Here We Go Again.

A Heavy Burden: At times such as these, our prime minister could be forgiven for wondering whether some malign political spirit has laid a curse upon her. As if everything that she is, and everything of which she is capable, can only ever be revealed fully at moments of harm and horror and national crisis. As if, on some divinely wayward whim, this daughter of the House of Sunshine has been sent to rule the Land of Storms.

 Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

 William Shakespeare – Henry V

 

 THERE I WAS, halfway through an episode of Vera, when my wife bursts into the sitting room, cellphone in hand. Jacinda and Ashley have called a special media conference for 9:15pm. It could only mean one thing. Community transmission of the Covid-19 virus had resumed. Our 102-day run of luck had run out.

 Jacinda Ardern is much younger than the British actor, Brenda Blethyn, who plays Vera Stanhope, the shrewd and indomitable Geordie police detective, but both women possess the special quality which allows them to demonstrate leadership and compassion simultaneously. Jacinda’s performance on Tuesday evening was distinguished by something else, however: sadness.

 She must have known, from the moment she received the “sit-rep” from the Director-General of Health, that her country and its people would be required to draw upon what scant reserves of courage and tolerance remained to them after their first encounter with Covid-19, to do battle with the monster a second time. She must have known, also, that she had no choice but to ask them, as Shakespeare’s King Henry V asks his exhausted troops, to make one more heroic effort against the foe.

 So, as always, there was clarity and forthrightness from New Zealand’s prime communicator, but there was sadness, too – and just a hint of weariness. As if the burden of leadership which she has carried so steadfastly since 2017 has suddenly become a lot heavier.

 At times such as these, our prime minister could be forgiven for wondering whether some malign political spirit has laid a curse upon her. As if everything that she is, and everything of which she is capable, can only ever be revealed fully at moments of harm and horror and national crisis. As if, on some divinely wayward whim, this daughter of the House of Sunshine has been sent to rule the Land of Storms.

 Then again, the acceptance of one’s fate: the understanding that Fortuna’s judgements can neither be appealed, nor deflected, but only borne with such stoicism and grace as one can muster, has always defined the classic hero.

 Perhaps that’s why so many New Zealanders hold their prime minister in such high regard. Because whether it be the Christchurch Mosque Shootings; the White Island Tragedy; or the Covid-19 Pandemic: Jacinda Ardern has consistently raised her shield against the slings and arrows of her outrageous political fortune, drawn her sword, and marched forward unflinchingly. Perhaps it also explains why so many New Zealanders have been willing to follow her.

 Many, but not all.

 It is the dirtiest of Humanity’s multitude of dirty secrets: that any display of genuine and unselfconscious excellence is bound to inspire the envy of those who, deep in their hearts, know they cannot – and will never – match it. This envious response to demonstrable talent is so deeply ingrained in a certain type of New Zealander that our culture has given it a name: “The Tall Poppy Syndrome”. It is our country’s curse: so few lofty flowers; so many secateurs.

 How much better off we would be as a country if in this – as in so many other matters – we allowed ourselves to be guided by the wisdom of the Maori. Though by no means immune to the injuries inflicted by envy and jealousy, Maori culture recognised that there are some values that  should never be sacrificed; some aspirations – and individuals – too important to abandon:

 Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei.

 Seek the treasure you value most dearly: if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.

 The resurgence of Covid-19 in the New Zealand community is a grave threat, not only to the lives of the elderly and vulnerable, but also to the businesses and livelihoods of millions of New Zealanders. Short of war, it is difficult to imagine a more profound challenge to the resilience of our state, its institutions and citizens.

 That challenge can be met in two ways: as a united people, determined to do all within its power to once again stamp out the virus; or as a disunited rabble, riven by envy, jealousy and malice.

 Once more, Jacinda Ardern is asking New Zealanders to wage war upon the Covid-19 enemy.

 Let’s knock the bastard off.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 14 August 2020.

The IPCC Report: All Of A Sudden - Nothing Happened.

