwater and waste infrastructures. Her big focus is on
identifying and publicly acknowledging good critical thinking, no matter how small the campus.
I ask does she work with private companies and if so how does she prevent them using the programmes for Spin and
Greenwash purposes? She replies that at first the CEOs would ring her up and she would just put the phone down on them.
They got the message. This said, she does involve some private companies but she identifies the good ones. It is she who
approaches them and it is all on her terms. An example is the world’s largest photovoltaic panel manufacturer. She
describes the guys running it as just a bunch of engineers out to create a most sustainable product who happen to have
made a lot of money doing it. They were happy to be involved and there was never any thought that their company’s name
would be in anyway linked.
For me, Jenny is an example of the power of the individual, of the community, of our schools, of a small island people
to show the world a sustainable future.
Afterwards I notice a small phenomenon. A few people begin coming up to me saying that I must feel my ideas are at last
being supported. I am kind of surprised as I had little inkling that they knew the ideas I promote. I guess some NZAEE
exec bods might have read my submission to the conference. Though NZers visit my website I rarely observe them there.
The bulk of my readers are overseas where I have noted people spending up to 9 hours over two days on it.
(I mentioned this to a mate and when he hears one extended visitor is Virginia-based he laughed and says that is where
the headquarters of the CIA is based. Yeah, well. I am well aware of the mass misery that the Agency causes. Then again
their intelligence must surely be revealing that our present systems and activities are leading to an inevitable mass
collapse of civilisation. Maybe someone there loves their child and wishes more for it and finds hope visiting my
website?)
At the end of the conference a teacher asks if she can see the Energy Action programme. She wants to teach about
“energy” and carbon. I have bought a dozen teaching posters with me and I pass them by her back at the hostel. A couple
of other delegates happen in on our discussion, including the president of the NZAEE. I think they are amazed at the
scale of the thinking in the resource and I have to tell them much of it is already superseded. It certainly is in my
mind.
Before I leave Auckland I visit the SkyTower like a good little tourist. Noble attempts are being made to wean Auckland city from its severe oil addicted ways. One
of my first acts on arriving had been to pay homage to the new Britomart rail centre. I admire the millions of dollars of sculpturing though the dead punga trees had a sad effect. Perhaps they
died in sympathy with the dead train sitting at the platform. Periodically the line of people sitting glumly on their
handbags and satchels were informed that mechanical breakdown would mean a twenty-minute delay. I do not know how many
twenty minutes that was on top of. No train came or went while I was there.
I ask to change my train ticket back to Wellington. “This must seem stupid but you cannot buy railway tickets at the
railway station – you will have to go elsewhere.” I walk around the block to a place that does sell them. “This must
seem so stupid that you cannot buy such railway tickets at the railway station”, offers the woman behind the counter,
perhaps anticipating the zillointh such comment. I agree and we discuss the stupidity and inefficiency of the New
Economic Order.
I have to pay an extra $26, which takes the price to $145.This is over twice what an airfare is. I think unkind thoughts
about our parliamentarians who promote this nonsense with their billion dollars subsidies to airlines while dumping on
rail.
Later at the rail station I am told I could have avoided this extra charge by just coming down and buying my ticket at
the time of departure. I note 50% of the seats are empty all the way to Wellington. What a rort. And the contracting
caterers failed to turn up with food for the canteen. As a result there was not much else available than the traditional
pies so scorned by our version of the Neocoms, those people who destroyed our rail potential in New Zealand too.
I had noted there is rail station near my hostel and ask if I can be picked there. There are no city buses to Britomart
by the departure clock-in time (7.10 am), I will avoid a taxi fare and I will be able to sleep in an extra hour or more.
I am told “Sorry, if we did that the train would never get to Wellington.” I point out that I date from the steam age
and it was perfectly possible then. I do not add that the world lacked MBAs and smart technology then. “The problem is
we do not own the tracks and can do nothing about the fact the lines were all welded up by the previous owners TranzRail
…so our trains cannot go very fast in case the lines have buckled in the heat.”
Its becoming clear to me that the definition and purpose of the Economics Reforms is to maximise energy inefficiency and
to allow everyone to pass the buck so oil is used up as fast as possible. Our nation has been reduced to a state of
structured helplessness. Just like America. An American at the hostel told me how helpless so many of his compatriots
feel and that all his acquaintances who were all for invading Iraq in 2003 now say “Oh I was always against going in.”
What will they say when their dependence on the oil and drug trades collapses their economy?
I sit high up in Skytower with a glass of wine watching the sun set over this amazing isthmus. Buildings crowd its
surface to the horizons. There are some beautifully designed buildings but many recent ones are very ugly and seem to be
built by sun-haters. The city lights gradually replace the day and the roads are revealed as four-lane wide gashes of
red and white that slash through the urban scape. Now I can understand why I was the only person on my bus at 8am peak
time coming into the city centre this morning.
People here think cheap oil and a benign atmosphere are forever.
I think of the great gleaming Humvee I saw inching down Queen Street. I easily walk faster than it. Indeed I have time to stop, window shop, dream and
calculate how many horsepower it takes to move the near stationary ego of its sole occupant a mile. With 25000 man-hours
of labour/energy in a 42 gallon barrel of oil, add the military, the extraction, processing (23 gallons are lost) and
transport man-hours involved and he uses a gallon this half hour and only 1% of that gallon actually moves him (the rest
disappears in heat and friction)..hmm..my head hurts.. this individual could be using a resource of 3000 man-hours of
labour to move himself down this street. For all that he does not look all that happy in his tank. How helpless can you
get?
