In Greece, Spain, the UK and now France the question is being asked in deadly earnest. Although the debt crisis may not be as great in New Zealand, we still have large and potentially crippling deficits to deal with and the question is being asked here too.

Should a nation and its citizenry tighten their belts to the point of real pain? Or should money be thrown at the debt problem in the hope that everyone spending more will produce more jobs and create an upward spiral in confidence that makes the money keep going around and eventually even out?

For most people it’s something of a left-vs-right issue, almost a good old class battle.

The people advocating austerity tend to be those with plenty enough already and who hold the levers of power with inside knowledge of money and debt markets and the like. They can still live comfortably with reduced services and less disposable income, and understand how to manoeuvre their assets to remain safe and even work the system and even the crisis to their advantage.

Meanwhile the people arguing for stimulus and growth tend to be those who don’t really understand how macro economies work, live to short-term goals and are envious of those with plenty.

I know that these are pretty simplistic stereotypes, but I think they’re close enough for a large number of people. But I also know there are a good number who do understand how economies work, who don’t live in relative wealth or poverty, and who have opposite opinions largely depending on their personal view of life (such as poorer people who religiously avoid debt).

I think there are essentially three approaches – two on the extremes (hard right and hard left) and one in the middle. As usual, as is apparently my character, I have a strong position near the middle. I believe that both austerity and stimulus can be achieved, and would work, if a particular combination of them is chosen. And in particular if our leaders (and we as their electors) are capable of looking to a distant enough horizon.

1. The hard right view is a country-wide version of the option applicable to a severely indebted individual – just stop spending and work harder. Pay back your debt (or reduce it to a manageable level) as quickly as is possible and stop paying all that wasted, dead-money interest.

I’m pretty certain that, while this is good advice in for most individuals and particularly for strict Presbyterians, this cannot work for countries, for several reasons.

First, any attempt to take a nation into emergency footing must include taking the citizens with you. This is no easier an ask than it ever was throughout history. Done badly, the result is almost inevitably and eventually expensive and destructive civil unrest and possibly revolution. Civil unrest is already a big problem in Greece and, apparently, in Spain, with France and UK now familiar with scary events of disorder and confrontation over lifestyle and immigration issues. Add to that the uprisings in Middle Eastern and Northern African countries and you can see what can happen if you anger your citizens without convincing them, intellectually and emotionally, of the benefits of your policies. Britain managed austerity measures during World War 2 because the citizens understood the reasons: I doubt very much this is the case now.

The second main reason why austerity can be counter-productive is that it can easily produce a downward spiral, for individuals and the country as a whole. The less money people have (having lost their jobs or seen cuts in their benefit entitlements) the less they spend and so the less local businesses make. This leads not only to more people unemployed and therefore with less money to spend, but also a fall in government income in taxes, meaning fewer services and lower benefits it can offer.

As the New Zealand government is now showing, the way out of this is to sell more assets to foreign “investors”, providing some immediate relief with new money in, but in the long run further reducing income streams from dividends, more of which go offshore. Put simply, this is not a sustainable situation but a slow, downward spiral that we will regret in decades to come.

2. The hard left view is to borrow money and distribute it as cash, tax cuts, and benefit payments. You give everyone more money in the hope that (a) they won’t put it all into the bank, and (b) they buy products made and sold locally, putting more money into local businesses who can then spend more themselves within the economy.

This works if two conditions are satisfied. First, if the resultant increased tax take (GST on sales, business income) by the government pays for at least the interest on the money borrowed to make it happen and preferably pay off some of the principal. Secondly, if the bulk of the money is in fact spent or invested locally.

But if the spending on imported stuff (or overseas trips) is more than the income our exporters can bring back into the country, then we’re going backwards into an ever worse position, with the only response being either a switch to austerity or even more (borrowed) cash stimulus to put off the day of reckoning.

