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NZ $8.50 Dec. 2006 - Jan. 2007 Labour seems to have concluded that political speech is so important that no one else should be allowed to have any… The Clark government is not nibbling at the r edges of free speech, they are engaged in both direct frontal assault and deliberate fl anking attacks on free speech.

…Political speech must be especially protected because it is in the r political arena that all other freedoms must be protected. The Clark Government’s assaults on free political expression must be resisted because if we fail to withstand this latest round of assaults, it may be illegal to resist the next. r - Bernard Darnton, p.12

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The Soviet Union might be long gone, but 3 Around the Barricades… 37 George Reisman the desire to clamp down on those who Britain’s Stern Review on Global Warming: don’t obligingly echo the party line is alive 8 INTERVIEW – Johan Norberg It Could Be Environmentalism’s and well in Wellington. “The problem is too little globalisation, and too Swan Song - Bernard Darnton, p. 12 little capitalism…” A rational review of the fanfare and How globalisation brings rewards for hoopla over the Blair Government’s I’ve concluded that genius is as common as everyone, both rich and poor. ‘Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.’ dirt. We suppress our geniuses only because we haven’t yet fi gured out how to manage 11 Paul Charman 40 Daniel Silva Turning Illiteracy Around a population of educated men and women. Not Fit for Offi ce How ‘reading warrior’ Graham Crawshaw The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Planet-saviour zealots are modern-day turns troublesome non-readers into eager Let them manage themselves. village idiots – and we’re electing them readers. - John Taylor Gatto to high offi ce!

COVER STORY The aim of both ‘Third Way’ and ‘Neocon’ 41 Bob Carter 12 Bernard Darnton politics is clear enough: it is power. Power The Stern Climate Review - Goskomizdat Comes to Helengrad for power’s sake -- and all policy is geared to Last Hurrah Of The Warmaholics How the exposure of the stolen election has that aim: policy as the handmaiden of power The Stern warning could join ‘The brought the Clark Government’s totalitarian lust. Population Bomb’ and the Club - Peter Cresswell, p. 20 instincts into the foreground. of Rome’s ‘Limits to Growth in the pantheon of big banana scares that 15 Professor Jim Evans proved to be unfounded. The building codes of the democracies In Praise of the Auditor General embody, of course, only what the previous How the Auditor General got it right in 42 Peter Cresswell generation knew or thought about building... fi nding the Clark Government acted illegally. The Buzzword For The Next - Frank Lloyd Wright Political Year Is ‘Sustainability’ 18 Bernard Darnton Both National and the Clark Nearly every signifi cant statement that One Pledge Card . . . Slightly Used Government have trumpeted that your former Vice-President Gore makes regarding Selling a Pledge Card, one bidder at a freedom and your future prosperity are climate science and climate policy is either time… to be sacrifi ced on the altar of one sided, misleading, exaggerated, ‘sustainability.’ What’s it all about? speculative, or wrong. In light of these 20 Peter Cresswell numerous distortions, An Inconvenient Truth Third Way Meets Neo-Con in the Authoritarian 44 Scott Wilson is ill-suited to serve as a guide to climate Scoring the Green Party Middle science and climate policy. Greenhouse Policies Bush and Blair – more in common than just - Marlo Lewis, p.29 The ‘six-pack’ of Green proposals to a handshake. help ‘fi x’ global warming are marked When the productive need to ask permission out of ten. 22 Phil Rennie from the unproductive in order to produce, Why Tax Cuts Are Good For Growth then you may know that your culture is 47 BOOK REVIEW Tax is no silver bullet on its own, but Selling disaster: The four horsemen of modern doomed. research shows it can have a signifi cant apocalypse - Ayn Rand positive impact on economic growth. 49 COLUMN – Susan Ryder The Stern review is not about climate FREE RADICAL The Road to Hell change but about economic, technological ENVIRONMENT FEATURE: and trade advantage. Its perpetrators seek 50 BEER – Neil Miller power through climate scaremongering. The Best of Beer in 2006 - Bob Carter, p.41 29 Marlo Lewis A Skeptics’ Guide to An Inconvenient Truth 51 BEER – Kachina Allen The ‘remote possibility’ of the best thing is Al Gore: Misleading, one-sided, Let’s Hear It For Beer! better than a clear certainty of the second speculative, exaggerating, and wrong. best. 52 HUMOUR – Save The Humans - A maxim fondly quoted by author Henry 34 Dr Fred Goldberg Twelve Guidelines for Objectivist Writers James Some Selected Climate Events From Historical Records 53 TEN YEARS AGO… Humans have always been at the TV Guide, April 1, 1996 mercy of rapid climate changes Humour from the much earlier pages of The through its entire existence… Free Radical …

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 1 Contributors A Free Rad Of Two Halves! Peter Cresswell

This Free Radical arrives in your Packed with Cabinet Ministers inbox as you make your plans for who once espoused the value of summer holidays, and it’s packed free speech for themselves, the PETER CRESSWELL JOHAN NORBERG BERNARD DARNTON with good, holiday reading – articles Clark Government now routinely to shock, to enlighten, and to shuts down debate except on their offer ammunition for the inevitable terms. Stealing money to buy an debates of the holiday season. election, changing the law to avoid a law suit, threats to charities and In many ways this issue is “a media who criticise the government magazine of two halves,” each too harshly, proposals for state half highlighting a particular funding for political parties and for PROF.JIM EVANS GEORGE REISMAN SUSAN RYDER contemporary assault on our restricting third-party advertising freedoms. (“speech rationing” as one American constitutionalist calls Al Gore’s fi lm, the Stern Report, it), refusing to answer questions the false claim for “consensus” on in Parliament while at the same climate science and the outrageous time we see fi nes, arrests and jail- equating of “climate denial” with time for sedition, for “contempt Holocaust denial have between of Parliament” and for “bringing them signalled the outright Parliamentarians into [well- GRAHAM CLARK PHIL RENNIE NEIL MILLER politicisation of science, and an deserved] disrepute” … all-out assault on our industrial civilisation. With these threats, proposals and very real fi nes and incarcerations The second half of The Free in the air, there is being created Radical features a defence of the “an atmosphere where criticising values of our industrial civilisation, the government is becoming a debunking of the many myths hazardous.” PROF BOB CARTER MARLO LEWIS DR FRED GOLDBERG of global warming, and a sober look at the history of warming and Enjoy your holiday – but don’t cast of the false predictions by earlier aside the ongoing threats to the scaremongers. Doomsday is enjoyment of your freedom. And not upon us just yet, at least not don’t forget the perfect Christmas unless the whole anti-industrial present for all your thinking friends: ‘Stern Gang’ do manage to shackle a Gift Subscription to The Free industry in pursuit of a chimera. Radical. Details inside the cover.

SCOTT WILSON KACHINA ALLEN DANIEL SILVA Honest debate is something we all Cheers, value – that is, something honest men and women should all value. Free speech is at the heart of western values and is the ultimate bulwark of our liberties – the fi rst half of this issue highlights an uncomfortable realisation of this past year and a dangerous footnote RICHARD MCGRAIL NICK KIM THIS COULD BE YOU! to the Pledge Card revelations: the discovery that those who once valued free speech and open debate are now so terrifi ed of being criticised that they want to stifl e political expression. This is chilling. Peter Cresswell Email the editor at: [email protected]

Editor: Peter Cresswell Articles, Comments and Letters to the Editor, email the Editor at [email protected] Editor at Large: Lindsay Perigo Thanks to the resources, help, advice, encouragement and contributions from around Assistant Editor: Sean Kimpton the blogosphere. Design: Graham Clark (The Tomahawk Kid) Business Administration Manager: Shirley Riddle. The opinions expressed by the writers herein are not necessarily those of the editor, or P.O. Box 96-103. Balmoral, Auckland of each other. Advertising: Contact Shirley Riddle on [email protected] Subscriptions: Visit or email Shirley on [email protected]

2 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz Around The Barricades . . . Dispatches From The Front Line

pertinent questions about the building had exceeded the original that counts; in feudalism, it’s BRASH RESIGNATION Republicans: contract price and profi t was your Count that votes. STOP PRESS 1: • How many departments were 6. A chicken crossing the road: (Lindsay Perigo) Don Brash has lost.... (Source: NZ Herald) resigned as leader of New Zealand’s abolished when Republicans * * * * * poultry in motion. main opposition party, the National controlled the presidency and What ‘Revolution’? 7. If you don’t pay your exorcist Party, in order to save it from the both houses of Congress? REMEMBER HOW NEW you can get repossessed. distraction of defl ecting allegations • How many agencies? ZEALAND was meant to have had 8. With her marriage she got a new about him in a new book by • How many spending bills were a ‘revolution’ during the 80s, where name and a dress. communist “peace activist” and vetoed? we stripped back Government? 9. Show me a piano falling down all-round conspiracy nutter, Nicky • How many pork-barrel projects The facts don’t back it up. Below a mine shaft and I’ll show you Hager. were jettisoned? are intervals of 10 years, next A-fl at miner. • How much was federal spending to which is state spending as a 10. When a clock is hungry it goes I had held high hopes that Brash, reduced? percentage of GDP from a recent back four seconds. a personal friend who spoke at the Cato Institute study: 11. The guy who fell onto an second SOLO conference would The answer to every question upholstery machine was fully lead something of a renaissance is, of course, a big fat zero. No 1960: 27.7 recovered. both for National and the country egregious legislation was repealed, 1970: 34.4 12. A grenade fell onto a kitchen (he almost certainly would have and the welfare/warfare state is 1980: 47.0 fl oor in France, resulting in become Prime Minister in 2008, bigger and more intrusive than 1990: 50.0 Linoleum Blownapart. all things being equal, having very ever. Some revolution. 13. You are stuck with your debt if nearly won in 2005). That may have In the following six years, the you can’t budge it. been naivety on my part, but now Although many Republicans Government managed to reduce 14. Local Area Network in we’ll never know. Hager the Horrible who claim to believe in a limited that by 7.7 percentage points. Australia: The LAN down has been gunning for Brash since government can talk a good Who cares about that, though? under. his Orewa speech on race relations conservatism, especially when it Aren’t they doing good things? 15. He would often have to break in 2003. It’s nauseating that this comes time for an election, one Um, no. into song because he couldn’t little twerp has succeeded where statistic is all it takes to see that The experience of New fi nd the key. Prime Minister Helen Clark failed. there has been no limit to the Zealand is also revealing. 16. A calendar’s days are Don Brash was a rarity in politics, a growth of government under the Between 1974 and 1992, numbered. thoroughly decent and honourable Republican Party. New Zealand’s government 17. A lot of money is tainted: ‘Taint man. • On the eve of the new expenditures as a share of yours, and ‘taint mine. Republican-controlled Congress GDP rose from 34.1 percent 18. A boiled egg is hard to beat. STOP PRESS 2: in 1993, the national debt was to 48.4 percent. Its average 19. He had a photographic (Peter Cresswell) just over $4 trillion. growth rate during this period memory which was never I’m both sad and happy to hear • At the time of Bush’s fi rst was 1.2 percent. Recently developed. this news. Very sad indeed for inauguration in 2001, the New Zealand began moving 20. A plateau is a high form of the country, which now loses the national debt stood at in the opposite direction. The fl attery. chance to have what could have $5,727,776,738,304.64. percentage of GDP devoted to 21. A short fortune-teller who been one of our very best PMs, • At the time of his second government expenditures was escaped from prison: a small but happy for him that he can now inauguration in 2005, the reduced from 48.4 percent in medium at large. get out of the disgusting three-ring national debt stood at 1992 to 42.3 percent in 1996, 22. Those who get too big for their circus that is NZ’s parliamentary $7,613,772,338,689.34. a reduction of 6.1 percentage britches will be exposed in the politics... • On the day of the recent midterm points. Compared to the earlier end. elections, the national debt was period, New Zealand’s real GDP 23. When you’ve seen one The best accolade to give him is up to 8,592,561,542,263.30. growth has increased by more shopping centre you’ve seen that he was never a good politician. [Source: Laurence Vance] than 2 percentage points to 3.9 a mall. Honesty is not valued in a politician; * * * * * percent. 24. If you jump off a Paris bridge, what is wanted in politics in this Builder’s collapse you are in Seine. place a is the ability to lie with a devastates homebuyers I guess it’s true what former TFR 25. When she saw her fi rst strands straight face, to stroke egos, to A COMPANY THAT BUILDS editor Lindsay Perigo once said of gray hair, she thought she’d spin, and to smile as you put the houses from Waiuku to Whangarei about the so-called revolution. dye! knife in. Brash was never a good has gone into liquidation, leaving “If there’s been a revolution in 26. Bakers trade bread recipes on politician. customers wondering whether New Zealand, then it hasn’t been a knead to know basis. National have for a long time now they will get back their deposits of inside people’s heads.” New 27. Santa’s helpers are just wanted “a good politician” for $25,000 to $50,000. Zealanders are just as enamoured subordinate clauses. their leader -- which to his great with Big Nanny Government now 28. Acupuncture: a jab well done. credit Brash could never be -- and Meridian Homes Ltd of Orewa as they have ever been. (Source * * * * * that’s now exactly what they’ll get: had 30 contracts for homes, TeenagePundit.Blogspot.Com) Libertarians are the Whichever of the three front-runners with half under construction, said * * * * * new swing voters… gets the job on Monday, the new joint liquidator Paul Sargison. For Lexophiles (Lovers Of A NEW CATO INSTITUTE report leader will be just another politician. Managing director Dean Hopper Words): Read Carefully says libertarians -- people who blamed the collapse of the six- 1. A bicycle can’t stand alone; it is historically tend to agree with year-old company mainly on two tired. Republicans on fi scal issues Why The Republicans signifi cant delays in getting building 2. A will is a dead giveaway. and Democrats on personal Deserved to Lose consents for homes. 3. Time fl ies like an arrow; fruit fl ies freedom -- are the new swing PRESIDENT OF THE FUTURE OF like a banana. voters. The authors estimate FREEDOM Foundation Jacob By the time the council gave 4. A backward poet writes inverse. approximately 13% of voters fall Hornberger recently asked some consent, he said, the cost of the 5. In a democracy it’s your vote into this category. “For those on

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 3 Around The Barricades . . . Dispatches From The Front Line the trail of the elusive swing voter, disciplines or have actively it may be most notable that the perpetuated and deepened libertarian vote shifted sharply political unity." in 2004. Libertarians preferred • "Social science and humanities George W. Bush over Al Gore faculty are the most liberal and by 72 to 20 percent, but Bush’s Democratic, and least diverse margin dropped in 2004 to 59-38 in their political culture. Fully Black Magic NZL32 over John Kerry. Congressional 54% of the social science and (1995): The yacht Sir Peter Blake and voting showed a similar swing humanities faculty identify as Team New Zealand sailed to from 2002 to 2004. Libertarians Democratic and 60% as liberal, Auckland Harbour Bridge glory in the 1995 America’s Cup apparently became disillusioned and only 11% as Republican (1959): race. Black Magic used cutting with Republican overspending, and 12% as conservative, a New Zealand’s longest bridge edge engineering and design social intolerance, civil liberties 5-to-1 ratio. [Which begs the with the largest span. ‘Clip-on’ technology. infringements, and the fl oundering question of what the remaining extensions, doubling the traffi c war in Iraq. If that trend continues 17-23% see themselves as?] lanes, were added in 1969. to beat out the competition. into 2006 and 2008, Republicans Of social science faculty who will lose elections they would voted in 2004, they were more otherwise win.” (Source than four times as likely to have RebellionCoffee.Com. See what chosen Kerry (81%) over Bush happened on election day 2006 (18%) while humanities faculty at Time-Blog.Com/Real_Clear_ were more than fi ve times as Politics/2006/11/The_Libertarian_ likely (81% for Kerry, 15% for Effect.html) Bush)." • "Business faculty are the most * * * * * The Raurimu Railway Spiral High-voltage DC link between diverse in their political beliefs University faculties not very (1908): the North and South Islands and behaviour. Still, only 30% diverse - survey The famed spiral loop on the (1965): of business faculty de-fi ne HERE’S SOME ‘HIGHLIGHTS’ railway line between Auckland and The under-sea cable in Cook themselves as Republicans and from a fascinating recent survey Wellington overcomes an abrupt Strait was the world’s largest and 35% as conservatives..." of [American] university faculty 132m rise in the topography. longest submarine cable when political beliefs: • "Signifi cant percentages of it was built. The 600MW, 500kV • "Faculty at colleges and faculty acknowledge that not HVDC transmission link integrates universities of all kinds in only students but also other power supply between North and America are overwhelmingly faculty may feel restricted in South Islands. their expression..." (Source liberal in their political ideology, StephenHicks.Org) creating a strong campus * * * * * political culture. Categorized What is New Zealand’s all time according to both self- greatest engineering feat? identifi cation and voting THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING patterns, faculty are heavily Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater at The University of Auckland weighted towards the Left." World (1985): celebrated its centennial year in • "The majority of faculty are Built in disused sewerage holding World’s fi rst base isolated 2006 by running a competition liberal and Democratic, and tanks, the 110m long transparent building (1982): amongst alumni to help identify therefore the full spectrum of acrylic tunnel under Auckland’s The William Clayton Building in New Zealand’s greatest beliefs and political behaviour waterfront was a world fi rst. Wellington was the world’s fi rst engineering feat from one of the of the American public is base isolated building, designed options below. The overall winner underrepresented on campus." to withstand earthquakes using a was the Manapouri Power Station. lead/rubber bearing as an isolator • Faculty hold a certain number of beliefs that are pervasive, but and energy absorber. not monolithic. They include: • Criticism of many American foreign and domestic policies. • Propensity to blame America for world problems. • A tendency to strongly support international institutions such as the United Nations. • Strong opposition to American unilateralism. • Criticism of big business. • Scepticism about capitalism’s Grafton Bridge (1910): ability to help address poverty in When it was built, Grafton Bridge The Skytower (1997): Manapouri Power Station: developing nations. was reputed to be the biggest At 328m it is New Zealand’s tallest The largest hydro power station in • "Recruitment, hiring, and tenure span, reinforced concrete arch structure. A feature of its design New Zealand. The majority of the review processes have either bridge in the world. It was is its ability to safely withstand an station, including the machine hall failed to adequately prevent pioneering in its use of reinforced earthquake, severe wind storms and two 10km tunnels, was built this political imbalance within concrete. or fi re. under a mountain.

4 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz Around The Barricades . . . Dispatches From The Front Line

Group of companies is still on things like wealth, income, the Herald: involved in electric fencing. production, energy, investment, The Government is promising enterprise ... tight controls on its new Pacifi c * * * * * Island seasonal work permit programme...

Immigration Minister David Cunliffe said yesterday that to Wairakei Geothermal Power reduce that risk, the new policy Station (1963): included funding for additional The fi rst in the world to utilise The Modern Jet Boat (1950s): compliance and enforcement super-heated geothermal water as Bill Hamilton developed the offi cers. “If they do not [return a steam source for the turbines, modern jetboat in the 1950s to home], the registered employer and the fi rst to utilise fl ash steam navigate the shallow fast fl owing may be subject to fi nes and from geothermal water as an rivers where he lived. In 1960 may lose their registered energy source. a Hamilton jet boat was the employer status,” Mr Cunliffe fi rst boat to travel up the Grand said. To take part in the Canyon. scheme, employers must fi rst show that they cannot fi nd New Zealand workers to do the seasonal jobs they need done. Jump! You see, even when the Clark McLaren F1 Supercar (1994): BUNGY KING AJ Hackett was Government frees something The McLaren F1 was the fastest back in New Zealand recently and up they’re more intent on new production car ever built (top doing interviews. He talked about barriers than they are on new speed 386.5 km/h). Most of the making his start in business by freedoms. With all the hoops that McLaren designers were New hanging off the bridges of New have to be jumped through to Zealanders and Team McLaren The Taranaki Gate: Zealand: join the programme, you have to was founded by Bruce McLaren, a A ‘Taranaki Gate’ is made from AJ: This was all before the wonder how many employers will legendary New Zealand F1 driver. battens strung together and Resource Management Act of take up the opportunity. connected to a fence by loops course. And here’s another aspect, of wire. The phrase has come to INTERVIEWER: Would you reported by NZPA: “Special mean a practical approach to a get off the ground now? efforts will be made to ensure common problem. AJ: It would be very, unemployed people took up jobs verydiffi cult. ahead of immigrant workers,” said And that’s without even David Benson-Pope. “Ensuring” mentioning what OSH and our people who don’t want to work safety-obsessed ‘cotton-wool take up jobs ahead of those who culture’ would have done to do? Yeah, good luck with that. World’s fi rst fl ying machine the fl edgling business that has * * * * * (1903): since conquered the world. A claim open to interpretation, Richard Pearse fl ew a powered John Britten Motorcycles There has to be a lesson there, heavier-than-air machine on 31 (1990s): doesn’t there? March 1903, some nine months John Britten designed a world- * * * * * before the Wright brothers. record-setting motorcycle that was years ahead of contemporary design. In 1994 it broke four world speed records in its class. * * * * * Slap on a tax, and ... Drinkers fi ngerprinted. GREEN TAXES. CARBON TAXES. Landlords threatened. Pollution taxes. Cigarette taxes. I HESITATE TO post this for fear it Fat taxes. Alcohol taxes. Gambling may give a local bureaucrat ideas. taxes... There’s a widespread From website Metro UK: recognition, indeed there’s an Too many hoops, not too many Drinkers could be asked to enthusiasm for the notion, that overstayers leave their fi ngerprints at the slapping taxes on something THE PROBLEM WITH the scheme bar every time they buy a pint will reduce the extent of that drawn up by David Cunliffe in a pub or club. They may also something -- and from wowsers to allow up to fi ve-thousand need to show a passport or a everywhere there are demands temporary seasonal workers driving licence and their details The electric fence (1936): to have them slapped good and is not the danger of too many will be held on a database In 1936, New Zealand inventor hard on all the many things they overstayers -- and what way is available to police... William “Bill” Gallagher Snr built object to. that to talk about other human Some landlords were reluctant one of the world’s fi rst electric beings simply looking for a better to sign up until they were told fences from a car’s ignition coil So just what do people think life -- the problem is too many they faced having their licences and a Meccano set. The Gallagher happens when tax is slapped hoops to jump through. Reports revoked...

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 5 Around The Barricades . . . Dispatches From The Front Line

Guy Herbert of privacy anyone could imagine. That ‘El Nino’ spike in 1988 aside, funster in a urine-coloured wig; campaign group No2ID said: This is as dangerous as an attack there’s been nothing of note to the male equivalent of a blonde ‘People are having to post bail on free speech gets. Make no deny down here. with big tits; a plummy-voiced in the form of their fi ngerprints mistake; “campaign fi nance nincompoop; the only dumb merely to have a drink.’ reform” is just a euphemism for Global warming? Well, maybe blonde in Westminster village; a Liberty’s Doug Jewell added: speech rationing. It should be northern hemisphere warming. man who has only just learned to ‘The money for these schemes fought by everyone who values “Catastrophic” warming? I think dress himself; and a shrewd and could be better spent on police free speech with everything they not. calculating prick. services.’ can bring to bear against it. * * * * * Meanwhile, Tony Blair insisted * * * * * N. Korea Detonates 40 Having such a man as Shadow there should be ‘no limits’ on Honour? Years Of GDP Minister for Higher Education expansion of a national police COMMENT ON THE CLARK PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA— is clear and present proof that DNA database, saying it was Government’s ‘Get Out of Jail Free A press release issued by the Conservatives do have a sense vital for catching criminals. Act’ on pledge card spending: state-run Korean Central News of humour. And Johnson’s call to Opposition leader Don Brash Agency Monday confi rmed that “give the bomb to Iran” shows Big Brother, bullying and threats to says it means there is “no legal the Oct. 9 underground nuclear once again that the natural state small businessmen. Just another obligation on anybody to pay test in North Korea’s Yanggang of a conservative is on his knees. day in the UK then. back anything.” But Prime province successfully exploded Neville Chamberlain is not dead, * * * * * Minister Helen Clark disagrees: the communist nation’s total gross he’s just wearing a urine-coloured ‘Campaign fi nance reform’ “I don’t believe that’s the domestic product for the past four wig and representing Henley in the = speech rationing intention at all but you have to decades. House of Commons. “CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM” take parties at their word and is being put on the table by a they say they will refund that “This is a grand day for the Shrewd and calculating he may Labour Party that’s so short of becomes a matter of honour.” Democratic Peoples Republic be (let’s give him the benefi t the readies they want to take your Of Korea, whose citizens have of the doubt) but his latest money by force to pay for their Honour? From a politician? The sacrifi ced their wages, their calculated clarion call for crawling next election campaign, while irony really is palpable. Time for food, and their lives so that our appeasement is the dumbest idea stopping you giving your money that old, old joke: great nation could test a nuclear since leaving the US Pacifi c Fleet voluntarily in large amounts to Q: How do you know when a weapon thousands of feet out there at Pearl Harbor with fund campaigns that you might politician’s lying? beneath our own soil,” read an everything but a big ‘Kick Me’ sign wish to. A: Their lips are moving. excerpt from the statement...” pasted to their bows. * * * * * That’s as basically venal as this ...According to the CIA, over 500 “Give Iran the nuclear bomb,” he proposal is. Caught with their tons of compressed purchasing says, and he does quite literally hands in the till, they want to power, the equivalent of 40 years mean “give.” change the law to leave the till of goods and services produced Perhaps the Americans open. Too few people want to by the impoverished country, could actually assist with the support them fi nancially, so they vaporized in 560 billionths of one technology, as they assist the want to force you to pay for their second. The device consumed United Kingdom, in return for election campaigns instead. 15 years of peasant wages’ certain conditions: that the Too many people criticise the worth of uranium, two decades Iranian leadership stops raving Government during the election of agricultural- and fi shery-export about attacking Israel, for campaign, so they want to profi ts’ worth for its above- instance, and that progress is forbid third-party criticisms of ground emplacement tower, made towards democracy and Government during an election No warming thanks, we’re and the lifetime earnings of the so on. The Iranian public might campaign. Southern Men: entire workforce of the Kilchu feel grateful, and engaged, and DESPITE BEING PREDICTED fi sh-canning factory for tungsten/ not demonised. Taken together, these are what for the last eighteen years, carbide-steel bomb casings... If you feel like issuing a tsunami Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist “catastrophic warming” is still not (Source: The Onion) warning now is the time. The tidal and author George H. Will happening anywhere except those * * * * * wave of wetness is all-engulfi ng: describes in the American context computer climate models, and in The tragedy of growing up is as “speech rationing,” of which he fact fi gures for the troposphere that human beings acquire the said recently “there is no greater obtained from the US National means of killing themselves threat to liberty.” Space, Science & Technology and others. The human race It is commonly called Centre and recently recalculated now collectively has that “campaign fi nance reform,” by separating out hemispheres power. The Iranians will join but it’s nothing of the sort. suggest that even the warming in soon enough. It might be It is simply the assertion by that is present is only present in sensible if they did so in an the government of a new, one hemisphere: the north. Here atmosphere of co-operation audacious ‘right’: the right in the south however we’re still and understanding, and not to determine the timing, freezing our tits off. See above. “Give the bomb to Iran” amid intensifying threats and content, and amount of says senior UK Tory hysteria... political advocacy about the That’s the global average for “GIVE THE BOMB to Iran.” Woosh. There it goes. I shall now government. It is the most tropospheric temperatures shown That’s the call of the UK Tory’s leave you some space to ponder astonishing slow-motion at the top, with the northern Shadow Minister for Higher those words of wisdom (but not repeal of the First Amendment hemisphere in the middle, and Education Boris Johnson, who’s perhaps as much space as Iran’s [protecting free speech that] us colder cousins at the bottom. been described as a porky near neighbours might like to

6 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz Around The Barricades . . . Dispatches From The Front Line

leave between them and Tehran’s builders”. Our home builders and that many of the sites he Shakia Dalmia says: missile launch sites). can no longer access long had identifi ed are outside the While it is diffi cult to use term supplies of land. One metropolitan urban limits. property rights to protect So what do you think? Does it surveyor took me to look at the global commons and seem any more sensible after a major development outside As Owen summarises, “This avert climate change, it does some thought? No? Bear in mind, of Wellington and pointed decision acknowledges the not follow that government now that this is not Keith Locke out that “Everyone of those connection between land scarcity, regulations are therefore the or Chris Trotter or Oliver Stone trucks distributed around the infl ated land prices and (by answer. saying this, it’s offered by a senior development is a cottage general inference) the impact of Too true. You can read the British Conservative as a serious builder’s head offi ce.” This the Metropolitan Urban Limit in debate (and join in yourself) at piece of RealPolitik. has a major impact on bulk creating this scarcity.” the main roundtable page [http:// purchasing and management * * * * * www.reason.org/roundtable/ And speaking of Oliver Stone, his of supply, and overall effi ciency. own advice that “we” should just globalwarming.shtml], or at learn to live with terrorism is not Then of course the addiction Ronald Bailey’s summary and just well-skewered by the cartoon to Smart Growth density follow-up here: www.reason.com/ on the right, as a colleague of has led to a wave of leaky hitandrun/2006/10/libertarians_ mine said it is also “proof that buildings which has now de.shtml. common sense is something else generated a new wave of “gold * * * * * you can’t get out of a Stone.” plated” building codes. And Time for some chains. everyone seems to believe we SO IT’S NOW confi rmed that the It’s bloody hard getting it out of a can promote “sustainability” Government did steal the last Tory as well. (whatever that means) by election. But is there any remedy? * * * * * High and higher regulation. adding up front costs with What would a libertarian do Any at all? High and higher house proposals for more insulation, about global warming? solar water heating and double LET’S SAY FOR a moment, and prices. In Thailand in such circumstances glazing and anything else just for the sake of argument, that THINK HOUSE PRICES are high? they tend to look to military action which seems like a good idea human-induced global warming is Owen McShane points out two to punish such corruption. In the at the time. both proven and a clear menace reasons below. Reason One: US there are remedies within the -- in other words that all the land supply is being strangled by Constitution. Not here. The impact of the building alarmists’ claims are correct. What regulation, specifi cally by artifi cial codes hits earlier than you would be the libertarian solution to city boundaries imposed by What’s still to confi rm is whether might think. Real Estate agents such a threat? regional governments such as the in fact there are any constitutional are now of the view that the Auckland Regional Council (ARC). chains on government at all down existing housing stock is That’s the question being Reason Two: a rise in construction here in this banana republic of the undervalued because existing considered in a revealing costs for new houses brought houses cost so much more to roundtable at the Reason South Pacifi c. Darnton V Clark will about by new “gold-plated” replace. Hence even as land Foundation’s website. The three confi rm whether or not the few building regulation is already prices fall the price of the total papers kicking off debate are: that do exist have any teeth, but feeding through to the prices of package may hold up for a you might like to set your mind existing houses. while. • Property Rights to considering whether or not it’s Explains Owen: Approaches to Global time to think about some formal The data [in 1996] showed that This will be described as “a Warming: Scope and constitutional safeguards to put the cost of actually building a strong housing market” rather Limits some real chains on government. house had been falling over the than the last gasp of a dreadful Shikha Dalmia, Editor of previous few years because set of policies which have Reason Roundtable After all, if a government can steal of a deregulated market done, and will continue to do, [Reason.Org/Commentaries/ an election and get away with it, which reduced material and extraordinary damage to the Dalmia_20060907.shtml] what else can they do? It’s time equipment costs. Furthermore economy and those struggling • The Missing Elements in for some chains. the cost of “constructing” to make ends meet. the "Science" of Global * * * * * residential subdivisions had Warming “...the party is dominated by fallen too, in spite of increased And oddly enough, the problem Donald J. Boudreaux, libertarians.” environmental standards. The with strangulation of land supply Chairman of the Department HERE’S SOME GOOD news. has been recognised even by the of Economics at George competitive electricity supply ACT board member Andrew Environment Court. Included in Mason University market [for example] had Fulford has just resigned from the recent decision to allow Living [Reason.Org/Commentaries/ dramatically reduced the price the party because, he says, it is Earth to build a composting plant Boudreaux_20060907.shtml] of supplying cables to sections being “dominated by its libertarian compared to the old monopoly outside the ‘Metropolitan Urban • The Role of Market wing.” “That libertarian faction has days. Limit’ imposed by the ARC was Institutions in Enabling this comment: Adaptation to Climate, become the predominating power However, recent data now In cross-examination, Mr Change in Act,” says a disgusted Fulford. reveals that house building Walker [for the ARC] agreed Julian Morris, Director of prices have been rising for that in the Auckland region International Policy Network My congratulations to that some years mainly because there is a shortage of industrial [Reason.Org/Commentaries/ libertarian wing. Just four more the restraints on land supply land generally available, with Morris_20060907.shtml] parties to dominate and some mean that all our house the effect that prices are substantive policy changes and builders are now “Cottage pushed up because of scarcity, As the convenor of the roundtable, the job is done...

