Rolling Back the Tide

Clark or Canute: Which Would You Prefer?

Every day a coconut. You cannot awake these days without being confronted with another indication that greenism and its attendant apocalyptic catastrophism is causing huge damage to the planet, and will continue to do so.

Today, it was a warning that the smelter at Tiwai point, the largest employer in Southland, is likely to be shut down if the Emissions Trading Scheme goes ahead. It will be shut down and the business moved to China, where a smelter will be constructed which will emit more pollution than the current one. All to save the planet! Greenism is an ecological disaster. It is a destroyer of the planet. It is folly heaped upon folly. It is inhuman.

Helen Clark and her coterie are completely responsible for this utopian madness. They wanted a “defining issue” that would capture the imagination of the electorate, that would whip up fervent enthusiasm once again. They wanted an aspirational goal that the ordinary Kiwi would be proud of, and proud that their government was embracing. Bluntly, they wanted to save their political and electoral hides.

So Clark—who, we have been told ad nauseam by Clarkists—is prudent, cautious, thoughtful—prolaimed that New Zealand was to become carbon neutral. The media and chattering classes applauded, and Clark felt vindicated. Then she announced that New Zealand would lead the world on this issue. We were going to be the first country in the world to set up a comprehensive tax on carbon emissions, through a bureaucratically designed (as opposed to a market evolved) Emissions Trading System. We were going to show the world how to do it. We were going to rush through the legislation setting it up before the election--so that it could be a defining issue!

Really. New Zealand, a poxy little country on the backside of the Pacific, with a fundamentally weak, narrow, unbalanced, economy; deeply in debt, unable to survive without borrowing savings from the rest of the world, running a huge current account deficit, with one of the highest interest rates in the OECD, with the carefully cultivated and promoted, pseudo economic virtue of non-development that is, (clean, green and pristine). We are going to lead the world. Yes, that's prudent, cautious and thoughtful. What Clark conveniently forgot, or perhaps has never learnt, was that capital is globally mobile. Increase the transaction costs of business through regulation and taxation, and guess what—capital migrates—offshore.

The absolutely last thing New Zealand needed to be doing, given our vulnerable and parlous economic condition, was to lead the world in the transaction costs of taxation and regulatory impositions upon capital. But, at least we are leading the world—in stupidity and egregious political hubris.

One cannot help thinking about King Canute. Oh, we wish the good King were ruling New Zealand. We would do far better to have a monarchy with Canute on the throne than suffer the costs of rabid self-interested politicians who will do “whatever it takes” to stay in power.

Canute, you remember, is the English king who sat upon his throne at the foreshore, and commanded the tide not to come in. The tide, of course, rudely ignored Canute's commands and the king was duly shown up as a very fallible, finite, limited, and creaturely ruler. What is almost universally forgotten about this event, however, is that King Canute was trying to teach his subjects an object lesson in his own limitations and fallibility.

Tired of his obsequious and fawning courtiers, whose nauseating flattery offended him, Canute had learned that they were saying that the king was so great he could command the tides to go back and they would obey him. Whereupon, the offended Canute ordered that he be seated on this throne at the foreshore to demonstrate publicly that his power, competence, and authority were very limited indeed. He sought to demonstrate in the most direct way possible that he was but a mere servant, a fallible human being. As he patently failed to command the tide, he announced: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings. For there is none worthy of the name but God, Whom heaven, earth and sea obey.”

One can imagine the febrile obsequious fawning of the Clarkist inner circle. “We need a defining issue. We need a symbol. We need an aspirational goal. I have it: we will lead the people to carbon neutrality.” The courtiers clap and cheer. “You can do it, Helen. You can command the markets, capital, people. You can create out of nothing by your word alone. You can make us carbon neutral! We will lead the world. Then the people will vote for us, inspired that we have lead them all 'up, up, up past the Russell Hotel; up, up, up to the Heavyside Layer.'”

No, we are not going up. Rather the Heavyside Layer is crashing down upon us—and it is heavy indeed. It is starting to squeeze economic life out of New Zealand. Who will this hurt? The poor and the vulnerable, of course. The better off will be able to leave if they wish. And who can blame them? Capital will flee. Unemployment will rise. Those reckless debts will catch in the throat.

A prudent, careful, humble leader would have said, “It would be folly—nothing more than wanton hubris—to believe that New Zealand could lead the world in such things. In this we will proceed very carefully, very cautiously. We will be a careful follower.”

“But an election looms. Full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes. Blast the people. They don't know what's good for them. I and my Labour Party are good for them. Don't you love me, my people? Am I not beautiful and terrible in your eyes? Fear me, and kiss my feet, before it is too late.”

May the Lord God spare us from such pride-filled madness. Jerusalem ever longs for just and wise rulers who will say, “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings. For there is none worthy of the name but God, Whom heaven, earth and sea obey.”

It is unlikely that the spirit of Canute will be found in rulers in our lifetimes. Athens will have to decay beyond recognition before their fawning courtiers and complicit princes learn. Meanwhile, see what desolation they wreak.