Sadly, Kiwis being as they are, the debate is largely along these black-and-white lines – austerity or borrowing. Everyone is looking after number one and demanding of their political leaders whatever solution suits them best. If those struggling to keep up come into extra money, many tend to spend it on imported flash goods and trips to Oz, trying to retain their accustomed lifestyle. And if they are already well protected they resent money going to the undeserving, lazy strugglers and demand their government get tough.

3. My view is in between. As a country we should be careful with our money (a touch of austerity or at least a measure of caution), but make sure that as much as possible of the money the government borrows to keep us going is spent within the economy on projects that produce tangible and sustainable assets.

I’m okay with certain levels of debt. I know how important debt was for me to end up owning a house. And when things get hard, I’m okay with borrowing a bit more, but under certain conditions.

Certainly not as a stimulus for spending! The “free market” ideology of giving consumers the cash and letting them choose how to spend it is folly. By nature, too many of us see it as a windfall and spend it on treats or stuff we don’t need, often imported and not necessarily good for us. It’s unwise for New Zealand’s recovery to be dependent on retail activity – that’s the model of the rat keeping the treadmill going but getting nowhere.

Extra “stimulus” money (borrowed from overseas) should be spent on things which have long-term benefits for the country. To name a few, I can suggest: power projects (preferably using renewables), communications technology, encouragement for tech-based niche export industries, transport infrastructure, cleaner and better primary produce, ways of making the country more attractive to tourists, better education and health of younger people, and reducing the causes of costly expenditure associated with low socio-economic status.

If we borrowed more money but invested it in some or all of these areas, we would (a) keep the money in an economy that is actually making advances rather than just spinning the wheel, (b) employ people who would then spend it, (c) dampen down feelings of disenchantment or even revolt among ordinary Kiwis.

The curious thing for me is that I don’t seem to be able to muster much feeling about it, one way or the other. Why would that be?

Hopefully it’s not that I’ve passed a certain age when the discomfort of unpopular protesting is unattractive; when the people seen on the TV in their occupation tents look scruffy, insincere or thoughtless; when I think I have better things to do with my limited time. Pity help me if I’m letting that level of superficiality affect my judgment!

My first problem (and that of so many other people who are not up with spontaneous social media networking and the like) is that the target of the Occupy movement – especially in New Zealand – is not clearly defined. On the Vietnam war and the Springbok tour, we all knew precisely what the issue was and what we protesters (and our opposition) wanted. With Occupy, the target appears to be the ultra-rich 1% of the capitalist world. Or is it the capitalist system as a whole? Or is it the establishment? I guess the ambiguity reflects the difference between a “campaign” and a “movement”.

And if the target of the occupiers is one or all of these, exactly what is it that they would rather do and how would they start to achieve it. Unlike Vietnam or “the tour”, there is no single action or policy change that will stop excessive greed/wealth/capitalism.

So I find it difficult to rouse a feeling of solidarity with the occupiers as they camp out on public land in Auckland, Wellington and several other centres. Also, compared with the size of the occupying “forces” and the policing responses in America and the UK, the Kiwi groups are pretty ineffectual, apart from causing some short-term damage to grass cover, some health issues and general annoyance to a minority of opponents.

It’s actually a problem for protesters if no-one is inconvenienced or angered by them, so it is to be expected that the occupiers will persist and try new tactics even when many think they’ve had their fair time. But in the end their gains will be small, if any.

On the other side of the coin, the right to protest is in my opinion absolutely vital to any healthy society. Near the top of my list of life’s guiding principles will always be the knowledge that all it takes for a dictatorship to be established is for good people to say and do nothing. To not stand up against bad policies is to pay no respect to the people over the centuries who fought for democracy and individual freedom.

So the occupiers are right to keep before our faces one of the biggest societal problems the world is now facing – the growing gap between the ultra-wealthy 1% and the so-called 99% who must show restraint in their life choices or are simply too poor to have any economic options at all. The issue should be something we are all aware of and prepared to think about.