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 7 THE “FREE RAD” INTERVIEW “The problem is too little globalisation, and too little capitalism...” - Johan Norberg, Globalisation Advocate (Part 1 of a 3 part series)

Globalisation continues to be high on the agenda of international and perhaps the fastest economic growth that the world has ever seen. We’ve cut extreme politics in today’s world and proponents and opponents are as poverty in half in twenty years and it has been divided as ever. Many opponents of globalisation argue that led by the places that have globalised. So we need more of that, yes. globalisation based on capitalism leads to inequality and entrenches TDA: So let’s try to talk about some the differences between the haves and have-nots, undermining of the problems that come with this development. In the rich countries, democracy and leading to social unrest. according to new statistics published in the liberal newspaper The Economist, the workers’ share of the profi ts is now However, according to Johan Norberg, answer to these problems would be the smallest it’s been for three decades globalisation brings rewards for everyone, more redistribution of wealth and more and the average real wages are fl at or both rich and poor, and thus classical liberal help from the developed world to the falling, at least in the United States. ideas underlying globalisation, such as free poor. But instead, you argue for more But at the same time, the profi t rate markets, private property rights and limited capitalism and for the benign effects of has risen dramatically and you might government should be encouraged rather globalisation in the world. If you were say that distribution of wealth now than limited. to very shortly summarise the most mimics the way it was in the nineteenth important reasons, what would they be? century, with a very rich elite and a very JN: Well, very shortly I would say it’s correct ‘The Devil’s Advocate,’ a Scandinavian free- big medium. Doesn’t it demonstrate that the wealth of the world is very unevenly market radio show, travelled to Stockholm that globalisation benefi ts multinational distributed. You can see that around the to discuss globalisation with Swedish author corporations and small elites at the world, but we also can see very clearly that and globalisation advocate Johan Norberg, expense of the average worker? the reason why it’s unevenly distributed and began by asking whether this still holds JN: I don’t think so, because fi rst of all you is that we have an uneven distribution of true in the light of evidence that wages are can say that yeah, we begin to resemble the capitalism as well, and of globalisation. falling for workers in the West, and that the situation with a tiny elite that is very wealthy Some places have had capitalism and free Washington Consensus model for capitalism and a large population that is not, but on trade for two hundred years and they have has failed in many developing countries. They completely different levels than they were eradicated hunger, increased life expectancy, also discuss (in part two) the success of the one hundred years ago. Today, people eradicated poverty, and are incredibly Nordic welfare states and how they compare who live a normal working class life have wealthy. The parts that haven’t had freedom, with the U.S., as well as the role of the state wealth, opportunities, technologies, ways of capitalism or free trade for such a long time in the economic development of the Asian communicating and transporting themselves are in those grave circumstances still. Tigers. that the richest people didn’t have one hundred years ago. Finally (in part three), they discuss Johan So I would like to change that whole Norberg’s vision of The Good Society: What perspective on the issue. The question is So it’s not just important to look at the is the proper role for government, and what not “Why is there poverty in the world?” distribution. It’s important to see: what can should be left to markets and individuals? The question is “Why is there wealth in the the money and wages give us? What kind of We will also discuss whether a development world?”, because two hundred years ago we purchasing power do we have? And one of towards a classical liberal democracy, were all incredibly poor. What we have seen the things that has happened when China and based on the rule of law and strictly limited is that some places have been able to do India, for example, begin to sell their goods to government is realistic in an era where something about that and that’s when they’ve us is that yes, we get that competition, we even (we might say especially) right-wing been given those opportunities and freedoms get more workers, perhaps we’ve doubled governments are at ease with the notion of that globalisation brings. the global workforce. Of course that means a big state. that the wages for some time will not increase TDA: So, the answer is really more as rapidly in our countries, but it also means TDA (The Devil’s Advocate): Johan capitalism everywhere? that they give us goods—clothes, furniture, Norberg, thank you very much for JN: The problem in the world today is too computers, TV sets and so on—that only the coming here today. It’s awfully nice to little globalisation, too little capitalism. We wealthiest could afford twenty or thirty years come and talk to you in Stockholm. can see as well that when very poor countries ago, but now people can afford that on a JN (Johan Norberg): Thank you. that twenty years ago we thought were more modest wage. So we have to look at hopeless, where we thought nothing would that bigger perspective. TDA: In today’s world, the wealth is ever happen—for example China, India, very unevenly distributed. Many people Bangladesh, Vietnam and so on—began to TDA: But still, doesn’t this pose a live in poverty or die from hunger liberalise their economies, open their markets political problem? Earlier, we saw and diseases that could be cured and got freedom to sell their goods to our outsourcing of the so-called blue collar with a few dollars. The traditional countries, they also saw rapid development workers, factory production and so on, 8 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz to China. But now it’s also the white Vietnam and China. How do we handle TDA: We’ve talked a bit about the collar jobs that are getting outsourced. this politically? danger of a backlash in the West, the Doesn’t this pose a problem? Doesn’t JN: Well, I think fi rst of all politicians who developed world. Let’s try to talk about it create some kind of turbulence in try to open up these systems for more the experiences, especially in Latin the workforce in the developed world? competition and allow poor countries to America, with what has been called People are losing their jobs and it sell their goods to us should learn some the Washington Consensus, which was appears to be damaging them. basic economics and communication skills, a model for development, a ten point JN: It can pose big problems in the future. I because so far they haven’t at all tried to framework for policymaking in emerging economies, including fi scal discipline, defi nitely agree with that, especially as you argue their case. They’ve just said “Oh, privatisation of government enterprise, say, when white collar jobs are facing the we’re forced to do this because now we free trade, tax reform, security of same competition, because those people belong to the World Trade Organisation and property rights and also investment have more access to the media, generally they say we have to do this. I’m sorry.” In they are more used to be being able to fi ght in education. This policy has been that case, well perhaps people will think that followed by the World Bank, the I.M.F. for their interests. They will perhaps be very “OK, we understand why you have to do sceptical and create some sort of backlash and governments through the nineties. this, but we hate free trade and we hate the against globalisation if we don’t handle this You might say it’s a sort of blueprint for World Trade Organization that forces us to in the right way. I think that therefore two capitalism, but at the same time the do it.” things are important to keep in mind. results have been very mixed in Latin America. Now there are countries going So, they must state their case and one of the in the opposite direction, like Venezuela things that they have to say is that sure, we First of all, I think that what we see right and Bolivia. How would the results of can for a while try to have restrictions on the now might be a temporary adjustment to the Washington Consensus lead you to imports of shoes and textiles from Vietnam the biggest change of our productive forces revise your opinions on globalisation? that we’ve seen in one hundred years, with and China to save some jobs, but that will JN: Well it does help me to revise my a doubling of the global workforce, almost always come at the cost not just of more opinions a little bit and I think it’s important one billion more people who produce for the poverty in Vietnam and China—which means for everybody who participated and spoke for global markets. Well, that means in the short it will take longer before they are so rich that [the reforms] to do that in one instance, and run that yes, we have less capital per worker. they buy from us—but also at the cost of less that is to realise that those reforms that they So we will see more competition about the jobs in other sectors of our economy, because spoke about and implemented were really top- capital, not more competition about the if we have the price on shoes and textiles at down, macroeconomic reforms. It was, as workers, because we have a bigger supply of an artifi cially high rate, it means that we have you mentioned, about fi scal discipline, trade them, and then wages will be held back for less purchasing power for other things, for and those very big, large structures. That some time. But it also means that if we have new things, perhaps from the computer was done in most of the countries to some a good business climate, people will see the industry or for the restaurant business. So extent at least. But if you do that, but you opportunities of moving into those sectors, we will only lose more jobs there. We don’t have enormous inequalities as we do in Latin of beginning to produce things, if the profi t benefi t at all. We only have the same amount America, based on the feudal background, if is that big, if the revenue for the owner, for of jobs, but less money and more poverty in most of the people do not have access to, the company is that big. And in that case, the Third World. for example, education, basic property rights, they will begin to bid up the wages again. I an opportunity to start a business without ten to fi fteen different licence requirements and a think that’s one of the things that we see even TDA: That might hold true in general, lot of corruption on the way, well in that case in countries like China and India today, that but still there will be individual losers those openings from the macroeconomic there’s actually a problem of fi nding a well who lose their jobs. What do we do for structure won’t help people on the ground educated workforce now… them? to really begin to use their skills, their talents JN: That will always happen in economic to produce, to sell, to buy and trade with TDA: So wages are rising there as well? development, that’s right. First of all, we others. So what you get in that case is only JN: Wages are rising very, very rapidly. In the have to explain that that is the case, and a globalisation for the elite, for those who latest edition of The Economist, they noticed that’s nothing that we can regulate away. already have the big companies, who already a sign in an Indian little company saying: The other thing that we have to do is to try have international trade or perhaps are friends “Trespassers will be recruited, because we to make sure that our labour markets are with the government and so on. need everybody right now”! so fl exible and our business climate is so open that we create the new opportunities TDA: So how would you avoid going So that’s one of the things. The second thing and jobs. We have to focus on improving down the same road once again? What that is important is that this is nothing new. the human capital. Tony Blair said “three has to be done? We’ve always seen that when we face new priorities for doing what it takes in the JN: I think it’s very, very important to look at competition, wages in the old systems, in the global economy: education, education and the micro level, to look at the microstructures old factories, they will be held back. So the education”, and that’s very true, but at the in those societies. We can see that when it important thing for us is to stop doing some comes to the rule of law, upholding property of the things that we used to do and instead same time, it’s not the case that everybody can and wants to have a Ph.D. or be an rights of small, normal people, of allowing enter the new sectors with better education them to start businesses and so on, Latin electro-engineer or molecular biologist. So and better technology, where we can have America is doing worse than almost all other there must also be a market for others, higher wages. places around the world because of a very those who aren’t as productive as others, elitist structure, the corruption in the system TDA: The economical problem might those who don’t have the same education and so on. So that’s where they have to begin not be so big, but politically it’s a big levels. Today, we just put them into early to build and that’s more diffi cult. It takes more challenge because if this development retirement systems or unemployment and time and there are more rigid structures that happens too rapidly, too many people shut them away. I think that’s devastating to you have to fi ght. It’s more diffi cult than just will be threatened and feel the need to the economy, but also for them. So I think fi xing the budget or something like that, but take political steps like protectionism it’s important for us to open up a new service that is what has to be done. And in some and special benefi ts. We’ve seen this sector for low-paid and low-skilled jobs, places, it has been done to a bigger extent. happen in the E.U. already with the so that everybody can have access to the Let’s not write off Latin America as a complete special regulations on shoes from economy. failure… Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 9 TDA: Can you give examples? TDA: Let’s try to make an abstraction they can confl ict. It might be that the political JN: We have some places that have reformed and look at a more general level, and sphere wants to intervene to a large extent in like El Salvador and Panama, where we’ve say maybe that economic liberalism is capitalism and that has happened again and seen good, healthy economic growth. We’ve a meritocracy that awards people for again in so many places. And then I think that seen a place like Chile, which keeps reforming, their talents and abilities and because the challenge for capitalism is to show that keeps prospering. It has almost abolished abilities are unevenly distributed, this is the way to give more people a stake in extreme poverty entirely… this system will create inequality. the system and make more… But democracy on the other hand is TDA: But even Chile now has a socialist egalitarian. Everybody has the same TDA: So actually, capitalism can appear government, so there’s been some kind vote, no matter what their abilities to be a way to reduce inequality, in a of backlash… are. Doesn’t this create a collision of way? Like you say, in Latin America the JN: It’s a socialist government on paper some sort? Isn’t there a danger that remnants of the feudal system make it in Chile, but it’s one that has actually kept democracy could go in and destroy the an extremely unequal place… reforming the basic economy, giving people products of a liberalist economy? JN: In a way, that’s exactly how capitalism the opportunities to start businesses, to have JN: Well, you can point out that there’s began, as a system. Liberal capitalism and safe property rights, the rule of law and so a difference in attitudes between the two free markets in the nineteenth century [were] on. They’ve actually kept moving up in the different systems. In a way, I would say that a way to reduce and even to abolish the old economic freedom indexes around the world. that’s healthy because they are completely privileges that existed in society, that let the At the same time, they’re trying to make sure different spheres of society. Capitalism, government and the elite decide who is to do that there’s a more social outcome, more the market, that’s a place where we create, what, who is allowed to produce anything, and distribution and so on. But if that does not hurt where deals are made only when two people gave the aristocracy the power. Capitalism the productive forces and the participation in think that they both benefi t from them. It’s abolished that one hundred and fi fty years globalisation, well then it might actually help a way of creating more value, of an invitation ago in western countries, but it’s still fi ghting that country. In some parts of Latin America, to people: do you want to participate and with those rigid structures in poor countries, they now talk of Chile as “migrating out of perhaps prosper, or don’t you? That does especially in [places] like Latin America. the region”, because corruption and poverty need the kind of structures that we need in That’s why I think that the micro reforms are are now so low. I think there is so much to the government, because the government is the most important, giving normal people the learn from this, whereas we see the biggest completely different. A government is about property rights and the opportunity to start a problems in the countries that moved in the the kinds of decisions that everybody has to be business and to actually dismantle the entire other direction and never reformed or really subjected to, the kinds of systems that we all elitist system. dealt with those structures. have to abide to, in the end by force if people don’t do it voluntarily. And that has to be kept End of part one. Look out for part two in the TDA: But aren’t you saying in reality in check by, for example, egalitarian structures next issue, including Norberg’s what the Marxists have been saying all like the general franchise, but I will also say answer to the question: “Why do along about communism and the Soviet division of powers, strong constitution, and the Scandinavian welfare states Union? For example: “This wasn’t real things like that. So they are two very different work?” communism. Real communism would systems in that regard and yes, defi nitely be much better than this”. A lot of people, at least in Latin America would say that you’re saying “That wasn’t real capitalism, this is real capitalism. Let’s go this way”. Is that not a danger? JN: It’s a danger and it’s a funny parallel defi nitely, but the difference I would say is that we have the examples. We can see that some countries liberalised and reformed a little bit, some did it to a very large extent and they did much better than the others. If the communists had been able to say “Well, OK, we’ve got some socialist structures in the Soviet Union and Poland and so on, but look to the even more socialist and regulated systems in North Korea and Albania, they are really prospering and cutting poverty”…well in that case they would have a point, but that’s not really the case. They were instead the biggest disasters, the most regulated ones. I say of the partial reforms, they worked. They were also better than nothing. In the 1980s, Latin America was in complete crisis with hyperinfl ation and huge debts that were inherited from the protectionist era. The reforms that were done had to be done, and contributed to stabilising those systems and economies, but to go further, to really make them fl ourish and cut poverty, well for that you need even more. Then you need the micro reforms and we can point to the examples of countries who did that, like Chile, and who are now prospering.

10 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz EDUCATION PAUL CHARMAN Turning Illiteracy Around: Reading Warrior, Graham Crawshaw

The other kids in class get what the teacher is explaining … you don ‘t. and often says he would like to meet prisoners and apologise to them for not being taught to The other kids move on … you stay behind. read. “When anyone is arrested, test their The other kids have prospects … you seem damned. reading as well as taking their fi ngerprints.” He would like to know if the person arrested can write a letter; what is the extent of Failing at literacy affects over one-quarter* of up on the Reading Adventure Camp vision – their vocabulary; can they hold a sensible New Zealanders. It brings that kind of quiet he now looks for those to whom he can pass conversation; and could they read a book like panic, a terror of not knowing what the teacher on the baton. As he swings a hammer and The Power of One? is talking about, a terror many of us have felt wields a skilsaw building new camp facilities, during the low points of our schooling. Crawshaw also spends hours writing out the “If the answer to all these questions is negative, procedures and details needed to keep the immediate steps should be taken to trace But what if that feeling of inferiority is sustained camps accessible and effective, and on a the primary schools attended between ages on a daily basis? Over many years, failing at book to keep his dynamic philosophy out in fi ve to eight — their very critical years when literacy builds up and can turn to dejection, the public domain long after he is personally literacy skills should have been established, self-hatred and possibly an abyss of anti- out of the picture himself. but weren’t.” social behaviours. Crawshaw gets a lot of opposition for his Crawshaw tells of sitting outside a Northland As he moves round the country, literacy views. court on court day and testing reading as campaigner Graham Crawshaw is constantly regaled with reports of young New Zealanders One school principal confronted him, saying: people came and went. A man who stuck whose reading and comprehension is “how dare you confuse children with phonics.” in his mind told him that he could not read, abysmal. He blames this country’s largely “I was sharply dismissed from the man’s and pointed to a nearby primary school from “whole language” system of teaching literacy, offi ce,” recounts Crawshaw, “but all I was where he had “graduated” some years earlier. which has minimal use of phonics (the sounds doing was asking if he would let parents know Just then a prisoner was led up the path in words make) to help children decode words about the Reading Adventure Camps we were handcuffs and the man told Crawshaw that he as they strike them. running during the holidays.” was there to support him, “and he can’t read either.” Crawshaw says the situation is tragic Crawshaw is no wimp. When he mentions However, in reply to a newspaper ad. two boys principals who “graduate” illiterate pupils every from the school came to camp and returned and unnecessary. year, the hands-on Northland farmer derisively home able to read journals for the fi rst time. He intends to concentrate his future energies compares the graduation of so many illiterate They returned to another camp, with two other directly towards parents, to get them teaching pupils to a world where Fisher and Paykel boys from their school, whose word decoding their children to be fully literate. “I believe could get away with delivering one-in-fi ve of skills also received a boost. Crawshaw heard learning to read is the single most important their washing machines without any electric later that all four boys were moved to a school skill anyone acquires. But everyone learns to motor inside. which taught phonics properly. speak their own language without a But the next minute Crawshaw is asking “Now I say ‘how dare you’ to any primary school in sight, just from their most how your kids are doing at school and school principal over the last half-century who important teachers, their parents.” recommending his upcoming book, which will allowed just one pupil to leave Standard 4 concentrate on how parents can best teach (Year 6) illiterate.” Paul Charman is an Auckland journalist literacy directly to their children. and a colleague of literacy campaigner Yet Crawshaw says his real quarrel is not with Graham Crawshaw. He will be writing Aged 73, he is widely read, a winner of the principals and teachers, who for the most part regularly for The Free Radical on Graham QSM, a strategic political lobbyist with a twinkle have not been taught adequately how to teach Crawshaw’s ongoing work with literacy in his eye and a lifelong passion for education phonic themselves. According to him the rot for young New Zealanders. Send him — especially educating the individuals too began in 1950 when Peter Fraser appointed mail at [email protected]. easily branded as hopeless. as director of education Clarence Beeby, who dismantled the phonics-based education Hundreds of kids have attended Crawshaw’s NB: The 1996 Adult Literacy in New Zealand system New Zealand had up until that point. Arapohue Reading Adventure Camps at survey of adults from 16-65 ranked reading Warkworth, Tauranga, and at his farm at The effects have been as cruel as they have levels from level 1 (very poor) to level 5 (very Arapohue, Dargaville. These boy-friendly been far-reaching, says Crawshaw, who good); level 3 is regarded as being “functionally camps -- with mudslides, bonfi res, bush craft claims it was virtually unknown pre-1950 for literate,” ie., the minimum level required to and all-important literacy sessions -- can a New Zealand child to leave school illiterate. meet the “complex demands of everyday life claim a dramatic turnaround in literacy age (as Recent surveys, however, have put today’s and work.” The survey found that for prose indicated by the Burt reading test) even after a rate of “functional illiteracy”* as high as one- (the “ability to understand and use information few days at camp. third or more of young New Zealanders. from text”) a staggering 66.4 percent of Mäori He himself he says is now getting too old to Crawshaw says that “up to thirty percent” of were below this minimum level and an equally run the camps directly, but has far from given the inmates of New Zealand jails are illiterate, tragic 41.6 percent of non-Mäori.

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 11 BERNARD DARNTON FREE SPEECH Goskomizdat Comes To Helengrad

In the Soviet Union, Goskomizdat – the State Committee for Publishing punished will be strong. Charities that engage primarily in political activism, from across the Houses, Printing Plants and the Book Trade – ensured that all political spectrum, like Sensible Sentencing publications were in accordance with the offi cial ideology and politics of and the Child Poverty Action Group were understandably outraged. the ruling party. The Soviet Union might be long gone but the desire to While attempting to chill dissent by exercising clamp down on those who don’t obligingly echo the party line is alive its power in other domains, Labour is also planning a more direct assault on free speech and well in Wellington. with its plans to further regulate election campaigning. They have proposed a three- fold package to tighten their grip on power. Helen Clark neatly summed up her attitude for their “Departure Gate” advertisements, Under the euphemism of “campaign fi nance to free speech while under sustained attack humorously suggesting that it was time for reform” they plan to introduce state funding of during this year’s pledge card funding row. She Helen Clark to go. The airport refused to put political parties, crack down on anonymous said, “Allegations of corruption are intolerable up the ads, saying they were “too politically donations to political parties, and – worst of in a Western liberal democracy. One blogger sensitive.”3 At the time, Wellington Airport all – forbid third-party campaigning during an brought that comment into perfect clarity was awaiting a government decision on an Air election. when he responded on his website, “No, New Zealand-Qantas codeshare agreement, In characteristic dystopian manner, the Clark Miss Clark. Corruption is intolerable. When which could hit airport profi ts, and it’s part- government has looked to muffl e criticism allegations of corruption are intolerable, it’s no owner, Infratil, is trying to get an agreement longer a Western liberal democracy.”1 of its own corruption by dressing up attacks to run commercial fl ights from Whenuapai air on dissenting opinion as anti-corruption base near Auckland. With this government’s The recent furore over Labour’s theft of measures. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author vindictive history, putting up the opposition public funds to pay for their ‘pledge card’ and columnist George F. Will put it in this election propaganda has brought the Clark party’s advertising is asking for trouble. summer’s Cato’s Letter:5 government’s totalitarian instincts into More of the same is coming. Charities were the foreground. Without even an atom of “There is no greater threat to liberty in [the warned, also in October, that they risked contrition, Labour lashed out viciously at United States] than the fourth kind of politics, anyone who dared suggest they’d done losing their tax-exempt status if they indulge the politics of speech rationing. It is commonly 4 wrong. So intolerant of criticism are they in too much political activity. All charities will called campaign fi nance reform, but it is that they’re now proposing some of the have to be registered from mid-2008 and nothing of the sort. It is simply the assertion most expansive attacks on free speech New then the ministerially-appointed board of the of the government of a new, audacious right: Zealand has ever seen. Charities Commission will decide who gets to the right to determine the timing, content, keep their status. The temptation for charities and amount of political advocacy about the During the pledge card campaign, Labour to censor themselves to avoid being fi nancially government. It is the most astonishing slow- tried several times to stifl e the debate, which was clearly not going in their favour. In August the New Zealand Herald produced a story2 called “Labour’s Pledge Card Spin” in which they outlined “The Spin” and “What Actually Happened”. Finance Minister Michael Cullen mused aloud that afternoon that the Herald might want to “consider its position” and noted that the government was considering the paper’s parent company’s tax position.

One of Labour’s favourite diversions during the campaign was a prolonged attack on the Exclusive Brethren church, who had run attack advertising at the last election (notably, with their own money). It came to light that some Brethren run businesses were taking advantage of employment law loopholes. The government has promised that those loopholes will be closed as punishment for the Brethren’s campaigning against them.

A chilling effect is already being felt by other organisations. In October, the National Party tried to buy space at Wellington Airport 12 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz motion – although it is gaining speed – repeal by enlarging and helping public discussion election. This clearly reinforces incumbency of the First Amendment.” and participation in the electoral process. and artifi cially amplifi es the (already louder) The Federal Election Campaign Act allows for voice of the largest parties to the detriment And so it is here, but without the protection of some private donations to be matched from of the smaller parties. This is especially true a constitution to guard free speech. public funds. when, as in the 2005 New Zealand election, The United States has the best developed the race is close and voters who would usually Aside from the clear libertarian objections to free speech jurisprudence in the world support smaller parties shifted support to taking someone’s money compulsorily and but there have been inroads made into its one of the two big parties to try and push handing it to a political opponent, the major constitutionally protected freedoms. In the whichever they perceive as the lesser of two free speech concern is that public funding of context of election funding, there has been a evils over the line. election campaigns may violate the neutrality systematic whittling down of free expression principle. The neutrality principle holds that We already have a variation on this situation since Watergate, ostensibly in order to the government must have a neutral point of whereby the Broadcasting Act makes it illegal combat corruption – the same excuse being view whenever it either subsidises or restricts for political parties to buy television or radio used in New Zealand. speech. advertising except with public money from a Public fi nancing of presidential election fund allocated by the Electoral Commission. Labour’s proposal for New Zealand political campaigns has been upheld by the Supreme These rules were brought in, in preparation parties is that they are funded from the state Court of the United States because, they for the change to proportional representation, purse based on their performance at the last claim, it fosters First Amendment objectives to smother new upstart parties so that they . . . continued on p.14

“...an atmosphere where criticising the government is becoming hazardous.”

The list of attacks on • an attack by Helen Clark • bullying of the Auditor General be hazardous." free speech by the Clark on the Dominion Post and over the last few months for And it is in this highly-charged Government is a long one, and The Press for printing the criticism of the Govt; atmosphere -- one in which those listed here just scratch Mohammed cartoons; • the Electricity Commissioner free speech is rapidly becoming the surface of incidents which, • a threat by Michael Cullen to removed from offi ce because, a privilege instead of a right -- taken together, reveal their land the Herald with “a very says the former Commissioner, that the decision of Wellington increasingly visceral hatred of large tax bill” if criticism of the “I stood up to the government Airport to refuse to display this the concept: Clark Government didn’t cease; as an independent regulator billboard below has been taken. • for the fi rst time in 103 years, • an attack by Helen Clark should”; "Too politically sensitive," the a crown-owned company on Fran O’Sullivan for • long and prolonged attacks airport management apparently fi ned for "contempt of her criticism of what Fran on a religious sect for daring said when presented with the ad. parliament"; called “ramming through to criticise the Government; • a Select Committee chairmen legislation under urgency • a "clamp down on the tax In the current "atmosphere tearing up letters from to retrospectively legalise privileges of charitable trusts where criticising the govern- Committee members who the unlawful raid on that cross an undeclared line ment can be hazardous,“ raise serious concerns; parliamentary funds”; into political advocacy"; you really have to commend • convicting a man for sedition • "Taking away the Exclusive • moving to prevent third-party the bravery of the other two for protesting the passing of Brethren's employment law criticism of Government airports which have chosen the Foreshore & Seabed Act; loophole because they spent during an election; to run with the billboard. Look • the 'crime' of "bringing $1.2 million campaigning • moving to ban anonymous out for attacks very soon on Parliament into disrepute," against the Greens and the donations to political parties; the management and running still on the books; Clark Government"; • moving to institute state- of Auckland and Christchurch • TVNZ’s Board being hauled • praising loudly "the funding of political parties airports. before Parliament’s Privileges measures the British Labour (these last three, taken Committee during the Ian Government has imposed to together, being a form of Perhaps the last word on this Fraser affair; curb press freedoms"; speech-rationing); should go to local blogger • Commerce Commission • moving to "toughen up the • attack on tax-free status of Vigesimal Pundit: prosecution of Air New Press Council" when it comes charities that criticise the “Allegations of corruption are Zealand for highlighting the to dealing with a local media Government; intolerable in a Western liberal high cost of government that is just doing its job; democracy,” says Helen Clark. levies to travellers in their • new restrictions either As Bill English said on Morning “No, Miss Clark. Corruption is ticket prices; announced or imminent Report (yes, even Bill can intolerable. When allegations • Attacking those who criticise on liquor, pharmaceuticals, get things right occasionally), of corruption are intolerable, the Clark Government of tobacco and fast food this is "an atmosphere where it’s no longer a Western liberal corruption -- advertising; criticising the government can democracy.”