Limited Vision: As a species, human-beings are superb at dealing with immediate dangers and short-to-medium term problems. Storing up food for the coming winter, setting aside enough grain for next year’s crops: thinking this way produced extraordinary human advancements. So many that, as a species, we never really saw the need, or acquired the knack, of thinking ten, twenty, a hundred years ahead.

ON TUESDAY MORNING the world should have awoken to financial chaos.* Stockmarkets around the planet should have been plummeting to levels not seen for a decade – or more.

For the markets to be in freefall, however, something truly shocking must have happened. Had the Saudi monarchy been overthrown? Had the President of the United States been assassinated?

The answer, of course, is: “No.” and “No.”

What had happened was that, on Monday afternoon, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had released its latest emissions report.

This sombre document speaks bluntly about the huge response required from the whole of humanity if the emissions targets set at Paris in 2015 are to be met. Massive and disruptive economic and social challenges loom ahead for the global community. The future of the human species (not to mention the survival of the millions of other species with which humanity shares the earth) now depends on those challenges being confronted and met.

But, as everyone reading this knows perfectly well, the world’s stockmarkets did not go into freefall on Tuesday. There were some jitters over the deepening rift between the United States and China – but these weren’t serious. Certainly, nothing approaching the financial Gotterdammerung of 2008-09 had unfolded – anywhere.

And that should tell us something about the problem of Climate Change.

Clearly, the “Masters of the Universe” – those expert buyers and sellers of financial derivatives, pork-belly futures and Apple shares – weren’t worried. The men (and they mostly are men) who drive the world’s markets up and down – had placed not the slightest weight on the IPCC’s pronouncements. They weren’t in the least bit bothered that the world’s leading climate scientists were telling them that by the 2050s (and maybe sooner) capitalism, as they understood it, would cease to be a viable system.

It’s not as if these economic movers and shakers are all Climate Change Denialists (although some of them undoubtedly are) or that they don’t believe in science. They do. In fact, market traders have a great deal in common with the climate scientists. Both groups spend their time developing models about the way the world works, and then using them to anticipate and shape future events. The big difference between the two, however, is that market traders base their predictions on the behaviour of human-beings, and climate scientists on the behaviour of the earth’s atmosphere.

The market traders know to a near certainty that nobody – or at least nobody that matters – is going to do a damn thing about the IPCC report. World leaders certainly aren’t about to hurl their respective peoples into a maelstrom of economic and social pain. The producers of coal, oil and natural gas are not going to stop sending their product to market – not while upwards of 90 percent of the world economy still runs on it. Those with money and status will continue to fly around the world to admire the scenery and soak up the cultures of faraway lands – regardless of the damage inflicted by their enormous carbon footprints.

“The American way of life is non-negotiable”, warned the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, in 2001. Seventeen years later, the rest of the world’s newly enriched citizens feel exactly the same way about the rising living standards to which they are rapidly becoming accustomed.

“But what about the rising seas!”, laments Greenpeace. “What about the extreme weather events? The floods? The forest fires? The hurricanes?”

To the world’s environmentalists, their fellow human-beings’ blank indifference to the looming catastrophe is both baffling and infuriating. As good ecologists, however, they should not be surprised.

As a species, human-beings are superb at dealing with immediate dangers and short-to-medium term problems. Storing up food for the coming winter, setting aside enough grain for next year’s crops: thinking this way produced extraordinary human advancements. So many that, as a species, we never really saw the need, or acquired the knack, of thinking ten, twenty, a hundred years ahead.

For the past ten-thousand years, humanity’s ability to master the planet’s creatures and plunder her natural resources has brought nothing but a longer and more bounteous life. In the desiccated remnants of that legacy, future generations will curse us for taking so long to identify our species’ suicidal trajectory, and wonder why we refused to get off it – until it was too late.

* In a wonderful example of Murphy's Law, two days after I filed this column the world's markets were in turmoil. Not, I hasten to add, in response to the IPCC's report, but still. - C.T.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 12 October 2018.