Is the wealth gap one of our biggest problems? Like an increasing number of commentators in recent months, I believe it is. Particularly the notion that the gap between the top few percent and the rest is actually widening. It’s a huge problem – and a potential time bomb – because the consequences affect every part of every society – even, eventually, the top 1%. But that’s too big an issue for me to tackle in this article, so I’ll give it some further thought in a separate post soon.

For those not familiar with the week-by-week progress (or lack of it) in planning for post-earthquake Christchurch, the list of majorly contentious issues includes unavailability of insurance, access to the partly demolished CBD, saving heritage buildings versus widespread demolition, delays in decisions on land status, payouts for red-zoners, and where displaced families will live.

Now there’s a relatively new one: how will the new CBD look and function, with residents and developers at odds over the draft plan put forward by the city council.

The council plan, developed from thousands of submitted ideas from across the community, sees greener spaces, fewer cars, restrictions on building heights and, over all, a planned and more people-friendly “look and feel”.

Developers say some of the proposed regulations would be too onerous and restrictive on the people who are expected to fund the rebuild – the CBD property owners and investors – and many will take their payout money elsewhere leaving no-one to finance and build what the populace wants.

Letters to the editor show a big divide: those supporting the free market solution of letting investors do what they want, and those who say this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to design a city that suits people.

Sadly, both are talking past each other, and I see few published opinions that seek to balance the two views, so here goes.

I may be wrong, but …. I believe the larger businesses and landowners with the money and the community-minded residents actually need each other.

Residents and town planners who seek to design spaces and facilities that will make for stronger and healthier communities simply do not have the money to do it. Nor do they legally own the land on which their dream will be built. The people who hope to live in the kind of ideal city environment suggested by the draft plan can only do so if they have jobs to pay for it through rates and consumer patronage. And this can happen only if those who have the money to invest in buildings for businesses see a financial return.

Big business must expect certain incentives to stay and get involved. But the people pushing the business side of this dispute do also need to get down off their high horses and realise one key factor – if the CDB that they rebuild is not attractive or friendly to the people of Christchurch, they will be wasting their money anyway.

They need to listen carefully to what ordinary punters are saying, and consider their own involvement in that light. Otherwise current trends of small businesses moving to the suburbs and shoppers buying from suburban malls will simply continue, and the city will remain hollowed out for decades and provide no incentive for investors.

Hopefully the current stand-off between CBD investors and council planners will cool down and each will see the need for the other if the city is to rebuild successfully. The right sort of investors and developers will seriously consult with their potential customers and shape their thinking to develop building solutions that make the city attractive enough to win over the populace. And environmentally minded citizens and planners will work with developers as partners, not adversaries, to show them what will and will not work and why; and be thankful that someone is prepared to put hunks of money back into their beloved city.

It is, in fact, a classic case of market forces at play. Developers must accommodate and plan for their potential clientele, while residents, as consumers and citizens, must rely on funders to give them the choices they want.

While acknowledging that many big ticket items are in short supply here (e.g. only two smallish car yards, one appliance retailer), and that occasionally some ordinary items have been short when I’ve needed them (e.g. no shop stocking white tennis socks on the day I’d run out), generally Motueka offers me an impressively good selection of the basics.

When more is needed, Nelson and Richmond are only a 30-40 minutes drive away and the selection of shops there would satisfy all but the most fastidious of buyers, I imagine. And of course, there’s the giant global shopping mall called the internet.

But I’ve firmed up now on a personal strategic policy of buying locally whenever possible and affordable. And there’s one good reason for this – it’s in my own best interests.

The maxim goes: The more I buy locally, the better those shops do and the more likely they are to still be in business when I need them.

The inverse is an even more convincing argument: Every time I choose to buy in Nelson or on the internet when I could have bought the same or similar in Motueka, I make it harder for a local businesses to survive, so the less likely that business is to be around when I need them.

It is in my interests to support them because I want to be part of a town which houses sustainable businesses that offer me solutions to my basic needs. When they thrive, my life gets better – they offer me more choices and better quality products and services so I don’t have the hassle of driving out of town to get them.