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 13 didn’t go taking too much attention away from While disclosure of donors could provide Brethren Church dared to campaign against the traditional parties. some minor protection against corruption, them during the last election. This ban would it is far more likely that the proposed law’s be an absolutely outrageous attack on free To promote free speech and a more diverse purpose is to chill dissent. New Zealand is a speech. If it became illegal to criticise the political conversation we should be abolishing small country and the government occupies government during an election campaign, the broadcasting restrictions, not extending nearly half the economy. Most people have for this is clearly the aim, surely we could no the restrictive regime to other forms of business dealings with the government in longer consider New Zealand a free country. electoral activity. one way or another. The Clark government The Clark government is not nibbling at the The American experience is also relevant is known to behave vindictively against edges of free speech; they are not proposing to Labour’s second proposal, the limiting dissenters and so it’s understandable that legislation with other goals that has an of anonymous campaign donations. people would want to keep their donations incidental impact on free speech; they are The Supreme Court upheld disclosure to the opposition anonymous. Until Labour engaged in both direct frontal assault and requirements, saying that donating money cleans up its own behaviour and attitudes, deliberate fl anking attacks on free speech. was more akin to “conduct” than “speech” we would be naïve to think that their call to and that it was legitimate to require disclosure restrict anonymous donations has anything to All governments have a natural tendency to as a protection against corruption. do with preventing corruption. It would be far regulate and to censor. To maintain an open more in character for them to be attempting society the rules need to be deliberately tilted Clearly the government should be allowed to punish dissenters. in favour of free expression. Political speech to legislate against bribery but this judgment must be especially protected because it is in fails to account for the fact that almost all The third prong of Labour’s assault is on third- the political arena that all other freedoms must donations are made with honest intent. party campaigning. This is an area where the be protected. It fails the “strict scrutiny” test which, in US Supreme Court got it right. They struck free speech jurisprudence, requires that a down any expenditure limits on campaign The Clark government’s assaults on free political expression must be resisted restriction on speech, even if it is incidental, spending whether by candidates themselves because if we fail to withstand these be narrowly tailored to its purpose (here, or by other interested parties. They rightly assaults it may be illegal to resist the preventing corruption) and using the least concluded that political speech was so next. restrictive means to achieve its goal. A blanket important that no restriction on its purchase disclosure requirement affects vastly more could be allowed by the Constitution. Bernard Darnton is a Wellington innocent people than it does guilty and as businessman, former litigant against Labour seems to have concluded that such is bad law. the Clark Government, and the leader of political speech is so important that no one New Zealand’s Libertarianz Party In New Zealand, Labour has made murky else should be allowed to have any. Speaking suggestions about anonymous donors buying about third party campaigning on National (Endnotes) policy from the National Party but has failed to Radio in September, Labour strategist Pete 1. www.teenagepundit.blogspot.com/2006/09/ produce any evidence, credible or otherwise. grasping.html Hodgson said it was likely that they’d “simply Far more likely, is that the policy came fi rst 2. www.subs.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_ forbid it, that [we] would simply say you’re not id=1&objectid=10396419 and the donors who wish to see that policy allowed to have a campaign.” 3. www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3847398a6160,00. enacted came forward afterwards. Labour html 4. www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3829759a6160,00. has used its own unsubstantiated rumours to The proposed ban comes in the wake of html launch an attack on anonymous donations. this government’s disgust that the Exclusive 5. www.cato.org/pubs/catosletter/catosletterv4n3.pdf

14 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz PROF. JIM EVANS THE STOLEN CELECTION In Praise Of The Auditor-General Professor Jim Evans replies to those who suggest the Auditor The directions are also important because they defi ned “parliamentary business”: General somehow got it wrong in fi nding the Clark Government acted illegally in the matter of their election over-spending. The undertaking of any task or function that a member could reasonably be expected to carry out in his or her capacity as a Member of Parliament and that The main focus in this discussion is the assistance is provided by the more detailed complements the business of the House difference between someone’s actions as a description of them in the relevant Budget of Representatives. member of Parliament and their actions as a estimates. Although these were not part of candidate -- it blows away much of the fog the Acts, they provide an indication of the This, then, was the business for which MP’s that the Clark government has generated purpose of the appropriations. In the 2005 could incur expenditure. over this issue. “Let me return briefl y to the Budget estimates, the appropriation was retrospective legislation,” says the author. “If made to each party “to support its Leader’s To sum up, the Auditor-General potentially any Member of Parliament or party disagreed offi ce, research operations, Whips’ offi ce and had two questions to consider for each item with the Auditor-General’s report it was open members’ parliamentary operations”. of expenditure he reviewed: (1) “Was it for to them to test the issue in the courts.” Notes Another important indication of the purpose ‘parliamentary purposes’?” and (2) “Was it would-be litigant Bernard Darnton: “Indeed, of the appropriations comes from the electioneering material produced or distributed they were invited to!” Parliamentary Services Act 2000. This had as to support the election of any person or the one of its purposes “to establish mechanisms casting of a party vote?”. The article authored by Rex that appeared for providing services and funding entitlements at Public Address.Net titled “Auditing the for parliamentary purposes”. It does this However, because he was concerned only Auditor-General” is typical of various attempts partly by imposing a continuing duty on the with communications he in fact considered that have been made in recent weeks to Parliamentary Services Commission “to only the second question, since that was obfuscate the issues surrounding the Auditor- administer, in accordance with directions suffi cient to settle the issues in front of him. General’s report on advertising expenditure by political parties in the three months before the last general election. Now that Parliament has passed retrospective legislation to validate A long-standing constitutional principle is that the Crown or an Offi ce of the expenditure that the Auditor-General Parliament must not spend public money except as authorised by an Act of held unlawful, this obfuscation is particularly Parliament. The Public Finance Act 1989 states this. dangerous, since it may make that legislation seem justifi ed.

In this article I will try to remove some of the confusion surrounding the report. I will start given by the Speaker, the payment of funding He says in his report, “I took a common- with the relevant law and then discuss some entitlements for parliamentary purposes”. sense approach based on what I considered of the arguments made by Rex and others. a reasonable member of the public would Both members and offi cers of Parliament think from looking at the advertisement as The law starts with the Appropriation Acts have always assumed that the appropriations a whole, in its full context.” He judged that of 2004 and 2005, by which Parliament for “Party and Member Support” were to be each of the items he identifi ed as “unlawful appropriated funds (in each case a little over administered under this provision. So, clearly, expenditure” was for producing or distributing $14m) to be spent on “Party and Member the appropriations were understood as being “electioneering material”. Support”, within a broader allocation for “Vote for “parliamentary purposes”. Parliamentary Service”. I do not know the character of each item, but This Act also required the Speaker to give like most other households in the community A long-standing constitutional principle is that written directions to the Commission annually ours received the Pledge Card from Helen the Crown or an Offi ce of Parliament must not on the nature of the services to be provided. Clark about a week before the election. I spend public money except as authorized Across the period covered by the Auditor- think it is beyond serious argument that this by an Act of Parliament. The Public Finance General’s review, the Speaker’s directions was electioneering material distributed for Act 1989 states this. It also provides that allowed expenditure on “communication the purpose of supporting the election of any the authority to incur expenses under an services” including “signage and advertising”. person (i.e. in each constituency, the local appropriation is limited to the scope of the But they excluded the use of funds: Labour candidate) as well as the casting of a appropriation and must not be used for other For producing or distributing promotional party vote for a political party. purposes. or electioneering material by mail or other means of communication for the purpose of Rex, writing at PublicAddress.net argues that It is therefore important to determine the supporting the election of any person or the the term “electioneering” should be understood scope of these appropriations. Some casting of a party vote for any political party. to apply only to communications that explicitly

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 15 THE STOLEN CELECTION ask people to vote for a candidate or a party. parties for some time back so as to include the three months before the general election, He relies on the opinion given to the Speaker advertisements or communications that are being scrupulously careful to be impartial. by Hodder and Davies, from Chapman Tripp. essentially for electioneering purposes. As Rex suggests, a similar pushing of boundaries may That seems to me exactly the course of action They argue that there is a need for a “bright have taken place for some other expenditure, we should expect from a public servant in his line” test to separate legitimate and illegitimate such as meetings held solely to discuss an position. So what is “diffi cult to stomach” is expenditure, and that this is the only workable election campaign. not the Auditor-General’s decision, but Rex’s test available. They disparage the test unfair criticism of him.

The second point made by Rex is that the Auditor-General’s defi nition of “electioneering” The view the Auditor-General took of the law was right. It requires a dis- would include vastly too much. It would tinction between the work of a Member of Parliament as a member of par- include all sorts of activity going way beyond liament and his activity as a candidate. Properly understood, that is neither advertising, such as travel to meetings purely for planning an election campaign or the an impossible distinction to make, nor one that has absurd consequences... employment of staff to help with a campaign.

In fact, the Auditor-General did not defi ne “electioneering”, for the rule on electioneering Expenditure of this second type is in a different suggested in the opinion of the Solicitor- category to advertising, since the explicit applied only to communications, not generally. General, upon which the Auditor-General exclusion of electioneering does not apply to He defi ned “electioneering material”, which, relied, which argues that electioneering it, but if it is not for “parliamentary purposes” he says: “is something that is intended to material is any material that attempts to then it is not authorized by the appropriation. persuade a voter to favour a candidate or persuade a voter to vote for a person or a But all any of this shows is that it was past party in an election, and is not limited to party, whether or not it says “Vote for X”, “Vote time that someone took a stand. The Auditor- material that expressly solicits votes”. for the Y Party”, or similar. General did so, and in a careful and measured way. The Auditor-General had given warning only Hodder and Davies are no doubt right that about advertising. As his report shows, even their test would be easier to apply than that His report says that in June of 2005 he investigating that required a great deal of work proposed by the Solicitor-General. However, I reported to the House of Representatives to ensure fairness. A wider enquiry would have do not agree that it would be a better test. a range of concerns he had about how involved a wholly different undertaking. The problem with it is that it trivializes the parliamentary advertising was managed, constraint. Any competent Member of drawing attention to the need for MP’s and Nevertheless, on the principles applied Parliament could frame a communication parliamentary parties to take care when by the Auditor-General, things other than designed to persuade voters to vote for a advertising in the pre-election period. Worried communicating done by an MP as a candidate candidate or party without explicitly asking about some of the expenditure in this period, are not covered by the appropriations and are the voter to vote that way. The Pledge Card is he sought legal advice from the Solicitor- therefore unlawful. Let us then consider the a good example. General and then proceeded to a careful scope of work for “parliamentary purposes”. review of the expenditure on advertising in We can start by noticing the obvious point Like the Solicitor-General and the Auditor- General, I think it is important to keep alive the difference between the activities of a member of Parliament as a Member of Parliament and the activities of a Member as a candidate (which I shall take as shorthand for as a candidate or prospective candidate or as an advocate for the election of a party). The fi rst are properly fundable out of public funds, but the second are not.

But, even if Hodder and Davies test would be a better test, that is irrelevant. It simply was not the test in operation at the time of the expenditure. The actual test used the words “electioneering material” and something that displays an intention to persuade people to vote for a person or a party is electioneering material. (That is also the view that courts have taken in cases on excess election expenditure.) Rex makes a great deal of two points. The fi rst is that other similar expenditure had not been challenged in the past. The Pledge Card was a particularly blatant case, but I think Rex is partly right about this. The boundaries of parliamentary purposes have been progressively pushed by MP’s and 16 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz THE STOLEN CELECTION that MP’s will often intend their competent the work of Parliament. Activity as a candidate those that are not. performance as a member to encourage is of this type. people to vote for them or their party. Plainly, I have been asked what all this implies for the that should not render expenditure that is Would a strict approach to the boundaries Green Party’s monthly newsletter or payments properly incurred in the performance of their of expenditure for “parliamentary purposes” to a campaign specialist. It will depend on the role as an MP unlawful. But simply because include vastly too much? detail, but prima facie I am inclined to think the competent work as an MP may be one way newsletter may be OK, so long as it merely of securing votes it does not follow that Rex takes a very broad interpretation of the keeps the public informed of public issues and everything done to secure votes is work as an word “persuade” in the Auditor-General’s of the Party’s views on them. Payments out of MP. That point implies, of course, that we can defi nition of “electioneering material”. He treats public funds to a campaign specialist to run draw a line between work as an MP and work any communication that may be intended to an election campaign seem highly dubious. as a candidate. make it more likely that a voter will vote for the MP or her party as intending to persuade Let me sum up. I think the view the Auditor- So what, then, is the role of an MP? voters. He then applies that idea to all forms of General took of the law was right. It requires a expenditure. That is how he is able to suggest distinction between the work of a Member of Very broadly, it is participating in the work of that the Auditor-General’s interpretation Parliament as a member of parliament and his Parliament. The core work of Parliament is to would require refunding “possibly more than activity as a candidate. Properly understood, keep a check on the Government, including a hundred million dollars”. that is neither an impossible distinction to the bureaucracy, to approve the expenditure of public money, to review the law and to make legislation. No doubt that is not a complete Not only did the Auditor-General get the law right, he acted with sense and list. Nowadays, keeping the public informed courage in a diffi cult situation. about proposals, reviewing issues of public concern and giving people an opportunity to be heard are rightly thought to have value for their own sake and not just to be of value Perhaps “persuade” is capable of bearing because they can improve Parliament’s make, nor one that has absurd consequences. that meaning in some contexts, but in the performance of its core activities (although It is no more diffi cult than many distinctions context of the Auditor-General’s report it does they can also do that). that lawyers and others have to make in not. The Auditor-General plainly understands applying the law. “persuade” to require an active attempt to My point is that while the scope of work as an persuade voters to vote in a particular way. MP may occasionally be controversial (as many It seems to me better to have a law that For example, he does not preclude MP’s or concepts used in the law may be) we share maintains that distinction than to abandon parties from efforts to keep an electorate enough common understandings about the it simply because its application may informed about public issues or of their views role of Parliament to be able to agree on most occasionally be controversial. However, on them. occasions about what counts as something whether or not that is so, the law at the time of the expenditure reviewed by the Auditor- done by an MP for a “parliamentary purpose” One more point will have troubled the reader. General required that distinction. and to know what is relevant to arguing about What is the position if something is done the remaining cases. partly for one purpose and partly for another? In their opinion to the Speaker, Hodder and Not only did the Auditor-General get the law The Solicitor-General’s opinion gives the right, he acted with sense and courage in a diffi cult situation.

It seems to me better to have a law that maintains that distinction than to Let me return briefl y to the retrospective abandon it simply because its application may occasionally be controver- legislation. If any Member of Parliament or party disagreed with the Auditor-General’s sial. However, whether or not that is so, the law at the time of the expendi- report it was open to them to test the issue in ture reviewed by the Auditor-General required that distinction. the courts. That the Labour Party promoted, and other parties supported, retrospective legislation to validate expenditure the Auditor- example of a monthly newsletter that informs General had held unlawful was appalling. Davies seek to expand the notion of things constituents about matters of parliamentary done by an MP for a parliamentary purpose business but also contains electioneering to include all lawful means of seeking votes, material. The Solicitor-General took the view The Auditor-General’s Report can be found so long as one does not explicitly say “Please that at least in the case of this example the here:. The Solicitor-General’s Opinion is vote for me” or similar. wrongful purpose would make the whole act available as Appendix 2 to that report. The unlawful. opinion of Jack Hodder and Briony Their argument is that a robust political process Davies is Appendix 3 (at page 14ff) to serves to create a better parliament. That may I think that is right when the same act serves the Speaker’s Report on the Report be true. But it does not follow that everything both purposes; but in other cases a division of of the Auditor-General. done by MP’s that is part of a robust political the expenditure may be appropriate. The point process is part of the work of Parliament. Like is tricky, but my tentative view on the example Jim Evans is Emeritus Professor other members of the public (for example, is that the whole cost of distributing should be of Law at Auckland University. constituency members of a party), MP’s may recoverable, since all of it serves the wrongful This article fi rst appeared engage in activity that contributes to a robust purpose. But the cost of publication might be at the website political process without thereby engaging in divided between the bits that are lawful and PublicAddress.Net

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 17 BERNARD DARNTON THE STOLEN ELECTION One Pledge Card . . . Slightly Used

fi ngers crossed that she gets away with In case you missed it, there were recently two Labour Party Pledge rorting the leader’s fund. Cards being sold on Trade Me, one by the Labour Party to raise funds What is the likelihood of a paper cut from the to repay stolen money pay back retrospectively validated democracy card being fatal? funding, the other by Bernard Darnton to raise funds to take them to I believe the effects of the card have largely been blunted now. If the pledge court over their stolen money. card proves fatal to anyone it will probably be Labour.

The sour-lipped Labour Party auction received Look red just clashes with EVERYTHING. Do Does the pledge card come with alternative two bids, seven unanswered questions, 1500 you have anything in a civilised blue? catch phrases? “My compendious conspiracy” hits and just $30 (only $824,970 to go crowed I couldn’t fi nd much. Neither could the or “I am contrite and compellable” or simply The Dominion); Darnton meanwhile received Auditor-General. “My conniption”. over eighty bids, hundreds of questions, No. Helen Clark is infallible and only one 32,000 hits and $700. I think there’s a point Damn. Some people I know tried green... slogan is acceptable. Everyone must say there, don‘t you? turned out it was just a paint job and it was it in unison. red underneath. What follows is the write up from the auction You have to be careful. It can be quite Do I earn Flybuys when I use the card? itself, and a pick of the wittier questions and deceptive. Even the blues can often just No. Labour doesn’t need to earn your answers on the auction page: be a light red. loyalty. Your loyalty is demanded.

Mint condition original 2005 Labour Party How do I know you are genuine and not a Will you consider delivery of the card by high- pledge card, nicely framed - just like the Labour MP doing some creative fundraising? speed motorcade? New Zealand taxpayer. Never to be repeated Because Labour MPs don’t do creative I would, but my driver’s in jail. (hopefully). This item is one in a million. Well, fundraising. They just pick taxpayers’ one OF a million. You’ve already paid for it pockets. Is it a quality frame? once, why not pay for it again? Proceeds to No. It’s worthless and transparent, much help fund the Darnton v Clark lawsuit. Can you show the other side of the card? I like the pledges it contains. think she has her fi ngers crossed Isn’t this sort of thing prohibited somewhere in Do you happen to have any more cards??? You’re right but it’s not clear whether the rules? I’ve love to play snap with them...... she’s got her fi ngers crossed so she Yes. The relevant rules are the Public Sorry. Only the Red Queen is available. doesn’t have to keep her promises or Finance Act, the Constitution Act and

18 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz THE STOLEN ELECTION the Bill of Rights. if I burn this “artwork” after purchasing it (if I do you think? am the successful bidder)? The card is 8.3 x 5.2 cm. That’s $10,334 I guess this is the free market in action. The bids are getting pretty riotous. If you per square centimetre. That’s right. It’s the invisible hand giving blow your cash on the top bid you might Labour a slapping. not be able to afford the carbon credits Will Peter Jackson make this into a movie? you need to burn it. Then it can be serialized adn vie for top Labour Do the pledges work? I have heard this Supporters viewing such as Coro Street! described by people as electioneering What is the signifi cance of the blurred waving If he was going to make a story about The only people who have described this arms in the background. Looks to me like the Labour’s pledge card fi asco what would as electioneering are the Chief Electoral adulations of adoring socialists, but I might be call it? Bad Taste? Meet the Feebles? Offi cer, Wellington District CIB, the [??] be wrong? Braindead? former Solicitor-General, the Auditor- An easy mistake to make but it’s actually General, and Pete Hodgson. the writhing of agonised taxpayers Why are you not showing us the “back-side” undergoing walletectomies without of the card you’re selling - is there something anaesthetic. hidden behind our Dear Leader that we’re not I would consider placing a higher bid, but supposed to see? considering I’m taxed 42% of my income, This card surely can’t be worth that much - I On the contrary, seeing the back of there is a court order for another 20% to pay inserted one like it at my ATM and it come up Helen is something I’m very keen on. off my traffi c fi nes and WINZ are demanding Declined - insuffi cient funds! another 20% to refund overpayments, I’m a You obviously tried to use the wrong little strapped for cash. Is that really Helen??? I want the name of her account. Next time try using it to access You need to get fi red from your job, plastic surgeon... someone else’s money. have eight children, and acquire some I believe he’s a Doctor Michael Cullen. not-too-specifi c illness that causes He’s very good at making things look Someone has performed several small malingering. You’ll be rolling in cash in like they’re not. For example, if you had miracles in Photoshop on the photo on that no time. an ugly bulge in your wallet he could get card. Helen’s years seem to have simply rid of it in no time. disappeared. Of course, the government has Does the picture come with any rating...I’m always been good at making things disappear. In a previous answer, you mentioned you thinking it might scare my children? Money, for instance, integrity and honesty as would throw in a free taniwha. I was wondering As a responsible parent it’s your job to well of course. if you would list it separately, preferably with a keep offensive material like political But, to be fair, the government also buy now price. Or perhaps, you would trade propaganda away from your children. makes lots of things appear as well for a leprechaun? Although that does raise the question of - pointless departments, red tape, I don’t really need a leprechaun and I’m where you send them to school... regulations, infl ation, ... having second thoughts about giving away the taniwha too. I hear Transit Where in my house do you think I should hang Can I have the card now. I’m pretty sure I’ve pays quite a good price for them. it? already paid for it. I would recommend putting it in the Everybody’s already paid for it. Much Don’t be too alarmed people that trader kitchen just above the sink. The when like health care, if you actually want it “bamsenz” loves Helen. If you saw the stuff you see all that water gurgling down the you have to pay twice. she has been buying on Trade Me you would drain you can remember the fi ve months understand. a year that you work to pay your taxes. Measurements please? I’m thinking of a Lots of people love Helen. It’s called perfect spot in the loo to assist with those Stockholm Syndrome. As this could be potentially embarrassing to constipation issues. I may need to blow it up our dear leader if released in public - is it okay a bit to get the desired effect though - what Love Helen? Stockholm syndrome? Extreme bad taste I’d say. How could you love her? She is so ugly. Yuck Lots of things about this government are ugly but they’re still hanging on to some of their support. I guess that’s the joy of having half the population on the payroll.

Do you think Helen would make a good UN secretary general? A superior attitude, vast quantities of money wasted on pointless (or destructive) projects, and a whiff of corruption? I can’t think of anyone better.

Is it true that this is the cover of Chairman Helen’s Little Red Book? Yes. At Christmas they’ll be launching a children’s version in conjunction with A.A. Milne called “A World of Pooh”.

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 19 PETER CRESSWELL POWER POLITICS Third Way Meets Neo-Con In The Authoritarian Middle Many people have expressed surprise at the alliance of George • Incremental change and routing around, rather than challenging, opposition to W. Bush and Tony Blair, men respectively of the right and the left particular policies but who share an obviously genuine friendship. The answer to the As I suggested above, this is hardly a 'big idea' in terms of political philosophy - this is apparent paradox is to be found in their respective philosophies. The strategy not philosophy, and if I may translate so-called ‘philosophies’ of the left’s ‘Third Way’ and the right’s Neo- from the language of wonkery above into how it has worked in practice here, the strategy Conservatism’ to which these two subscribe share more than their has been this: promoters might like to concede. • Shackle capitalist means for socialist ends -- that is, use the engine of capitalism to produce, and the maw of politics to redistribute In fact, I would suggest that in all essentials the summarises for the “further left” the Third Way ‘Third Way’ is just the mirror image of ‘Neo- strategy followed by Labour here since 1993. • Accept the political landscape (as Blair Conservatism.’ It is no accident that George did in keeping the Thatcher reforms, and Clark has in keeping the Richardson/Douglas Bush and Tony Blair have become allies; the Third Way understanding they so clearly share is born of a reforms) and seek instead to capture and common way of seeing the political landscape, If we look fi rst at that “Third Way strategy” massage and persuade the unthinking and and it has lessons for us here in New Zealand. as summarised by Jordan: “The key the easily persuaded components of that locally have been,” he Let me explain. These two political schools of says, • Take ownership of the 'commanding the right and the left have until recently both heights' of state welfare (health, education, dominated their respective political ‘markets,’ • Emphasis on the connection between welfare), and use welfare distribution as a and they’ve done so largely by making social justice and economic development tool of politics: that is, make sure welfare is themselves ‘pragmatic on principle’: that is, politically targeted (remember for example they accept what they view as the ‘political • Moderate political positioning, in touch how South Auckland came in for Labour realities’ of the present ideological and political with voters not activists last September?) and that new welfare geography of a country; they concede that programmes are identifi ed with Labour capitalism produces rather more than any • Pragmatic policy lines in terms of public (Welfare for Working Families anyone?) other alternative yet devised; and they’ve spending and the market/community chosen to shackle the levers of power and the boundary • Keep former New Labour activists close engine of capitalism simply to deliver votes. and compliant (Hello Jim), and the harder left • An avoidance of 'reform' as opposed to rabble quiet by whatever means necessary, consolidation in most areas of policy That in a nutshell is the ‘big idea’ including both 'buy-in' and buying off. behind the ruling ideologies of both the Neocons and the Third Way zealots.

Far from being big ideas, both are little more than strategies for gaining and holding power for their ‘side,’ but in placing strategy over principles both leave largely bare the question of what they are gaining power for -- the result is that for both schools the pursuit of politics becomes power for power’s sake - and we know (and have seen in the NZ Parliament recently) what the pursuit of power tends to do to those who pursue it absolutely. It’s not at all pretty, and not all a natural environment in which freedom and liberty can fl ourish.

Fortuitously, recent posts on the local blogosphere make the comparison between the two relatively transparent. Prof. Brad Thompson’s superb analysis of American conservatism gives the necessary keys to understanding the so-called philosophy of Neo-Conservatism; and now and in an apologia to the local left posted yesterday, Labour strategist Jordan Carter 20 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit the website: www.DarntonVsClark.org for updates on this trial as different ends of the political way on behalf of the paternalistic state. spectrum, but they both meet up in the authoritarian middle. So the Neocon strategy of gaining and keeping Continuing the summary of the power differs in practice only marginally from Neocons the strategy of the Third Way; both seek to politicise the delivery of welfare, and in doing so Neocons agree with the both seek to enlarge and expand the nannying underlying moral principles of state and put it at the service of buying votes. the socialists; they disagree merely over the best means to In practice, then, Neocons and Third Way achieve their shared ends. As strategists are soul-mates. George, meet do all good socialists, neocons Tony. Tony, meet George. (Jordan, how do hold that welfare should be you feel?) regarded as a right because it is grounded in people’s The Vision Thing • Blur public-private boundaries, and make “needs”—and, as Kristol But as I’ve suggested above there is a problem both public and private companies either explains, for the neocons, “needs” are with the strategies of both Neocons and Third politically or fi nancially dependent on the synonymous with rights... Way zealots like Jordan’s beloved Labour party in power party, and it is best summarised by Brad The aim of course is not reform per se, except So how does a conservative welfare state Thompson in talking about the neocons: to the extent that reform might attract votes. work? And how does it differ from a liberal The measure of success for such a strategy welfare state? Behind all the rhetoric, the The most remarkable issue about the is not the success of the programmes and shabby secret is that there is very little neocons’ notion of a “governing philosophy” policies introduced (as demonstrated in the difference except how and by whom the is that it is a strategy for governing without almost complete lack of interest shown by readies are doled out. Both liberals and philosophy. The neocons unabashedly Labour in plummeting literacy and numeracy, Neocons opposed Clinton’s refoms of the describe themselves as pragmatists; they increasing (if now-hidden) hospital waiting welfare state. Both liberals and neoncons eschew principles in favor of a mode of lists, and the almost complete disinterest in recent poverty surveys showing increasing poverty), instead the real measure of success Never mind the poverty and the dependence, feel the power! “We won, to such a strategist can be best measured by the number of votes such a strategy attracts. you lost, eat that!” The aim of the ‘Third Way’ strategy is clear enough: it is As Jordan boasts: power. Power for power’s sake -- and all policy is geared to that aim: policy as the handmaiden of power lust. [The ‘Third Way’ strategy] has been a very successful strategy for Labour. The party has rebuilt from a very low share of the vote of 28% in 1996, to three consecutive election wins promise cradle to grave nannying. The thinking—and they scorn thinking about around 40%. The message of moderation, Neocons, who (like Roger Douglas) talk what is moral in favor of thinking about and of investment in public services instead of about socalist ends through capitalist what “works.” For over twenty-fi ve years, cutting taxes, has been an electoral winner. means simply insist that the all-powerful they have fought an ideological war against state should provide, but people should ideology. Never mind the poverty and dependence, be allowed some “choice.” The state will feel the power! “We won, you lost, eat that!” continue to put its hand in your pocket, And at the end of that ‘war’ -- and just like The aim of the ‘Third Way’ strategy is clear increasingly so say neocons, but “the Labour -- all they are left with is power, and enough: it is power. Power for power’s sake. people choose their own “private” social little real idea of what to do with it. And here’s The pursuit of power, and the holding of power security accounts; they choose their own the key thing, and it is this: the ‘vision thing’ is once gained -- and all policy is geared to that “private” health and child-care providers; left for someone else to determine, aim, policy as the hand-maiden of power-lust. and parents receive vouchers and choose which schools their children will attend.” Never mind “the vision thing” -- about which Neocons George Bush Sr. agonised -- give yourself How does this differ from Neo- The choices, of course, are not the wide- over instead to absolute rule, and let the other side seek out new visions . That’s the neocon Conservatism? Hardly at all. Professor Brad open choices of a free market; rather, ticket. The three most important rules for Thompson summarises the advice given the people are permitted to choose by Irving Kristol, the father of the Neo- from among a handful of pre-authorized absolute rule: Compromise, compromise and Conservatism: providers. The neocons call this scheme a compromise. The fourth rule: if visions arise free-market reform of the welfare state. that are going to happen anyway, then just roll over and make sure you take the credit... This Kristol’s advice to Republicans is: Stop is what it means to “think politically.” taking your principles so seriously (as if Socialist ends through capitalist means, that were ever a problem). The successful you see (or at least “conservative” means, And therein here’s the hope for local politics. statesman, he argues, is chameleon- capitalism not being the process so As long as Third Way and Neocon strategists like in his ability to redefi ne his principles described). And as far as the neocons’ “big eschew ideas and the ‘vision thing,’ then ideas in the light of changing circumstances. idea” goes, that’s it. George Bernard Shaw Don’t concern yourselves with principles; observed years ago that a government that and vision become (or should become) the concern yourselves with acquiring and robs Peter to pay Paul can always rely on province of their ideologic opposition. keeping power. the support of Paul. The neocons rob Peter, rob Paul, and channel that money to the The question is, are they up to it? In other words, make policy the hand- providers pre-approved by the ruling party maiden of power-lust. Third Way leftists and (who can expect to show their gratitude in the This article originally appeared Neocon rightists might start at what they see appropriate way), clipping the ticket on the at Peter’s Blog, PC.Blogspot.com