Click through to Bonus Joules Cartoon Strip
Yes, as I gaze down on Auckland I know this city is in for such a shock when its access to cheap oil suddenly ceases, if
the weather gets turbulent. It has not one single electric means of transport. The pavements are still full of broken
branches from the wee breeze earlier in the week. I drink to the fact I do not live here, even as I know such attitudes
are a recipe for misery.
The train trip back to Wellington is a fabulous experience. The length of the North Island is soaking in summer. Much of
the first hour is spent travelling through a frenzy of graphiti, sometimes three stories high. If only we can more tap
into the amazing energy of our young people and create a sustainable future for all. Then we are into the lush
industrial pasturelands of the Waikato.
Periodically, just as I am sinking into a reverie, a commentary on the towns, viaducts and history we are passing
through blasts out of the speakers positioned above every passenger’s head. Nice idea. Terrible technology. Imagine the
hapless passenger who uses the train more than once. The powers-that-be really hate trains in this country and it is
often said that Toll Holdings only wants to move freight.
Sometime after Hamilton I become aware of a new force moving us. A quiet force with terrific tow. My heart leaps with
joy as on steep curve I see what it is. We are now electric. Unannounced we have changed locomotives in Hamilton. For some reason I feel quite emotional and the landscape comes
even more alive. I really feel at one with my land now. In my mind I see the wind turbines quietly turning and the rains
falling onto the hills behind the hydrodams. I feel the atmospheric forces being transformed into horsepower – 4000 hp I
later learn. The engine pulling us has almost twice the power of our largest diesel locomotive. My ears are popping at
the rate it moves us up into the King Country.
My feelings can best be described as a sensation of moving from a crude barbaric era into an enlightened age. I am
leaving oil in the ground that will provide food for my great, great grandchildren and I am not murdering the hapless
humans who live in oil-rich regions. I am moving through our world leaving only a small footprint. The sense of sanity
is palpable. I stand out on the viewing platform and experiences something else new. I can smell the summer, the
crackling broom pods, the drying hay, the crops of brassicas crushed underfoot by browsing stock and all those smells
that were always swamped by the fuggy diesel fumes before.
This is living. I reflect on the quiet desperation written on so many the faces of the occupants of cars we zip past. I
reflect on the quiet anguish expressed to me by conference delegates as they asked how we can alert people to the need
for change and yet still maintain hope. Daily in their work they are at the interface with classes of students, workers
in industries, streams of tourists, panels of politicians and it is so hard to maintain hope in the face of overwhelming
challenges created by our use of energy. Someone suggests to me I might be able to help create an “energy” education
programme for an SOE. Someone else suggests an organization might use me for a “climate” education programme they are
planning. Always people come back to the problem of “keeping people hopeful as we get them to face the facts”.
Hope is something I am fortunate to know of, especially in this moment as I flow through this land, borne along on its
winds and rains. It is pointless teaching energy efficiency without talking of the power of compassion and how any act
links us to our environment. It is pointless teaching how we face calamity by destroying our habitat without providing
in people with simple strategies for ameliorating the impact of their activities. I know we can teach the wonders our
climate so that it inspires sustainable change and energy efficient practice. The programmes cannot work apart. One
provides activities with no meaning and the other provides insights with no hope. I know the power of our children and
their ability to transform their communities for better. Grant Dunford with his Energy Action programme was a genius. I
know we can create an even more inspirational education programme so each may more know their Thermal Beings and their
Trace Beings.
Palmerston North and back to the Barbaric Ages. The fumes and the crude sounds of the diesel-burning locomotive assail
my nostrils. I buy a small bottle of wine and together with a couple of other passengers in the viewing platform we
salute Kapiti Island and the motorists who wave back to us. We have a ball. I make a toast to life with every sip. Just
as Jenny Su is transforming Taiwan I know New Zealand can reinvigorate its Parliament, slough off its fossil fuel
addiction and provide guidance to the world with inspiring education programmes and sustainable ways.
We pass a substation. Painted over so it is barely legible is the crafted engraving that reads Horowhenua Electric Power
Board. It reminds me of the National Radio News in the week describing how power companies were out fixing broken power
poles and downed power lines and getting the power back on in the Auckland storm. I lost count of the number of times
Maggie Barry, the newsreader, abused this wonderful symbol and made it PR gobbledygook. I drink to our much wiser and
more scientific grandfathers and their communities who built and named this substation with such care. We can all learn
from them. I drink to the future past and arrive in Wellington feeling rosy and elated from my rail journey.
Footnotes:
Since my last blog our New Zealand Parliament has scrapped plans to establish a carbon tax and has turned its back on the
spirit of Kyoto. This will be no surprise to people who have followed my blogs. Enough said.
Will try to put my presentation to the NZAEE conference up on this website when I get time.
Thursday, 26 January 2006, 9:46 am
Press Release: NZ Association of Environmental Education
The Bonus Joules cartoon, drawn a couple of years ago, is pointing up the fact that our New Zealand schools are turning
out generations of plumbers, builders and electricians who are ignorant of the most fundamental principles of
thermodynamics. These people make the major decisions involving billions of dollars of investment that will impact for a
century or more.
ENDS