Every time I choose to top up my petrol tank in Nelson because the cost per litre may be 3 cents less (the sort of average we’re used to), I lessen fractionally the viability of our two High Street gas stations here. If, then, one went under it would be me that suffered as much as their owners because I will have lost an option into the longer-term future.

When I buy a book over the internet to save a few dollars and get it more quickly than it can be ordered in, I make it fractionally harder for my nearby stationer to survive; and if he went then so would so many other products he so usefully makes available to me at strolling distance.

I’m not going to name and single out any particular local businesses that I want to survive for my personal future benefit, and therefore will patronise whenever possible, but locals here will know and understand these examples.

If I need a new computer modem (as I did recently), I’d rather buy from the one local computer shop than save $15 getting one on the internet or spending that $15 on petrol to travel to Nelson to buy one for $10 less at Harvey Norman. The local computer shop now has a tiny extra chance of surviving and becoming even better – plus I got the local tech guy to help install it properly.

If I need new jeans or a sweatshirt, I’ll make sure that at least I try the local menswear retailer first and only consider a trip to the city if he has nothing at all suitable – which is in fact a rare situation. Likewise shoes – the choice available locally is surprisingly good and buying there helps that situation to continue (rather than forcing the retailer to cut down on his range if sales aren’t sufficient to sustain his offering)

I could go on; I trust you’ve well and truly got the picture by now. Even if I have to pay a little more on some purchases (and this isn’t all that often the case anyway), I would rather do that and help make the commercial activity of the community stronger, because in the long run it will make Motueka a better place for me to live, and certainly make me less reliant on driving to the city to buy what I need.

That’s what I call real commercial sustainability.

I’ve never met Roger, but I had already formed the seed of an opinion of the man from several things I’d read about him in recent  years and what I’d seen of him on the telly since the February earthquake.

From media reports, it’s clear that his new fan club includes a very broad cross-section of Christchurch and politicians country-wide. And the reason is clear – so clear that I hope it serves a huge, unequivocal message to other current and wannabe public sector leaders.

Roger’s appointment is a victory for engineering substance over bureaucratic fiddling, for direct communication over risk-averse media management.

I wrote a couple of months ago about my fears that the do-as-I-say approach to Christchurch people by military-trained Civil Defence leaders would do more harm than good after the initial crisis had passed. Until recently, when they began to realise that there’s no harm in listening, their view was based on the fundamental, unquestionable rule that “safety is paramount”. But rebuilding a city and a community must be about much more than just safety.

Now my fears have lessened considerably. If anyone can do the job it will be someone who commands far more respect than minister Gerry Brownlee, and that someone is Roger Sutton.

And this reinforces something we all know intuitively but often don’t appreciate directly – the value of plain speaking when we’re faced with a real challenge.

We saw it in the first weeks after the Pike River coalmine disaster: while the chief executive Peter Whittall was being admired and thanked for giving straight answers and treating us as grown ups, the police officer in charge Gary Knowles (who may be the finest fellow around for all I know) drew suspicion every time he spoke that he was hiding things and using “official speak” to avoid risking someone getting upset. “Trust me, safety is paramount, you don’t need to know any more.”

Gary’s performance felt to me like a doctor who is scared to tell a patient that they have a bad disease for fear of them not coping. Instead they resort to using unfamiliar words and leaving out bits thought to be dangerous if not managed by knowledgeable officials.

Back to Roger Sutton’s appointment. He has shown already that he is capable of talking directly about the good and bad bits without frightening the horses. And he appears to have a track record of facing technical and organisational challenges, applying a good mixture of common sense and engineering practice (which he knows is never a 100% art), and getting on with the job. And if decisions cannot be made just yet, he can explain to ordinary people why not.

Most people appreciate empathetic, honest communication far more than being nannied to remain safe.

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My apologies to those who would like to add genuine comments to my blog articles, but I have had to disable comments because I was being flooded with spam messages from people posting non-specific, automated comments aiming to get links to their dodgy sites included in commentary (doubtless to boost their Google ranking). If and when it ever stops, I will renew the comments feature.