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 21 PHIL RENNIE PLUNDER Why Tax Cuts Are Good For Growth Tax cuts are good for two basic reasons: First because tax cuts are The ingredients for growth There is a reasonable consensus in New good for growth. Second, because it’s your bloody money! Zealand over the two main ingredients for economic growth: productivity and labour Phil Rennie at the Center for Independent Studies argues the fi rst point participation.2 here. More people in the workforce means more wealth created, more tax paid and less welfare expenditure. On this front New Zealand has Introduction Executive Summary done well in recent years, although there is Many voters support tax cuts because it still room for improvement (a following section *Economic growth involves a number of means more money in the pocket. However explains this in more detail). A lower tax rate factors, which are often diffi cult to isolate. tax can also have a substantial impact on can help by making it more rewarding for Tax is no silver bullet on its own, but research economic growth, which means more jobs, people to enter the workforce, work longer shows it can have a signifi cant positive impact opportunities and a higher standard of living hours and at greater intensity. on economic growth. for all New Zealanders. The impact is similar for productivity. New *Tax causes people to make different economic Growth is a big issue for New Zealand. Since Zealanders work about the average amount of decisions than they otherwise would – such the 1950s our standard of living has slipped hours by world standards, but our productivity as whether to start work, work longer hours, compared to other countries, and the major – the value created for those hours – has been acquire new skills or expand their business. reforms of the 1980s and 1990s have only lagging behind other countries.3 In effect, we really stopped the decline rather than gained have to work harder to produce the same *These changes in behaviour can be measured us any ground. Thanks to higher growth rates, amount of wealth other countries can produce and are known as “deadweight losses”. This incomes in Australia are now a third higher on in a shorter time. is the amount of money that is lost from the average than in New Zealand. 21,000 Kiwis economy, on top of what the government now cross the Tasman permanently every Lower taxes can help by making it more actually collects in revenue. Studies show year. rewarding to invest in activities that boost that taxing labour costs the economy at least productivity, such as: $1:20 for every $1 raised. It is worth noting that Australia is a lower taxing country, with the government taking 31.6% • Capital (e.g. new machinery and *In New Zealand’s case, the large amount of GDP. In New Zealand 34.9% of all wealth equipment) of extra tax paid since 2000 means that at created is confi scated by the government and • Research and Development (New Zealand is least $4 billion of potential wealth has been transferred to the public sector.1 Inevitably below the OECD average for private sector sacrifi ced (at the most conservative estimate). this level of taxation will have an impact on investment in R&D) • Human capital (developing more skilled and economic growth. *Productivity is a key issue for economic productive workers, through training and education). growth. Lower tax can help by giving fi rms This is not to say that lower tax is a guarantor more leeway to invest in capital, training and of growth, or the only requirement. So many research and development. It would also different things affect the economy that it is The deadweight cost of tax encourage risk-taking and entrepreneurship near impossible to prove causality. However, The imposition of tax causes people to make different decisions than they otherwise would, by making such activities more rewarding. research, theory and common sense tell us such as whether to invest in new skills or that tax will have a major impact. The level of training, to start a new company, how many *Getting people into the workforce is another tax, and the different kinds of tax employed hours to work, or even whether to enter the key to economic growth, but New Zealand will create different incentives and therefore workforce. The value of this lost output is has some of the worst incentives for people affect behaviour and outputs. moving off benefi ts into work - particularly called “deadweight losses”, caused by people for sole parents. Tax combined with benefi t switching from higher valued to lower valued Governments know that economic incentives abatement means that many people face an economic activities. It is the amount of money matter. That is why they tax cigarettes and fi ne effective marginal tax rate of 91%. that is lost from the economy, in excess of speeding drivers – to discourage those kinds what the government collects in revenue. of behaviours. Taxing work, employment and *Governments around the world use tax as business success will surely have the same a competitive tool to attract investment and New Zealand Herald economics editor Brian impact. skilled workers. Over the past decade New Fallow uses this example: Zealand is alone in going against the OECD There are also strong moral arguments for trend for lowering taxes. “For example, tax beer more than wine lower taxes, in that people have the right to and people may end up drinking more keep more of what they earn for themselves *Flatter and lower tax rates are better for wine and less beer than they would if their growth than tax concessions, because they and their families. However this paper focuses choices were not distorted by tax. Tax the reduce distortions and allow the market to solely on how reducing New Zealand’s tax income from labour and you affect how function better. burden can help economic growth and create people divide their time between work and a more prosperous nation. leisure.”4 *Substantial tax cuts are affordable through the Budget surplus and controlling future In particular, this paper argues that lower and The same applies to business decisions. Higher expenditure. The cost of tax cuts is likely to fl atter taxes (both personal and corporate) are tax rates reduce the potential return from risk- have been over-estimated. the best vehicle for maximising growth. The taking and entrepreneurship, which means rest of this paper explains why and how. that many potential successful businesses

22 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz PLUNDER have never started up or expanded. extreme, for two parent families. With one transferrals are.19 Overall, one in 12 working- partner earning the average wage of $40,000, age New Zealanders receives an income- Therefore the cost of collecting tax is not the second partner will face EMTRs of tested benefi t.20 always 1:1; it will often have a higher cost to between 35% and 55% as they begin earning society and the economy. Reducing the level up to $40,000.12 There are also signs that a large number of of tax will reduce these deadweight costs. people are considering work but without This is the fundamental problem with a real urgency, such as the semi-retired or A range of studies have attempted to progressive tax and welfare system: the more second-earners. This is suggested by the estimate the exact level of losses both in tightly targeted it is, the greater disincentive it large discrepancy between the numbers New Zealand and around the world. In 1994 creates to work harder. Lower and fl atter taxes of people who say they are seeking work a Treasury-commissioned study calculated are not the sole answer, but they can improve (86,000 according to the Household Labour that the deadweight loss from taxing labour the situation by making work more rewarding Force Survey)21 and those actually receiving and consumption was $1.20 per $1 raised.5 and removing these disincentives to success. the unemployment benefi t (under 40,000).22 Winton Bates updated this estimate in 2001 Many people will not be eligible for the and concluded that it was closer to $1.50.6 In total, 350,000 families are now eligible for benefi t because of their assets, their partner’s A cost-benefi t guide used by the Treasury for Family Assistance and as such will face higher earnings, or because they don’t feel they need new spending recommends a default cost EMTRs. Economist Gareth Morgan laments the benefi t. of $1.20, “in the absence of an alternative the impact that these disincentives will have evidence based value.”7 - “With an economy that has desperately Even the New Zealand Council of Trade low productivity growth this standard of Unions has recognised this, noting “this still Since 2000 the amount of tax paid by New policy contribution is simply digging the hole means there is room for active labour market 13 Zealanders has increased by 62%, from $32 deeper.” policies to assist more people into work…the 8 billion to $52 billion. If we use the conservative key labour market issue right now is how to deadweight estimate of 1.20, then that is Tax rates also have an impact on people at the attract workers.”23 $4 billion in potential wealth that has been other end of the scale – high-income earners, sacrifi ced at the altar of taxation. such as the self-employed, who have more Finally, it is worth emphasising that the fl exibility and control over the hours they work. deadweight losses described above don’t Encouraging people to work Their taxable income (which refl ects not only come solely from people entering the A large amount of the deadweight loss caused hours worked but the intensity and productivity) workforce, but also the number of hours by tax comes through the labour market. tends to be responsive to changes in tax, in worked and the work intensity. This is best The elasticity of labour is important - that is, that lower tax results in more income reported. measured by the taxable income, and recent how much impact do taxes have on people’s This demonstrates the high economic cost of studies show it has a strong relationship to 14 decision to enter the workforce and/or to work taxing the most productive individuals. changes in tax.24 more hours? Clearly, the more people there are Rasing the top rate of personal tax to 39% working the wealthier New Zealand will be. International competitiveness has exacerbated this problem. And thanks to As well as the local infl uence tax has on Much of the research shows that changes ‘bracket creep’, even a single worker on the economic growth, it is also important in in net wages have little impact on labour average fulltime wage ($43,000) now faces a attracting skilled workers and businesses into participation for males, but for women it marginal tax rate of 33% in the dollar. These New Zealand. Skilled labour and capital are is a different story. Female labour force marginal rates – the rate of tax paid on the increasingly mobile, and there is increasing participation, and the hours worked, is much next dollar earned – are the most infl uential on competition amongst countries to recruit this more responsive to changes in net income.9 behaviour, and New Zealand has high rates for nearly every group in society. This is why talent. Many potential workers are discouraged the Treasury urged the government to reduce from entering the labour market because of marginal tax rates last year: This is important because New Zealand is a harsh effective marginal tax rates (EMTRs). highly taxed country on a world scale. The With each additional dollar earned, workers “In an economy like New Zealand’s – with government’s tax take for 2003 was 34.9% of pay tax and have their benefi t reduced so high participation rates and mobile labour GDP, higher than the weighted OECD average that often they are hardly any better off. This and capital – these dynamic effects of high of 31%. It is also higher than most of our major problem has been worsened by the Working marginal tax rates on productivity are likely trading partners and regional neighbours, for Families package. to have the greatest impact on growth.”15 including Australia, which takes 31.6% of GDP in tax.25 As part of the package, the ‘Inwork payment’ Isn’t New Zealand’s labour market already at replaces the Child Tax Credit and has the full capacity? Do businesses move and invest because of deliberate goal of making full-time work more tax? attractive. It is an excellent objective, but New Zealand has an unemployment rate like most government tinkering, it creates of 3.6% as of August 2006, the second Companies will look at a range of factors when problems elsewhere in the system. EMTRs are lowest in the OECD. The number of people deciding where and how to invest, including: now much higher for many working families, on the unemployment benefi t has dropped and in particular for benefi ciaries moving into by over two-thirds since 200116, and the • the regulatory environment; is there a lot of part-time work. job participation rate is at an all-time high of red tape to deal with? 68.8%.17 Does this mean there are no more For example, moving from the unemployment people to enter the workforce, and that • a skilled workforce; can they fi nd the right benefi t or domestic purposes benefi t (DPB) changing incentives won’t make a difference? workers? into part time work (earning up to $20,000 a year) now incurs an EMTR of 91%.10 When There are plenty of signs this isn’t the case. • access to markets (Ireland had an advantage reductions in the accommodation supplement For a start, numbers on the DPB – which has here as a gateway to the EU); and childcare subsidies are taken into the worst disincentives to work – are still high account, it is possible that some families will at 101,000, and this has barely changed in • cost; of setting up and employing people, actually be worse off if they receive a pay rise fi ve years.18 which is affected by tax. or work extra hours.11 It means that for many single parents it is hardly worth the effort to There has also been a large increase in It is impossible to quantify the exact impact start working part-time. numbers on the sickness benefi t (up 10,000) tax has amongst the range of other factors. and invalids benefi t (up 17,000), with concerns Often it is not the dominant factor, but it is one The problem is the same, although not as raised over how legitimate many of these area the government has direct control over.

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 23 PLUNDER

The importance of corporate tax for The importance of personal tax The previous paper in this series (How to fi x competitiveness has been recognised by the The global trend for personal tax rates is also a leaky tax system) examined this argument government in its Business Tax Review, which downward. New Zealand’s top rate of 39% and explained why targeted tax concessions notes that “A company tax rate higher than is still relatively low by world standards, but are a poor choice. Concessions encourage those of our trading and investment partners it cuts in at just 1.4 times the average wage, tax avoidance, and force higher than puts pressure on the New Zealand tax system one of the lowest thresholds in the world.30 necessary taxes onto other industries. They because it creates incentives to stream profi ts Thanks to bracket creep, a worker on the are risky in that they assume the government to countries that have lower tax rates.”26 It average wage now pays a marginal tax rate of has better knowledge and judgment than the 31 also notes Australia’s lower rate (30%) and the 33% compared to 21% a decade ago. market. And because they deliberately distort disincentive this creates for international fi rms economic behaviours they will inevitably have to locate in New Zealand. There are a range of reasons why individuals higher deadweight costs. move countries and many of them are There has been a consistent downward trend intangible, such as weather, family, friends Economic research has noted the impact in tax rates around the world over the last 15 and the challenge of starting a new life. distortionary taxes (such as income tax) have years, for both corporate and personal rates. Money is clearly a major factor though, and on economic growth, as compared to non- most expats earn higher than the average distortionary taxes (such as broad-based 33 New Zealand income. In particular, our consumption taxes).41 The Treasury has also nearest neighbour Australia has an average described a broad-based, low-rate (BB- 34 income over a third higher than New Zealand. LR) system as “a foundational principle for Last year 20,400 New Zealanders emigrated a taxation system which seeks to support 35 across the Tasman. economic growth.”

Trying to isolate exactly how much of an “BB-LR taxation helps to support infl uence tax has on migration decisions is economic growth by minimising distortions impossible. However an IMF study from 2002 arising from the harmful impact of tax on is one of the few to try and put some numbers incentives and relative prices that may around this area. It concluded that as much as adversely distort behaviour and the 7 to 30 percent of the cost of tax cuts could allocation of resources.” NZ vs. the world: corporate tax rate be offset by reducing the cost of migration: 28 Source: The Treasury “From a purely growth perspective “Emigration induced by the tax and without taking into account other welfare New Zealand is one of the few countries to social security system involves true implications, moving to a fl at tax rate is likely buck the trend, and this has been recognised economic waste. In an economy with to have the greatest impact on economic as a key pressure by the IRD: “A key concern highly mobile labour, the welfare cost growth as it conforms most closely to the is whether we will be able to continue to collect [to NZ] of migration should be taken into BB-LR principle.”42 as much company tax as we do at present if consideration when reforming tax and 27 we do not lower the rate of company tax.” social security systems. In particular, Does tax actually make a difference? a high income tax burden could have “The claim that cutting taxes leads to higher In 1990 New Zealand’s corporate rate of strongly negative effects on GDP and the economic growth is simply not true.” 33% was well below the OECD average of 36 welfare of the nation.” -Hon Dr Michael Cullen, Minister of Finance 40%. The global average is now 28.3% and continuing to track down. Research by the Australian Chamber of Despite all this theory, do taxes actually Commerce and Industry (ACCI), suggests make a difference in the real world? Is there Accounting fi rm KPMG noted the importance that while individuals don’t necessarily leave empirical evidence to show that reducing the of tax in its 2004 and 2006 global survey of Australia because of tax, it is a factor in level of tax is linked to higher growth? corporate tax rates: deciding whether to return.37 Dr Cullen is right in that tax cuts are not a “What we are now experiencing is an Business leaders, tax experts, immigration intensity in global tax competition for magic solution or a guarantee of growth. consultants, recruitment specialists and The economy is a complicated beast and internationally mobile capital. In turn, this politicians have all publicly acknowledged is leading to investment analysis becoming there are many different infl uences that could that tax is an effective tool for attracting overshadow the effects of tax cuts. Therefore increasingly sensitive to taxation. 38 migration. it is almost impossible to isolate the effect of “KPMG has some corporate clients just one input, however important it might be, Even the government itself has acknowledged who complain of losing work to foreign and to prove causality, and the direction of the pulling power of lower taxes through jurisdictions because the high New causality. various initiatives. For example, a taxation Zealand tax cost makes their tenders bill introduced last year had the purpose of uncompetitive.”29 However, as the quality of econometric “Assisting the recruitment of top talent by research becomes more rigorous the providing a temporary tax exemption on the relationship between the level of tax and foreign income of new migrants…”39 economic growth is becoming clearer. Some of the main studies include: What kinds of tax cuts are best for growth? This is a very important question; in fact some *Barro (1990) for the OECD concluded that research has claimed that the makeup of when the government is very small, public taxation is just as important to growth as the spending on key assets such as infrastructure, level of taxation.40 a proper legal system and basic education has a positive impact on growth. However, The government’s recent Business Tax Review once the size of government reaches a certain fl oated the possibility of tax concessions for level it depresses growth as more and more these activities, in particular for exports and resources are diverted from the productive research and development. The reasoning private sector.43 is that targeted measures will have more Top Marginal personal tax rates “productivity bang for the buck” than a *Robson (2005) surveys a wide range of Source: The Treasury32 general cut. literature and fi nds a strong correlation between

24 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz PLUNDER lower tax and economic growth. From 1980 Controlling the increase in government 11 See economist Gareth Morgan’s example “A nation of bludgers”, 1st December 2005 http://nbr.infometrics.co.nz/a-nation-of-bludgers_ to 2000, in economies where substantial tax spending would allow for even more substantial 1039.html cuts took place, per capita economic growth tax cuts. A combined report released earlier 12 Proposed Increase to Family Assistance: Implications for Family Incomes and Work Incentives, Briefi ng paper from the Ministry of rates were almost double those enjoyed by this year by Federated Farmers, Business Social Development, 2nd November 2005 Appendix B pg 20. economies where no substantial cuts took New Zealand and the Business Roundtable 13 “A nation of bludgers”, 1st December 2005 http://nbr.infometrics. place.44 outlined an achievable fi ve-year plan of how co.nz/a-nation-of-bludgers_1039.html 14 See Alex Robson, The Costs of Taxation pg 7, and Sinclair Davidson to lower spending and taxes, to achieve a top Are There Any Good Arguments Against Cutting Tax? (Sydney: Centre *Two reports by the OECD have estimated the personal and corporate rate of 28%.49 for Independent Studies, August 2005) which both analyse the affect tax rates have on taxable income of the wealthy. Also see the work cost to be even higher; they associate a one of Nobel Prize winner Edward C Prescott who argues that tax rates percentage increase in tax to GDP associated Finally, it is worth remembering that all the explain the difference in hours worked (and prosperity) between the USA and Europe. with a 0.6% to 0.7% reduction in per capita estimates of how much tax cuts would cost 15 Treasury Briefi ng to the Incoming Government 2005 - Sustaining income.45 are static, in that they don’t take account Growth (Wellington: November 2005), pg 18 of the extra growth and revenue that will 16 Ministry of Social Development benefi t factsheet June 2006 17 Statistics New Zealand, Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS), *A recent paper by Lee and Gordon (2005) generate as a result. This is not to say that August 10th 2006 tax cuts will be self-funding, but that most 18 MSD benefi t factsheet June 2006 suggests a strong negative relationship 19 methods overestimate the true cost. The number of people on sickness and invalids benefi ts has between the company tax rate and economic increased by 50% since 1999. In 2004 the chairman of the Auckland GP and Independent Practitioners Association Council, Doug Baird, growth. It estimates that a 10% cut in This is especially true for New Zealand and chairman of the NZ Medical Association’s general practitioner corporate tax will raise the annual growth rate council, Peter Foley, raised concerns about the numbers of patients where there is a high level of tax evasion and demanding to transfer from the unemployment benefi t to the sickness by one to two percentage points .46 avoidance.50 Making taxes lower and fl atter or invalids benefi t. See “Benefi t scam - doctors accuse Winz”, New Zealand Herald 26th July 2004. will bring many tax evaders out of the closet. 20 There are 280,000 people receiving an income tested benefi t (MSD The trend is obvious around the world today. factsheet) and 3.2 million people aged between 18 and 64 (HLFS June The fastest growing countries are the USA, 2006). Conclusion 21 Statistics New Zealand, HLFS March 2006 Australia and the Asian nations, which are The movement for lower taxes is not an 22 Ministry of Social Development benefi t factsheet June 2006 reducing tax, while the high taxing European 23 Council of Trade Unions, “Unemployment 2nd Lowest in OECD – But ideological exercise, or a way for the rich More Still to Be Done says CTU”, press release August 10th 2006 nations (France, Italy, Germany and in to make more money. It is a key factor in 24 See Robson The Costs of Taxation Scandinavia) are stagnant. lifting our living standards and creating more 25 Rennie, Are New Zealanders Paying too much Tax? pg 3 26 IRD Business Tax Review: A Discussion Document (July 2006) Pg 3 opportunities for all New Zealanders. 27 Inland Revenue Department (IRD) Briefi ng for the incoming Minister The government’s own economic advisors in of Revenue (Wellington: September 2005) pg 31 28 Treasury Briefi ng to the Incoming Government 2005 - Sustaining the Treasury have regularly urged the Finance Taxes are necessary to run a civilized Growth, pg 29 Minister to lower taxes for growth, to no society, but there needs to be more honesty 29 KPMG press release “Corporate tax rate downward trend continues” March 2004 avail: around the costs that taxation imposes. 30 The weighted average threshold for the OECD is 5.6 times the The disincentives it creates to work, the average wage; See Rennie, Are New Zealanders Paying too much deadweight costs it imposes and the affect Tax? “The design of tax policies can have a 31 As above signifi cant impact on economic growth. it has on our international competitiveness all 32 Treasury Briefi ng to the Incoming Government 2005 - Sustaining need to be acknowledged. Growth pg 29 Tax policy is a major tool that can assist 33 An online survey by the Kiwi Expat Association found that less than in promoting economic growth… the half of the respondents gave economic reasons for going oversees. The government has repeatedly said it wants Almost a third of respondents aged between 25 and 44 earned more most recent evidence suggests that, while than $NZ100,000, compared with about 3% in the New Zealand sound, reform of the tax regime could economic transformation, higher growth population as a whole. See “Half ex-pat Kiwis homesick”, http://tvnz. better support economic growth.” and to reach the top half of the co.nz/view/page/425823/743231. OECD. Until the issue of taxation 34 Statistics NZ, New Zealand in the OECD (Wellington: 2005) pg 24 http://www.stats.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/5090A93F-4D58-4D5E- is addressed, and in a coherent In July this year the government fi nally BB27-9F55C001474D/0/GDPPerCapita.pdf manner, then it is unlikely much 35 Statistics New Zealand External Migration (Wellington: August acknowledged the role tax can play, after 2006) http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/hot-off- progress will be made. years of denying it has any signifi cant impact. the-press/external-migration/external-migration-aug06-hotp. htm?page=para001Master The Business Tax Review is something 36 IMF Working Paper “Implications of Migration on Income and Welfare (Endnotes) of Nationals”, (December 2002) http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ of a turning point, in that the government 1 See Phil Rennie, Are New Zealanders paying too much tax? Issue wp/2002/wp02215.pdf acknowledges and outlines how tax cuts (to Analysis 71, (Sydney: Centre for Independent Studies, May 2006). 37 Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Australia Needs 2 the corporate rate only, at this stage) can help See New Zealand Economic Growth: An Analysis of Performance and Personal Income Tax Reform (Canberra: December 2005) Policy, New Zealand Treasury April 2004; Productivity Perspectives, 38 See Business New Zealand comments in “Australia dangles bigger th economic growth. Business New Zealand, 19 December 2005, and the Council of Trade carrot”, Dominion Post 11th May 2006; Government Tax Review 2001, Union’s website: http://union.org.nz/workplaceproductivity.html. In Issues Paper pg 17; comments from Jason Walker of Hays recruiting 2004 the government established the Workplace Productivity Working on Radio NZ May 10th, 2006; “Come on over, Costello tells Kiwi Can we afford it? Group, including representatives from Business New Zealand, trade taxpayers” Dominion Post 20th May 2006 New Zealand is a highly taxed country. Deep unions, the public and private sectors, and academia. See also the 39 Taxation (Depreciation, Payment Dates Alignment, FBT and OECD’s view: Jean-Philippe Cotis, OECD Chief Economist, Boosting Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2005 th company tax cuts (and cuts to personal incomes and jobs: The OECD strategy, speech delivered on 18 40 See Arthur Grimes Economic Growth and the Size and Structure income tax) can be afforded if the government September 2006 (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/8/47/37452674. of Government: Implications for New Zealand (Motu and University of pdf) Waikato: July 2003), and John Whitehead (Secretary to the Treasury), 3 th has the political willpower. See Productivity Perspectives, Business New Zealand, 19 December “New Zealand’s Economic Growth: A Near and A Far View”, June 2004 2005, for how New Zealand has historically lagged. New Zealanders http://www.treasury.govt.nz/speeches/nzae/#4 work longer hours than Europeans but fewer than Australians or 41 Robert Barro “Government Spending in a Simple Model of In nominal terms, the government collects Americans; see http://www.dol.govt.nz/futureofwork/workplace- Exogenous Growth”, Journal of Political Economy 1990 Vol 98 no. normalhours.asp. 5, and “Reforming Income Tax”, OECD Policy Brief March 2006, pg 4 62% more tax than it did in 2000. This year’s 4 “Company tax a deadweight issue that splits the party”, New Zealand http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/21/36346567.pdf th budget has a surplus of over $11 billion and a Herald 8 July 2002 42 Treasury, New Zealand Economic Growth: An Analysis of 5 cash surplus of $3 billion.47 W. E. Diewert and D. A. Lawrence The Marginal Costs of Taxation in Performance and Policy, Wellington April 2004 http://www.treasury. New Zealand, (Wellington: Business Roundtable, 1994) govt.nz/release/economicgrowth/nzeg-app-apr04.pdf 6 Winton Bates How much government?: The effects of High 43 Robert Barro “Government Spending in a Simple Model of Even using the conservative cash surplus Government Spending on Economic Performance, (Wellington: New Exogenous Growth”, Journal of Political Economy Vol 98 no. 5 1990 Zealand Business Roundtable, 2001). 44 Alex Robson Taxation, Individual Incentives and Economic Growth, 7 of $3 billion would allow for signifi cant cuts. Cost Benefi t Analysis Primer, New Zealand Treasury (Wellington (Paris: Institute for Research on Economic and Fiscal Issues) 2005 December 2005) http://www.treasury.govt.nz/costbenefi tanalysis/ 45 OECD, The Policy Agenda for Growth: An Overview of the Sources For example, the top, middle and corporate 8 Financial statements of the Government of New Zealand for the year of Economic Growth in OECD Countries, 2003, and Bassanini, th tax rates could all be dropped to 30% and ended 30 June 2006, October 11 2006 pg 25 http://www.treasury. Scarpetta and Hemmings, “Economic Growth: The Role of Policies govt.nz/fi nancialstatements/year/jun06/cfsyjun06.pdf and Institutions”, Panel Data Evidence from OECD Countries, OECD the middle rate could be lowered to 18% 9 See Jean-Philippe Cotis, OECD Chief Economist, Boosting incomes working paper 2001. th all for $3.15 billion, according to Treasury’s and jobs: The OECD strategy, speech delivered on 18 September 46 Young Lee and Roger Gordon “Tax Structure and Economic Growth”, estimates.48 All this could be done without 2006 (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/8/47/37452674.pdf), page 4: Journal of Public Economics, 89, 1027 – 1043 (2005) “Our research shows that high labour taxes on married women keep 47Financial statements of the Government of New Zealand for the year even touching current spending or debt them out of the labour market.” Also see Sinclair Davidson Are There ended 30 June 2006, October 11th 2006 pg 25 http://www.treasury. repayment. Any Good Arguments Against Cutting Income Taxes? (Sydney: Centre govt.nz/fi nancialstatements/year/jun06/cfsyjun06.pdf for Independent Studies 2005) which examines the arguments around 48 Treasury’s Ready Reckoner, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/ the income and substitution effects, and the impact tax has on hours readyreckoner/reckoner.asp. worked. 49 The report is available here: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ Future budgets have an annual $1.9 billion 10 Proposed Increase to Family Assistance: Implications for Family BU0604/S00096.htm provision for unallocated spending. This Incomes and Work Incentives, Briefi ng paper from the Ministry of 50 See Phil Rennie How to fi x a leaky tax system, Issue Analysis 74 nd money could also be used for tax reduction. Social Development, 2 November 2005 pg 18. (Sydney: Centre for Independent Studies, September 2006) Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 25 “By The Pricking Of My Thumbs,

Man-hating environmentalists exist. Sadly. Not values of human wealth and happiness. Say so- • If you'll give the idea a chance ... you all environmentalists are man-haters, but there is called “deep ecologists,” “Humans are important might agree that the extinction of Homo a strong and dark strand of misanthropy at the primarily in their capacity to provide stewardship Sapiens would mean survival for millions if heart of too much of it. for the eco-system.” The appropriate response is: not billions of other Earth-dwelling species. “Why?” Why are we primarily important because - The ‘Voluntary Extinction Movement,’ quoted The key difference between the man-haters and we get to sweep the rain forests, rake the beaches, by Daniel Seligman in ‘Down With People,’ in more rational nature-lovers lies in our relationship and feed the wildlife? Is that why we’re here? ‘Fortune’ magazine, September 23, 1991 to nature. The man-haters generally believe that • The extinction of the human species may preserving nature is, by itself, of inherently greater “Yes,” say deep ecologists. If you want examples not only be inevitable, but a good thing... value than any other activity. Rational nature- of mainstream ecologists who subscribe to this - Editorial in ‘The Economist,’ December lovers however understand that human beings “deep ecology” mindset, I could mention how 28, 1988 cannot live by adapting themselves to nature, mainstream environmentalists opposed the fi ghting • A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication but by adapting nature to ourselves. Put nature of the fi res that tore apart Yellowstone Park -- these of cells; the population explosion is an fi rst, and humans inexorably come second – and fi res were “natural” and so sacrosanct; I could uncontrolled multiplication of people ... the man-haters are all too happy with that. To mention the opposition by environmentalists to the We must shift our efforts from treatment paraphrase Monty Python: harvesting of the Pacifi c yew from 1989 to 1997 in of the symptoms to the cutting out of the a bid to develop paclitaxel (Taxol), a revolutionary cancer... We must have population control Every tree is sacred, anti-cancer drug; or the local Green Party’s ... by compulsion if voluntary methods fail. Every bird is great, opposition to Ruakura’s research to fi nd a cure - Paul Ehrlich, ‘The Population Bomb’ (Ballantine If a dune is built on, for multiple scleroris; or the worldwide opposition Books 1968) pg. xi, pg. 166 Greens get quite irate. to the production of Golden Rice, which can help • ...Man is no more important than Every bush is wanted, with third-world anaemia, blindness and death. any other species ... It may well take Every swamp is good, our extinction to set things straight. Every bug is needed, Or I could point out that mainstream environmentalists - David Foreman, ‘Earth First!’ spokesman, In your neighbourhood. were happy to continue with the DDT ban, even quoted by M. John Fayhee in ‘Backpacker’ as evidence mounted that DDT was not toxic magazine, September 1988, pg. 22 Are there really environmentalists that don’t put to birds as claimed, and despite the ban being • I see no solution to our ruination of Earth except humans fi rst, I hear you ask, that put trees, bugs, responsible for the deaths by malaria of up to for a drastic reduction of the human population. rocks and mud puddles ahead of human beings? one-million people every year due to malaria. - David Foreman, ‘Earth First!,’ quoted by Well, yes there are. There are too many who put Gregg Easterbrook in The New Republic, April man a poor second at best. Tree, bugs, rocks and Or I could just offer you these views below from 30, 1990, pg. 18 mud puddles have value, they say, “intrinsic value,” environmentalists within the mainstream, and • If radical environmentalists were to invent a but human beings do not. Put more succinctly, that make clear that positions I’ve mentioned disease to bring human populations back to as ‘Earth First! Journal’ editor John Davis once above are not surprising, given the view within sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. did: “Human beings, as a species, have no more mainstream environmentalism that human - from a good old Earth First! periodical, value than slugs.” That was not intended by Davis beings come second, at best. quoted in ‘Access to Energy,’ Vol.17 No.4, as a throwaway remark. He meant it. December 1989 • Honorable representatives of the great saurians • As radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS TFR says that the anti-concept of “intrinsic of older creation, may you long enjoy your lilies not as a problem but a necessary solution. values” itself needs rejecting, and a new ethic of and rushes, and be blessed now and then with a - ‘Earth First!’ periodical, quoted in ‘Planet environmentalism enjoined, one in which human mouthful of terror-stricken man by way of a dainty. Stricken’ by Alan Pell Crawford and Art Levine, beings are put fi rst. - A benediction to alligators by John Muir, Vogue magazine, September 1989, pg. 710 founder of the Sierra Club, quoted with approval • I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra “Intrinsic values” should be rejected as an anti- as “a good epigram” by environmentalist Bill Club look reasonable. Then I founded the Earth concept since it wipes out the idea of real values. McKibben in ‘The End of Nature’ (New York: Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth Values cannot be intrinsic -- what you’re saying Random House, 1989) pg. 176 look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look when you posit an intrinsic value is actually to say ‘I • We have wished...for a disaster or for a social change reasonable. We're still waiting for someone to value this.’ Put it another way: The question of Value to come and bomb us back into the stone age... come along and make Earth First! look reasonable. always implies a valuer. Hence, value implies the - Environmentalist Stewart Brand in ‘The Whole - “Mainstream” environmentalist David Brower, question: ‘Valuable to whom, and for what.’ Such Earth Catalog’ [Stewart might recently have quoted by Virginia Postrel in ‘Reason’ magazine, values may be either objective or subjective, but they seen the light, if his recent comments are April 1990, pg. 24 ain’t intrinsic. It is us who bestows value. Why? anything to go by, that that “Over the next ten • Human happiness, and certainly human years ... the mainstream of the environmental fecundity, are not as important as a wild and Because “value” is a uniquely human concept -- the movement will reverse its opinion and activism healthy planet. We are not interested in the whole question of value only has importance for a in four major areas: population growth, urbani- utility of a particular species, or free-fl owing human valuer since there’s no point in producing zation, genetically engineered organisms, and river, or ecosystem to mankind. They have ethics for other species -- they ain’t gonna listen to nuclear power.”] intrinsic value, more value - to me - than you. As PJ O’Rourke said, you can keep telling the lion • Y ou think Hiroshima was bad, let me tell another human body, or a billion of them... it’s wrong, but he’ll still rip the guts right out of Bambi. you, mister, Hiroshima wasn't bad enough! Until such time as Homo Sapiens should - Faye Dunaway as the voice of “Mother decide to rejoin nature, some of us can So it’s not to say that “human life is somehow ... Earth/Gaia” in the 1991 WTBS series ‘Voice only hope for the right virus to come along. superior to other forms of life “ -- although we are of the Planet’ - David M. Graber, National Park Service that to each of us -- but that the whole question • Given the total, absolute, and fi nal disappearance biologist, in a review of Bill McKibben’s ‘The of value only has relevance to human life. of Homo Sapiens, then, not only would the Earth's End of Nature,’ in the Los Angeles Times Book Now, it seems manifestly clear that mainstream Community of Life continue to exist but ... the Review, October 22, 1989, pg. 9 environmentalism does not always recognise ending of the human epoch on Earth would most • Childbearing [should be] a punishable mankind’s right of survival, does not put human likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!' crime against society...all potential parents beings first (indeed, quite the opposite), and - Paul W. Taylor, ethics professor at City University, [should be] required to use contraceptive values the so-called “intrinsic values” of wild NYC, in ‘Respect for Nature’ (Princeton Univ chemicals, the government issuing nature and natural processes over the human Press, 1989) pg. 115 antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.