My wife and I spent last weekend in Christchurch, mainly for a big family celebration but also to see for ourselves, for the first time, some of the damage to the city we lived in for years and to catch up with a few close friends. It was our first trip there since February 22^nd, and yes, we did experience the large aftershock on the Saturday evening.

In (very) brief, we saw how the events of the past seven months have so profoundly shaped the attitudes, thinking and day-to-day lives of our friends. We saw how and why the earthquake events have become the on-going major topic of all conversations. We saw how the people there (the ones we met, anyway) are doing what is almost unthinkable to us who learn about it only through the media – trying to get on with some sort of normal living when the whole atmosphere wrapping around the city is a giant fog of question marks.

I have frequently wondered over the past two months how I would have managed to stay positive had we still been living there. Our old house, as we saw, is still standing strongly – one of what appears to be a minority in the neighbourhood – but the surrounding suburban area is messy and only partially operating in the way we remember. And our weekend conversations were filled with stories about people who knew people whose lives have been turned on their heads, and are now trapped in a series of circumstances – disruptions to house, work, business, finances, toileting habits, families – which no longer resemble what they had in mind this time last year. I simply don’t know how I would be coping if it were me there.

These people have guts and patience, that’s for sure, and somehow they’re going to have to rely on those qualities to see them through at least one cold winter and hot summer ahead, and maybe a few more. What else can they do? Those with property commitments that cannot be cashed up simply have no alternative.

But back to my commentary on the future there, and the part that will be played by the new government-run authority, Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera). It’s to be run by a politician whom I (along with most everyone I’ve talked with recently) have never respected, Gerry Brownlee. The government’s main “do as I say, I won’t tolerate any backchat” man.

Brownlee aside (for my concern would be much the same even if the politician in charge were someone I admired), I’m one of many who fear that the whole top-down, prescriptive approach to the decision making and planning that Cera is tasked by the new law to do will fail.

Physically, the city can be reconstructed in time – no doubt about it. To do that you do need a “tsar” (as the media is calling Brownlee’s role) who can decide everything and simply say what will be built where and when. Returning unviable suburban areas to nature, remaking sewers and water lines, building roads, houses and places of business. With the money and the workers, that’s no big deal for any first-world country.

But if you don’t take the people with you, if you don’t involve them in the decision making, it will almost certainly fail. Why? Because the city is the physical structures and the people.

As I talked with Christchurch people last weekend – most of them born and bred there – it became apparent that if they are not involved in the new development work, if they are expected to sit and make do for five years while the new city is designed and built, they will lose heart, interest, contacts, and the will to do their bit.

With the bulk of the population sitting on the sidelines, not taking any official part in the planning (except through the 20-person community feedback group, all appointed by Brownlee), businesses will decline in number and importance, people will leave, schools will shrink, fewer teachers, fewer pupils and parents, fewer jobs ….. It becomes a negative spiral. In five years time Christchurch could be comprised of a hard core of those who somehow managed to live well despite the events plus a few thousand tradespeople no longer needed after major rebuilding is over.

Five years down the track, all the physical structures will be there but not the people, and not the attitude of ownership that a great city requires of its inhabitants.

I really hope the Cera process somehow works, but as time stretches out before us and the wider picture is becoming less foggy, and particularly as the authorities make it clear that they won’t be wasting time talking with the communities that make the city, I’m increasingly, sadly, pessimistic of the outcome. Christchurch may never again be the glorious little city it once was.

While doing the usual contemplation of a year past and a new one beginning (part of which was wondering to myself whether or not I should keep this blog going), something prompted me to consider the type of person I’m becoming as I explore my “mature years”. This was also prompted by a couple of newspaper articles I read about ageing gracefully (or otherwise) and considering the conventional benefits of being older.