26 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz Something Wicked This Way Comes…”

- Herr David Brower, founder of Friends of the for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, solution to the problem of overpopulation.” Earth, quoted in ‘The Coercive Utopians’ by abundant energy because of what we would —Author, biologist, and International Whaling Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac (1985 Regnery do with it. We ought to be looking for energy Commissioner Lyall Watson, The Financial Gateway Inc.) sources that are adequate for our needs, Times, 15 July 1995 • I got the impression that instead of but that won’t give us the excesses of And then of course there are the just plain dumb going out to shoot birds, I should go concentrated energy with which we could quotes: The environmentalists who make the out and shoot the kids who shoot birds. do mischief to the earth or to each other. mistake or predicting disaster, rather than just - Paul Watson, a founder of ‘Greenpeace,’ —Amory Lovins in ‘The Mother Earth–Plowboy’ wishing for it. Here’s just a small selection: quoted in ‘Access to Energy’ Vol.17 No.4, Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p.22 December 1989 • The only real good technology is no technology • Britain's industrial growth will come to a halt • We, in the Green movement, aspire to a cultural at all. Technology is taxation without because its coal reserves are running out “… it model in which the killing of a forest will be representation, imposed by our elitist species is useless the think of substituting any other kind considered more contemptible and more criminal (man) upon the rest of the natural world. of fuel for coal... some day our coal seams [may] than the sale of 6-year old children to Asian brothels. —John Shuttleworth, founder of ‘Mother Earth be found emptied to the bottom, and swept - Carl Amery of the Green Party, quoted in News’ magazine clean like a coal-cellar. Our fi res and furnaces ... ‘Mensch & Energie,’ April 1983 • What we’ve got to do in energy conservation suddenly extinguished, and cold and darkness • A reporter asked Dr. Wurster whether or not the is try to ride the global warming issue. Even ... left to reign over a depopulated country. ban on the use of DDT would not encourage if the theory of global warming is wrong, to --Economist William Stanley Jevons, writing the use of the very toxic materials, Parathion, have approached global warming as if it is in 1865 Azedrin and Methylparathion, the organo- real means energy conservation, so we will • Demographers agree almost unanimously on the phosphates, [and] nerve gas derivatives. be doing the right thing anyway in terms of following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread And he said 'Probably'. The reporter then economic policy and environmental policy. famines will begin in India; these will spread asked him if these organo-phosphates did —Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D- by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China not have a long record of killing people. And Colorado), adviser to Al Gore, and head of Ted and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, Dr. Wurster, refl ecting the views of a number Turner’s United Nations Foundation, quoted in or conceivably sooner, South and Central of other scientists, said 'So what? People are Science Under Siege by Michael Fumento America will exist under famine conditions....By the cause of all the problems; we have too • I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire many of them; we need to get rid of some played an important part in balancing ecosystems. world, with the exception of Western Europe, of them; and this is as good a way as any.' —John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal North America, and Australia, will be in famine. - Victor J. Yannacone, Jr., lawyer and co- • Human beings, as a species, --Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas founder of the Environmental Defense Fund, have no more value than slugs. State University. Spring 1970 issue of ‘The on EDF co-founder Dr. Charles Wurster, at a —John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal Living Wilderness.’ May 20, 1970 speech at the Union League • We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. • …some scientists estimate that the world's Club in New York City. Published in the It may take our extinction to set things straight. known supplies of oil, tin, copper, and Congressional Record as Serial No.92-A of —David Foreman, Earth First! aluminium will be used up within your lifetime. Hearings on Federal Pesticide Control Act of • Phasing out the human race will solve every --1990s school textbook The United States and 1971, pg.266-267 problem on earth, social and environmental. Its People, quoted by Ronald Bailey in testimony • Shit happens. They were in the croc's —Dave Foreman, Founder of Earth First! to US House Subcommittee on Energy and territory. • If radical environmentalists were to invent a Mineral Resources, Feb 4, 2004 - A commenter at ‘Not PC’ in response to disease to bring human populations back to • The period of global food security is over. the death of two human beings by crocodile sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. As the demand for food continues to press attack. —Earth First! Newsletter against supply, inevitably real food prices • The right to have children should be a • The collective needs of non-human will rise. The question no longer seems marketable commodity, bought and traded by species must take precedence over to be whether they will rise, but how much. individuals but absolutely limited by the state. the needs and desires of humans. --Worldwatch Institute founder Lester Brown, 1981 —Kenneth Boulding, populariser of the —Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project • The world's farmers can no longer “Spaceship Earth” concept (as quoted by William • If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be counted on to feed the projected Tucker in Progress and Privilege, 1982) be returned to Earth as a killer virus additions to the world's population. • Free Enterprise really means rich people get to lower human population levels. -- Worldwatch Institute founder Lester Brown, richer. They have the freedom to exploit and —Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund, speaking State of the World Report, 1994 psychologically rape their fellow human beings in to the UN in 1990. • The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII the process... Capitalism is destroying the earth. • Every time you turn on an electric light, is in accord with the increase in global air pollution —Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned you are making another brainless baby. associated with industrialization, mechanization, Scientists —Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned urbanization and exploding population. • We must make this an insecure and inhospitable Scientists —Reid Bryson, “Global Ecology; Readings place for capitalists and their projects… We • To feed a starving child is to exacerbate towards a rational strategy for Man”, (1971) must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt the world population problem. • The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, dam construction, tear down existing dams, free —author Lamont Cole, quoted by Elizabeth the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of Whelan in her book Toxic Terror millions of people are going to starve to death tens of millions of acres of presently settled land. • The only hope for the world is to make sure there in spite of any crash programs embarked upon —David Foreman, Earth First! is not another United States: We can’t let other now. Population control is the only answer. • Everything we have developed over the countries have the same number of cars, the —Paul Ehrlich, in The Population Bomb last 100 years should be destroyed. amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. (Ballantine Books 1968) —Pentti Linkola, Finnish Eco-fascist We have to stop this Third World countries right • I would take even money that England • “[World War III would be] a happy occasion where they are. And it is important to the rest will not exist in the year 2000. for the planet.... If there were a button I could of the world to make sure that they don’t suffer —Paul Ehrlich in (1969) press, I would sacrifi ce myself without hesitating, economically by virtue of our stopping them. • In ten years all important animal life in the sea will if it meant millions of people would die." —Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to —Pentti Linkola, Finnish Eco-fascist Defense Fund be evacuated because of the stench of dead fi sh. • If you ask me, it’d be a little short of disastrous • Cannibalism is a “radical but realistic —Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 27 • Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age what it would take to put us in an ice age. life spell the end of the natural world? ... cause of scarcity…in which the accessible supplies —Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global irreversible damage to the biosphere, making of many key minerals will be facing depletion. cooling, speaking on Earth Day 1970. Watt genetic pollution an even greater threat to the —Paul Ehrlich in (1976) is Editor in Chief, Encyclopedia of Human planet than nuclear or petrochemical pollution?” • There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather Ecology Advisory Board Member, Center for -- Jeremy Rifkin, The Biotech Century patterns have begun to change dramatically the Study of CO2 and Climate Change 1999 and that these changes may portend a • Indeed, when we wake up 20 years from now • Current estimates that a flu pandemic drastic decline in food production—with and fi nd that the Atlantic Ocean is just outside could infect 20% of the world's population serious political implications for just about Washington, D.C., because the polar icecaps are and cause 7.5 million deaths are "among every nation on earth. The drop in food melting, we may look back at this pivotal election. the more optimistic predictions of production could begin quite soon… The --New York Times foreign affairs columnist how the next pandemic might unfold.” evidence in support of these predictions Thomas Friedman, writing in NY Times, Dec --Osterhaus et al. Nature May 2005 has now begun to accumulate so massively 8, 2000. • The next flu pandemic could kill that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep • Frostban -- a harmless bacteria genetically as many as 150 million people. up with it… This [cooling] trend will reduce engineered to protect plants from freezing --Dr. David Nabarro. WHO spokesman agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. temperatures -- "could irreversibly affect Sept 2005. --Science writer Peter Gwynne writing in worldwide climate and precipitation • As many as 142 million people around the world ‘The Cooling World,’ ‘Newsweek’ magazine, patterns over a long, long period of time. could die if bird fl u turns into a "worst case" April 28, 1975 -- Founder and president of the Foundation infl uenza pandemic and global economic losses • This cooling has already killed hundreds of on Economic Trends, Jeremy Rifkin, 1986 could run to $4.4 trillion - the equivalent of wiping thousands of people. If it continues and no • The economic impact of BIV (Bovine out the entire Japanese economy for a year. strong action is taken, it will cause world Immunodeficiency Virus) on the beef --Report entitled Global Macroeconomic famine, world chaos and world war, and this and dairy industries is likely to be • Consequences of Pandemic Infl uenza, from could all come about before the year 2000. devastating in the years to come. the Lowy Institute in Australia. Feb 2006. —Lowell Ponte in his book The Cooling, --Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef 1992 “Unless we announce disasters, no one will 1976 (which was endorsed by US Senator • Biotech crops will "run amok"; they will listen.” Claiborne Pell and current Bush adviser on create "super bugs"; they will lead to farmers -- Sir John Houghton, global warming Stephen Schneider) using "greater quantities of herbicides." responsible for producing the • I f present trends continue, the world will be --Jeremy Rifkin, 1999 Boston Globe fi rst three IPCC reports on global about four degrees colder for the global mean • The use of biotechnology might "risk a fatal warming, writing in 1994. temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees interruption of millions of years of evolutionary colder by the year 2000. … This is about twice development? Might not the artifi cial creation of The advantage of speaking for the speechless

Too many people spend too much of their time as they disadvantage all of us by putting heritage values, spiritual values, cultural speaking either on someone else’s behalf or as their hands in our pockets -- naturally too values, or moral values of the community. a spokesman for people or things who can’t ensuring they advantage themselves by Why do these people get headlines and speak for themselves, and they spend too doing so. Or politicians who say they ‘speak hegemony when the communities, species, much of our time telling us what we should be for their people,’ even as their actions serve trees, rocks and mud puddles they claim doing on behalf of those they claim to speak to further impoverish the people they claim to speak for haven’t ever given them for. And in the name of those “without a voice” to speak for. Why don’t these claims and any mandate to speak on their behalf? they often seek to silence those who do. the consequent theft and impoverishment caused receive any decent scrutiny? How do they all get away with it, and why do There is a special status in law and in our we let them? culture given to advocates who claim to Or look at high-profi le activists, like for example speak for the voiceless. They get extra kudos, Cindy Sheehan, who claims (or allows others When you are speaking for the speechless, legal aid, sympathy, headlines, moral stature to claim on her behalf) to speak for “an the best thing about it is that the speechless ... and just sometimes (and just coincidentally) invigorated anti-war movement.” As Rick can’t speak up for themselves to tell you when they also get themselves a job for life. Moran asks, where exactly are all the protesters you’re talking nonsense -- which is precisely she is supposed to have inspired? [Hat tip SH] why so many idiots are attracted to this kind Look for example at politicians who like to Why do claims like this get traction, unless it is of advocacy. Your idiocy is trumped by the claim they speak for the disadvantaged, even that the views of activists like Mother Sheehan fact that a) you have a mandate (or claim to), refl ect those who so breathlessly and b) you care (or claim to). When the things report their activities and opinions? and people you claim to be speaking for can’t contradict you, you can in short have it any And what about those busybodies who way you want since what you say goes. It’s claim to speak for “future generations,” your opinion that matters, and your opinion as if they somehow have a direct line has all the moral force of those you claim to what future human beings are going to be speaking for, but without the need to to want at some unspecifi ed time in the convince them that you’re making any sense. future. Why do they get taken so gosh- darned seriously? Who’s to say that So if you’re speaking for the speechless, ‘future generations’ won’t think they’re speaking for the unspeakable, speaking for all bloody idiots with an anti-human those who wouldn’t let you if they knew, agenda who should have been silenced or speaking for those who know you’re an with a gag and a bucket of paraquat? idiot but just don’t give a shit, then don’t pretend you’re speaking for anybody who has And how about those that claim to specifi cally endorsed you. Tell people speak for other species, or for wild instead who you are really speaking for. Consider the trees. They have no legs to run with. and beautiful landscapes, or for the Yourself.

28 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz TFR Film-Goers’ Guide: Proudly sponsored by:

A Global Goring Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges

MARLO LEWIS A Skeptics’ Guide To An ‘Inconvenient Truth’

“An Inconvenient Truth,” Vice President Al Gore’s book and fi lm on “The • Cites Turner et al. (2006), who found a 0.5°C planetary emergency of global warming and what can be done about to 0.7°C per decade wintertime warming trend in the mid-troposphere above Antarctica, as it,” purports to be a non-ideological exposition of climate science and measured by weather balloons, but neglects to mention that Turner et al. found much less common sense morality. As this commentary shows, ‘An Inconvenient warming—about 0.15°C/decade—at the Truth’ is a colorfully illustrated lawyer’s brief that uses science selectively Antarctic surface, or that NASA satellites, which also measure troposphere temperatures, and often dubiously to advance an agenda of alarm and energy rationing. show a 0.12°C/decade Antarctic cooling trend since November 1978.

Gore calls global warming a “moral issue,” • Never confronts a key implication of its • Shows a picture of a garbage-strewn refuse but for him it is a moralizing issue—a license assumption that climate is highly sensitive dump in Mexico City to illustrate the “collision to castigate political adversaries and blame to CO2 emissions—left to its own devices, between our civilization and the Earth”—as America fi rst for everything from hurricanes global climate would be rapidly deteriorating if blight and swill were the hallmarks of to fl oods to wildfi res to tick-borne disease. into another ice age. mankind’s interaction with nature. Somehow he sees nothing immoral in the attempt to make fossil energy scarcer and • Neglects to mention that, due to the growth • Sees “success” in the recent reduction more costly in a world where 1.6 billion people of urban heat islands, U.S. cities and towns of global population growth rates, not in still have no access to electricity and billions will continually break temperature records, the fossil-energy-based civilization that has more are too poor to own a car. with or without help from global warming. enabled mankind to increase its numbers more than six-fold since the dawn of the Nearly every signifi cant statement that former • Neglects to mention that global warming industrial revolution. Vice President Gore makes regarding climate could reduce the severity of wintertime (frontal science and climate policy is either one sided, storms) by decreasing the temperature • Compares Haiti (deforestation) and the misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or differential between colliding air masses. Dominican Republic (lush forest cover) wrong. In light of these numerous distortions, to illustrate the impact of politics on the An Inconvenient Truth is ill-suited to serve as • Highlights London’s construction of the environment, but overlooks another key a guide to climate science and climate policy Thames River fl ood barrier as evidence of implication of the comparison: Poverty is the for the American people. environment’s number one enemy. global-warming induced sea-level rise without mentioning that London is sinking two to six Summary of Distortions • Notes that “much forest destruction” and times faster than global sea levels are rising. “almost 30%” of annual CO2 emissions One Sided come from “the burning of brushland for • Ignores the large role of natural variability • Never acknowledges the indispensable role subsistence agriculture and wood fi res used of fossil fuels in ending serfdom and slavery, in Arctic climate, never mentioning that for cooking,” but never considers whether alleviating hunger and poverty, extending Arctic temperatures in the 1930s equaled fossil energy restrictions would set back th human life-spans, and democratising or exceeded those of the late 20 century, developing countries both economically and consumer goods, literacy, leisure, and and that the Arctic during the early- to mid- environmentally. personal mobility. Holocene was signifi cantly warmer than it is today. • Neglects to mention the circumstances that • Never acknowledges the environmental, make it reasonable rather than blameworthy health, and economic benefi ts of climatic • Cites the fi nding of a study that the number for America to be the biggest CO2 emitter: warmth and the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 of recorded wildfi res in North America has the world’s largest economy, high per capita content. increased in recent decades but not the same incomes, abundant fossil energy resources, study’s fi nding that the total area burned markets integrated across continental • Never acknowledges the major role of decreased by 90% since the 1930s. distances, and the world’s most highly mobile natural variability in shrinking the Snows of population. Kilimanjaro and other mountain glaciers. • Fosters the impression that global warming can only be good for bad things (algae, ticks) • Impugns the motives of so-called global • Never mentions the 1976 regime shift in the and bad for good things (polar bears, migratory warming skeptics but never acknowledges Pacifi c Decadal Oscillation, a major cause of the special-interest motivations of those birds)—nature according to a morality play. recent climate change in Alaska. whose research grants, direct mail income, industrial policy privileges, regulatory power, • Cites Velicogna and Wahr (2006), who found • Presents a graph tracking CO2 levels and prosecutorial plunder, or political careers an overall loss in Antarctic ice mass during global temperatures during the past 650,000 depend on keeping the public in a state of 2002-2005, but ignores Davis et al. (2005), years, but never mentions the most signifi cant fear about global warming. point: global temperatures were warmer than who found an overall ice mass gain during the present during each of the past four 1992-2003. Three years worth of data is too • Castigates former White House offi cial Phil interglacial periods, even though CO2 levels short to tell anything about a trend in a system Cooney for editing U.S. Government climate were lower. as vast and complex as Antarctica. change policy documents, without ever

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 29 TFR Film-Goers’ Guide: Proudly sponsored by:

A Global Goring Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges considering the scientifi c merits of Cooney’s research, and neglects to mention that corn- • Misrepresents the auto companies’ position editing. based ethanol, a product in commercial use in their lawsuit to overturn California’s CO2 • Waxes enthusiastic about cellulosic ethanol, for a century, is still more costly than regular emissions law, neglecting to mention that a product with no commercial application gasoline despite oil prices exceeding $70 a CO2 standards are de facto fuel economy despite 30 years of government-funded barrel. What ‘Everybody Knows’ About Tuvalu

No. Compensation? In their dreams.

Those “hundreds of millions” From the ‘Skeptics’ Guide to An Inconvenient of “climate refugees” are Truth’: supposed to be the result of massive rises in sea level. Al Sea Level Rise. Gore’s fi lm talks about sea The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel level rises of “18 to 20 feet,” on Climate Change does not forecast sea- partly as a result of “possible” level rises of “18 to 20 feet.” Rather, it says, melting of the Greenland ice “We project a sea level rise of 0.09 to 0.88 sheet. The Skeptics’ Guide m for 1990 to 2100, with a central value of to An Inconvenient Truth 0.48 m. The central value gives an average conveniently rebuffs these rate of 2.2 to 4.4 times the rate over the two related myths (see 20th century...It is now widely agreed that below). major loss of grounded ice and accelerated sea level rise are very unlikely during the 21st Everybody knows that the boat is leaking And, guess what. Have a century.” Al Gore’s suggestions of much more Everybody knows that the captain lied look at that graph below, based on data from are therefore extremely alarmist. Everybody got this broken feeling National Tidal Facility, Adelaide, who confi rm Like their father or their dog just died... - that “there has been no signifi cant rise in Greenland Climate. sea level in Tuvalu over the past 22 years.” – Leonard Cohen Greenland was warmer in the 1920s What else does everybody know? and 1930s than it is now. A recent study We know (via the breathless Sunday Star by Dr. Peter Chylek Times) that “New Zealand may be refuge as of the University of rising sea levels displace hundred of millions California, Riverside, of people”! That Helen Clark has”called for addressed the boldness in tackling climate change”! That question of whether she boldly “credits [Al Gore’s movie] An man is directly Inconvenient Truth with helping sharpen public responsible for opinion”! This movie, says the Star, “lays out recent warming: “An evidence for the potentially devastating effects important question of man-made climate change” and this movie is to what extent tells us that sea levels are rising, and that sea can the current (1995-2005) temperature level rises are going to sink Tuvalu with ten As John Daly reported a few years back, increase in Greenland coastal regions be years, and that ‘climate refugees’ from Tuvalu The reported `plight’ of the Tuvaluans is not interpreted as evidence of man-induced are going to fl ood New Zealand. about sea level rise at all - it’s about over- global warming? Although there has been a population. With such a high population considerable temperature increase during the We all know it. density, the fresh water table on the atolls is last decade (1995 to 2005) a similar increase subject to rapid depletion, especially in dry and at a faster rate occurred during the The BBC knows it. Oxfam knows it. Australian years. In addition, the development which early part of the 20th century (1920 to 1930) politicians all know it. Pacifi c Islands leaders would follow from such a high density when carbon dioxide or other greenhouse know it (and they want compensation). Nick will bring the inevitable coastal erosion, gases could not be a cause. The Greenland Smith, Gordon Copeland and David Parker a problem which the Tuvalu government warming of 1920 to 1930 demonstrates that know it. Helen Clark knows it. Al Gore knows falsely blames on climate change and sea a high concentration of carbon dioxide and it. And Al Gore’s movie-goers all know it. level rise. Tide gauge data from all around other greenhouse gases is not a necessary the South Pacifi c shows the same pattern condition for period of warming to arise. The Everybody knows that the war is over as the one at Funafuti - no sea level rise. observed 1995-2005 temperature increase Everybody knows the good guys lost It is, and always was, a bogus claim, with seems to be within a natural variability of Greenland climate.” (Petr Chylek et al., Everybody knows it, so it must be true, mustn’t few in the outside world bothering to check Geophysical Research Letters, 13 June 2006.) it? the accuracy of the claim.

30 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz TFR Film-Goers’ Guide: Proudly sponsored SMOKINGby:

A Global Goring Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges standards and that federal law prohibits states • Ignores the societal factors that typically declined in the 1970s and has been stable from regulating fuel economy. overwhelm climatic factors in determining since the late 1980s. people’s risk of damage or death from • Blames Detroit’s fi nancial troubles on the hurricanes, fl oods, drought, tornadoes, • Implies that a study, which found that none Big Three’s high-volume production of SUVs, wildfi res, and disease. of 928 science articles (actually abstracts) even though U.S. automakers probably would denied a CO2-global warming link, shows that not even exist today had they been “ahead • Implies that the 2006 tropical cyclone Gore’s apocalyptic view of global warming is of their time” and emphasized Kyoto-friendly season in Australia was unusually active and, the “consensus” view among scientists. vehicles in the 1990s. An Inconvenient Truth thus, symptomatic of global warming. In says nothing about the biggest cause of contrast, National Oceanic and Atmospheric • Reports that 48 Nobel Prize-winning Detroit’s falling capitalization—unaffordable Administration describes the season as “near scientists accused Bush of distorting science, payments for employee benefi t packages average.” without mentioning that the scientists acted negotiated decades ago. as members of a 527 group set up to promote • Cites increases in the Kerry for President Campaign. • Touts Denmark’s wind farms without insurance payments mentioning any of the well-known drawbacks to victims of • Implies that the United States is an of wind power: cost, intermittency, avian hurricanes, fl oods, environmental laggard because China mortality, site depletion, and scenic drought, tornadoes, has adopted more stringent fuel economy degradation. wildfi res, and other standards, glossing over China’s horrendous Al Gore: Misleading, natural disasters as air quality problems. • Never addresses the obvious criticism that one-sided, evidence of a global- the Kyoto Protocol is all pain for no gain and warming ravaged • Confuses fuel effi ciency (the amount of that policies tough enough to measurably speculative, planet, even though useful work per unit of fuel consumed) with cool the planet would be a “cure” worse than exaggerating and the increases are fuel economy (miles per gallon), falsely the alleged disease. wrong. chiefl y due to portraying U.S. cars and trucks as ineffi cient socioeconomic compared to their European and Japanese • Claims a study by Robert Socolow and factors such as counterparts. Stephen Pacala (S&P) shows that “affordable” population growth and development in high technologies could reduce U.S. carbon risk coastal areas and cities. Exaggerated emissions below 1970 levels, even though • Exaggerates the certainty and hypes S&P specifi cally say their study does not • Re-labels as “major fl oods” (a category importance of the alleged link between global estimate costs, and neglects to mention defi ned by physical magnitude) a chart of warming and the frequency and severity of that S&P’s study is a response to Hoffert “damaging fl oods” (a category defi ned by tropical storms. et al. (2002), a team of 18 energy experts, socioeconomic and political criteria). who concluded that, “CO2 is a combustion • Hypes the importance of the US National product vital to how civilization is powered; it • Re-labels as “major wildfi res” (a category Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cannot be regulated away.” defi ned by physical magnitude) a chart of running out of names (21 per year) for “recorded wildfi res” (a category refl ecting Atlantic hurricanes in 2005, and the fact that Misleading changes in data collection and reporting, some storms continued into December. The • Implies that a two-page photograph of such as increases in the frequency and scope practice of naming storms only goes back Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina shows that of satellite monitoring). to 1953, and hurricane detection capabilities the glacier is melting away, even though the have improved dramatically since the 1950s, glacier’s terminal boundary has not changed • Confl ates the Thermohaline Circulation, so the “record” number of named storms in in 90 years. a convective system primarily driven by 2005 may be an artifact of the data. Also, differences in salinity and sea temperatures, Atlantic hurricanes continued into December • Implies that, throughout the past 650,000 with the Gulf Stream, a wind-driven system in several previous years including 1878, years, changes in CO2 levels preceded energized primarily by the Earth’s spin and 1887, and 1888. and largely caused changes in global the lunar tides, exaggerating the risk of a temperature, whereas the causality mostly big chill in Europe from a weakening of the • Never explains why anyone should be runs the other way, with CO2 changes trailing Thermohaline Circulation. alarmed about the current Arctic warming, global temperature changes by hundreds to considering that our stone-age ancestors thousands of years. • Presents a graph showing the number of survived (and likely benefi ted from) the much annual closings of the Thames River tidal stronger and longer Arctic warming known as • Belittles as ideologically motivated the barriers from 1930 to the present, even though the Holocene Climate Optimum. painstaking and now widely-accepted the modern barrier system was completed in methodological critiques by Canadians Steve 1982 and became operational in 1984. This • Portrays the cracking of the Ward Hunt McIntyre and Ross McKitrick of the Hockey apples-to-oranges comparison conveys the ice shelf in 2002 as a portent of doom, even Stick reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere false impression that London faced no serious though the shelf was merely a remnant of climate history. fl ood risk until recent decades. a much larger Arctic ice formation that had already lost 90% of its area during 1906- • Distracts readers from the main hurricane • Blames global warming for the decline 1982. problem facing the United States: the ever- “since the 1960s” of the Emperor Penguin growing, politically-subsidized concentration population in Antarctica, implying that the • Claims polar bears “have been drowning in of population and wealth in vulnerable coastal penguins are in peril, their numbers dwindling signifi cant numbers,” based on a report that regions. as the world warms. In fact, the population found four drowned polar bears in one month

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 31 TFR Film-Goers’ Guide: Proudly sponsored by:

A Global Goring Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges in one year, following an abrupt storm. to 1950 show no correlation between during the early Holocene. North Pacifi c storm activity and global • Claims global warming is creating “ecological temperatures. • Warns that meltwater from Greenland could niches” for “invasive alien species,” never disrupt the Atlantic thermohaline circulation mentioning other, more important factors • Blames global warming for the record- based on research indicating that a major such as increases in trade, tourism, and urban breaking 37-inch downpour in Mumbai, disruption occurred 8,200 years ago when a heat islands. For example, due to population India, in July 2005, even though there has giant ice dam burst in North America, allowing growth, Berlin warmed twice as much during been no trend in Mumbai rainfall for the two lakes to drain rapidly into the sea. An 1886-1898 as the Intergovernmental Panel on month of July in 45 years. Inconvenient Truth does not mention that Climate Change (IPCC) estimates the entire the lakes injected more than 100,000 cubic world warmed in the 20th century. • Blames global warming for recent fl oods in kilometers of freshwater into the sea, whereas China’s Sichuan and Shandong provinces, Greenland ice melt contributes a few hundred • Blames global warming for pine beetle even though far more damaging fl oods cubic kilometers a year. infestations that likely have more to do struck those areas in the 19th and early 20th with increased forest density and plain old centuries. • Claims global warming is “disrupting millions mismanagement. of delicately balanced ecological relationships • Blames global warming for the among species” based on a study showing • Portrays the collapse in 2002 of the disappearance of Lake Chad, a disaster more that, in the Netherlands, caterpillars are Larson-B ice shelf—a formation the “size of likely stemming from a combination of regional hatching two weeks earlier than the peak Rhode Island”—as harbinger of doom. For climate variability and societal factors such as arrival season of caterpillar-eating migratory perspective, the Larson-B was 180th the size population increase and overgrazing. birds. AIT claims the birds’ “chicks are of Texas and 1/246th the size of the West in trouble,” yet the researcher found “no Antarctic Ice Sheet. • Claims global warming is drying out soils demonstrable effect” on the bird population • Warns that the break-off of fl oating ice all over the world, whereas pan evaporation during the past 20 years. shelves like the Larson B accelerates the fl ow studies indicate that, in general, the Earth’s of land-based ice behind them. However, surface is becoming wetter. • Warns that global warming is destroying researchers found that the speedup was not coral reefs, even though today’s main reef observable beyond about 10 km inland, and • Presents one climate model’s projection builders evolved and thrived during periods that decelerations occurred only one year of increased U.S. drought as authoritative substantially warmer than the present. later. even though another leading model forecasts increased wetness, climate model hydrology • Warns that a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 • Presents a graph suggesting that China’s forecasts on regional scales are notoriously levels to 560 ppm will so acidify seawater that new fuel economy standards are almost unreliable, and most of the United States all optimal areas for coral reef construction 30% more stringent than the current U.S. (outside the Southwest) became wetter during will disappear by 2050. This is not plausible. standards. In fact, the Chinese standards are 1925-2003. Coral calcifi cation rates have increased as only about 5% more stringent. ocean temperatures and CO2 levels have • Blames global warming for the severe drought risen, and today’s main reef builders evolved that hit the Amazon in 2005. RealClimate.Org, and thrived during the Mesozoic Period, when Speculative a web site set up to debunk global warming atmospheric CO2 levels hovered above 1,000 • Warns of impending water shortages in Asia “skeptics,” concluded that it is not possible to ppm for 150 million years and exceeded 2,000 due to global warming but does not check link the drought to global warming. ppm for several million years. whether there is any correlation between global warming and Eurasian snow cover • Warns of a positive feedback whereby CO2- • Links global warming to toxic algae bloom (there isn’t). Also, if Tibetan glaciers melt, induced warming melts tundra, releasing more outbreaks in the Baltic Sea that can be entirely that should increase water availability in the CO2 locked up in frozen soils. An alternative explained by record-high phosphorus levels, coming decades. scenario is also plausible: The range of record-low nitrogen-to-phosphorus levels, carbon-storing vegetation expands as tundra and local meteorological conditions. • Claims that CO2 concentrations in the thaws. Holocene never rose above 300 ppm in pre- • Asserts without evidence that global industrial times, and that the current level • Claims global warming endangers polar warming is causing more tick-borne disease. (380 ppm) is “way above” the range of natural bears even though polar bear populations An Oxford University study found no variability. Proxy data indicate that, in the early are increasing in Arctic areas where it is relationship between climate change and tick- Holocene, CO2 levels exceeded 330 ppm for warming and declining in Arctic areas where borne disease in Europe. centuries and reached 348 ppm. it is cooling. • Blames global warming for the resurgence • Claims that a Scripps Oceanography Institute • Blames global warming for Alaska’s of malaria in Kenya, even though several study shows that ocean temperatures during “drunken trees” (trees rooted in previously studies found no climate link and attribute the past 40 years are “way above the range of frozen tundra, which sway in all directions as the problem to decreased spraying of homes natural variability.” Proxy data indicate that the the ice melts), ignoring the possibly large role with DDT, anti-malarial drug resistance, and Atlantic Ocean off the West Coast of Africa of the 1976 Pacifi c Decadal Oscillation shift. incompetent public health programs. was warmer than present during the Medieval Warm Period. • Blames rising CO2 levels for recent declines • Insinuates that global warming is a factor in in Arctic sea ice, ignoring the potentially large the emergence of some 30 “new” diseases • Blames global warming for the record role of natural variability. An Inconvenient Truth over the last three decades, but cites no number of typhoons hitting Japan in 2004. never mentions that wind pattern shifts may supporting research or evidence. Local meteorological conditions, not average account for much of the observed changes global temperatures, determine the trajectory in sea ice, or that the Canadian Arctic • Blames global warming for the decline of particular storms, and data going back Archipelago had considerably less sea ice “since the 1960s” of the Emperor Penguin 32 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz TFR Film-Goers’ Guide: Proudly sponsored by:

A Global Goring Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges population in Antarctica based on a Medieval Warm Period was as warm as or • Blames global warming for the rapid coast- speculative assessment by two researchers warmer than any recent decade. to-coast spread of the West Nile virus. that warm sea temperatures in the 1970s North America contains nearly all the climate reduced the birds’ main food source. An • Calls carbon dioxide (CO2) the “most types in the world—from hot, dry deserts to equally plausible explanation is that Antarctic important greenhouse gas.” Water vapor is boreal forests, to frigid tundra—a range that ecotourism, which became popular in the the leading contributor to the greenhouse dwarfs any small alteration in temperature or 1970s, disturbed the rookeries. effect. recipitation that may be related to atmospheric CO2 levels. The virus could not have spread • Cites the growing number of Thames • Claims Venus is too hot and Mars too so far so fast, if it were climate-sensitive. River barrier closings as evidence of global cold to support life due to differences in warming-induced sea level rise, even though atmospheric CO2 concentrations (they are • Cites Tuvalu, Polynesia, as a place where UK authorities close the barriers to keep water nearly identical), rather than differences in rising sea levels force residents to evacuate in as well as to keep tidal surges out. atmospheric densities and distances from the their homes. In reality, sea levels at Tuvalu fell Sun (both huge). during the latter half of the 20th century and • Warns of “signifi cant and alarming structural even during the 1990s, allegedly the warmest changes” in the submarine base of the West • Claims scientists have validated the decade of the millennium. Antarctic Ice Sheet, but does not tell us what “Hockey Stick” climate reconstruction, those changes are or why they are “signifi cant according to which the 1990s were likely • Claims sea level rise could be many times and alarming.” The melting and retreat of the the warmest decade of the past millennium larger and more rapid “depending on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet “grounding line” has and 1998 the warmest year. It is now widely choices we make or do not make now” been going on since the early Holocene. At acknowledged that the Hockey Stick was built concerning global warming. Not so. The the rate of retreat observed in the late 1990s, on a fl awed methodology and inappropriate most aggressive choice America could make the West Antarctic Ice Sheet should disappear data. Scientists continue to debate whether now would be to join Europe in implementing in about 7,000 years. the Medieval Warm period was warmer than the Kyoto Protocol. Assuming the science recent decades. underpinning Kyoto is correct, the treaty • Warns that vertical water tunnels (“moulins”) would avert only 1 cm of sea level rise by are lubricating the Greenland Ice Sheet, • Tacitly assumes that CO2 levels are 2050 and 2.5 cm by 2100. increasing the risk that it will “slide” into the increasing at roughly 1 percent annually. The sea. Summertime glacier fl ow acceleration actual rate is half that. • Accuses Exxon Mobil of running a associated with moulins is tiny. Moulins “disinformation campaign” designed to in numbers equal to or surpassing those • Tacitly assumes a linear relationship between “reposition global warming as theory, rather observed today probably occurred in the fi rst CO2 levels and global temperatures, whereas than fact,” even though two clicks of the half of the 20th century, when Greenland was the actual CO2-warming effect is logarithmic, mouse reveal that Exxon Mobil acknowledges as warm as or warmer than the past decade, meaning that the next 100-ppm increase global warming as a fact. with no major loss of grounded ice. adds only half as much heat as the previous 100- ppm increase. • Claims Bush hired Phil Cooney to “be in • Presents 10 pages of before-and-after charge” of White House environmental “photographs” showing what 20 feet of • Claims the rate of global warming is policy. This must be a surprise to White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairman sea level rise would do to the world’s major accelerating, whereas the rate has been James Connaughton, who hired Cooney and coastal communities. There is no credible constant for the past 30 years—roughly was his boss at the CEQ. evidence of an impending collapse of the 0.17°C/decade. great ice sheets. We do have fairly good • Claims the European Union’s emission data on ice mass balance changes and their • Blames global warming for Europe’s killer trading system (ETS) is working “effectively.” effects on sea level. Zwally et al. (2005) found heat wave of 2003—an event caused by an In fact, the ETS is not reducing emissions, will a combined Greenland/Antarctica ice-loss- atmospheric circulation anomaly. transfer an estimated £1.5 billion from U.K. sea-level-rise equivalent of 0.05 mm per year fi rms to competitors in countries with weaker during 1992-2002. At that rate, it would take • Blames global warming for Hurricane controls, has enabled oil companies to profi t a full millennium to raise sea level by just 5 Catarina, the fi rst South Atlantic hurricane on at the expense of hospitals and schools, and cm. record, which struck Brazil in 2004. Catarina has been an administrative nightmare for formed not because the South Atlantic was small fi rms. • Forecasts an increase in U.S. renewable unusually warm (sea temperatures were energy production during 1990-2030 more cooler than normal), but because the air was • Claims U.S. fi rms won’t be able to sell than twice that projected by the U.S. Energy so much colder it produced the same kind of American-made cars in China because Beijing Information Administration. heat fl ux from the ocean that fuels hurricanes has set higher fuel economy standards. This is in warmer waters. equivalent to saying U.S. fi rms won’t be able Wrong to sell cars in India until all U.S.-made • Presents as glaciologist Lonnie Thompson’s • Claims that 2004 set an all-time record cars are built to drive on the left side reconstruction of tropical climate history for the number of tornadoes in the United of the road. a graph that is in fact the “Hockey Stick” States. Tornado frequency has not increased; reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere rather, the detection of smaller tornadoes has Marlo Lewis is a Senior Fellow at the Competitive climate history. increased. If we consider the tornadoes that Enterprise Institute. You can download your have been detectable for many decades (F-3 own copy of the full ‘Skeptics’ Guide to An • Claims Thompson’s reconstruction of or greater), there is actually a downward trend Inconvenient Truth,’ along with references, videos climate history proves the Medieval Warm since 1950. Period was “tiny” compared to the warming and a Powerpoint display that is ideal as a observed in recent decades. It doesn’t. Four • Blames global warming for a “mass extinction teaching tool, at the website of the Competitive of Thompson’s six ice cores indicate the crisis” that is not, in fact, occurring. Enterprise Institute, www. CEI.Org.

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 33 DR FRED GOLDBERG GLOBAL WARMING Some Selected Climate Events From Historical Records

Humans have always been at the mercy of rapid climate changes Canterbury Cathedral through its entire existence and endured 7-8 ice ages during the last million years. Our ancestors adapted to the irregular cycles of cooling and warming, fl oods and droughts since the last ice age 10 000 years ago. They developed strategies for surviving harsh droughts, decades of heavy rainfall or long cold periods with failing crops.

During the 9th and 10th centuries a warm was under the protection of the Archbishop in period arrived in the north Atlantic making it Nidaros (Trondheim). possible for the Norse population along the Norwegian overpopulated coast to sail and A hundred years later it was almost impossible colonize Iceland. Records indicate that in 874 to keep contact with the settlements on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris the Vikings took advantage of the favourable Greenland. When these sites were visited in ice conditions and permanently colonized the seventeenth century, the ruins and graves Iceland. Earlier Iceland was always surrounded were found but no dead people who would by ice therefore its name. have starved to death and not been buried. For a few hundred years there was a thriving It is very likely that the last remaining settlers colony of Norsemen and a mild and stable packed their ships and sailed south to the New climate. They survived because it was possible England area and here became easy prey for to grow crops and grass to feed sheep. This the Indian tribes along these coasts. The age is not possible today which is one piece of the of the Vikings was the warmest period in over evidences that the Medieval Warm Period was a 1000 years which can be verifi ed in the th warmer than today. In the early 13 century Greenland ice cores. the fi rst signs of a climate change arrived with more ice in the waters surrounding Greenland making communication with Norway diffi cult Medieval Warm Period and risky - A blessing for the farmers In northern Europe the Medieval Warm Period The new settlers from mainland Norway were was a blessing for the rural poor farmers who able to grow various cereals during this mild supplemented their harvest with fi shing and period, crops that can not be grown today. In A Viking church at Herolfsnes, Greenland 980 it was also feasible to sail to the southern hunting. There are many examples of medieval parts of Greenland. Erik the Red, who was paintings showing rich harvests. At this time banned from Iceland saved his life by escaping it was possible to grow crops and cereals to Greenland. After 5 years he came back and on the summits of south-eastern Scotland made the fi rst real marketing stunt in history. at Lammermuir Hills 320 m above sea level He told his friends in overpopulated Iceland The Kelso Abbey owned a farm in southern about the green lands in the west which Scotland which had over 100 hectares under he had named Greenland. In the year 985 cultivation at 300m above sea level, well Erik the Red sailed off with 25 longboats to above today’s limit for viable cultivation. Today colonize Greenland. They were hit by a severe traces of these cultivations can still be found storm near the southern tip of Greenland on hills around England and Scotland. during which 9 ships went down with men and all. The surviving crews established the Eastern and the Western settlements. They Even if it was a warm climate period there also brought with them Christianity. Erik the were cold spells. Fluctuating grain prices are Red’s wife Tjodhilde built a church, which a good barometer of changing temperatures. 34 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz Winemaking Bridgebuilding seafarers who lost their lives but the storms also transported sand over land and created Another important sign of a mild climate During the Medieval Warm Period there was large sand-dunes. The fl ourishing port of during Medieval Warm Period is the fact also a lot more rainfall in areas where there is Kenfi g near Port Talbot in south Wales had to that England was a major wine producing a lot less today. Examples of this can be found be abandoned after a severe storm deposited country. Between 1100 and 1300 vineyards in the city of Palermo on the island of Sicily. a high sand-dune over the harbour. Many spread across southern and central England Here they built the Ponte dell’Ammivaglio villages at this time had big problems with bridge across the river Oreto (below) in 1113 and as far north as Hereford. Commercial wandering dunes burying both forests and and as can be seen in the picture there is vineyards fl ourished 300 to 500 km north of villages. On the 19th of August 1413 the small th today only a very small stream fl owing under their 20 century limits. During the height of town of Forvie near Aberdeen was buried it. Another example is Pont d’Avignon in the the Medieval Warm Period the French tried to under a 30 m high sand-dune. lower Rhone area which was built between negotiate trade agreements excluding British 1177 and 1185. wines from the continent. Storms and fl oods The Norse discovery of America, settlements During the thirteenth century very heavy How the climate changed year by year can in Iceland and Greenland and European storms and fl oods took place. It is estimated be found in the vineyard archives indicating conquests and the building of cathedrals all that during the storms that took place in 1200, when the grapes were ready to be harvested. over Europe are a consequence of a global 1212-1219, 1237 and 1362 at least 100 000 Between 1100 and 1300, however, night frost climatic phenomenon, an enduring legacy of people were killed along the North Sea coast was unknown in the month of May. the Medieval Warm Period. of Germany and Holland.

Cathedral building Copper mining in the Alps During this time the Zuider Zee in the northern th th part of the Netherlands was carved out from The warm climate during the 12 and 13 During late prehistoric times, numerous prime farmland. The last storm was named century gave good harvests and not every living copper mines had fl ourished in the Alps until “Grote Mandrake” which means the great man had to work in the fi elds to secure enough advancing ice sealed them off. Late Medieval drowning of man. food for the winter. The sudden appearance miners were able to reopen some of them of a free workforce or unemployment perhaps when the ice retreated. Floods were often combined with storms at causing unrest in the societies led to the start high tide and in 1240 and 1362 sixty parishes of cathedral building. This also led to golden A colder climate is approaching along the Danish and German North Sea days for architects. The Notre dame church in The fi rst sign of a new cold period approaching coast had been swallowed by the sea. Half of Paris was commissioned by Bishop Maurice was when the northern pack ice came all the all the farmland in the Schleswig-Holstein area de Sully in 1159. way down to the Icelandic coast and polar had been destroyed by salt water. bears went ashore. This happened for the In England Canterbury cathedral was started fi rst time in 1203. During this fi rst phase of When the Medieval Warm Period arrived the in 1170 and Lincoln in 1192, to mention just an arriving colder climate very strong gales, island of Helgoland off the North Sea coast two. The surge in Gothic cathedral building storms and fl oods hit the North Sea and of Germany had a diameter of 60 km. Due to fi nanced by a surplus of labour and wealth Atlantic coasts of Europe. These storms were storms in 1300, half of the island with many was never repeated in later centuries. not only a big problem for fi shermen and churches and villages disappeared into the

Ponte dell’Ammivaglio bridge, Palermo, Sicily. Big river in 1113 when built. Very small stream today.

1588: “Hit by a severe storm, the Spanish Armada lost more ships due to the storm than due to battle with the British Navy.” “During the sixteenth century the little ice age was over Europe. “

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 35 sea leaving an island of just 25 km diameter. people. The same thing happened in 1714 town of Martigny. In 1926 a beam in a house Today the largest stretch of the island is only and 1816, the year without a summer caused near Bagnes was found with the inscription 1.5 km. by the eruption of Mt Tambora. It is believed “Maurice Ollier had this house built in 1595 to be the most spectacular eruption of the last the year Bagnes was fl ooded by the Gietroz In 1315 Flanders stood more or less under 15000 years. Many of the extreme winters glacier. water and prevented Louis X’s military were most likely initiated by volcanic activity campaign moving. Horses sank to their when ash spread in the upper atmosphere In 1599-1600 alpine glaciers pushed saddle girths, wagons bogged down into the and shaded the sunlight. downwards destroying villages and farmland mud. The infantry stood knee-deep in the in the Chamonix area. boggy fi elds. As food ran short King Louis X Peter Breughel the Elder’s painting “Hunters quickly had to retreat. The thankful Flemings in the Snow” (previous page) shows a snowy Clouds wondered if the fl oods were a divine miracle, landscape with the farmers skating on a frozen Hans Neuberger studied clouds shown in already then giving climate change a religious canal while some men are getting ready to go 6500 paintings completed between 1400 touch. 1315 was overall a bad year with cold out hunting. The year was 1565 which was and 1967 from 41 art museums in USA and weather and torrential rains. Thousands of the fi rst great winter of the Little Ice Age (LIA). Europe. His statistical analysis revealed a slow hectares of cereals did not ripen and hay The Londoners have not forgotten when the increase in cloudiness between the beginning could not be cured properly. The following year Thames froze during the cold winters. of the fi fteenth century and mid-sixteenth was also a terrible year with rain and fl oods century followed by a sudden jump in cloud in central Europe. Intense gales battered the In 1658 the southern Baltic was ice covered cover with low clouds increasing sharply after Channel and the North Sea. which Carl X Gustav took advantage of. He 1550. After 1850 the amount of cloud cover let his troops march over the ice and attacked decreased. Storms reported in 1421, 1446 and 1570 the Danes from the south. He won a quick caused more than 400 000 fatalities. victory and a peace treaty was signed in Final words Roskilde, which gave Sweden the districts I will not in this presentation discuss if the Areas along rivers were also heavily fl ooded of Halland, Blekinge and Scania, today the recent warming is natural or not. It is however at times. Cologne was one year fl ooded and southern part of Sweden. The fact that the strange that the society in common is very it was possible to row a boat over the city natural southern borders of Sweden are on alarmed about the recent global warming. wall and the following year it was so dry that the Baltic sea today are due to the LIA making What is the alternative? Global cooling with one could walk across the Rheine. Europeans it possible to move the Swedish troops over failing harvests or no change at all. When in were getting used to severe storms, fl oods, the ice to the island of Fyn. history has the climate been unchanged. It droughts, and cold winters. never has and will never be. People’s memories Glaciers in the Alps seem to last not more than a normal lifetime. In 1588 the British Navy was fi ghting the With the Little Ice Age arriving the glaciers in Cooling caused failing harvests resulting in Spanish Armada off the western coast of the alps started to grow and surge down the migrations and wars for survival. The potato Ireland. They were hit by a severe storm and valleys quite rapidly. The attack of glaciers famine in Ireland in the 1840s the Spanish Armada lost more ships due to on the villages in Switzerland occurred with killed one-million people and the the storm than to the battle with the British a speed of 20 m per year destroying homes failing harvest in Finland in 1866- Navy. and fi elds. At the time this was perceived as 8 killed 100,000 people (15% of a calamity but today when the glaciers are the Finish population at the time), The Little Ice Age withdrawing it is regarded as a disaster. just to mention a few examples. The inhabitants in central Europe were invaded by ice and glaciers. During the In 1589 the Allalin glacier near Visp descended From a a paper delivered to the Swedish sixteenth century the little ice age was over so low that it blocked the Saas Valley forming Royal Institute of Technology International Europe. Rivers, canals and parts of the seas a lake. Climate Seminar 11-12 September 2006, froze in the winters. Farmlands endured fl oods Global Warming-Scientifi c Controversies and cold summers with failing harvests and In 1595 the Gietroz glacier in the Pennine Alps in Climate Variability. Dr. Goldberg is famine. Europe experienced a serious food pressed into the bed of the Dranse river. 70 associate professor at the Royal School crisis 1315-1319 killing tens of thousands of people died when the fl oods submerged the of Technology in Stockholm.

Norwegian 19th- century painting Dutch 17th-century painting

36 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz The Stern Gang: TFR Special Report: The Stern Report On Climate Calamity

GEORGE REISMAN lead to a much larger temperature rise or even runaway warming . . . . (p. 10 of the Britain’s Stern Review full report, the Stern Review.) The frightening allusions to “unknown territory” and “runaway warming” come On Global Warming: very close to conjuring up old-time religious images of hellfi re and brimstone as the fate It Could Be Environmentalism’s Swan Song of the world if it does not take Sir Nicholas’s Report to heart and repent of its ways. But To the accompaniment of much fanfare and hoopla, the British Sir Nicholas never actually does make this threat. He leaves it merely to implication. government has released Sir Nicholas Stern’s Stern Review on the Perhaps if it were made, it would be easier Economics of Climate Change, a report that it commissioned but that for people to identify the environmentalists’ fears for the empty bugaboo that they are it labels “independent.” and dismiss them. Their response would need be only that if economic progress The report is a rehash of now standard Under a BAU [business as usual] scenario, and the enjoyment of its fruits will consume environmentalist claims concerning alleged the stock of greenhouse gases could more the world in fl ames, and thus that living like disasters that await the world if it continues than treble by the end of the century, giving human beings means we really will all go to with its wicked ways of fossil fuel consumption: at least a 50% risk of exceeding 5°C global hell, as the preachers have always claimed, the disappearance of islands beneath the average temperature change during the then so be it. Better to live as human beings sea, the fl ooding of coastal cities, more following decades. This would take humans now, while we can, than throw it away for the into unknown territory. An illustration of the sake of descendants living as pre-industrial, severe droughts and hurricanes, famines, scale of such an increase is that we are now medieval wretches later on. (But, of course, disease, the displacement of tens of millions only around 5°C warmer than in the last we will never have to make such a choice, of people from their traditional homelands— ice age. (p. ix of the Executive Summary.) for reasons that will become clear shortly.) it’s all regurgitated in the report. A couple of Surprisingly, the actual negative consequences times, however, the report provides a hint of It remains unclear whether warming could Sir Nicholas alleges that will occur from something even much worse: initiate a self-perpetuating effect that would global warming are extremely tame, at least in

his conclusions are those which the solutions that do not curb their march Stern green taxes government wanted...” Philip Chaston at away from poverty. The “Stern Review on the Economics the UK-based Samizdata blog gloomily of Climate Change” is a 700-page summarises: Reaction from the UK public to the Stern doorstopper commissioned by the Blair Report has not been entirely positive. A Government to have an effect on an The Letter from David Miliband [PDF], BBC forum is an example, with the more the appointment of the political failure international audience. It is a political popularly-rated commenters expressing Al Gore and the report by Stern are all document commissioned by politicians views like these: designed to provide the intellectual ballast to justify political action -- and in Britain • Everyone in the country is sick to the for continued government expansion. and here in New Zealand the ‘Stern back teeth of working just to pay ever These taxes are politically unpalatable Gang’ was all ready to hit the ground increasing bills and taxes to this hopeless and would be rejected by the electorate, running with respectively “green taxes” government. if levied without green cover. Therefore, and promises of “carrots and sticks” • We already have a green tax on cars. climate change and catastrophism are the even before the report was released. The Its called petrol duty. And at 80% its reasons for a ‘greener than thou’ ratchet report takes the politicised science as already more than enough. effect, where politicians use Britain and read and unsurprisingly concludes with • Typical government reaction: if you our money to puff themselves up as a can't solve it, tax it. alarmist calls for government expansion. moral example for others. The UK’s Scientifi c Alliance [Word Doc] • It seems to me that this government has run out of ideas, and thinks that the “believes that Sir Nicholas’s talents have Since the science and the scenarios been misused.” are still so uncertain, climate change failures of tax and spend, can be rectifi ed has been adopted as the vanguard for with new and inifi nitely more complex His calculations are based on the further taxation and a curb on British versions of exactly the same thing. output of complex computer models, consumerism. Using the expansion of • More taxes???? This really is the all constructed on the assumption that the state and taxes, rather than market Government's answer to everything! average global temperatures are directly mechanisms, our politicians will dampen • NO! Despite what the greenies linked to atmospheric levels of greenhouse our economic growth, steal our wealth, would have you believe, there is NOT a gases – in particular carbon dioxide. His and wrap us in their parasitical hairshirt. consensus amongst climate scientists estimates are doubtless correct for the The only light in this gloom is that that humans have (or even can) affect the scenarios presented, but we question the the British electorate may reject such climate. The government is jumping on validity of the starting point. alarmism and the example of our political the green bandwagon because it allows stupidity will lead India and other nations them to increase taxes without taking the As they drily note, “Not surprisingly, to seek technological and free-market heat for it

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 37 The Stern Gang: TFR Special Report: The Stern Report On Climate Calamity comparison with hellfi re. In his “Summary of certainly not produce 3-4 times the output in Developing countries are already taking Conclusions,” he writes: 2050 with 25% less carbon dioxide emission. signifi cant action to decouple their economic Using the results from formal economic Far more likely, if such a reduction is forced growth from the growth in greenhouse models, the Review estimates that if we upon us, we will produce substantially less gas emissions. For example, China has don’t act, the overall costs and risks of output, despite the probable existence of adopted very ambitious domestic goals to climate change will be equivalent to losing a substantially larger population by then. reduce energy used for each unit of GDP at least 5% of global GDP each year, by 20% from 2006-2010 and to promote now and forever. If a wider range of risks Sir Nicholas appears to be as naïve in his the use of renewable energy. India has and impacts is taken into account, the estimate of the cost of replacing today’s created an Integrated Energy Policy for estimates of damage could rise to 20% of technologies of fuel and power as he is in the same period that includes measures to GDP or more. estimating the effect of their loss. Without expand access to cleaner energy for poor evidence of any kind, he claims that while the people and to increase energy effi ciency.” Sir Nicholas’s use of the words “don’t act” cost of “inaction” is as much as 20% of annual (p. xxiv of Executive Summary.) is very misleading. What he is urging when global GDP, “the costs of action – reducing he speaks of “action” is a mass of laws greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst To say the least, this represents the use of and decrees—i.e., government action. impacts of climate change – can be limited mere statements of intent concerning action This government action will forcibly prevent to around 1% of global GDP each year.” in the future in an effort to override the hundreds of millions, indeed, billions of diametrically opposite character of China’s individual human beings from engaging in Thus his program is designed to appear as and India’s actual actions in the present, their, personal and business private action— really quite a bargain: the world’s governments and in the foreseeable future as well if these that is, from acting in ways that they judge to will appropriate an additional mere 1% of countries are to achieve further substantial serve their own self-interests. Thus, what he is global GDP each year in order to prevent economic development. actually urging is not action, but government their citizens from wantonly destroying as action intended to stop private action. much as 20% of annual global GDP by Another illustration of the attempt to employ foolishly pursuing their own self-interests. words as though their use could control reality, Furthermore, he does not explain why he And it turns out that, in Sir Nicholas’s view, occurs in Sir Nicholas’s discussion of “learning believes that global warming means the even this 1% is far more than is required by and economies of scale” in connection with end of all subsequent economic progress, the governments for the actual development low-carbon technologies. He notes that “The though that is implied in the words “now of new technologies. In his chapter titled cost of technologies tends to fall over time, and forever.” He compares the dangers of “Accelerating Technological Innovation,” because of learning and economies of scale,” global warming to “those associated with he writes that “Global public energy R&D and appears to conclude from this that low- the great wars and the economic depression funding should double, to around $20 billion, carbon technologies can therefore eventually of the fi rst half of the 20th century(ibid.),” for the development of a diverse portfolio of be as effi cient as the high-carbon technologies yet seems to forget the stupendous technologies.” (p. 347 of the Stern Review.) they are supposed to replace when the latter economic progress that followed them. Twenty billion dollars are a mere one-twentieth are forcibly curtailed. He writes, “There have of one percent of the world’s current annual been major advances in the effi ciency of According to Sir Nicholas, what we must do GDP of roughly $40 trillion. That’s supposed to fossil-fuel use; similar progress can also be to avoid the loss of up to 20% of annual GDP, be all that it takes to develop the technologies expected for low-carbon technologies as is ultimately to reduce our carbon dioxide that will enable the world to eventually reduce the state of knowledge progresses.” (Stern emissions “more than 80% below the absolute carbon emissions by 80% from today’s levels. Review, p. 225.) It apparently does not occur level of current annual emissions.” (p. xi of the to him that there may be some necessary Executive Summary. My italics.) Lest one think How easy and simple it is all supposed to order of sequence involved and that the use that such drastic reduction lies only in the very be, if only we will do as we are told, and get of high-carbon technologies is the necessary remote future, Sir Nicholas also declares, started doing so right away. All we have to foundation for the possible later adoption of By 2050, global emissions would need to do is sit back and leave the direction of our low-carbon technologies. be around 25% below current levels. These lives in the hands of the government. It will cuts will have to be made in the context of solve the problem of changing the global Presumably, he does not believe that in the a world economy in 2050 that may be 3 technology of energy production with the period 1750-1950, industrialization could - 4 times larger than today - so emissions same success that the Soviets and the British have proceeded on the foundation of low- per unit of GDP would need to be just one Laborites pursued their respective varieties carbon technologies. For example, before quarter of current levels by 2050. (Ibid.) of socialism and with the same success such technology as that of atomic power that our own government has conducted could be developed, generations of industrial In appraising Sir Nicholas’s views, it should be its wars on poverty, drugs, and terror, and progress had to take place on a foundation kept in mind that our ability to produce, now in Vietnam and Iraq. Did I say, “success”? of fossil fuels. And this was equally true for and for many years to come, vitally depends the technology of wind turbines and solar on the use of fossil fuels. These fuels are the Sir Nicholas’s Review is characterized by an power. The ability to produce the materials, source of most of our electric power and thus apparent belief in a kind of magical power components, and equipment required by of our ability to use machinery. They propel of words to create and control reality. Thus, these low-carbon technologies rests on the our trucks, trains, ships, and planes. And, the actual fact, as reported in The New York existence of previously established highly of course, their use entails the emission of Times, is that “About one large coal-burning developed carbon-based technologies. carbon dioxide. Thus, it would seem that plant is being commissioned a week, mostly Further substantial economic development on Sir Nicholas’s means of preventing even a in China.” In the same report, The Times the same foundation is required for the further 20% loss of GDP would entail a far greater points out that “A typical new coal-fi red development of low-carbon technologies. loss of GDP than 20%. It follows that if it is power plant, [is] one of the largest sources output that concerns us, we would be better of emissions, [and] is expected to operate for Wherever the use of high-carbon technology off simply accepting global warming, if that many decades.” Totally ignoring these facts, is cheaper than that of low-carbon technology, is what is in store, than attempting to avoid Sir Nicholas believes he has said something forcibly curtailing its use implies the forcible it in the way Sir Nicholas prescribes. We will meaningful and signifi cant when he writes, reduction of the physical volume of production 38 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz The Stern Gang: FREE SPEECH TFR Special Report: The Stern Report On Climate Calamity in the economic system, including its ability to mankind’s means of coping with all aspects government climate control by means of produce further capital goods. Thus, forcibly of nature, including, if it should ever actually the destruction of modern technology. curtailing the use of carbon-based technology be necessary, the ability to control the earth’s cuts the ground from beneath the development climate, whether to cool it down or to warm In fact, a possible outcome of today’s of future low-carbon technology. It aborts it up. intellectual chaos on the subjects of the development of the necessary industrial environment and government is a combination base. (For elaboration of these points, see If mankind ever really fi nds it necessary to of major destruction of our economic system my Capitalism, pp. 178-179, 212, 622-642.) control the earth’s climate, whether to prevent resulting from policies based on hostility global warming or, as is in fact probably more to carbon technology and climate damage Sir Nicholas’s and the rest of the environmental likely, a new ice age, its ability to do so will caused by governmental efforts to control movement’s hostility to carbon technology, depend on the power of its economic system. climate through the use of modern technology. is ultimately contrary to purpose not only An economic system with the ability to It’s not impossible that what we might end up insofar as it prevents the development of the provide such things as massive lasers, fl eets with is an economic system largely destroyed low-carbon technologies they claim to favor, of rocket ships carrying cargoes of various by environmentalist policies plus the start of a but also in that it simultaneously, and more chemicals, equipment, and materials for new ice age resulting from government efforts fundamentally, operates to deprive the world deployment in outer space, with the ability to to counteract global warming through the use of the ability to counteract destructive climate create major chemical reactions here on earth of technologically inspired counter measures. change, such as global warming. too, if necessary—such an economic system will have far more ability to make possible The only safe response to global warming, if Whether or not they are aware of it, in any necessary change in the earth’s climate. that in fact is what is unfolding, or to global attempting to combat alleged global That is the kind of economic system we freezing, when that develops, as it inevitably warming, Sir Nicholas, and the rest of the could reasonably expect to have in coming will, is the maximum degree of individual environmentalists, are urging a policy of generations, if it is not prevented from coming freedom. (For elaboration and proof of this deliberate counteractive global climate into existence by policies hostile to economic proposition, see Capitalism, pp. 88-90.) change by the world’s governments. They progress, notably those urged by Sir Nicholas want the world’s governments to change and the environmental movement. Any serious consideration of the proposals the world’s climate from the path that they made in the Stern Review for radically reducing believe it is otherwise destined to take. What Sir Nicholas and the rest of the carbon technology and the accompanying They want the world’s governments to environmental movement offer is merely the calls for immediacy in enacting them makes make the earth’s climate cooler than they destruction of much of our existing means clear in a further way how utterly impractical believe it will otherwise be as the next two of coping with nature and the aborting of the the environmentalist program for controlling centuries or more unfold. But their policy development of new and additional means. global warming actually is. The fundamental of climate control is the most stupid one To the extent that their program is enacted, impracticality of the program, of course, lies in imaginable. It’s more stupid than a modern- it will serve to prevent effectively dealing with its utterly destructive character. But in addition day equivalent of a savage’s attempting to global warming if that should ever actually be to that, the fact that people are not prepared control nature by the sacrifi ce of his goat. necessary. easily or quickly to make a massive sacrifi ce of their self-interests dooms the enactment of The reason it’s more stupid, much more stupid, A major word of caution is necessary here. the program. Even if, in utter contradiction of is that the goat that they want to sacrifi ce is The above discussion implies that the use the truth, the program were sound, it would most of modern industrial civilization—the of modern technology to control climate is simply not be possible to enact it in time to part that depends on the 80% of the carbon infi nitely more reasonable than the virtually satisfy the environmentalists that the level emissions they want to eliminate, and which insane policy of attempting to control climate of carbon buildup they fear will not occur. will not be replaced through any magical by means of destroying modern technology. In other words, the world is quickly moving power of words to create and control reality, The word of caution is that in the hands of past the window of opportunity for enacting however much they may believe in that power. government, a policy of climate control the environmentalists’ program for controlling It is precisely modern industrial civilization and based on the use modern technology could global warming. (Concerning this point, see its further expansion and intensifi cation that is be almost as dangerous as the policy of pp. xi-xii of the Executive Summary, especially Figure 3 on p. xii.) The implication is that either they will have to fi nd another issue or different means for addressing the issue.