They all seem to make sense. Yes, the body becomes frail and badly shaped. Aches and pains at some level and in various places are a constant companion that you have to get used to. You feel you have wisdom to offer, but it’s hard to find anyone younger who’s interested in asking you for it. You have more time to pursue your own interests rather than having to work for others. You worry less every year about what others think of you and whether or not you can “keep up”. And the happier ones amongst us learn to be thankful for the good things that have happened to us over the years, and often still are.

Anyhow, amid that navel gazing I came to one conclusion: that as I get older I’m getting more grumpy in some ways and at the same time kinder in others. Let me explain.

Grumpier:

Such is my nature and upbringing that I try to avoid arguments. Until recently that has meant that I’ve tended to tolerate and pass over, usually without comment, most statements made to me in convivial conversations that I very much disagree with, particularly if they’re put forward in a black-and-white or generalised style (such as “I find Australians lazy, don’t you think?”). Usually I just “Uh huh, you think so? That’s interesting”, or I try to change the topic. It’s easier and less stressful than getting into an argument or debate, especially if shades of grey are involved and my life doesn’t depend on it.

Increasingly, as I allow myself to care less about what people think of me, I’m finding myself less tolerant of statements or arguments I think are just over-simplistic, mean-spirited, racist, hypocritical or self-serving. And I’m tending to make counterstatements that make me appear grumpy. Take this blog, for instance. I couldn’t easily have written these opinion pieces a few years ago, but now I feel it’s okay to be grumpy about people with attitudes I simply think drag society down rather than enlighten it.

Kinder:

Throughout my life I’ve experienced the same sort of mixture of good things and bad things that people have done to me or to others around me. You cannot help but realise that there will always be people who know that it is personally satisfying to be positive, accepting of others’ strengths and faults, and supportive of the good in others. And there are also always people whose lives are dragged down by forever moaning without taking action, criticising others, and highlighting the bad things that happen.

So I’ve found myself choosing to look for the positives and encouraging people who are trying to contribute (even if sometimes they don’t realise that they are). This is especially so for our young folk; it’s easy to criticise them, easy to decry their attitudes, easy to say society is done for if this is the next generation. But when you choose to encourage the things they do that are inventive, aspirational, artistic (by their standards, not ours), and considerate, when you look for the good things they do and don’t get hung up on their silly mistakes [and especially when you remember what you were like at that age], suddenly you feel confident that society is not done for yet.

The same for adults. For the parents who spend time helping out at their kids’ school or sports club; for the middle-agers who look after folk at the aged care centre. When I view life in this kinder way, I feel more at ease in my world.

So what’ll I be today – Mr Grumpy or Mr Kindly? Both!

The way I view it, people are either grateful for what they have or are, or they’re never happy. You see it in people who appreciate the contributions and the good in others, who have a positive disposition, against those who must always see the worst in things or other people. You see it in those who usually try to praise versus those who usually look for imperfections and complain.

Recently an old friend said something which cast this distinction in a slightly different way, making it a little easier for me to express what I mean. We hadn’t seen each other for over a year and he was telling me of the joys and challenges of his present work as a manager of a small group of staff working in a “caring” profession (ie, social work).

He commented that half of his staff thought the world owed them a living while the other half felt they owed the world a living. These two attitudes provided the challenges and the joys he was talking about.

I thought this was a great way of viewing people’s attitudes in general. People who I see as showing predominantly negative and mean-spirited attitudes usually seem to think that they are owed a living. They’re sure there’s something better around the corner, if only all these other annoying and demanding things would stop happening to them. They are infected with the modern bug of “entitlement” and inalienable rights. Me first.

The others, the generous-minded souls, are mainly grateful of the good things that have happened to them – their luck in being born into good circumstances; the things that others have done for them over the years; the little delights that make each day worth living.

Although they don’t actually owe the world a living, these people acknowledge and appreciate the good things that have happened to them over the years and are happy to keep the circle going by paying back to their families, friends and communities.

Also we’ve recently enjoyed a great community festival, the Motueka Festival of Lights, celebrating mid-winter and lifting the spirits of the locals. For those not familiar with this event, have a look here for reports and photos.