The only different means, however, are technological in character. Environmentalism thus stands a very strong chance of ultimately reverting to the more traditional socialism of massive government construction and engineering projects. It’s future may well lie with what is coming to be called “geo- engineering.” We shall see.

This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. George Reisman is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. You can visit him on the web at www.Capitalism. Net and www.GeorgeReisman.Com/Blog

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 39 DANIEL SILVA THE STERN GANG Not Fit For Offi ce

PRESS RELEASE: UK SCIENTIFIC ALLIANCE: A report commissioned by Tony Blair’s government warns that Too Stern a view of climate change the end is nigh and said that Europeans should not eat food from Sir Nicholas Stern has published his review of the economic implications of modelled faraway places like New Zealand, if they want to save the planet. climate change. Not surprisingly, his conclusions are those which the government wanted: high levels of expenditure now will Prime Minister Helen Clark told the NBR this said the protocol would not be acted upon prevent much greater economic damage debate “was promising because it meant in the Senate until there was participation arising from the projected infl uence of climate change was no longer remote or by the developing nations. That was before Mankind on the global climate. theoretical and people were beginning to see Mr Gore took up a new career making The Scientifi c Alliance believes that Sir there were implications for New Zealand.” documentaries. Nicholas’s talents have been misused. His calculations are based on the output of Miss Clark had earlier suggested New There was a time when the governments in complex computer models, all constructed Zealand should aspire to becoming “carbon New Zealand saw it as their duty to protect on the assumption that average global neutral”, whereby all carbon emissions are temperatures are directly linked to markets for our exports. Regardless of atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases offset by measures such as tree planting. whether we had coalitions of accountants, – in particular carbon dioxide. His estimates How this is to be achieved, or when, was farmers and lawyers (National) or school are doubtless correct for the scenarios not made clear; Miss Clark did not go into teachers, trade union advocates and presented, but we question the validity of the details. We do not know if the Holy Grail of starting point. political science lecturers (Labour) the fi rst “carbon neutrality” is to be achieved through priority was the same: keep those European wholesale de-industrialisation, closing down Martin Livermore, director of the Alliance, markets open. The current crop, however, said “Evidence is building that climate is not pastoral activity or both. No matter, the seems to be more interested in saving the driven primarily by human use of fossil fuels, slogan sounds great. planet. Contrast this with the Australian as most people have been led to believe. There have been signifi cant temperature government’s position. The government has not even managed to changes during the last millennium, well hold emissions at 1990 levels, as mandated before industrialisation, and the major People who go around saying that the end by the Kyoto agreement. In fact, they have infl uence of fl uctuations in cosmic rays from is nigh and we should atone for the sin of the Sun have been under-represented in actually increased by 20%. We are to be 1 having won the Cold War are the modern- the work of the IPCC . The billions which punished for such profl igacy by donating this review says it is necessary to spend are upwards of $1 billion of ‘carbon indulgences’ day village idiots. Every village has one, but likely to have little positive effect, and could to the thugs running the plutocracy in in New Zealand we elect them to the village be put to much better use in helping the Moscow. council. The costs are too high. Future New world’s poorest people to create better lives Zealanders will be impoverished at the altar for themselves.” of the planet-saviour zealots. The Kyoto project was never more than Despite rising levels of carbon dioxide, an attempt by Europeans to stymie the We say that those people are simply 1998 remains the warmest year on development of competing economic blocs. not fi t for offi ce. record. Although hurricane Katrina caused That may be why the US Senate voted catastrophic damage in 2005, it was not an unanimously against it (a 95-0 vote), when Daniel Silva is the head of the New especially intense storm, and 2006 has been a particularly quiet hurricane season. While Al Gore was still in offi ce. At the time, Gore Zealand Importer’s Institute the Western Antarctic ice shelf is breaking up, more snow is falling over a much greater area in Eastern Antarctica. Climate changes all the time, and humans undoubtedly have some infl uence, but to believe that drastic reductions in our use of fossil fuels will necessarily have any real effect on a climate system which we don’t understand is to distract our attention from the current needs of the majority of the world’s population.

According to Martin Livermore, “Gordon Brown’s recruitment of Al Gore as an advisor – perhaps the world’s leading propagandist for a one-sided and alarmist view of Mankind’s role in climate trends – shows how much a single analysis of the evidence currently dominates policy. The government still has time to bring cooler heads into the debate, look at the evidence in a more balanced context and develop policies which can make a difference to people’s lives in the here and now.”

40 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz BOB CARTER THE STERN GANG

The Stern review has been presented as a The Stern Climate Review rigorous treatment of climate change and its economic effects. In reality, however, the review is a political document whose relation to the truth is about the same as that of the notorious British - Last Hurrah Of report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

The Stern agenda in Britain is to enable Labour The Warmaholics to compete for eco-votes with an increasingly green-oriented Tory party. A wider agenda is The Stern warning could join Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb the imposition of carbon levies for goods and services provided from outside Europe, thereby and the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth in the pantheon of big penalising more effi cient competitors elsewhere. The European Union has form on this, and banana scares that proved to be unfounded has previously tried to use DDT and genetic engineering of food as bogies to justify trade Nicholas Stern is a distinguished economist. Estimating accurate costs and benefi ts for barriers. Climate change is a complex, uncertain and future environmental change requires not just contentious scientifi c issue. Have you spotted knowledge of changing global averages but Among a range of possible carbon morality taxes, Stern considers the application of a food- the problem with the Stern review yet? accurate, site-specifi c predictions for all parts of the planet. miles levy on produce subjected to lengthy air transport. Subsequent media coverage has An accomplished cost-benefi t analysis of concentrated on earlier estimates that fl ying climate change would require two things: a For example, from 1965 to 1998, measured 1kg of kiwifruit from New Zealand to Europe clear, quantitative understand ing of the natural sea level rose slightly in Townsville and fell generates 5kg of carbon dioxide. With delicious climate system and a dispassionate, accurate slightly in Cairns. Presuming that these trends irony, it turns out that virtually all NZ kiwifruit are continue, there is obviously the need for different consideration of all the costs and benefi ts of transported by ship, yet arrive in Britain at a price coastal management plans for the two regions. warming as well as cooling. that undercuts local supplies. No wonder a levy Now repeat that thought exercise for future is needed. Unfortunately, the Stern review is not a cost- changes in temperature, precipitation and sea level worldwide. To make actual and accurate benefi t but a risk analysis, and of warming only. Australian grape growers are doubtless already predictions for this is, of course, impossible. resigned to having an extra “noble carbon” levy This adroit shuffl e of the pea under the thimble imposed on their products, to the advantage Stern has surely accepted his IPPC-centric perhaps explains why Stern’s fl awed and partial of their French competitors. For that matter, science advice in good faith, yet that turns out account of our possible climate future stresses why not a ballet miles surcharge on tickets at costs, ignores benefi ts, and fails to consider the to be his fatal mistake. Because there is copious Covent Garden when the Australian Ballet next all too likely eventuality of future cooling. evidence that the advice is untrustworthy. For visits London? And given that most British dildos instance, participants at a recent international probably come from overseas, perhaps UK Even more unfortunate for Stern than his climate conference in Stockholm were told that citizens will soon have dildo miles, too. the hockey-stick depiction of temperature over restricted brief is that there is no established the last 1000 years, an IPCC favourite, has been theory of climate. Stern therefore has to rely on The Stern review is not about climate change discredited; that pre-industrial atmospheric the advice of others in providing the summary but about economic, technological and trade carbon dioxide levels were higher, and fl uctuated of climate science that occupies the fi rst 21 advantage. Its perpetrators seek power through more, than is indicated by the averaged ice core pages of his review. Though he cites a range of climate scaremongering. The review’s release measurements; that global temperature has scientifi c literature, his summary strongly refl ects was carefully timed to closely precede this not increased since 1998, despite continuing the unsatisfactory consensus view of the UN’s month’s US congressional elections and the increases in carbon dioxide; that the Arctic region Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Nairobi climate conference. Beyond these is no warmer now than it was in the 1930s; and (IPCC). events, we can expect another burst of alarmist that climate models are too uncertain to be used hallelujahs to accompany the launch of IPCC’s as predictive policy tools. assessment report in February. The advice to policy-makers that governments periodically receive from the IPCC contains These considerations undercut the core IPCC Though it will be lionised for a while yet, the political rather than scientifi c advice. In concert arguments for dangerous human-caused Stern review is destined to join Paul Ehrlich’s with this, over the past 10 years the IPCC has warming, as contained in its 2001 assessment The Population Bomb and think tank the Club moved from being primarily a reviewer of the report. Yet early drafts of the forthcoming fourth of Rome’s manifesto, Limits to Growth, in the science evidence to being an advocate for the assessment report reveal that IPCC thinking pantheon of big banana scares that proved to alarmist case for global warming. does not consider these deep uncertainties, and be unfounded. It is part of the last hurrah for neither does Stern. those warmaholics who inhabit a world of virtual Perhaps the most important scientifi c point climate reality that exists only inside fl awed made in the Stern review is the statement that The opinion of Bjorn Lomborg, writing in computer models. “the accuracy of climate predictions is limited by yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, suggests that computer power”. it is not just Stern’s science that is fl awed. Meanwhile, the empirical data stressed by Lomborg accuses Stern of cherry-picking climate rationalists will ultimately prevail over the Nonetheless, the review’s risk analysis assumes statistics to fi t the argument, such as massaging predictions of the unvalidated computer models. that the computer models used are able to future warming cost estimates from the generally Perhaps then we will be able to attend to the predict the future path of global climate for policy accepted 0per cent of gross domestic product real climate policy problem, which is to prepare purposes. They cannot. now to 3 per cent in 2100 to fi gures as high as response plans for extreme weather events, “20 per cent now and forever”. and for climate warmings as well as Worse, even if the models did have global coolings, in the same way we prepare predictive skill, that would only be a tiny fi rst It seems that the economics of the Stern review to cope with all other natural hazards. step towards policy advice, because the global is as shaky as the science, given that Lomborg average temperature or sea-level rise that the concludes that “its fear-mongering arguments Bob Carter is a geologist and models calculate are conceptual statistics, not have been sensationalised, which is ultimately founding member of the Australian Environment Foundation. physical realities. only likely to make the world worse off”. This article is copyright ‘The Australian.’

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 41 PETER CRESSWELL ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS The Buzzword For The Next Political Year Is ‘Sustainability’

DOMINION, 30 October their anti-development, anti-industry, anti- technology philosophy. The environmentalists In her keynote address to more than 650 delegates and observers at want to pretend that strangling industrial the party’s annual conference in Rotorua… Miss Clark said it was time civilization would not consign the world to a permanent hell of poverty, starvation to be bold on climate change. and mass death. They want to evade the monstrous consequences of their ideas.

“People realise you can’t continue to deliver the economic and social Thus, they tell us that there is something called “sustainability,” a magic mechanism gains that we all have traditionally ... that the way of life we have is that will help the Third World achieve unsustainable.” Sustainability would be a core value of 21st century prosperity -- even as the environmentalists restrict the only known conditions for social democracy, she predicted. prosperity: free trade and industrialization. The way to achieve this contradiction, or at least to achieve the illusion of it, is the central “Why shouldn’t New Zealand aim to be the fi rst country which is truly idea of the Johannesburg conference: the demand that industrialized nations pay out sustainable - not by sacrifi cing our living standards, but by being massive aid subsidies, putting Third World countries on the dole rather than helping them smart and determined?” She fl oated the possibility of becoming develop their own economic production. It “carbon neutral”, which would be a major step on from merely is an attempt to give the Third World some of the results of industrial development curbing greenhouse gas emissions. “We can now move to develop without actual industry or development. more renewable energy, biofuels, public transport alternatives, and But even the promise of aid is a lie, because minimise, if not eliminate, waste to landfi lls.” Western money can do no good when the greens have outlawed all elements of industrial development. For example, there is much Miss Clark said measures would include a mix of “carrot and stick”… talk in Johannesburg about using Western aid to prevent famine, to halt the spread of disease and to provide Third World countries with clean water and sanitation. But it is the The buzzword for the next political year wrong), and from the Club of Rome on how environmentalists who have campaigned will be ‘sustainability.’ Be aware that both the world is running out of resources (which against the construction of hydroelectric National and the Clark Government have now myth Julian Simon almost “single-handedly dams, a major source of electric power and trumpeted that your freedom and your future routed”). All were wrong, spectacularly wrong, clean water. It is environmentalists who have prosperity are to be sacrifi ced on the altar of but their spectres still haunt the world through tried to block the use of genetically modifi ed ‘sustainability’ -- National are doing so in the the ‘sustainability’ detritus of this report. crops, which are more resistant to drought name of political strategy; Clark in pursuit of and disease. And it was environmentalists another political diversion, but the few carrots The Bruntland Report defi ned sustainable who stopped the use of DDT, allowing the and the many sticks are the same. So what the development as development that “meets resurgence of malaria, which once again fuck does it mean, this fl atulent buzzword? It’s the needs of the present generation without kills millions in the Third World each year. no good looking to your dictionary for help: compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Sustain v.t., to bear the weight of, to hold These campaigns are proof of the greens’ real motives. They want to stop development and up, to keep from falling... This nostrum was adopted by the Agenda keep the Third World in a state of poverty - 21 circus in Rio early in the ‘90s, by schools - while they work to bring the same ideal of Not much help there. No, sustainability is and universities around the world, and was more about keeping people down than it is reaffi rmed by the World Sustainability Summit poverty to industrialized nations... about keeping anything up. in Johannesburg as recently as 2002. As the Ayn Rand Institute’s Robert Tracinski pointed Michael Shaw and Ed Hudgins call “sustainable ‘Sustainability’ fi rst became fashionable with out at the time, the confusion seen at the 2002 development” Sovietization, and they highlight the UN’s Bruntland Report of 1987, which Summit was precisely the result of taking a number of serious philosophical problems provided a recipe for authoritarians to take “sustainable development” seriously -- with with the notion: control of their nations’ economies -- this all of the contradictions inherent in the notion. The U.N.’s concept of Sustainable report by the way was produced on the back Development is antithetical to individual of scare stories from Rachel Carson about For environmentalists, the campaign for freedom and economic liberty. It is, DDT (which proved to be both wrong and “sustainable development” is not motivated by philosophically speaking, unsustainable. destructive), from Paul Erlich on the population a legitimate desire for development. Instead, Development in this context refers to the explosion (which proved to be embarrassingly it is an attempt to put a respectable face on use of naturally occurring materials such 42 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS

as land, forests, rivers, water, and the like. time. Predictions at that time that America We’re supposed to conserve ‘resources’ The notion of Sustainable Development would run out of oil in a few decades also for future generations, for example, but assumes that if not managed by some proved spurious. Consider the folly if our if ‘resources’ are ‘conserved for future collective body, these materials will be ancestors had determined to save whale generations,’ when in fact will the resources destroyed by individual owners. The oil for lighting a few homes during the be used? Which future generation will be United Nations Habitat Conference twentieth century. allowed to access them? When? This is a Report in 1976 stated: “Private land sacrifi ce of the present to a future that never ownership is also a principal instrument But more fundamental is the fact that we arrives. If ‘resources’ may no longer be of accumulation and concentration of cannot know how technology will affect used, can they really be called a ‘resource’? wealth and therefore contributes to social the sustainable use of any given asset It is the human mind that has turned trees, injustice…Public control of land use is in the future. A snapshot is not a movie. rocks and mud puddles of yesterday into therefore indispensable.” We’re supposed to “conserve resources for future generations,” but if The idea plays on the notion that “natural resources” resources are limited, say Shaw ‘resources’ are conserved for future generaations then when in fact will the and Hudgins, yet as they point out “there is resources be used? Which future generation will be allowed to acess them? no such thing as a natural resource ... only When? This is a sacrifi ce of the present to a future that never arrives. matter and energy that we human beings with our remarkable minds are able to make use of for our survival and well-being.” America’s history shows material progress the resources of today; it is the human mind over past centuries by any measure. If we that is the ultimate resource -- and just like Oil, for example, a century and a half had asked at any given time whether the all the other resources, it is not running ago, was not a resource to a farmer who use of an asset was sustainable without out, although with economies and industry found it seeping out of his land; it made knowledge of future technologies that being shackled it is the mind being applied the land worthless for growing crops or are simply unknowable before they are to production that is itself being shackled. grazing farm animals. Only when men created, no doubt most development and discovered how to use it to heat homes, progress would not have occurred. But will our grandchildren really thank us run electrical generators, and propel tomorrow for not applying our minds and planes and automobiles did it become a This brings up another fl aw in the defi nition our energy to production today? Will they resource. Since from a human perspective of Sustainable Development. It is likely really thank us tomorrow for not having there is no limit to the potentially usable that future generations will live better built today the roads, dams, abattoirs, oil matter and energy in the universe, there than present ones if governments do is no problem of running out of resources. refi neries, industrial and chemical plants, not sabotage economic growth through canals, sewerage systems, pulp and paper The only problem is which resources will takings, taxes, and regulations. If be developed and at what cost. mills, railways and mines that we present anything, the present generation makes generations have enjoyed as a gift from our itself a victim by forgoing the use of There is nascent technology, for example, own predecessors? Will they think we’ve resources for the sake of future ones. to generate energy via ocean waves or to been sensible? Or bloody idiots with an The present generation bequeaths use orbiting collectors that would convert anti-human agenda who should have been to the future a wealth of capital and and beam energy to Earth via microwaves silenced with a gag and a bucket of paraquat. knowledge. That means future generations or lasers. will not need to reinvent the wheel. But in the end it’s not sense that attracts [...] And University of Arizona, Tucson, politicians is it, it’s power, and the reason for Professor John Lewis has done serious the more-than-decade-long popularity of the These problems with Sustainable work on the technology and economics of ‘sustainability’ nostrum is that it delivers power Development show that at best it is a mining asteroids for minerals. to those who are hungry for it: to politicians subjective, collectivist muddle and its and their minions. It is nothing other than a Sustainable Development is supposed application inevitably will destroy private pseudo-concept giving planners, bureaucrats, to meet “the needs of the present control of property and with it freedom itself. politicians and minor functionaries power without compromising the ability of future over your property and your industry and the generations to meet their own needs.” This ‘Sustainability’ is not about wealth production, use of your mind to create new wealth and defi nition is collectivist to the core. Not only rational analysis or the use of science or new resources. And it does this in a way does it ignore individual owners of assets, technology for advancement of human it in effect bestows title to those assets welfare. Quite the opposite: at root it is about peculiarly suited to politicians -- by delivering to an unborn future collective—not even sacrifi ce, paying penance for our prosperity them a constituency that can’t talk back. future individuals who might inherit titles and our freedom, and like all forms of sacrifi ce If ‘resources’ (i.e., your property) must be to property—but to “future generations.” or of altruism, it’s more about the present-day protected for ‘future generations,’ and in the Agenda 21’s defi nition of Sustainable sacrifi ce than it is about future results (if any). absence of future generations to speak for Development was lifted from the 1977 themselves, then the idea of ‘sustainability’ Constitution of the Soviet Union. As Bjorn Lomborg points out for example, nostrum empowers someone to speak on their rational analysis of authoritarian reactions behalf. That someone of course is a politician. In addition, this conception assumes that to projected environmental problems see one can judge at any given time whether the solutions as more expensive and more How ironic: a constituency from tomorrow some use of an asset will be sustainable in damaging than the so-called problems. that can’t answer back, used to shackle the the future. But such knowledge is virtually As he says, “Just because there is a constituency of today that can. What could unobtainable. Estimates a century ago that problem doesn’t mean that we have to be more ingenious? And what could America would soon lose its forests—a solve it, if the cure is going to be more be more suitable to sell politically. renewable resource -- were wrong; we expensive than the original ailment.” That have more woodlands today than at that of course doesn’t stop much irrationality. Are you buying it?

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 43 SCOTT WILSON GREEN PARTY POLITICS Scoring The Green Party Greenhouse Policies Our Free Radical Green-Watcher scores the ‘six-pack’ of Green Party Bill, a resident at Waimarama Beach would pay the full costs of maintaining and proposals for legislative change to help ‘fi x’ global warming. replacing the lines to that area compared to the bach owner who, only staying at the bach a couple of times a year, pays very little in Some in the Green Party are willing to learn SCORE: 0.1 out of 5 for climate change electricity (but at the moment does pay for the beyond the “assumed truths.” Others suggest impact, and maybe another 0.1 out of 5 for cost of maintaining the connection). This is that anyone with a car with an engine bigger the economy (it could save taxpayers a few even though the bach owner expects to have than 1.3 litres is “evil.” It is the latter group cents each). who write their global warming policies. a power connection 24/7/365 that he could use at any time he visits it. Those fi xed costs 2. The Climate Change (NZ Superannuation The green movement has been particularly should not be born on the basis of usage, Fund) Bill would require the managers of passionate about the energy and transport because they do not vary with usage. The the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to sectors, perhaps because the visible Greens think you’re more likely to turn your “consider climate change” and “the broader impact of both sectors is so pervasive, TV off standby if you can get your bill down environmental impact” of the companies in and so essential to the life of an industrial to near zero by being frugal. Essentially, this which they invest. Now “consider” is a fairly nation. Their moralistic sermonising has the Bill doesn’t stand up to economic scrutiny. weak threshold, so it is hard to say whether message, “If you don’t do what we say, then This Bill will do nothing to reduce greenhouse this will really change anything or if it will risk you’re destroying our planet,” and they point gas emissions, but will encourage more rarely reducing returns and the ability of the fund to out that you can’t be trusted to make rational used properties to be connected to electricity pay for national superannuation in the future – decisions about your behaviour, so it’s up to subsidised by high electricity users. presumably not that important to the Greens people like Sue Kedgley who can. (making money out of climate change would SCORE: 0/5 for climate change impacts be “evil” no doubt). However, the Green Party’s The enhanced greenhouse effect comes and -1/5 for the economy (transferring grasp of economics is adolescent at best and as a godsend to those ecologists with an wealth from regular electricity consumers to the trade-off between retirement income and authoritarian bent. Following the publicity over occasional users). the tiny marginal effect this bill will have on the Stern Report in the UK, the NZ Greens greenhouse gas emissions is not something were keen to join the Stern Gang of political 4. The Climate Change (Airline Emissions) that is raised. The purpose of the Bill is to doomsayers, swiftly drafting a ‘six-pack’ of Bill would require airlines operating in NZ “send signals to companies to clean up their Bills to reduce the “New Zealand contribution” to cap, by 2012, their total greenhouse gas acts and encourage investment in businesses to the enhanced greenhouse effect. The emissions in New Zealand to the level they are that help prevent climate change” – as if Bills represent what Lockwood Smith once in 2007. It would also require them to “take the NZSF investment will make a decisive said of the Greens: that a party that was so measures” to decrease their net emissions to difference. So, I don’t support using the NZSF concerned about the planet spent so little 1990 levels. In other words, between now time actually on the planet. as a tool for changing business – it is a tool for and 2012, the number of fl ights will have helping preserve national superannuation, and to have reduced (partly offset by ongoing Below I summarise the merits of each Bill (or if it was privatised (the investment split and fuel effi ciency gains). Now there will be lack thereof) and score them out of 5 for their granted to all NZers as a personal investment fuel effi ciencies from new aircraft, no doubt. likely impact on climate change, and also for account they could keep, add to, or sell) then This is something being driven intensely by their impact on the economy (with 5 being I doubt most taxpayers would be pleased to airlines worldwide and aircraft and engine highly positive, and -5 being disastrous). be forced to invest in businesses based on manufacturers have been achieving such environmental impact. gains for decades. This Bill would mean that 1. The Climate Change (Government airlines fl ying occasionally (e.g. Aerolineas Vehicle Procurement) Bill is window- SCORE: 0/5 for climate change impacts, Argentinas) may meet this requirement by dressing. This Bill would require SOEs and and 0/5 for the economy (assuming that maintaining current schedules with more fuel- certain Crown entities to purchase or lease “consider” means altering investments on the effi cient aircraft. It will give an advantage only vehicles of 1800cc or less, and only those margins, but not investing in poorer returns to new airlines (indeed you can see “new” in the “top 10% in fuel effi ciency in their size than otherwise). airlines being set up by existing ones to get class.” This would mean Helen Clark should around this). By contrast NZ-based airlines be driven to the airport in a Ford Focus rather 3. The Climate Change (Electricity Fixed would all face a hammering. For starters, than an LTD. Silly and ineffective? Sure, but Charge) Bill would regulate electricity the routes with the highest emissions (long I won’t get too heated about the government retailers to prohibit fi xed charges, the theory haul routes) would suffer enormously – Air requiring itself to buy smaller cars, as long as being that fi xed charges discourage energy New Zealand’s recent doubling of services to it doesn’t require it of anyone else. However conservation, because if consumers faced all London (by adding a service via Hong Kong) you don’t need a new law to do this – just charges based on usage, then very low users would probably have to reverse. It would be make it part of the performance agreements would pay very little (encouraging low use). the death knell for any international expansion between Ministers and their departments. As This quite simply is not fair. There are common plans by the airline. long as it saves money (diffi cult to say as it costs in electricity distribution that vary little may increase the price of smaller cars due to according to how much or how little electricity As Air New Zealand would need to the increase in demand) I won’t shed a tear if you use. These costs include maintaining concentrate its future efforts not on growth, Cabinet Ministers have to be driven in smaller everything from Transpower’s network to the but instead on maximising what routes it cars. local distribution lines. So under the Green services, routes would be culled and fares

44 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz increased (after all, no other airline could sense to them. So, instead of letting road 18 people out of their cars. Now given that increase fl ights so competitive pressure is users pay for, well, roads, the Greens have the majority of bus users would never have reduced). Domestically, services to some proposed the Climate Change (Public driven in the fi rst place (they either have no provincial towns may be at risk because many Transport Funding) Bill to stipulate that car or access to one, or the cost of parking are marginal now (and especially given the big two thirds of the National Land Transport means they wouldn’t bother), it is a hard ask increase in domestic fl ights since 1990 as Fund (NLTF) be allocated to public transport, to attract 18 car drivers onto each bus. Air NZ went to low-cost low-fare operations, walking and cycling, rail, coastal shipping and generating more business). Of course this travel demand management. In other words, However, the biggest problem is that the ignores whether or not it is a breach of the this Bill would increase the amount spent on Greens have neglected what this redirection International Convention on Civil Aviation by those modes of travel by 400%! Instead of of funds would mean. 41% of Land Transport imposing such a requirement on overseas paying for what you use, the Greens would New Zealand funding at the moment goes on airlines. spend money on modes that also emit carbon road maintenance. Resealing, pothole fi lling, dioxide, just in a more collective friendly replacing broken signs, weeding and the like. The big effect is on the economy: provincial “Green” way. So reducing this to less than 33% (once you towns would be more isolated, and more remove administration) means maintenance is people would drive instead of fl y (hardly The fi rst effect is infl ationary, on subsidies. cut by over a quarter. This means highways any will go by train!). All in all there would Rail and bus operators would hike up the start to get rougher, more potholed and you’ll be less travel, particularly to and from other subsidies they demand as they desperately need more fuel to drive on rougher roads, countries. Time-sensitive export cargos that try to lay their hands on trains, buses, ships and there will be more accidents. Buses and go by air would be signifi cantly effected, as and staff. Of course, since the Greens are bikes will suffer too but, hey, “roads are bad,” the price of international air cargo would rise, inherently Marxist, they will happily support a aren’t they man? reducing international competitiveness. In good portion of the subsidies being sucked addition, international tourism would be on a out of the system to pay for these cost It also means no road construction. None. virtually nil-growth path. With airlines unable increases. That doesn’t just mean no motorways, it to increase fl ights, their only hope to grow means no safety realignments and no fear business is either shifting to larger planes Secondly, you might ask what the effect of all tidying up intersections, in other words none fl ying less often (such as the delayed Airbus of this actually might be. Now, it would be fair of those hundreds of small projects that help A380) or changing the tourist effort from to say that expenditure on walking and cycling improve the conditions for road transport. mass tourism to upmarket (making money (which basically means footpaths, cycle lanes from more business-class passengers that and marketing these modes) will do next to You see, the Greens have this fanciful notion pay much more than economy class, but nothing to encourage people to walk or bike that leaving traffi c stuck in congestion is good with fewer seats). So, if you’re in the tourist when they currently don’t. In fact, as the for the environment, that any dollar spent on sector the glory days would be over, and intent would be to signifi cantly subsidise the upgrading a road is bad for the environment. don’t expect New Zealand to tap into the main competition (public transport) or even On top of that, if the Greens ARE successful in growing tourist markets from China and India run it free, this is far more likely to attract their goal of shifting large numbers of people – the fl ights would be too expensive or simply people from walking and cycling, as frequent from cars and freight from trucks, there will couldn’t exist, without cutting others. cheap public transport is more attractive than be LESS money to spend on alternative walking and cycling for most people, unless modes, because there will be less road taxes SCORE: So the Greens would put aviation they treat walking and cycling as recreation. collected. in a virtual time warp, with modest aircraft So it is a form of chasing your own tail. The effi ciency gains providing little respite. The extra public transport is likely to have a modest Score: So, climate change effect of this? - climate change impact? Well, given that effect on driving. I say modest because unless 1/5 (deterioration in roading infrastructure, growth in Chinese aviation will outstrip public transport does these three things it unnecessary underutilised extra public reductions in New Zealand fl ights in less than simply can’t compete with driving: transport). Economic effect? -2/5 (as road a year, you might be able to say a 1/5 if you transport becomes increasingly less effi cient count it for less than that period. Economic a) provides a nearly door-to-door and money is wasted on subsidising ineffi cient impact? How about -4/5. Thousands of jobs alternative (or with free secure car modes of transport). in tourism and exports are put at risk, Air New parking); Zealand’s viability is seriously compromised b) is as fast as driving or better; 6. Not happy with spending your road taxes and provincial New Zealand will suffer from c) is at a high enough frequency that subsidising how other people move, the most less air links. missing a bus or train doesn’t add a ridiculous Bill of the six-pack could well be the signifi cant delay to travel. Climate Change (Rail Electrifi cation) Bill. 5. Having put the aviation sector into a time This “sets targets for electrifi cation of different warp, the Greens get onto their favourite Almost everywhere, and even taking traffi c parts of the rail network and requires the rail fetish: The religion of “cars and trucks bad, congestion into account, public transport operator to use biodiesel on those parts of the trains and coastal shipping (locally owned) is an inferior option for most people. All of network which are not electrifi ed by 2012”. good” “cycling and walking better, bus good the wishing in the world doesn’t change, but not as good as trains”. for example, that only 13% of all Auckland’s The fi rst question is “who is going to pay for employment is in the Central Business District this”? If the rail operator has to, I suspect Toll The road transport sector already pays where all the rail lines head for – and once you Holdings will go to the Government and say around $2 billion a year in taxes (fuel tax, road deduct those not within a cooee of a railway “we’re out” because the cost of electrifying user charges and motor vehicle licence fees) station at home (as Helen Clark once said), the extent of the rail network listed in the Bill is which, at the moment, direct or indirectly, pay you are down to perhaps 10% of Auckland exorbitant. It cost $350 million in 1986 dollars mostly for road maintenance and construction, commuters, at best, who might have some to electrify the central part of the main trunk with about 15% left over for public transport, sort of rail option. On top of that, and based line; in today’s dollars we would be talking cycling and pedestrian facilities, a broadly on the government’s own data1, for buses to $700 million. The amount of kms proposed user pays system. The Greens don’t like this be an improvement on car use (in terms of for electrifi cation are about treble that, so the – user pays doesn’t seem to make a lot of emissions) each bus has to attract at least cost would be about $2.1 billion, remembering 45 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz that it isn’t just about overhead wires, but also (and the positive externalities often ignored) emissions during construction would offset new locomotives, complete replacement of included “climate change emissions”, the savings). Effect on the economy? -3/5 (as signalling and telecommunications systems, meaning CO2. The study looked at what Toll pulls out or you get taxed to pay for it, and and supply of high voltage power to sometimes CO2 emissions came from road and rail, and it generates a net economic loss). remote parts of the network. It isn’t cheap. multiplied that by what was estimated as being * * * * * You also need to lower tunnel fl oors to allow a top-end level of what would be paid in an space for overhead wires. Then you have international carbon trading system. In other SO THERE YOU HAVE IT - even if you do the new biodiesel locomotives. Now to be words, the cost was what “New Zealand” believe that man-made climate change needs fair, Toll does need to replace most of the would lose or have to pay in carbon credits to be combated, the Greens present you with current fl eet of locomotives over the next to maintain the current level of transport Bills to: ten years, but it will pay a premium to buy use. The total ‘carbon cost’ for current rail - Shrink the NZ tourist industry; electric and biodiesel locomotives over simply transport was fi gured at just $5 million. - Shrink the NZ export sector dependent new diesels. So either Toll pays (doubt it, on air cargo; given the rail business is currently worth $600 In other words, the proposed $2-3 billion - Signifi cantly increase the price of air million in total according to the current share investment in “greening” the railway would travel; price) or you the taxpayer are forced to pay. only generate a “benefi t” of $5 million a year. - Make roads rougher, less safe, You would be forced to pay presumably to In real life this is what we call stupid. unimproved and more pot-holed; ensure that the average rail freight customer - Spend $3.5 billion on rail to get a gain gets cheap transport (coal, forestry, dairy and Ah, but what if rail attracted freight from the at best of just $10 million a year; containerised exports). road? Well yes, wow, what if it carried double and the current amount – by their own fi gures this - Achieve a net zero benefi t for the However, what does this multi billion would save a whopping $10 million a year in planet. “investment” get you? Well, the Greens ‘carbon costs’!! So instead of putting $2.1 are keen to selectively quote the results of a billion in the bank and getting over $100 million TOTAL SCORE OUT OF A POSSIBLE 60: study commissioned for the Government a in interest, the Greens would literally pour it A very shabby -9.8. few years ago called Surface Transport Costs down the drain to get, at a very optimistic COMMENT FROM THE MARKER: and Charges which looked at the full costs best, one tenth of this. Calling this dopey Must do better. of road and rail transport and what road and would overestimate just how little sense this rail transport users paid towards those costs. proposal actually contains. (Footnotes) It includes externalities, which, setting aside 1 Surface Transport Costs and Charges, the debate about how “real” these costs are SCORE: Effect on climate change? 0/5 (the Main Report, Table 3.4A, p 64.

46 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz PETER CRESSWELL BOOK REVIEW Selling Disaster: The Four Horse- men Of Modern Apocalypse “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed pass -- unless of course you do count the overcrowding of the topless beaches of St. - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an Tropez in mid-summer -- but these were endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” not predictions, he now says, they were "scenarios." Despite his abysmal failure as a -H.L. Mencken prognosticator however, the sad old hippy is still tripping over wind chimes and bothering There’s money and power and headlines centuries before him, Ehrlich used shoddy the adults. On the release of Bjorn Lomborg's aplenty in scaremongering (and much less arithmetic to predict a worldwide explosion of book Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring and many fewer in good news), but how often population that would see “future generations” the Real State of the World Ehrlich ranted, is the scaremongering accurate? And does it stepping on each other’s feet all day every “If Lomborg had done some arithmetic, he matter? Disaster sells. It sells politically, and it day just to survive, and used scary rhetoric could have . . . spared us a book as thick makes a fair return through the cash register about this nonsense to fi re up the activists. as a brick and almost as intelligent.” And as well. But do the facts matter when we’re Fired up they were, and scary indeed were his if Ehrlich had spared us his comment, he scaring ourselves to death, or is it okay to predictions: might have spared us forming for ourselves lie in order to “wake people up” to calamity? the fairly obvious conclusion about himself... • Not just millions but "hundreds of millions" would die from "a coming overpopulation For the benefi t of those readers either not crisis in the 1970s," he said, and by 1980 But perhaps Ehrlich was still just pissed paying attention or under thirty-fi ve (insert life expectancy in the United States would off because Lomborg’s hero Julian Simon obvious jokes here), let’s have a look at three be just forty-two years. had famously embarrassed him in their hugely infl uential granddaddies of modern 1980 bet on the price of a chosen basket environmental scaremongering: these three • "If I were a gambler, I would take even of resources. Ehrlich bet $10,000 and his invented the “sky-is-falling” “something-must- money that England will not exist in the reputation as an alarmist that the price be-done” technique peddled so effectively as a year 2000." would go through the roof as resources ran political tool in recent times. Doom and gloom, out; Simon bet the opposite. Simon won. we’re all going to die, the four horsemen of • "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. the apocalypse -- these three books launched In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of Which leads us on nicely to another failed that whole alarming trend in public relations millions of people will starve to death in pack of alarmists and their own contribution and political activism; between them they spite of any crash programs embarked to sensationalist history, The Limits to Growth raised pessimism to an art form, and “there- upon now. At this late date nothing can (1972). Like Ehrlich, the Club of Rome had ought-to-be-a-law-against-it” whinging to a prevent a substantial increase in the world also read Thomas Malthus and had re-used central part of contemporary political debate. death rate..." his static arithmetics in the cause of alarmism. You name it, they said, and we’re running Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) began Nothing except perhaps good sense, hard out of it. “There will . . . be a desperate the popularisation of environmental disaster work and entrepreneurial activity -- and of [arable] land shortage before the year 2000”; for political ends. She claimed that DDT, used course the facts. As PJ O'Rourke notes, we would run short of gold by 1979, they for malaria control, is killing birds, harmful to "Crowded as the country is, is overcrowding humans, and should be banned forthwith. even its main problem? Hong Kong and said, of silver and mercury by 1983, of tin People bought the book in droves. DDT was Singapore both have greater population by 1985, of zinc by 1988, of petroleum by banned in 1972. The result of the ban was that densities (14.315 and 12.347 per square 1990, and of natural gas by 1992. Um ... millions died because of a resurgence in the mile, respectively) than Bangladesh, and disease that was formerly being controlled by they're called success stories. The same What they got wrong of course was judicious application of the chemical Carson goes for Monaco. In fact, the whole not just their arithmetic, but their whole called a killer. It wasn’t. Her book was. Riviera is packed in August, and neither understanding of the role of price signals and Malthus nor Ehrlich have complained entrepreneurialism -- indeed of the capitalist Paul Ehrlich wrote the 1968 best-seller The about the topless beaches of St. Tropez." economy as a dynamic rather than a static Population Bomb. Like Thomas Malthus two None of Ehrlich's predictions have come to engine of production. The capitalist engine

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 47 of creation is a supple beast when left free This fi gure, 20%, was the number that the safety of health care, raise construction and unshackled, allowing human minds to rocketed around the world, although it is costs, deprive developing nations of clean read price signals and opportunities, and to simply a much-massaged reworking of the electricity, stop renewable wind energy, block adapt their own resources to suit. The results standard 3% GDP cost in 2100--a fi gure a solution to global warming, and contribute are astonishing. As Ronald Bailey observed in accepted among most economists to be a to deforestation. How sick is that? 2001, reasonable estimate. Answer: Very bloody sick. Scaremongering Since the 1970s, the weight of the average In a series of ingenious steps, the modest 3% sells -- but you don’t have to buy it. And neither car has fallen by 25 percent. Food cans are fi gure for a century hence if nothing is done now should you sell it on anyone else’s behalf. 50 per cent lighter than they were 50 years has been “tricked” and fi nessed and infl ated ago. A fl exible plastic pouch that replaces with more imaginary “scenarios” -- Stern, says POSTSCRIPT: George Reisman’s in an end- a steel can reduces the packaging weight Lomborg, is “inventing, in effect, a “worst- of-days mood too, but one of a rather different by 93 percent. Plastic soda bottles are 30 case scenario” even worse than any others on character to the apocalyptic four. He argues percent lighter than they were in the 1970s the table” -- in order to grab headlines and to that the Stern Review on Global Warming scream disaster. (And that’s just one problem -- which were already much lighter than the could be environmentalism’s swan song. with Stern’s report, as Lomborg and others glass ones that preceded them. Similarly, have been pointing out since its release.) plastic grocery bags are 50 percent thinner He raises a crucial point about the “action” than they were 20 years ago and lighter called for in the report, a similar problem to Inventing catastrophe for political effect. What than the paper bags they replaced. The Erlich’s and the Club of Rome’s own nightmare could be more ingenious. invention of the steel frame building did “scenarios”: Stern simply fails to understand away with structures that needed heavy that a capitalist economy is a dynamic, not a “It’s okay to lie,” say activists, if you’re doing it thick walls to support their own weight. static entity. Stern declares that disaster and in the name of a good cause. Is it? Say those hellfi re and that depressive 20% drop in wealth same activists: “Bush lied; people died.” If it’s Functionality is increasing throughout the production will be the inevitable conseqences wrong for Bush to lie, as they claim he has, economy as well—as computers get smaller of “not acting,” but as Reisman points out, then why doesn’t that work both ways? A and faster, air conditioners, refrigerators, founder of Greenpeace Patrick Moore split furnaces, and all manner of appliances Sir Nicholas’s use of the words “don’t act” recently over exactly this issue. “Beginning in become more effi cient and longer-lasting. is very misleading. What he is urging when the mid-1980s,” he says, “Greenpeace, and he speaks of “action” is a mass of laws much of the environmental movement, made . . . [C]orn yields per acre in the United a sharp turn to the political left and began and decrees—i.e., government action. States have more than tripled since 1950. adopting extreme agendas that abandoned This government action will forcibly prevent Improving crop productivity is based science and logic in favor of emotion and hundreds of millions, indeed, billions of entirely on technological improvements sensationalism... individual human beings from engaging in such as fertilizer, pesticides, and better their, personal and business private action— seeds. Environmentalism has turned into anti- that is, from acting in ways that they judge He also notes, globalization and anti-industry. Activists have to serve their own self-interests. Thus, what A copper wire can transmit 24 voice abandoned science in favour of sensationalism. he is actually urging is not action, but channels or about 1.5 megabytes of Their zero-tolerance, fear-mongering cam- government action intended to stop information per second. Far thinner and paigns would ultimately prevent a cure for private action. lighter optical fi ber can transmit more than Vitamin A defi ciency blindness, increase 32,000 voice channels and more than 2.5 pesticide use, increase heart disease, deplete This article originally appeared at gigabytes of information per second. The wild salmon stocks, raise the cost and reduce Peter’s Blog, PC.Blogspot.Com fi rst American communications satellite, Telstar 1, was launched in 1962 and could www.organonarchitecture.co.nz handle 600 telephone calls simultaneously. Modern Intelsat satellites can handle 120,000 calls and 3 TV channels at the same time.

So much then for the three granddaddies of today’s scaremongering. Everything about them was wrong, tragically wrong in the case of Carson, but the spectre of their various apocalypses still haunt debate today.

Bidding now to join this prestigious club is a new candidate on the scene, a fourth horsemen predicting global apocalypse if Something Isn’t Done Now. The already famous Stern Report on Climate Catastrophe is a “bombshell study” was greeted even before its release by a whole Stern Gang of waiting politicians -- it reports We Face Depression If We Don’t Act Now! Worse, much worse, Than Even the Great Depression of the 30s! Calamity, catastrophe and 20% of our wealth stripped from our pockets if We Don’t Do Something Now! Right Now!!

Guess what? Says Bjorn Lomborg of that headline-grabbing fi gure:

48 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz Susan SUSAN RYDER Slays-’em Susan the Libertarian slays everbody’s sacred cows

The Road to Hell bureaucrats currently favour. Government 2 November 2006; 2.27pm The ‘Hell Pizza’ company recently placed a never solves problems; conversely, it Hi Hell, condom in thousands of private letterboxes subsidises them. It’s called the Law of Tania, I appreciate the response, but come on. nationwide in order to promote its Meatlovers’ Unintended Consequences, which means we Highlighting important sexual health issues? “Lust” pizza. After receiving complaints always end up with even more problems as a You’re a pizza company for Chrissakes! that young children had found them, Hell result of state interference. responded by saying that it was in the public What next? Are you so concerned about interest that condoms should be free. The I’m tempted to say ‘go screw yourselves’, but the government’s latest obsession with media (predictably) jumped on the story, that would be tacky, much like your promotion. obesity that you’ll throw a carrot stick in the which prompted public health offi cials and letterbox to promote Gluttony?! Or maybe a You’ve just lost a customer for good. the Aids Foundation to come out in support of matchbox Mercedes to promote Envy?! Hey,

Hell. And what do you know, in fi ve minutes a how about a free sweatband for Sloth or a one-off fast food promotion had become the Oh, and please note that I’ll be forwarding starving African for Greed! Wow, just think of latest weapon in the War on STDs. this to as many people as possible. You see, the possibilities for Hell to be able to ‘highlight freedom works both ways and I’ve just voted important issues’! It is a fact that do-gooders drive me nuts, with with my feet. health do-gooders being the most painful of But please don’t accuse me of being offended. all. Free speech is free speech and I had Every man and his dog is ‘offended’ by something to say. Susan Ryder something today; it’s a national affl iction for dripping wet whiners. I’m pissed off that you * * * * * took the easy way out by blatantly imposing 2 November 2006; 10.20am this crap upon people who haven’t asked for Hi Hell 2 November 2006; 1.20pm it, particularly where minors are concerned. Handing a condom to your customers at the The 9 o’clock (radio) news just carried the To Susan Ryder point of sale would have been the adult thing story of your latest ‘free-condom-in-the- We acknowledge your complaint dated 02 to do. That way, you’d be giving them the letterbox’ promotion. November. We are sorry that you have been option to accept or decline the offer, while still First and foremost, I’m a Libertarian, which offended by the latest HELL campaign. making your point. means I believe in the right for individuals to conduct themselves as they wish, provided We never set out to offend anyone but we do Stick with cooking pizzas. At least you’re they do not harm others in the process. like to push the boundaries of marketing. We being productive. Leave the (questionable) public health policy to the Health Nazis. It That automatically includes the right to run acknowledge your right to complain about gives them something to do; they love to your business as you wish. the fact that you received a condom in your think they’re saving the world. But it’s worth letterbox. It also allows me the right to free speech - and noting that they more they interfere, the worse I think your promotion stinks. The thought the stats. of my 5 year-old niece or 7 and 9 year-old However, while the Lust campaign is primarily nephews fi nding a condom in the letterbox about marketing HELL’s meatlovers pizza, It is also worth remembering just what the when they collect the mail for their parents is there is an important social responsibility road to hell is paved with. bloody disgusting to any adult with a modicum issue here, and that is that condoms are of common sense. the most effective way to reduce the risk of Cheers. unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted If you wanted to create a sensationalist fi ve- If Tania thought she could fob me off with the diseases. minute wonder story - which is obviously the party line, which ignored the points I raised promotional intention - why the hell didn’t anyway, she thought wrongly. ‘Health issues’, you dump a truckload outside the nearest Its also interesting to note that while abstinence bollocks. If they had just owned up to it being university? God knows the students are so is often promoted as an alternative to sexual a cheap publicity stunt, I’d at least have had state-brainwashed into believing everything activity, the rates of infection and pregnancy in respect for their commercial nous. But it in life should be ‘free’, they would be worthy groups that pledge no sex before marriage are always worries me when business gets into recipients. At least the gesture might prevent similar to those of adolescent groups overall. bed with the state. the conception of another generation of state- On balance, we feel that the Lust campaign What next, indeed. The Mad Butcher worshipping twats. has been effective and has served to highlight promoting UN policy (ye Gods) with his important sexual health issues. And as for your spokesman’s comment chicken pieces? The Energiser Bunny that ‘condoms should be free’, you backing Kyoto? How about Toilet Duck on just don’t get it, do you. The government Tania McRae reducing Third World Debt! provides nothing; taxpayers are forced to fund whatever hare-brained scheme the * * * * * Spare us from those who would save us all.

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 49 NEIL MILLER

The Malthouse (Wellington) – the biggest The Best of Beer in 2006 range of beer. Order a Tuatara tasting tray. Bar Bodega (Wellington) – it may have moved While Ayn Rand had no use for tradition, we Tories simply love it. but the beer list is just getting better. Tuatara Porter on the handpump is a must-have. It is traditional at this time of year to publish top ten lists and this Mussel Inn (Golden Bay) – a highlight of my humble beer column is no exception. beer drinking career. The Captain Cooker is a classic.

So, here are my thoughts on the top ten New Zealand Dux de Lux (Christchurch) – over a decade of coaxing great beer out of a tiny brewery. Go beers of 2006. for a stunning Nor’Wester Pale Ale.

The Twisted Hop (Christchurch) – how beer 10. Moa Original – the champagne of beers. Some of these beers are not household should be made and drunk. Ask for a names even though on pure merit they should Goldings Bitter and a pork pie. 9. Mac’s Reserve – you were taken from us be. I’m often asked by people where they Inch Bar (Dunedin) – small but perfectly too soon. should go to drink good beers. formed. Take the barman’s recommendation for the best Emerson’s beer on tap that day. 8. Twisted Hop Centennial – a New World real Well, fortunately I’ve had some thoughts on ale. that subject too. Honourable mentions would also have to go to Ruby’s bar in Richmond, Bar Edward 7. Emerson’s American Pale Ale – a hop- I’ve compiled a list of the top ten places to in Wellington and the chain of Belgian Beer spangled beverage. drink beer in geographical order from north Cafés across the nation. to south. As a bonus, I’ve made a beer 6. Limburg Czechmate Pilsner – simple yet recommendation for each venue. I’ve picked these places because they “get” beautiful, just like the brewer. beer. They smash the stereotypes that all Hallertau (Auckland) – variety and quality in beers taste the same and that beer is just a 5. Cock and Bull Monk’s Habit – a rich, second-class beverage best drunk ice-cold Riverhead. The Stuntman IPA will appeal to decadent pint. and in great volume. the brave. 4. Three Boys Pilsner – near-perfect balance. They take beer seriously and offer their Galbraith’s Alehouse (Auckland) – the original punters a range of fl avoursome beers and 3. Epic – some people call it insane, they call brewpub. It would be a sin to miss the great service. Many of these venues are it fl avour. Resurrection Trappist Ale. doing amazing things with beer and food matching. 2. Dux de Lux Nor’Wester – still the only beer Cock and Bull (Auckland and Hamilton) – a which gets me into an arts centre. chain of fun pubs serving great beer. Have a There are many beer heroes in New Zealand. pint of Fuggles. Over the festive season try and give them 1. Mayhem – as close to the perfect pint as I your support. have ever tasted. Wassail Brauhaus (Taranaki) – hospitality and I’ll see you in 2007 for the next year of beer. real ale in the country’s only bed, breakfast Cheers. and brewery. Drink what your host Tim drinks. Send Neil mail at: [email protected]

50 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz KACHINA ALLEN

The dangers of alcohol abuse are well known. So too are the Beer can even protect against radiation damage (from sources such as x-rays) with cardiovascular benefi ts of drinking red wine. But could drinking beer numerous studies providing evidence that actually be good for you? animals given beer extracts have better survival rates after high dosage radiation exposure. In human blood, beer components New Zealanders consumed on average nearly But in moderation, how benefi cial is beer? demonstrated increased protection of 80 litres of beer per person in 2002 (according lymphocytes (white blood cells involved in the to the Alcohol Advisory Council of New First let’s defi ne moderation. Moderation is immune system) against radiation damage – at Zealand). This is equivalent to a small glass a equivalent to (or less than) 1 standard drink a least in a test tube. Some of the benefi ts are day (or 2/3 of a standard drink). This makes day for women and two for men. due to cancer prevention compounds. Beer it a substantial part of many people’s diets. constituents have been shown to reduce free- In terms of nutrition, beer is high in B vitamins radical levels in the blood and to prevent some Beer has been popular for at least fi ve or – vitamins important in mood regulation, DNA damage associated with early tumours. six thousand years. Prayers, recipes and promoting healthy tissue growth, boosting the In animals, this has been demonstrated as a descriptions have shown it was integral to the immune system and preventing anaemia. It is reduction in the risk of colon cancer. inebriation of people from ancient civilizations also high in phytoestrogens – plant similies of including the Sumerians, Egyptians, the hormone estrogen. These phytoestrogens For the more elderly, beer seems especially Babylonians, Romans and Greeks. are the ingredients which supposedly make benefi cial. It has been shown to counter osteoporosis (weakening of bones associated soy products benefi cial. While beer has yet to Some historians go so far as to suggest that with broken hips) with regular (moderate) be fully tested, it is possible that constituents the craving for beer created civilization itself. drinkers displaying lower bone mass loss than may help to regulate circulating hormone levels Hunter-gatherer societies began farm crops their peers. and to build towns in response to the need thus improving mood, reducing cholesterol and possibly preventing some cancers. to stay in one place long enough to permit It also slows dementia onset. For people 55 fermentation and brewing. Fortifi cations and and older, moderate alcohol (including beer) armies were formed to protect the essential Like red wines, beer protects the cardiovascular drinkers exhibited better cognitive function grain crops. system, with moderate beer drinkers having a than their teetotal (or inebriated) peers. third the risk of coronary heart disease than a Whether beer provided the impetus for non (or heavy) drinker. The magic ingredients in On the downside, beer does give you the civilization or not, it was certainly a crucial both wine and beer appear to be polyphenols munchies. However studies have revealed no source of nutrients in early societies with early (found in hops and malt) – and beer contains correlation between beer consumption and European communities existing on a diet as much polyphenol material as wine. These body mass index (BMI) – in other words the of beer and barley soup. Beer at that time are chemicals which prevent the oxidation of beer gut is an urban myth. Obviously, like any probably provided the majority of the nutrients low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) - also known alcohol it’s not benefi cial during pregnancy consumed. as “bad” cholesterol. “Bad” and “Good” as it can cause physical and behavioural cholesterol are misleading terms. Cholesterol problems in the child. The only other negative Beer has changed substantially over the is good for you to some extent – it allows you thing appears to be that regular consumption centuries. Originally formed by fermenting to be solid at room temperature. However increases the amount of bleeding after bread, it would have barely had a fi zz let alone transporting cholesterol in LDLs damages operations. the frothy head we know today. Hops were a the arteries through oxidation. Cholesterol late addition and thus early beers lacked the carried as High Density Lipoproteins (HDLs) Overall, beer does appear to be a bit of bitter fl avor of current Western beer. is considered “Good cholesterol” as it does a wonder drug – so long as you lay off the not cause arteriosclerosis to the same extent. stubbies a couple of weeks before the hospital While for most people, beer is no longer a major A beer a day increases the amount of HDLs visit, and if you are expecting. source of nutrition, beer today still contains a by 4.4%. wide range of essential compounds including So perhaps it really is as Benjamin proteins, antioxidants and B vitamins. With Franklin once said, that “beer is proof Studies following people for at least 10 years such a powerhouse of ingredients, it has the that God loves us and wants us to be have demonstrated that moderate alcohol potential to be good for you. But is it? happy.” intake (including beer) has been shown to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes by 36% As usual, the answer lies in the quantities in Kachina Allen is an Australian scientist, for men and 58% for women. It seems that which it is consumed. While 10 beers may currently living in New York. She blogs isohumulones; one of the bitter fl avor agents seem like a great idea on a Friday night, at Eccentricscientist.Wordpress.Com. generally Saturday’s hangover reminds us in beer reduces insulin levels in the blood. Ms Allen does not necessarily agree or that moderation is the sensible course. In Isohumulones also help to prevent (and can support any political, aesthetic, moral, large quantities, beer, like any other alcoholic be used to reduce) hypertension. philosophical or other viewpoints beverage can cause nausea, headaches expressed in this magazine. A full list of and in the long term, liver disease, brain Beer can act as an antiviral – inhibiting the references for this article can be obtained deterioration and cancers including mouth, replication and thus spread of numerous by emailing the editor at organon@ihug. oesophagus, liver, lung and colon. viruses including HIV. co.nz.

Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz December 2006 - February 2007—The Free Radical — 51 JASON ROTH

Twelve Guidelines for 6. If you’re going to use facts of history 10. If you mention a fact because it’s and current events as evidence for Objectivist Writers controversial, state your source. your arguments, try to pick something Don’t be an authoritarian asshole. 1. Don’t include a byline photo of you in that more than nine out of ten Especially when the authority is you. your best John Galt pose if your own Objectivists don’t already use when mother turns away when you enter a making the same point that you’re 11. If you happen to fi nish your tirade room. trying to pretend you’re making for against environmentalism on the the fi rst time. 2. Take your Kant quotes from Kant, not same day a major bridge is obliterated from the Objectivist essay recycling 7. Restating everything in other people’s by terrorists, you’re not immediately bin. articles and then linking to them does obligated to e-mail it to the New York not constitute good writing. It’s called Times and make the entire Objectivist 3. Hold off on the paragraph-long Ayn being a leech with references. movement look like a bunch of Rand quotes until you’ve hinted goddamn wackos. to your audience that, yes, you’ve 8. Either say something that hasn’t been actually thought about what-she-said- said, say it differently, or keep your 12. Don’t quote yourself repeatedly, you better-than-you. fucking mouth shut. (Yes, this has lazy, pompous prick. As I’ve said been said before, but I don’t believe before, “That piece of shit you wrote 4. Avoid clipping an author bio to your with the word “fucking.”) article about the Israeli-Palestinian for your political science class wasn’t confl ict if your experience in foreign 9. Address the people whose arguments Atlas Shrugged.” policy consists of a business trip to you are criticizing by name. Nowhere Canada. amongst the Objectivist virtues is it Jason Roth is an Objectivist humorist stated that being a pussy promotes from New York, and the host of 5. Refrain from humor if your forte is your values. (I’m talking to you, SaveTheHumans.Com. Send him insults being dry, boring, and monotonous. Cresswell. at [email protected]

52 — The Free Radical—December 2006 - February 2007 Visit ‘The Free Radical online’ at: www.FreeRadical.co.nz The Free Radical - 10 Years Ago Editor: Peter Cresswell Articles, Comments and Letters to the Editor, Editor at Large: Lindsay Perigo email the Editor at [email protected] Assistant Editor: Sean Kimpton Thanks to the resources, help, advice, encouragement and contributions from around the blogosphere, including the brilliance of Pacifi cEmpire.Org. Design: Graham Clark (The Tomahawk Kid) NZ, Generation-XY.Blogspot.Com, Latitude45South.Blogspot.Com, WhaleOil. Business Administration Manager: Shirley Riddle. Co.NZ, TeenagePundit.Blogspot.Com. P.O. Box 96-103. Balmoral, Auckland Advertising: Contact Shirley Riddle on [email protected] The opinions expressed by the writers herein are not necessarily those of the Subscriptions: Visit or email Shirley on [email protected] editor, or of each other.