If my blog is new to you, you may also want to have a look at earlier articles (for example, this one) about what a community like Motueka means to me philosophically.

My experience here (matched pretty much by that of my wife) shows that most of my expectations have been met and opinions confirmed, but some new things have been learnt – mainly about the strengths and limitations of living in a community the size of Motueka (population 7,500 to 14,000, depending on where you draw the line around it) and a city the size of Christchurch (pop. 400,000 and growing fast).

Other lessons learnt (and still being learnt) are about what it can be like to live in a “sustainable” and “resilient” community that may well be able to withstand the 21^st century onslaught of global financial instability, peak oil and climate change.

For a start, I’ve learnt that having fewer choices makes it easier to actually do things. In Christchurch on any day there is a choice of entertainment experiences, so much so that, given almost all involved getting in the car and looking for car parks, we rarely went to any of them. (Especially on the cold winter nights in those parts.) In Motueka good concerts and other entertainments are held quite often, sometimes involving visiting performers but more often using home-grown talent, mostly of excellent quality. And guess what – we actually go to see most of them, mostly within walking distance.

We reside only 5 walking minutes from the main shopping precinct so we use the car far less often than we used to in suburban Christchurch. In winter we drive sometimes when in summer we would have walked or cycled, and we go to Nelson for family and occasional extra shopping or medical excursions, but we realise that if petrol supplies dried up for a month or three our lives would not be disrupted too much.

When we chose Motueka to live, part of the reason was that we didn’t want to be in a smaller village community where everyone knew each other and their activities. Going to that from a city would have been one leap too far. But as hoped, we’ve found the size of Motueka is just right. Almost all the things important for a busy and happy life are located within walking distance, covering a broad range of needs. But it’s big enough for us to know that we will still be meeting new people for many years to come.

We have found that for some locals, even Motueka is too large, and they seem stuck in their own little sub-communities or clubs with little interest in wider community events or activities. Many of the older ones told us that, despite plenty of publicity, they weren’t really aware the Festival of Lights was coming and didn’t really care anyway – they were more interested in their next club meeting and trip away. I guess that happens in communities of all sizes, especially among the well entrenched.

While here I’ve become aware of the Transition Towns (TT) concept. Motueka has a TT group of its own, which is purposeful and active but struggles for traction. I’m quite convinced that the TT concept – basically a green, low-energy, localised economy – is the best for the future, but it’s so hard to go “cold turkey” and switch from a consumption and growth-driven society en masse. I’m confident, however, that Motueka is better placed than many NZ towns to work toward that goal over the coming decade or two, and to weather crises that will devastate larger cities.

I do recognise that the depth and breadth of one’s involvement in a community depends largely on how much time you have, and therefore on your age and family or business responsibilities. I am now edging into the ‘oldies’ category and do have more time on my hands to ponder concepts like ‘community’. It’s easy for parents of young families to become totally occupied in just parenting and have little time to think about wider community issues. But in the parenting process they are also making a big, long-term contribution to the community by raising and teaching the next generation to appreciate their place in it.

And they do. I’ve talked with a few of our teenaged residents who are aware of the positives of the Motueka community and who appreciate what it offers. They commonly talk of leaving to look for the more varied and exciting opportunities in the cities or overseas, but they also say that they can easily see themselves returning to raise families here. We should welcome their adventurous nature because many of them return with vigour and ideas that benefit us all in the long run. And the more welcoming and engaging we make our community to them now, the more likely they are to return.

Even if most teenagers and young parents don’t get involved in wider community projects, most parents nevertheless play a role and make their contribution by helping out at preschool groups, school activities, and sports and other clubs that their kids join. Since arriving here, I’ve been impressed by the sheer number of community groups offering services, support and companionship to people of all demographics.

And finally, the clearest difference I see between community living in a small/medium town and a city. In a community like Motueka, if something needs doing you talk with others like yourself and, if there’s a way, organise amongst yourselves to get it done – yourselves. Whereas in a city your first thought is to find out whose job it is to do that thing – who’s paid to do it – and agitate to get them to do it.

I don’t like being told “I told you so” by anyone else, so I prefer not to say it to others when what is obvious to me, but is negative lefty thinking to others, turns out to actually happen. And generally you can hardly be pleased to be right, because what you’re right about too often results in a mess that you really, really don’t want.

But every now and then things happen that cause you to sit up, put two and two together and say: We are going in the wrong direction! It’s obvious. Why could you not see that this was going to be the result? I did tell you so.

Two recent events have made it abundantly clear that unsustainable activities eventually have downstream costs which even the cheerleaders of relentless economic growth acknowledge are horrendous.

Now I didn’t predict the eruption of that volcano in Iceland, and the ensuing disruption to air traffic. And I didn’t predict the accident at the oil rig off the US coast. So I won’t say ‘I told you so’ about these specific events (though some people actually could).

But what I have thought, spoken and written about for many years, and am being proven correct often enough, has been that the more we allow ourselves as residents of this planet to become dependent upon economic growth and the unsustainable tools of growth, the more likely a disaster results when mother nature or human error throws us a curve ball and these tools let us down.

The volcano event has shown how dependent most of us are, mainly indirectly, on scheduled air services. When they’re interrupted for days or weeks, products cannot get to market, people get stranded, people run out of funds to live, business contracts are threatened or breached. And the thing is …. we can’t do anything about it. Good old Mother Nature reminds us that she’s in charge. No amount of management skill, market-driven competition, economic growth or new technology has any real effect.

I’m not saying that good public management skills, sound trading markets or new technologies are poor goals. I’m just saying that we all need a level of self-sufficiency in our places of living, our communities, and our lives such that our existence is not threatened by distant acts of nature. Disrupted, maybe; but not seriously threatened. Making us ever more dependent on remote technologies and activities is just not the way to go.

(I wrote about this in this article on the Haiti earthquake.)

And then we come to the oil rig situation – an even more salutary event with far longer-term implications and an even more obvious lesson for us. Here I’m going to borrow ideas and a few sentences from an opinion article I read in the Christchurch Press (May 3), written by The Times’s Simon Barnes. It was his piece that prompted me to think: I should be writing in the same vein, because I sure think the same.

As we watch on TV the desperation of the Americans who live and earn their livelihood by the coastline that will now inevitably be ruined for decades by the incoming oil slick, it is impossible to see any good side to this. There is no grey area, no “Yes, but ….”, and certainly no bright side. We’ve got it wrong, and we’re going to pay for it.

Those Americans whose jobs will be ruined by the destruction of the seafood stocks will be directly affected. The rest of us will be affected by the resulting costs and how they ripple through our economies.

And although the operator/owner of the exploded oil rig, BP, and its technology suppliers are directly to blame, we’re all indirectly responsible. Everyone who whinges every time the price of petrol goes up, and who demands the right to use a petrol-powered vehicle to go wherever they please, has played a part in this and every costly mistake made within the petroleum industry (including the tanker whose short-cut caused damage to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef last month). The oil suppliers are merely responding to demands from addicted consumers for petrol at the cheapest possible cost – which inevitably means ‘cut corners if you have to, I want my petrol now!’

As Simon Barnes put it: “These spills concentrate the mind, at least for a while. They tell us that our addiction for oil is madness, that our short-term thinking is madness, that our reckless approach to containment – oil at any price – is madness. Treasure this spill; it is a rare occasion on which we can see this essential truth of the way we run our lives with absolute clarity.

“We crave oil like a junkie craves his fix, and like the junkie, we will put up with anything to get it. But even for an addict, there come moments of searing clarity. A sudden revelation that this is actually a stupid way to live life. Well, the spill tells us that this is a stupid way to run our planet.”

Sorry for copying that bit, Simon. But it’s exactly what I’ve thought about the attitude of too many people who lack any longer-term respect for our environment, and he’s said it in far better words than I could have used.

And so I say, with feeling, “I also told you so!”